Hats off to all the Fathers who let us fly when we’re ready to land by ourselves and who are there to help us fly until we can do it on our own. photos – James Grimes
I had a dear friend, actually a couple of friends, ask me to write about my Scholar’s Retreat. I think they meant the place I stayed while I was doing research at Berkeley as much as the experience I had in my role of scholar. Big ol’ Venn overlap in that. Having a room or [...]
A friend asked me what is the most northern mission in Alta California. It was a Bambi moment, you know deer in headlights analogy: because it was an unexpected question, because I didn’t have a real answer. So out came a non-answer answer; to the effect that where you stop hearing Spanish names for places, [...]
He started as a feral and looked this side of starving. Larry thought he had the right credentials so he let him hang around. Leia figures he’s okay – for a cat. After all, he’s not Larry, who has the heart of a dog in a cat’s skin. Perhaps Leia knows Larry’s exceptional. [...]
Never having been to Napa, Sonoma, or Mendocino, and being of a certain age, I talked James into spending time there. I remember old Sunset Magazines that spoke of this place in almost mystical terms. Had no idea what we’d find. In brief – we found nature at all stages a bit of eco/Disney tiny [...]
James loves nature. Photos – James Grimes
As we get older we get different adjectives and nouns added to our identifiers. We start out life with certain words, during our teen age we have words removed and added, and as we age the words are modified yet again. At weeks shy of 60 words like compact, Nana, and researcher are words that [...]
Part of the reason for my trip over the last couple of weeks was going to institutions to do research in preparation for a talk that I’ll be giving on June 26. The talk will be a part of series that is presented by the Pasadena Museum of History. I’ll be talking about some [...]
Elections can make for difficult times. People become passionate in expressing their views. An election is one of the few places where there you either win or loose. It’s hard not to take things personally. All that. So here I am sticking my neck out on a very local election matter. I was one of [...]
My mini sabbatical had several different parts to it: I’ll be writing more about it at some point. One of the parts was focused on the scholarly part of my life. Like McCoy in Star Trek, I often want to say something to the effect of…”Jim, I’m a historian, not an organizer”. I’m happier at [...]
