Neptune Landing

      With its temperate clime and ocean-kissing caresses, Hawaii has always called me. Having been raised on the East Coast, the lush archipelago felt remote and fantastical as the only reference I had of Hawaii as a kid was when the Brady Bunch, in 1972, jumped the shark and encountered a lot of bad juju there. Still I appreciated the fact that our youngest U.S. state is the most geographically isolated string of rock on the globe and has a cultural and racial diversity that gives most alpha cities reason to pause. I just could not foresee going to one of the most beautiful places in the world in a state of shock, more like one of suspended belief, following my dad's death.  Baldwin Beach on Maui's North Coast       Dennis Kilduff died on March 2nd and I flew home the next morning and was thrown into the heady whirlwinds of funeral planning, greeting family, friends and guests and "catching up." As anyone who has been through this before, this ...

        As many of you know, my dad, Dennis Kilduff, age 69, passed away at 11:35 p.m. on Monday, March 2nd. On this date, 33 years ago, his big sister and Godmother, Mary Driscoll, passed away and I've a strong feeling that the two of them were in cahoots about the timing. There seems to have been an extraordinary amount of synchronicity these last couple of weeks. Omens too have been flying out of the woodwork.  Dennis at sister Mary's wedding in 1953         The record-breaking snowfall in Boston didn't help ease his symptoms over this winter. Diagnosed with Pulmonary Fibrosis in March of 2013, Dad never once complained of losing his breath but he did grow frustrated that he couldn't be helpful around the house. Pulmonary Fibrosis causes scarring of the lungs; in Dad's case it was idiopathic, meaning the doctors could not determine its origin. Having toiled in a printing shop for decades, Dad was likely exposed him to all sorts of...

      I worried about being too showy with this post as most of my readers in Boston remain under 7 feet of snow. But the fact remains: Spring does come to California in February! California readers, has this always been the case or is climate change the go-to villain?       We're not immune, in the Golden State, to "Global Weirding." Los Angeles in fact is to receive more rain than San Francisco over the next ten days. Up here in fact it did not rain one drop in January - an almost exact replica of 2014. Business owners and farmers are getting jittery as this drought continues into its 4th year and thus state government is getting creative. Desalination right now is the hot-ticket-idea to secure water flow in California, something that countries like Israel have been investing in for decades.       At least the authorities won't neglect Golden Gate Park, a well-watered oasis that should really be sandy scrubland. These photo...

      Typical Vermont Streetscape   Mauricio at Sunset       Christmas came early this year in the form of a snowstorm that socked central New England the day before Thanksgiving. We had planned, months earlier, to visit Vermont on our annual trip to Boston in order to reunite with a San Francisco escapee, our German friend, Katharina. She had moved to the Green Mountains last summer with her Dutch husband, Glen, to live on thirty acres of virginal pine forest they had purchased decades ago. The couple had tired of the city. In many ways, Mauricio and I are always ready to follow suit, as we seem to eternally live out the fable of "The Princess and the Pea," where no amount of Californian comfort is quite cozy enough. I'm also reminded, when I hear myself drivel onward about travel and restlessness and home, of the joke of the Irish boomerang. Punchline: "It doesn't come back - it just sings songs about how badly it wants to."  Snow Sc...

      Friends and allies abound everywhere in shamanic living but in the fall harvest season their invitation to play is all the more pressing. In San Francisco, the seasons are quite muted to the in-your-face flashiness of the New England turn-of-clock. Here you feel a noticeable sensation of dryness (as if we needed more of that with our historic drought), a lifting of the fog and a slanting of the light. Days are warmer but nights feel cooler. The leaves in coastal California may stay about 95% evergreen but it's hard to ignore these other manifestations.       With the change in seasons, we've been scoring some real gems in our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) box like sweet potatoes, squash gourds, chicory and swiss chard. Occasionally our farmers will pack fresh basil and fennel. For reliable herbal assistance, though, it's best to visit Rainbow Grocery , a cooperative market between the Mission and Soma neighborhoods. Rainbow does not just stoc...

      Harvest season is fast approaching and that gives me license to talk about food and drink for the next several posts. Gastronomy is our go-to conversational topic in the Bay Area just like baseball is in Boston. In terms of personal diets, the San Franciscans I've met generally fall into two camps. The first smaller camp is the one where members dare not touch certain foods or edible constituents, i.e. maintaining diets that are sugar-free, vegan, meat-and-eggs-free or free from packaging. The second camp is much larger and more celebratory. These happy campers declare at every opportunity how foods at certain restaurants are "So Good!" and need to be lauded, or, at the very least, deliberated.       No show captures the "So Good!" foodie zeitgeist than Check, Please! Bay Area . We watch it on domestic Friday nights at 8:30 p.m. on Channel 9, KQED, the Bay Area's PBS station. The premise: three guests who are local diners (not professional food criti...

      More than 3 months have passed since I first started to track the spirit of Whale and much goodness and an ocean's full of serendipity have drifted my way. Around the time of our Mendocino trip, I had picked up a copy of dime-store copy of Moby Dick and dove into the text with a seaman's wanderlust. This avidity lasted just a few weeks (it has since been gathering dust under my bed since early May). Not to worry, methinks, it's only been in print for 162 years so it isn't going anywhere. Whale himself, however, is a highly mobile spirit, one who crosses all cultures and oceans to help guide our dreams and shape our narratives.  New Bedford was a happening place in the mid-18th century.       In early April, I went back to Boston to visit family and felt pulled to visit New Bedford, Massachusetts. The only thing I knew about "Nu'Beffa" is that it was a depressed old fishing port with a high Portuguese-speaking population. And of course, it w...