Archive for the ‘Geography’ category

Quick storm

The Chisos Mountains seen from Terlingua.

Bay Area weather forecast

There is a range of temperatures that’s expected and safe — mid 70s as a high (if it’s hot), upper 50s as a low (if it’s cold). Beyond that, Bay Areans see danger everywhere. Today, it might get up to 88 degrees (84 in San Francisco). Seek shelter and drink plenty of liquids, people. You […]

How to spend a Wednesday in West Hollywood

First, you go to the Pacific Design Center.   Then, you go into the Pacific Design Center and start going up the stairs, so you can see some views.   Then, you go back down and into the little brown box that is the MOCA branch in West Hollywood, to see if there are any […]

Weekend recs

Hidden things on hills, San Francisco, California San Francisco gives up its secrets slowly, but they are fabulous. Relying on Google map directions to visit friends-of-a-friend, we ended up climbing the Filbert Steps up Telegraph Hill. They rose through an improbable fairyland of Victorian cottages and exotic plants, some kind of vertical Shire tucked right […]

Who wants to go for a damn hike?

Are you sitting at a desk right now? Doing a little Internet surfing in between bouts of Candy Crush, or checking your Facebook page, or maybe even some work? Do you want to stop doing those things and go for a damn hike? Come on, dammit! It’s time for some fresh air. Here’s a view. […]

Talkin’ freedom blues

Take a minute to jump in my Great Whatsit way back machine and recall the first time I blogged about cruising with Speed Levitch. Over the years I’ve had the good fortune to take a couple other walks with him, though always through Central Park. I knew that back in the day he had a […]

The expat’s return: Top and bottom 10

After returning to New York from almost a year in Abu Dhabi, it’s hard not to assess differences. Some things are an equal trade: spectacular blue skies and clouds in New York for equally spectacular pink skies and the enormous desert sun in the UAE. But cultural differences are trickier to parse. The other day, […]

Monday photo: From the top of Jebel Hafeet

We made a quick trip over the weekend to Al Ain, an oasis town on the UAE/Oman border. We stayed at a hotel perched atop Jebel Hafeet, the highest mountain in the emirate of Abu Dhabi. The view was pretty spectacular, as was the drive to the top — though we didn’t scale it quite […]

A post-Sandy walk through the Seaport

This post by my friend Teri Tynes, from her blog Walking Off the Big Apple, and especially the picture of Fresh Salt, above, had me missing home more than usual this week. Coincidentally, I’d finally had an email from Jason, the first I’d heard from him since they moved to Austin a the end of […]

The Navajo know

No time for an actual post this week, so allow me to whet your appetites and, for some of you at least, lubricate your memories. Today in my American lit class we were discussing a version of the Navajo emergence story — the account of how the Diné came to inhabit this, the Fifth World […]