The Ferris Files

I attended the Greener Gadgets Conference in New York City today, and pricked up my ears when the experts in electronics and design debated an urgent question: How can the ever-changing consumer electronics industry innovate without adding yet more gadgets to the trash bin?

The conference, now in its second year, met as both the electronics [...]

“Emperor of the Air,” by Ethan Canin, recorded for Radhika Kumar on Christmas 2009. Enjoy!
Emperor of the Air

The Ferris Files has been so quiet recently that you might wonder if your trusty outdoor correspondent died suddenly without leaving a forwarding URL. Did a giant swell at Ocean Beach bury David’s head in the sand? Did he run too far up a trail and into a pride of hungry bobcats?
I’m writing to tell [...]

1. Click on the “Leave a Comment” link, in the grey bar below.
2. Make a comment such as, “Hello you two, at first I meant to get you a tiara and a pair of hot pants, but then I decided to get this other thing you’ll like even more.”
3. When prompted for your email address, [...]

Among the several hats I wear, I lead an outdoor workout for employees of the city of Mill Valley twice a week at lunchtime. This is a fun job and one with unexpected perks.
For an hour I hector a group of office workers, mostly women, to climb up and down flights of the fabled Dipsea [...]

One year ago today, sitting at a cramped vanity in my friend Donnella’s hotel room, I made the first post to The Ferris Files. The world of self-publishing has never been the same, if I may say so myself.
Over the last 365 days, The Ferris Files has reported the highs and the lows, from the [...]

I have long considered golfers a bunch of lazy so-and-sos whose greatest feats are 1) not spilling their lattes when they get out of the electric cart and 2) thwacking a tiny, spring-loaded ball across a giant lawn that has already been mowed for them by a Mexican.
If that passes for “sport,” then we set [...]

Last Thursday I played my first golf game ever. The first tee at the Presidio Golf Course is a doozy, a 362-yard drive that doglegs to the right so hard that you can’t see the green through the trees.
I squared up to the ball – somewhere I heard that’s what you’re supposed to do, square [...]

I discovered the tip of the Baja Peninsula six years ago, when my friend steered her Jeep off the carretera, down an arroyo and right onto the sand. The ocean tinted green and blue like the Caribbean and invited us to lose our sandals. The beach stood empty. Looking around I saw the land was [...]

I hadn’t quite finished pulling in behind the van when from its driver’s seat hopped a woman, a little Filipina in a huge denim shirt and with a band-aid under her left nostril. She wanted a jump.
Sure, I said. Something about her seemed a little strange, but a dead battery is a dead battery. I [...]