My new novella, The Byrd River Flood, was just released by Paper Angel Press. Inspired by the true story of the 1995 Pajaro River flood in Watsonville, California, The Byrd River Flood is an adaptation excerpted from my eco-thriller, Fruit of the Devil. It portrays the social, emotional, environmental, personal, and political causes and costs […]
Here in California, in March, 2023 we’re experiencing another “Hundred Year Flood.” President Biden is flying in to inspect the damage and consult with Governor Newsom. We’ve heard that people in the mountains have been stranded in heavy snow and have lost their lives. There have been floods and landslides, collapsed roads and bridges. People
Hundred Year Flood Read More »
What’s the connection between salmon and pesticides? It’s the water. Early on in my novel writing journey, an editor I met at the Santa Barbara Writers’ Conference sent my manuscript back to me with the comment, “You have a tight little thriller here, if only you’d cut out the romance, the pesticide story, and that
So you don’t think there were Grizzly Bears in California in 1999? You might be in for a surprise. To find out more, read this latest excerpt from my novel, Fruit of the Devil. (A short stand-alone thriller with a speculative twist, published in the Santa Cruz Weird anthology, available on Amazon.) The Fish and
Rough Cut: Grizzly Bears in California! Read More »
December 1, 2016 Standing Rock, North Dakota Dear Friends and Relatives, In late August I responded to an utterly compelling, impossible-to-refuse Call from Spirit to go to Standing Rock, North Dakota. Since I’ve returned home, everyone I’ve met has expressed a deep hunger to better understand the current situation at Standing Rock and to know
Standing Rock Insiders Urgently Request Help as Violence from DAPL Mercenaries Escalates Read More »
Is Your Child Being Exposed to Dangerous Pesticides? U.S. EPA Chief Pruitt just gave the okay to Chlorpyrifos, a brain harming pesticide the agency knows to be extremely dangerous to children. Want to know what else is your child is being exposed to? HERE’S HOW TO Become a CITIZEN RESEARCHER. “Kids today are sicker than
CITIZEN RESEARCHER Read More »
I’ve taken the last 6 months away from my novel to go back to classroom teaching in the Pajaro River Valley. My middle school classroom – a well-equipped computer lab in a state-of-the-art Google Classroom paperless school – is surrounded by agricultural fields. Many of my 7th and 8th grade students are children of freseros
Organic and Sustainable Agriculture – Re-Designing the Food System Read More »
It was our great honor and pleasure to celebrate this New Year with Congressman Sam Farr and his friends at Sam’s family ranch in Big Sur, California. Camped out on an exquisite piece of undeveloped land perched on the edge of the Pacific, we witnessed the procession of epic numbers of California Grey Whales south
Congressman Sam Farr Bringing in the New Year at Big Sur Read More »
The photo above is linked to a Community TV YouTube broadcast of four scientists discussing the question: How Global Warming is Changing our World. Have we already triggered tipping points from which there is no going back? I sought the advice of these and several other esteemed climate scientists when writing the following excerpt from
Tipping Points: How Global Warming is Changing Our World Read More »
PLEASE SIGN OUR PETITION AT http://bit.ly/1pkc8oC to urge EARTHBOUND FARM to Support Measure J! Don’t Frack My Salad! Little San Benito County, California, is engaged in a David and Goliath struggle with the Oil Industry over fracking. San Benito is a scenic and historically significant county, with priceless agricultural and ranch lands. It supports a
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I just drove home, on this beautiful full moon California night in June, from a meeting at the AFL-CIO Labor Hall in Salinas with the Safe Strawberry Working Group. When I got home, I said hello to my dogs, poured three fingers of Chivas Regal in my glass, and read over the news and information
New State Report on Pesticide Use Near Schools Read More »
At Lighthouse Field in Santa Cruz, CA last weekend, we discovered a Leak in the SpaceTime Continuum. A phone booth from another dimension materialized on the field, and we were able to listen to voicemails from the many possible future threads unwinding out of the chaos created by unfolding Climate Change. Some of the voicemails
Leaks in Space Time, Future Games, and Water Read More »
“What is the Northwest? Anywhere the salmon can get to.” Timothy Egan. A Year Without Rain This year, there is so little water in the streams and rivers that the Coho Salmon had to be rescued by volunteers from the Monterey Bay Salmon and Trout Project. Ground Hog Day. Today we had the first real
“The health of our waters is the principal measure of how we live on the land.” Luna Leopold This weekend, the University of California Santa Cruz Common Ground Center (“Education for a Just and Sustainable World”) sponsored a series of programs about restoring our watersheds. The keynote speaker was Brock Dolman of Occidental Arts &
Our Watershed as a Lifeboat, Our Whole Earth Watershed, “Planet Water” Read More »
Spent many years teaching watershed ecology to little kids. Death of the Gecko is a story about watershed ecology for grown-ups. Had a dream the other night. I was at a university, and it was the end of the semester. A professor of geology or geography was looking over his text books, and I was
writing about the watershed Read More »