Two Moons Better Than One

The side of the moon facing us is a low lava field; on the other side it's mountainous.

It’s only in the past 50 years that scientists have had a peek at the whole of the moon. Because the moon doesn’t spin on its axis,  the harvest moon that we saw and sang about (or barked about, in some cases), was the exact same moon, showing the exact same face and the exact same features. Then the space program began orbiting the moon, and researchers discovered that the terrain on dark side was very different from what human have seen for hundreds of thousands of years.

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Mighty Marin Alsop

Maestra Marin Alsop. Photograph by Grant Leighton.

In 1930, a pioneering American, Antonia Brico, conducted the Berlin Philharmonic, and to critical acclaim. It was a fluke. No woman musician played in that famous orchestra until 1982. Of virtually equal stature, the Vienna Philharmonic opened the door to a female musician, a harpist, only in 1997. This was the world Swiss-born orchestra conductor Gustav Meier grew up in.

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Befuddlement Over Beach Closures

Twin Lakes is one of the state beaches slated for closure. Photo by Chip Scheuer.

Closing a park is hard; closing a beach is even harder. But that’s just what Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed for four local state beaches. The beaches—Twin Lakes and Seabright in Santa Cruz County and Zmudowski and Moss Landing in Monterey County’s northern reaches—are among nine beaches up and down the state set for closure by next July. Due to the unique public access issues posed by beaches, the question of how exactly that will look—or if it will even work—remains entirely unanswered.

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