Plans for our family vacation this summer are starting to come together. I was initially trying to include too much and it was complicating the logistics. We’ve all talked it over and we’re settling on a couple of days in San Francisco, including a visit to Muir Woods, and then the rest of the week in Carmel and Monterey. Let me know if you have any suggestions.

My reading has also started honing in on California. I was already reading Robinson Jeffers’ poetry (who lived in Carmel and whose home I plan to visit). I’ve had High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies on my to-read list for a long time and I’m finally getting around to it. The events covered by the book center on California. Finally, I decided I was long past due to read some John Muir. I picked up a collection of his writing titled Essential Muir: A Selection of John Muir’s Best (And Worst) Writings - which interested me because it attempts to balance out his status as a green icon with a frank admission of his racism.