From the Los Angeles Times:

Overall, the Census Bureau’s latest data show that state and local government expenditures for all purposes in 2005-06 were 46.8% higher in California than in Texas: $10,070 per person compared with $6,858. Only three states and the District of Columbia saw higher per capita government outlays than California, while those expenditures [...]

Michael emails: I stumbled across your site today, and got a sense that you have a good feel for Jewish life in Northern California. Is there no Orthodox life to be found north of SF and Berkeley? Seems so beautiful on the coast, and my wife and kid are looking into discovering the Cali Northern [...]

Here is the Amazon.com page for the book and here is the website for the author Frances Dinkelspiel.
We did this interview a couple of weeks ago via email. I told Frances to only answer the questions she found interesting. I’ve left in tact all questions I sent her.
* What were the biggest obstacles you [...]

My favorite part of this biography by Hellman’s great-great-granddaughter Frances Dinkelspiel came on page 181.
It describes how affluent German Jews in the San Francisco Bay Area reacted with ambivalent feelings to the arrival of Russian Jewish immigrants.

Why were the German Jews so opposed to the immigration of people who were facing slaughter by the czar’s [...]

Rabbi Avi Shafran writes:
Which brings us back to more recent flames, those of the unprecedented California fires – which fire-management experts have dubbed “mega-fires,” since they are ten times larger and more intense than wildfires of a mere decade or two ago. More than eight million acres of American forest have burned this year already.
The [...]