In 1913, railroad magnate Henry Huntington and his wife Arabella moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles, purchasing 500 acres of land in what was called the San Marino Ranch. Arabella didn't like life in Southern California, and persuaded her husband - the nephew of her second husband Collis Huntington - to create a European-style…
The desert air is dry and warm, even on this late fall day. The heat of the summer has faded, but winter rains - rare even during the later months - have yet to quench the thirst of the earth. Blue skies, white clouds, brown dirt, gray rocks: the colors combine on the canvas of…
If there are two things I am a sucker for when I travel, they are history and free activities. When you add Covid into the mix, outdoor, easily social distanced becomes a perk as well. So when I visited San Jose, I searched for a place that would accomplish all three. Lo and behold, such…
In the heart of Silicon Valley lies Santa Clara University, a private Catholic university. And, in the heart of Santa Clara University lies Mission Santa Clara de Asis, from which the university, city, and county derive their names. Founded as the eighth mission (of twenty-one) in California by Spanish missionaries in 1777, it was the…
I've been coming to Palm Springs since I was a little kid. My grandparents bought a small condo here, in Palm Desert, when the area was mostly just country clubs, resorts, and sprawling date farms. Driving with them as we went out to dinner at one of their favorite restaurants, even major roads would pass…
The smell wafts through the air, permeating even the car I'm driving. Garlic. Fresh garlic growing all over. This is Gilroy, California, and the smell greets visitors like an old friend. Warm, familiar, emotional. That is garlic for me, and a sure sign I've arrived in the city known as the Garlic Capitol of the…
It's hard to believe this used to be a dump. I am in Alviso, California, the northernmost spit of land attached to San Jose before the southernmost tip of the San Francisco Bay. The morning has started off cool, the marine layer (Bay speak for fog) in over my head, but signs of it clearing…
The role of apples in societal lore is well documented. From the snake in the Garden of Eden encouraging Eve to eat from the Tree of Knowledge what has come to be thought of as an apple to Johnny Appleseed and his pot hat spreading seeds all over America to my own Jewish tradition of…
It is hot here on an early October day, made more so by the need to wear my mask when other people are around, which many are since it's a Saturday morning and Covid has closed all but one parking area here on the east side of Pinnacles National Park. We are about ninety minutes…
You know we're going to Surf City 'cause it's two to one / You know we're going to Surf City, gonna have some fun Jan and Dean - not The Beach Boys, as is normally thought - pump through my brain as I exit the 405 freeway and head down toward the Pacific in Huntington…