Birds in the Oaks
75% of all birds born die within the first year. But I try to take care of the ones I can. Growing up, I spent an unusual amount of time with birds. My mother was a wildlife biologist at...
Window Shopping with Topanga Mercantile & Busto and Sun
Originally the Topanga Candle Company, now Topanga Mercantile, has expanded to sell jewelry, crystals and items made mostly by local artists. While the business thrives as a gift shop selling beautiful things at reasonable prices, it is their candles—created...
Events of the Season
The Water Babies. A Zoom production for the entire family. Join the Topanga Actors Company for this imaginative and beautiful adaptation of Charles Kingsley’s classic children’s story The Water Babies, originally written in 1862. “Fairies, sea creatures, wise women,...
Claire Miller and the Gift of Cacao
Claire Miller is a gift from the cacao deities. She first fluttered into our lives brunching with our neighbors (remember those?) I was so overcome by sun rays beaming from her grin, that when she asked me where I...
Let There Be Light: A Drive-Thru Holiday Celebration
In good times and bad, Santa has counted on his trusty sleigh and reindeer pack. Jewish Americans ride in every Hanukkah with menorah lightings accompanied with stories about the Maccabes’ triumph over adversity with the help of an efficient oil that burned for eight days. Until now,...
Two New Books Celebrate the Life of Mountain Lion P-22
Mountain lion P-22 was catapulted to fame in 2012, when Griffith Park ecologist Miguel Ordenana first captured the big cat on film with a remote camera. Genetic testing revealed that P-22 was born in the Santa Monica Mountains, and...
Bosco’s Christmas
A couple of years ago on Christmas Eve morn, I was on my way to work at the Winter Sports School at Mountain High, the closest ski resort to Topanga Canyon and the Santa Monica Mountains. It was early...
Winter Solstice
This Druid witch likes to sit under the oaks and listen. The things that have been told to her this year have been astounding. She has been tapping into the wood wide web, and has found that nothing is indeed...
The Gift of Dignity
One sunny, fall morning several years ago, my kids and I woke early and headed down Fernwood to Pine Tree Circle. We grabbed some treats from the Waterlily, and then we met Lin Ilsley and Karen Sherwood who had...
Black and White Spaces
Racial segregation in America has often been viewed through two lenses. In the South, Jim Crow laws separated the races in schools and other public spaces. This is de jure (by law) segregation. Outside the South, de facto (in...
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