Trending Topics
FOOL’S GOLD 
May 30, 2025 0 79  
California Mustard: Beauty or Bane 
Suzanne Guldimann, May 30, 2025 0  
A beautiful but unwelcome tide of golden blossom is sweeping over the Santa Monica Mountains this year. The late—and light—rainy season has resulted in few native wildflowers but an abundance of mustard, an opportunistic invasive that thrives even in...
TREES IN BLOOM 
Suzanne Guldimann, April 18, 2025 0  
This isn’t one of those springs when the hills are covered in a vivid profusion of wildflowers. The Santa Monica Mountains have received just a fraction of the average rainfall for the season. Hot weather is already arriving, drying...
SAVING THE COAST 
Suzanne Guldimann, April 4, 2025 0  
The Trump Administration is taking aim at the California Coastal Commission, and according to a recent New York Times article, the President may have an ally in California Governor Gavin Newsom. The Times headline states “Trump and Newsom Find...
Mission Impossible U.S. Army Corps of Engineers 
Suzanne Guldimann, March 21, 2025 0  
If it’s dangerous, difficult, or downright impossible and it involves American infrastructure, disaster recovery, or water resources, there’s a good chance the US Army Corps of Engineers will be the ones called in to deal with it, sometimes with...
13 Jun 2025
Books & Such

On Hume 

Jimmy P. Morgan, September 24, 2021 0 5 min read  
In The Great Guide: What David Hume Can Teach Us about Being Human and Living Well, independent scholar Julian Baggini proposes the idea – upon the inspiration of eighteenth century Enlightenment philosopher David Hume (1711-1776) – that we might...
Books & Such

Flying Fish 911 

Jimmy P. Morgan, July 30, 2021 0 5 min read  
The Anthropocene Epoch is an unofficial unit of geologic time, used to describe the most recent period in Earth’s history when human activity started to have a significant impact on the planet’s climate and ecosystems.* Mankind has transformed the...
Books & Such

The Agora 

Jimmy P. Morgan, July 2, 2021 0 5 min read  
My mother is a clinical psychologist who began her academic work a bit later in life than is typical; which is to say, I was raised by a woman practicing to practice psychology. Since she will likely read this,...
Books & Such

MCMLXXIV 

Jimmy P. Morgan, June 18, 2021 0 5 min read  
In August 1974, when I was 14 years-old, Richard Nixon resigned as president of the United States under a cloud of lies and malfeasance. The next month, I began my journey from Cincinnati, Ohio to Southern California under no...
Books & Such

Some Friends of Mine 

Jimmy P. Morgan, June 4, 2021 3 10 min read  
As an introverted and not-yet-so-famous historian, it amazes me that I have been able to develop surprisingly intimate friendships with Absaroka County, Wyoming Sheriff Walt Longmire; Wyoming Game Warden Joe Pickett; Iberia Parish, Louisiana Detective Dave Robicheaux; LAPD Homicide...
Books & Such

1942 

Jimmy P. Morgan, May 21, 2021 1 6 min read  
“In a 2018 poll, over 60 percent of respondents in a citizenship survey could not identify the nations that the US fought in World War II.” —Tracy Campbell In The Year of Peril: America in 1942 (2020), social historian...