I’ve run across so many articles lately offering advice on how to talk to someone suffering a health or lifestyle setback. “How To Talk To Someone With Cancer,” “How To Talk To Someone Experiencing Depression,”… Filing For Divorce, … Mourning The Loss Of A Loved One, … Who Has Lost a Pet. I’m sure these pieces are very helpful to friends, family and co-workers wondering whether to ask “How are you feeling?” or the alternative “How‘s it going?”  (Or the always inappropriate, “What’s up?” indicating that you’ve somehow momentarily forgotten your friend’s plight.)

I read these articles and stow away the helpful tips just in case I find myself at an awkward conversational juncture with a fellow human being knee-deep in a skill-set of emotions that I have yet to wade through. Of course I want to avoid increasing any pain—physical, emotional or mental. Sometimes that increased pain is my own, so I’d like to keep the conversation as non-committal as possible.

I’m often left wondering if there might be a small-talk rule set that might apply to me, the terminally cranky. Could there be a working model available to my friends, family and co-workers that will keep them from increasing my level of caustic rebuttal?

The character of Downtown Santa Cruz has pretty much been under discussion for as long as I can remember.

Longtime Santa Cruz residents love the tradition of what was once known as The Pacific Avenue Garden Mall, and that pride continues into its post-earthquake years.

But there’s an equally strong anti-downtown feeling from those who don’t like the so-called “social problems”—the panhandlers and groups of street people who line the sidewalks.

When they told me I needed glasses, I did what most 11-year-olds do. I plea bargained. “How about a monocle?” “You need both eyes corrected.” No problem. “Two monocles!”

A week later, I tried out my new glasses and decided they were uncomfortable and made everything look screwy, so I didn’t wear them. I only needed them to see things in the distance, and most of a child’s world is the near field, where the comic books and snacks and televisions are. There’s no need to read freeway signs at night or to check out hot people from a safe distance. When I needed to see those unimportant things farther away, like blackboards, I could bring them into focus using an affordable, all-natural technique called squinting.

The “Occupy” political movement is one of the most fascinating developments in recent years, as frustrated, self-described regular folks are stepping up to demonstrate just how furious they are with Wall Street.

They’re calling themselves the “99 percenters” and they’re focusing their antipathy towards the “1 percent” that they see as nearly taking down our economic system.

Time is a flirt, the little bitch. Time says, “I’ll always be here for you.” And you come to believe it, and get used to it, and then suddenly you really need Time, and then Time is nowhere to be found. You panic, you scramble, and somehow you learn to cope without it. Then there’s a knock at the door, and it’s Time with a bottle of wine and some sweet talk, and all you can remember are the good days.

It’s fall, and fall is procrastination season. For one thing, school has started. School is where we encounter our first deadlines and decide how we will fight their power. Will we finish the assignments early and thereby defuse the tension? Prudent, but bo-ring. Procrastinators such as myself prefer to live on the edge, racing toward deadlines with steely nerve in a temporal game of chicken to see who will flinch at the last second. Sometimes due dates get extended, and we get a sense of relief the Prudentarians will never enjoy, but more commonly we find ourselves paying the price with an all-nighter. Though we may be criticized for our sub-standard work, we can hold our heads high and say, “Sure, but considering I did a two week project in one night, not too shabby!” It may not be the best way to get our money’s worth out of an expensive education, but it gives us time to focus on other important fall things, like ... the holidays!

My grandmother had so little interest in the past that it used to frustrate me beyond belief. Here was a woman who was born in the era of horse-drawn carriages and she lived long enough to witness man’s landing on the moon.

I longed to hear her stories about horses delivering ice in San Francisco, or even what it was like to prevent her son—my father—from an early death in the influenza epidemic of 1919. Or anything at all from her rich background

But she had no interest in the “good old days.” Instead, she preferred to talk about how she didn’t trust Richard Nixon, or even more—why I wasn’t getting better grades in college.

The Mayor and City Council, in my view, have demonstrated that a progressive, pro-environment City of Santa Cruz can also have a strong, serious economic development policy, and that it can all come together in a project such as the La Bahia proposal that was in front of the California Coastal Commission in mid-August.

The project was a decade in the making—which means negotiations with the city, various segments of the community, and lengthy discussions with the Coastal Commission staff—and resulted in a 6-0 vote at the City Council, and a recommendation for approval from the Coastal Commission staff.  Typically, it was not a walk in the park at either venue.

If you want to understand the politics of coastal California, look no further than the proposed La Bahia Hotel project in Santa Cruz.

You’ll be hearing a lot about the proposal as it heads to the state Coastal Commission for approval next month during the commission’s August meeting in Watsonville on Aug. 11, 12 and 13.

The La Bahia project has been much debated, and it’s a big deal in Santa Cruz. But beyond that, it’s an instructive tale about how awkward California’s political institutions really are.

Nostalgia is denial!" proclaims the smug pedant played by Michael Sheen in Woody Allen's terrific new movie, Midnight In Paris. He's poo-poohing the craving of protagonist Owen Wilson for the bygone era of Paris in the 1920s, a Mecca of creativity and artistic ferment idealized by Wilson's character, Gil, a Hollywood scriptwriter with a Pinocchio-like urge to become a "real" writer.

Does it count as "nostalgia" to crave something you've never actually experienced? Lots of people (especially those of us who write historical fiction, and the majority of those who read it) do feel sometimes like we were born in the wrong era. Who doesn't occasionally have a pang of yearning for some simpler past time when communication wasn't so instant, media wasn't quite so mass (or massive), and a person had time to, you know, sit and think once in a while?