Minda Berbeco

Having grown up on the East Coast, droughts are a little foreign to me. Every spring, the city I lived in experienced about 3 weeks on non-stop rain, followed by a summer besieged by extremely violent lighting storms that tore down trees and destroyed church steeples.  If anything, we always seemed to have too much … Read more

Living in East Bay is always an interesting experience.  Where else can you engage in paratheater, uncomfortable zones of fun and midwifery for humanity all in one weekend? Living in a former pagan temple, I get even more exposure to the whimsy of the local community than most.  People not realizing that my house is … Read more

Living in Berkeley is a surreal experience.  Once the center of a political and social revolution, it’s now like wandering a graveyard that’s been infiltrated by high-tech picnickers. As you wander the streets you meet the ghosts of revolutions past, sometimes reformed into soccer grandmas with pressed silver hair and hand-hammered African jewelry, sometimes in … Read more

San Francisco is known for its culinary delights; there’s just about every type of restaurant in town for every kind of diet.  Paleos, GAPSers, macrobiotics, raw juicers and frugivores can delight in the many delectable treats available around every corner.  We have everything from Jakartan street food (the menu of which actually taunts that “you … Read more

A dark shadow has fallen over the city of Berkeley.  The air has grown cold. The sun is blocked by clouds.  The trees have turned gray and are dropping dull, broken leaves.  It is fall.  Unlike the dazzling fall that hits many other parts of the country, with bold reds and fiery yellows, fall in … Read more

I am sick and it is my fault. In my line of work, with constant travel, shaking hands, kissing babies, chatting with folks from around the world, the risk of falling ill is quite high. I do my best to keep healthy, wash my hands obsessively, take zinc and guzzle orange juice; anything that could … Read more

Berkeley is a great place to get drunk. Nowhere else in the world will you find yourself at a Santa Maria BBQ surrounded with former Black Sabbath roadies, Argentinian media darlings and industrial architects discussing the I Ching at candlelight with the most lovely $5 wine. Sorry Virginia, that country club swill you call cabernet … Read more

Working in climate change you hear a lot of myths surrounding the science; it’s a scientific conspiracy, the models are faulty, scientists are in disagreement, there is too much controversy. This last point is particularly annoying, because it has been long established that this is simply not true. But it’s also irritating, because it ignores … Read more

Now that summer has come to a close and everyone is returning to their homes with tales of downing oyster shots and hiking the continental divide, I think it’s appropriate for me to share how I spent my summer vacation. I wasn’t jet skiing in Miami or visiting the coffee houses of northern Europe. I … Read more