In 2001, when Julia Roberts received the Oscar for her gutsy portrayal of the title character in Erin Brockovich, few of us were surprised. She was a knockout in the role of a scrappy young woman who used her smarts and sex appeal to uncover info that took down a power company over poisoned water. In 1996, while working as a novice legal aid, Brockovich built a case against … [Read more...]

Ken Allen was a Bornean orangutan who lived at the San Diego Zoo from the 1970s through the 1990s. Ken’s enclosure had been designed to be escape-proof: high walls, smooth surfaces, no obvious handholds. Yet on June 13, 1985, with the Sun and Mercury in nimble Gemini, zookeepers arrived to find Ken casually strolling through the grounds, exploring and greeting people. The … [Read more...]

In her fabulous new book, Mothers of Magic: Summoning the Wisdom of our Ancestors, Perdita Finn tells a story about her husband’s grandmother, who’d just turned one hundred. The whole family had assembled at her house for a party. “At one point,” says Finn, “she told her great-granddaughters to go to her closet and take whatever cashmere sweaters appealed to them.” While there, … [Read more...]

  In the late 1930s, Gerald Gardner returned home to Britain’s southern coast after traveling abroad for many years. There he joined a coven of witches in Highcliffe-by-the-Sea. On the cross-quarter holy day of Lammas, August 1, 1940, Gardner and 16 other witches (or Wiccans, as they prefer to be called) gathered secretly at night in the forest. Their purpose was to … [Read more...]

Crowds across the globe erupted in cheers last Friday evening as Integrity, the Artemis II Orion capsule, splashed down in the Pacific Ocean and four brave astronauts disembarked after their week-long lunar tour. Here in San Diego, local space aficionados packed the Aerospace Museum, and the historic Hotel del Coronado hosted a lively celestial watch party – complete with … [Read more...]