ValleyDad

Somehow I never knew that Lichens were hybrid organisms -- being the result of fungi melding with (most often) algae.
 
Recent DNA analysis suggests this mutual hybridization occurred not just once, after which the many thousand of lichen species evolved, but rather that fungi discovered the appeal of algae and cyanobacteria, or vice-versa, on many different occasions.
 
The result, of course, is nearly always stunningly beautiful and puts any thought we might have of longevity to shame.

This lichen was found on a coast live oak in Foothills Park, Palo Alto, CA.

With a professor of literature for a mother and a writer for a father, who would have guessed that she'd be enthused by science above all.

The recipe: Gently fold melted chocolate into freshly-whipped organic cream. Layer cream between fine, hand-extruded chocolate pieces and top with crushed banana.
 
It's actually very good, but daily consumption of Battercake by the health-conscious is not recommended.

Against my better judgement I was persuaded (by a Considerate Visionary, in case you're interested) to take an online personality test c/o personaldna.com.
 
It tells me that I am a Benevolent Visionary. But what I really want to know is whether such tests always present their results in positive terms. Is anyone ever defined, say, as a Credulous Fool? Or a Monomaniacal Egoist? How about Blithering Idiot? Dismal Crank?
 
One man's Benevolent Visionary, after all, could be another's Wishy-washy Pushover -- just ask my kids.
 
Still, I like the colorful personality 'bar codes' they give you. Best thing about the site.

I thought it had closed, but the most exquisite store in the world -- I discovered this last weekend -- lives on.
 
It's quite simply the ur store. There is none sourced with better taste. There is none more beautifully arranged. If you can't find something in it that you would like to purchase, the failing is yours, not theirs.
 
What is this place? It is De Vera, which I first discovered on Hayes Street in San Francisco some fifteen years ago. It specialized in fine glassware but would also feature Asian antiquities, perhaps, along with some English art pots, a medieval tile, a boulder, moss arranged in a jar, a South American puppet, an abalone shell, a diamond encrusted skull (well, I never saw one of those, but it would have fit right in).
 
Everything was the best of its type. If it was flawed or damaged then it was better for being so.
 
This placed wasn't so much stocked as curated. Like a museum, it was above mentioning anything as quotidian as price. If you really had to, you could ask.
 
I could never afford to shop there (I did ask), and in a way to take something out of it was almost unimaginable -- it would feel like looting or buying just one piece of a mosaic.
 
But it has always been, to me, the perfect, platonic form of a retail establishment, lost to the world, though, I'd thought.
 
Then this weekend Jennifer and I were wandering down Maiden Lane, off Union Square, in San Francisco. And in the plain light of that most-sought-after shopping location, there it was.
 
They were just turning off the lights but answered our knock and let us in to wonder anew. They'd moved both here and to New York, it turns out, after their two Hayes St locations closed.
 
It's still exquisite. There are still no prices. It's still the best store in the entire world.