Author Erica
A rainy morning in Salt Lake City yielded to a sunny afternoon, perfect for an outing to the Utah State Capitol Building. This rotunda is one of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen! The gracefully echoing circles and arches sooth… Continue Reading →
Last year my long-term relationship evaporated overnight. While I can’t say there were no warning signs, they were certainly faint. Silver linings from that have been similarly faint. But one upside has emerged in the wake of another painful loss… Continue Reading →
Yesterday a friend was telling me how computer games only render the rooms we are in to save memory, and that our brains aren’t so different. When we encounter something different or enter a new space we force our minds… Continue Reading →
Growing up in the desert, I learned there’s magic in the details — tough, sharp, dusty, surprising details. There is sweeping beauty in mountains and sunsets, but much of the charm is only found when you look closely at the… Continue Reading →
Whoo! Back from a 1840 mile, 12 day solo driving trip home to Tucson. What a bittersweet trip, one of tears and mortality and also of life-affirming friendship and beauty and nature. The universe really came together on this one… Continue Reading →
When I said in Part I that this wasn’t a story about opening my heart, that wasn’t entirely true. There is one place my heart lacked compassion: the criminal justice system. My last bastion of conservatism was the belief that… Continue Reading →
When I was growing up, Tucson seemed small and conservative to me. Then college took me to Bible-belt Indiana and I discovered what small and conservative truly is. In hindsight, I’d have been hard pressed to pick a worse fit… Continue Reading →
I relish telling the story of how I used to be a registered Republican. It’s good for shock value, considering that today I’m a flaming California liberal! Even better, I was a Teen Age Republican (TAR) in Arizona, a state… Continue Reading →
There was a time when I had friends with very different political beliefs. Of course! It would be narrow-minded and dogmatic to exclude people simply because we vote differently. Right? And this worked because, in theory, we all wanted people… Continue Reading →
As anyone who has traveled with me knows, I am fascinated by creatures on buildings — or, in this case, humans on buildings! Dotted all around this green terra cotta façade are male figures that could be either friend or… Continue Reading →
I first visited Tadich as a child on my first family trip to San Francisco. Over the decades we have returned there time after time for local classics like cioppino, hangtown fry, and petrale sole. Tadich is a San Francisco… Continue Reading →
I have always found the desert Southwest immensely calming. Originally I assumed it was simply the comfortable feeling of being back in my childhood home — it never felt right when I lived in states without mountains — but on… Continue Reading →
This photo mashup series by Shawn Clover that merges images from the 1906 earthquake and San Francisco today is a fantastic concept, with stunning execution. “To put these photos together, I first create a catalog of historical photos that look… Continue Reading →
