When one thinks of Los Angeles, palm trees immediately come to mind.  Hardly a city block lacks a business with Palm in its name, and whether you’re in affluent Brentwood or the effluent neighborhoods near downtown, palms line the streets.  When visitors send postcards home, most likely they’re showing off palm trees.  We’ve got a [...]

The weekend before last we had a couple over for dinner:  he’s vegan, she’s vegetarian, and I wanted to be a gracious host.  But as a proud omnivore, I was wondering what the heck I could cook that didn’t have cheese or eggs.  Well, it turned out to be pretty simple:  the trick is to [...]

I’ve eaten soy products for years, even before they came in all shapes, forms, and brands.  The funny thing is that looking back, I bought soy milk because I liked the taste—it came in plain little bottles, mixed with just a little sugar, and it was less than a dollar at the Chinese markets.  Yum!  Everyone else thought, [...]

We’ve been talking for decades about greening L.A., so it doesn’t make sense to put forth a policy that’s going to make everyone’s lawns go brown. -          Matt Myerhoff, spokesman for LA City Councilman Greig Smith Huh? (more…)

The DC chattering class is having a field day with the news that Tom DeLay will compete on Dancing with the Stars.  Hopefully he can burn off those calories he’s consumed over the years, eating steaks half his size (he’s what, 4’9”?), often paid for by government lobbyists.  I’m not one to make fun of [...]

Let me be frank:  I’m not what the MBA and marketing world would describe as an “early adopter.”  I’ll buy an iPhone by 2013, we still don’t have a flat-screen TV, and well, on the environmental side, it took me three years to see Who Killed the Electric Car and Fast Food Nation (it wasn’t [...]

Last week’s Taiwan took a an awful pummelling from Typhoon Morakot, which was especially cruel considering that many of the villages hit were still recovering from a 1999 earthquake that destroyed many towns and villages. What’s chilling about Morakot and its wrath is what we’re going to see in the coming decades–many of those drastically [...]

I’m already starting to think about fall planting.  This year was our first vegetable gardening, and I have got to say that we exceeded our expectations.  The winners:  tomatoes, eggplant, zucchini, salad greens.  We still haven’t purchased salad greens since April!  Fresh tomatoes are a no-brainer.  And home grown eggplant lacks the tough rind that [...]

Last week Ara and I saw Julie & Julia at the Vista Theater in Silver Lake.  I had been looking forward to this since I saw the first preview:  who could resist Meryl Streep taking on the warblely-voiced Julia Child?  I’d watch the movie again, even buy the DVD, just to watch Streep; but honestly, [...]

It happened again Wednesday morning, infuriating me:  someone had gone through our garbage overnight, taking about our bottles and cans from the recycling bin . . . and putting all the paper and cardboard in our blue bin into the black trash bin.  Once again, I had to separate my garbage, and I was seething.  [...]