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Official dire prophecy USED to be issued exclusively under the authority of the cleric/sorcerer, but now the public trust for such tales has shifted to the province of the professional scientist. It makes sense. The scientist has models and stuff and has studied subjects deeply. Writers have minor credibility in this area but often discredit themselves by putting specific dates on apocalyptic predictions (see Mayan calendar).

I'd love to join the fray, too, but I'm always wrong. I actually went to live on a tropical island in the 1970s because I thought the whole Western Thing was coming down. Later I made a number of dubious moves, always keeping my life stripped down because the next depression/world war/plague/environmental catastrophe/monetary collapse was at hand. Last year I seriously went out THREE times to stock up on food.

What we forget is that even though it runs against our sentiments, we are at base interdependent, and even if we do grind our heels into each other's face too often, at least under THIS flag and in the matrix of THIS mythology, we've managed to pull together so far when the ...

One day back in 1959 in San Clemente, California, Surf Dawg Rickey and Mysterious Felipe were strolling along the beach, boards under arms, when they ran into a slump-shouldered, hairy-backed man with a ski-jump nose and bags under his eyes who said his name was Dick. Dawg and Felipe felt sorry for this gloomy loner, so they let him sit with them at their beach fire and shared some of their malt liquor and ice cream bars. When Dick went in to surf, Rickey and Felipe were amazed at his moves and dubbed him "Tricky."

Tricky looked at you like a hound dog from under his heavy eyebrows and occasionally shivered his jowls as he spoke. He was homeless and only spent money on corn dogs and Anne Bancroft movies, his favorite the 1953 adventure Treasure of the Golden Condor with Cornel Wilde, George Macready, and Fay Wray (Bancroft would later go on to make a gorilla movie, too, which might explain her eventual attraction to the hairy-backed loner).

At night Rickey's ska band, the Doobie-Wah-Doobies, was usually playing somewhere to a packed house. Mysterious Felipe sat in ...

Because I've lived a risky and unconventional life, I don't often struggle for subjects to write about. Spending time homeless on the streets of New Orleans, the sociopath with whom I lost my virginity, feeding the child of the junkies upstairs, getting kicked off the trains in San Antonio — that's all natural, electric material. However, when my neighbor, Steven, disappeared and was found three months later burned and bound to a tree a half a mile south of the college campus where he taught, as natural and electric as the material might've been, I wasn't sure if I wanted to write about it. Wisdom, my own safety, and the fact that I had never written about crime suggested that the mystery was better left unexplored. Among those opposed to a comprehensive treatment of the case were Steven's family, the college that employed him, the various law enforcement agencies who turned in uninspired performances, the criminology professor who tried to have an affair with my wife and then took over the investigation without authority, and last but certainly not least, the people who were responsible for the death ...

My good friend Abner Violette, a retired NASA electrical engineer (literally a rocket scientist) and owner of five radio stations throughout Nebraska and Colorado, is the most intelligent person I've ever met. He can talk with facility on just about any subject, from physics to falafel to the Foo Fighters. He is a Christian (though you'd never know it), an admirer of Robert Goddard and Wernher von Braun, and a firm believer in ghosts.

We've gone many times, to the delight of my young (Catholic) son, fully equipped with pyrometers and EMF meters and digital voice recorders and cameras to explore old buildings at night in pursuit of phantoms. Our trips are always fruitful — EMF spikes, batteries mysteriously draining, cameras shutting off by themselves, photographs with orbs, recordings of voices that aren't ours ("I see you grin!"), videos of flying what-nots, candle flames flaring up on request. Abner is not only a spook magnet but a great part of the serendipity of my book. After one of the people who I list as a prime suspect hastily left town and then sold his house, Abner ...

It's the story of the century, the most baffling, bizarre, and beastly crime in anyone's memory. A beautiful, elegant, gentle, brilliant man, a theoretical mathematician, goes missing and is discovered three months later way back in the sticks in a horrifying pose. The town immediately goes into a panic. The local police travel in widening circles, scratching their heads and issuing cryptic statements. Many are convinced a serial killer is on the loose. Jim Hahn swears he saw FBI vans in town. Lisa Aschwege knows who did it. The gossipmongers jump aboard their gossamer machines. In a town where many do not lock their doors, we all begin locking our doors. And in spite of the fact that there are many here qualified to do so, including literature professors who teach up on the hill, NO ONE IS WRITING THE BOOK.

But apparently I'm wrong. For I'm sitting next to Floyd at the local bar. Floyd is a barfly in a brown cowboy suit who lives at a residential motel and tells everyone he's rich. Floyd is hard to get along with. Whether he's intentionally contrary, naturally cranky, ...

People talk about the French malaise. But in Spain, there's a full-on crisis. My family and I spent three weeks there in June, traveling from Madrid to Granada, then driving up the coast to Tarragona and Barcelona. It's a beautiful country — very different from France, where we are now: dry and earth-colored, not humid and green; mountainous, not rolling; spotted with castles, not chateaus; strongly connected to Mediterranean and Arabic cultures. It reminded us of California rather than Wisconsin. In LA, we're used to people speaking Spanish.

In the medieval streets of Tarragona, with Roman ruins for a backdrop and a full moon overhead, we celebrated the festival of Saint John. Folks dressed like fish carried giant tridents loaded with firecrackers down the narrow streets, dancing wildly as sparks flew and drums pounded. The party continued all night at the beach, with more fireworks and bacchanal. In Granada the intricate, geometric decorations of the Alhambra palace offered opulent respite from cathedrals and museums full of bloody pictures of martyrs. In Barcelona's brilliant Sagrada Familía, the multihued stone columns rose like trees in a forest, ...

The fishing village of Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue perches on a peninsula on the northeast corner of the Normandy coast. Just a kilometer off the shore lies Ile Tatihou, 28 hectares of sheep fields and rocky beaches. In fact, when it's low tide, you can drive to the island. A hydraulic-powered amphibious vehicle carries visitors to the 17th-century fort, bird sanctuary, and maritime museum without ever leaving land. Or you could jump aboard one of the tractors that magically appear where hours before boats sailed. The farmers tend the oyster beds: rows upon rows of mollusks in black plastic-mesh pillows held a foot off the ocean floor by stakes. The tourist duck rolls down the lanes between what must be tens of thousands of coveted shellfish. Then the English Channel returns, the sailboats and windsurfers and fishing boats come back or go out, the teenagers jump off the docks into the steel-blue water, and agriculture becomes aqua culture again.

Last weekend, we got smart like the Parisians and fled to the coast. We spent two nights right on the water, in an apartment above a seafood store and restaurant, and one night at an old farmhouse in Brittany. After weeks spent visiting cities in Spain and France, the ocean wind and country silence cooled and soothed our overheated and overstimulated souls. For me, the voyage was also a chance to relive my childhood visit to the French coast and countryside — with my own 10-year-old at my side.

Once we spun ourselves off the peripheral road that rings Paris, it didn't take long to lose the crowds. We opted for blue highways over toll roads, not just because we're cheap but because you see the country that way. Cows grazed in undulating fields of green. In fact, we felt like we could be in our usual summer haunt of the Midwest — except instead of big, old 19th-century red barns, 14th-century stone farmhouses pimpled the landscape.

The excursion was a trip down memory lane for me in general. When I was about my son's age, my parents brought my brother and me to Europe. All summer, I've been reliving that transformative experience — as the parent this time. In Normandy, the feeling was especially acute. Thirty-eight years ago, my family also wearied of the tourist treadmill and took time out for some beach relaxation here. I remember vividly those epic tides — the ocean disappearing into the distance — and the pools of marine life they left behind.

I also remember the bunkers in the dunes. Out of all the provinces in France, my husband picked my childhood haunt because of D-Day. He's fascinated by the horror and heroism of war.

Now I'm not one for nostalgia — for my own past or anyone else's. But history hangs heavy in Europe, in a way that's both tangible and ghostly. Almost 70 years since the Allied troops landed here, you can still see the Atlantic wall that the Germans built and the tanks with which the Americans breached it. The countryside is beatific and beautiful, but once you've visited one of the several museums dedicated to the events that began June 6, 1944, you can just imagine what it was like for dazed paratroopers, or shell-shocked infantrymen, as they fought their way through the old farms that had survived so many centuries — and would mostly weather this firestorm too.

I came away from the exhibits and memorials with new respect for the soldiers who turned the tide against Hitler. Still, the images most burned in my mind are the photos of the small cities and towns that were destroyed, their historic buildings reduced to jagged, shattered, pockmarked ruins — mini Dresdens. People lived here. What happened to them?

Sobered, we made our way past Omaha and Utah beaches to Saint-Vaast. We didn't have the address for our lodging, so we just drove to the end of the road — and there was La Criée du Tomahawk, named after the fishing boat that every day provides its fresh, delicious wares. Halyards clanged against masts as a strong wind blew across the then-high waters. By Friday night, as Cole chowed down a huge lobster he had picked out from the living pile that morning, we were actually cold even in our jeans and hoodies — blessedly so, after the heat of Paris.

The strangest thing for me about this journey has been realizing that I have become my parents. As my father was, I have been sent to Europe by my university to work. Like my mother, I struggle to remember the French I learned so many years ago and be the spokesperson for the family. As I was, my son seems both confused by and, possibly, proud of my mangled communication skills. I remember how moved my parents were by the rows upon rows of white crosses at the American cemetery, how my mom loved the fresh flowers of the Paris markets, how I loved to drink the chocolat, how my dad loved the wine. In some way, I think I'm here to claim a powerful, happy moment of a past that eventually broke.

I'm clutching a security blanket. All those years ago, Mom bought us a colorful striped beach spread that lasted forever. In fact, I may still have it somewhere, soiled but intact. It followed me to beaches in Rhode Island, New York, Michigan, Florida. I had forgotten where it came from — until I saw its brethren for sale at a shop in Saint-Vaast. They were not cheap. But all trip, we'd been needing linen for picnics. And the memories that could and would be woven into that cloth... Cole picked the color. I hope it lasts him as long as its predecessor did me.

For company and for the class I'm teaching, I've been reading M. F. K. Fisher's memoir The Gastronomical Me. It's a coming-of-age story about an American woman who sails back and forth between California and France, finding her self, independence, freedom, love, and, most of all, appetite. Fisher, who also wrote a book called Consider the Oyster, is the godmother of foodies, a woman who had a deep appreciation for the origins of ingredients and a zest for experimentation. Fisher made cooking an adventure, not a domestic chore. She served the antithesis of comfort food: "My meals shake them from their routines, not only of meat-potatoes-gravy, but of thought, of behavior."

I've discovered the secret of French living: they don't need oxygen. Gallic bodies have some sort of internal cooling system whereby they can sit in a 100-degree room with the windows closed and no fans, let alone AC, in a grand edifice into which apparently no new air has been introduced since Baron Haussmann rebuilt the town 140 years ago, and they can remain as cool and collected as if it were just another cold, rainy day in Paris — of which there have been none, by the way, in almost a month. French people never break a sweat. Maybe, on the fifth day of weather more befitting Miami than Mont St. Michel, their opalescent skin gets a little shinier as they sit at their café tables — where the chairs always face outward — watching bemusedly the American tourists mopping their brows as they march, moaning, from one crowded sight to another.

The French have a lot of theories (a.k.a. myths), and one of them holds that the old stone walls retain the coldness of winter for weeks after summer has arrived. My theory is that they are ...

I've been digging Paris. I mean digging for vinyl. You can find records here you can't find in the States, partly because different performers were popular in France (the Jerry Lewis syndrome), partly because collectors here aren't sifting for the same nuggets. I'm extremely selective; after all, the empty bag I brought is already half filled with shoes and clothes. Mostly, I'm looking for cool girl artists.

One music shop revealed a 1989 album by the Cookie Crew, called, er, Born This Way. The Crew were an all-female English hip-hop act I don't even remember. Rappers Remedee and Suzi Q have got a Native Tongues vibe in the cover shot, but I'll have to wait until I'm home with my turntable for the aural review. Speaking of Suzi Q, American daughter Suzi Quatro was more popular in France (and England and Japan and most of the world) than she ever was in her native land. I've seen two copies of her first album for sale here. I let them go since I have it, but I did snatch up a French release of her hit single "48 Crash" (a song allegedly about male menopause, of all things).

My favorite find came while combing through a box of vinyl at an antiques market. There, staring up at me with a revolver in one hand and a flashlight in the other, was Kim Fowley. Visions of the Future was released in 1978, during the Queens of Noise's brief reign, perhaps as his and Capitol Records' attempt to cash in on the fame he got for his work with the teenage girls who by then had fired him. On the inner sleeve, the Legendary Prick (as he titled an early version of his memoirs) clutches the gun and a teddy bear. The pistol-packing overgrown kid plays a sort of Eastwood-esque antihero in my book Queens of Noise: The Real Story of the Runaways.

At night, when we lie in the back bedroom and the sound of traffic on busy Boulevard Voltaire fades, we can hear the metro beneath us. The subterranean thunder is distant but impressively insistent. You rarely have to wait more than five minutes for a train in Paris, until after the last one leaves its first station at 1 a.m. and goes to bed at its final destinations of either (in the case of the rail that winds beneath us, number 9) Montreuil or Pont de Sèvres. I guess the sound keeps me up; I usually don't fall asleep until the final underground rumble. Then again, who can surrender consciousness early when you're in Paris in the summer, and it doesn't get dark until after 11, and there's so much still to do, so many pastries to eat and wine to drink and art to imbibe and landmarks to ogle, that a month isn't barely enough time — you're just getting started, just beginning to feel comfortable in your high school French and to know which cheese is from what hoofed animal, and then it's over, and ...