The French filmmaker and environmentalist Yann Arthus-Bertrand, 76, has made his valedictory statement. The ravishing documentary Legacy, now streaming, is a visual and aural love letter to our planet, the creatures that inhabit it, and the ones (us) who are destroying it. Employing languid footage shot from a hot-air balloon, as he did in his...
In Notes from the Road, the debut book from Mike Ingram, a writing professor from Philadelphia makes a week-long car trip across America, where he finds space to reflect on his middle-aged life — and Life. (And America, and writing, and everything else.) Heavy, right? While the book possesses the gravity of serious reflection, it’s actually...
We’ve consulted the elves, fairies, and ancient spirits flitting around our garden, and they’ve offered some insights into the future. We predict: + A cataclysmic environmental disaster on the scale of the 9/11 attacks, such as the entire continent of Australia going up in flames, will spark a global revolution of unprecedented size and impact,...
Runyon Canyon Park, a unique wilderness area in the heart of Hollywood, is currently under threat. Expensive studies have been commissioned, catastrophic problems identified, and Strategic Plans (many of them wildly expensive) formulated. The standard narrative promulgated by those with political and financial interests: Runyon Canyon is being “loved to death.” It’s crumbling from too...
Not long ago, the brilliant photographer and videographer Jonny Harper (@JHB1126) brought his drone and his talent to the Vista Street Farmstead. His original intent was to document the recently completed driveway mural. He ended up shooting much more. Our friend and neighbors know what’s behind the driveway gates. For those who don’t have the...
The Hollywood Hills West Neighborhood Council (HHWNC) is an all-volunteer advisory board with lots of strong feelings and almost zero political power. At regularly scheduled meetings held at the Durant library, the HHWNC fields the concerns of local residents and stakeholders, many of whom are vexed about preposterous and harmful developments being allowed in the...
Moko the Hunter possessed all the attributes an early proto-human hominid needed for success. He was strong, strong enough to choke a wild boar with his bare hands. He was stealthy, able to blend into foliage and tree canopies like a biped chameleon. And he could wait patiently for hours, standing still as a birch...
Do you have an experience that, in retrospect, seems to have set you on your life’s journey? A formative moment? An epiphany? Mine came when I was 16, more than 35 years ago. The summer after my sophomore year of high school, I attended (and completed) a 24-day Colorado Outward Bound course in the Rocky...
We call the place we live “Vista Street Farmstead.” It’s a house in Hollywood, one block from Sunset Boulevard, with a front and back yard, maybe 1/16th of an acre? But almost every available square foot of dirt is dedicated to growing fruits, vegetables, and flowers. Blessed with copious sunshine throughout the day – and...
Finally! A movie for botany nerds, for artistic landscapers, for gardeners. The unrelentingly charming film This Beautiful Fantastic, written and directed by Simon Aboud, takes a familiar tale — curmudgeonly old man’s heart melts for an impossibly lovely young woman — and makes it magical. His leads, Tom Wilkinson, as the grouchy horticulturalist, and Jessica Brown Findlay as...
Hope RekindledThis past week has given us more hope for our diseased republic than any other time in 50+ years of paying attention. Observing and participating in a long-overdue peaceful uprising, occupying the streets, feeling the righteous energy of people of all ages, colors, faiths, and wealth (or lack thereof), has…
Clarinetist Glenn Dickson, master of klezmer, has made a solo recording, “Wider Than the Sky,” that’s been on perpetual repeat at our home office. Using over-dubs and electronic digital effects, Dickson fills the aural soundscape with a rich melange of chordal textures supporting the melody. His celebrated virtuosity is subsumed here to long, elegiac musical...
