Trending Topics
Mushroom Madness 
Fungi can cure or kill, nourish life, and also decompose it back into soil. Fossil evidence for fungi is limited, but the ability to analyze molecular data has led to revelations about the evolution of this extraordinary family of...
Fool’s Gold: The Myth of Tiburcio Vasquez 
“And still of a winter’s night, they say,  when the wind is in the trees, When the moon is a ghostly galleon  tossed upon cloudy seas,    When the road is a ribbon of moonlight  over the purple moor,    A...
Billions in Flight: Migratory Birds 
Autumn doesn’t officially begin until the equinox on September 22, but all across North America birds are already on the wing—billions of them. Migration times and destinations vary based on the species and variables like weather and food sources—some...
One-Room Schoolhouse 
Back to school. A hundred years ago in Topanga, it would have been on foot—and often barefoot—to the little, red, one-room schoolhouse by the creek in the bend of the dirt road.  Public education in California was still relatively...
E-Issues

Lights Out 

An extended SCE “public safety power shutoff,” PSPS, made Thanksgiving more of an endurance test than a feast for tens of thousands of people, including most residents of the Santa Monica Mountains. The power went off on Wednesday evening...
E-Issues

Gratitude 

COVID-19 has killed 5 million people worldwide. It’s a somber milestone in a horrific chapter of history. The statistic was—with grim appropriateness—released on November 1, the day observed by many as All Souls Day, or Dia de los Muertos—the...