Nowhere Near the Edge

Monday was our big day to really see Shanghai. It was the traditional holiday of "Tomb Sweeping Day," when Chinese are supposed t...

Easter Sunday in China. It was a day of rest for us. The kids collected Easter eggs around the house, including some plastic ones filled w...

Our trip into Shanghai from Shanghai Pudong Airport in our Buick minivan-for-hire (lacking any markings or signs of regulation, we could not...

Ignoring the query of a young woman who asked us if we needed a taxi (why would we? A friend was meeting us), we deposited ourselves and ou...

For the three or four of you wondering when, or if, our family ever escaped the clutches of the Shanghai Airport, the story will resume shor...

I must have played too many games of solitaire on the iPhone on the trans-Pacific flight, because now, as our flight from Seoul descended to...

Taxiing out to the runway at SFO was its usual interminable trek, leading to jokes about driving to LA. (Okay, that was just me, and I don...

All we wanted to do was travel 8000 miles across the Pacific Ocean from a small town in California to the biggest city in the world in China...

If you always wanted to be a pilot but were put off by the bus-driver mentality ... if you always wanted to be an international spy ... if y...

We spent the evening watching a news program on CCTV International, a Chinese-based television network. The perspective on world events was...

The kids are well into their sports seasons now. After one practice and one practice game (which her "Penn State" team won), Kell...

The attention that the St. Mary's basketball team has brought to itself by its run to the Sweet 16 round of the NCAA tournament reminds ...

One of the unique features of our area is the very sharp delineation between prosperity and poverty. Our three little contiguous communities...

The NCAA men's basketball tournament kicks off again this morning, with a few items of local interest. The most prominent media story is...

The first space shuttle, the Enterprise, will be moved soon from its current home at the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum Annex near ...

In preparation for our trip to China, I found myself at the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco twice this week. On my first visit, I learne...

After a wet winter that played havoc with the practice schedule, the Moraga Baseball Association held its opening day ceremonies and first g...

The Boeing 747 . Bigger than expected, but versatile, and usually makes people happy when they see it. Yeah, that's sounds about right.

The part of the world that turned "google" into a verb, and gave the world the means to carry out that action, may be on the cusp ...

Cataclysmic seismic events have obvious local consequences. They also can have much more far-reaching consequences that are not visible to m...