George’s slightly off-center view of the world
I’m glad to have been a teenager in the time before cell phones and GPS tracking allowed parents to always know where their kids were. And as a parent of now-grown daughters, well, if you don’t want to know the answer, don’t ask the question.
Here are some useful smartphone apps, and not just for travelers. But don’t use them when you’re crossing a busy street.
Marin County is known for a number of things: German automobiles cluttering its roads, George Lucas’s Skywalker Ranch and the stereotypical affluent California lifestyle in general. It’s also rolling hills and, miles from anything, the town of Nicasio, home to a church, a little league field, a volunteer fire department and the venerable Rancho Nicasio. The roadhouse was built in 1941, a year after the 1867-vintage Nicasio Hotel burned.
ExxonMobil touts its success in extracting natural gas by fracking – hydraulic fracturing. They also want us to know how safe and inconsequential to the surroundings it is. But just in case, ExxonMobil’s CEO Rex Tillerson is suing to prevent fracking near his property in Texas. It would impinge on his “rural lifestyle.”
Olympic swimmer and Santa Rosa native Maya DiRado brought her four medals – two gold, a silver, a bronze – on a visit to her alma mater, Maria Carillo High School, where she was a member of the swim club.
If medals were awarded for smiles, she would have another gold.
Oregon Governor Oswald West in 1913 signed legislation designating its ocean beaches as public highways. “The shore of the Pacific Ocean from the Columbia River on the north to the Oregon and California State line on the south, is hereby declared a public highway and shall forever remain open as such to the public.” Driving on the beach used to be common, as did the sight of a motorist frantically trying to get free from soft sand before an incoming tide claimed the vehicle. The law was revised in 1947, changing “public highway” to “recreation area.” In California, beaches are also, by law, public. The wealthy and the famous find that outrageously unfair to them.
The problem with YouTube is that once you start – doing serious research, of course – you get distracted by the endless panoply of videos. Before you know it, hours have passed.
On the Johnny Carson show, big-name guests, instead of moving down the couch when their time was up, would have to leave for some presumably important commitment. Here’s Steve Martin:
