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Gilroy artist, Karah Karpinski, 37, got her creative side from her mother, Cindy and drive to succeed from her father, Paul. “I’ve always loved to draw and paint since I was little,” said Karpinski, who started painting murals on friends’ walls - everything from portraits to three dimensional murals and cartoon characters. You can see her latest creation outside Robot Shark at 7454 Monterey Street in downtown Gilroy. “I’m just beginning to explore new ideas and getting my artwork onto business’ floors and walls. It’s called illusion or 3-D murals. I do it all free-hand.” Reach Karah at [email protected].

Robert “The Ghost” Guerrero said he is more prepared for a fight than he has been for a long time.

Gilroy’s phantasmic fists are set to do battle in the ring once again, with an July 15 fight against Omar Figueroa at the Nassau Coliseum.

In between winter storms, a bright, sunny weekend beckoned me out to a wine tasting at Miramar Vineyards. Several groups, celebrating various milestones, filled the expansive patio, overlooking a vastness of vineyards and rolling green hills. Nearby, a team of wine drinkers played bocce ball on the shaded court.

If you enjoy the outdoors, it is likely you are a photographer. You are on the trail and come around a bend. Suddenly, the world drops away and a vast landscape stretches to an incomprehensibly distant horizon. When nature shows off like this, it is natural to want to preserve it in pixels.The grand landscape will always be the top priority to a hiker with a camera, but with practice, photography can also be a window to natural beauty that we routinely pass by unnoticed.Over the years, I have been to a handful of photographic seminars, always in a place of special natural beauty. But I am not sure that Yosemite or Point Reyes is the best place to learn to see beyond the usual wide angle landscape. If you gave a camera to a monkey in Yosemite Valley, he would likely return with some nice photographs. How could he miss? But could he take a good photograph in a vacant lot?I believe that the measure of a good photographer is one who makes extraordinary images in ordinary surroundings. Cultivating the heightened visual acuity necessary to create images like this is an excellent way to bring us closer to the natural world. Getting out into nature is important, but when we go, we should strive to walk into it and not just through it.I am better at preaching it than doing it, but photography has helped me open my eyes to natural beauty that I would have otherwise passed without notice. It has awakened me to the beauty of nature at my feet or close at hand that I never saw before. It has challenged me to see with a child’s eyes and discover extraordinary sights in ordinary places.With this in mind, photography becomes as much a practice in expanded seeing as the pursuit of a picture. You don’t need a hoochy-coochy Nikon SLR to do this. Next time you hit the trail, grab your pocket camera. Use your hike as an opportunity to really look at the “ordinary” sights you pass. Is there a spider web bejeweled with morning dew? Are some fallen maple leaves resting on autumn’s tawny grasses just so? How about the brightly colored lichen on that rock? I wonder if a photo of the sycamore trees reflected in that creek pool will look like one of Monet’s impressionist paintings.It is a bit surprising, but I have learned that images of simple scenes like this wear far better on a viewer’s eyes than the photo of the alpine peaks bathed in alpenglow. Mark my words, you will take that image off the wall while the picture of the maples leaves on the grass continues to please.The possibilities are endless. As we look more carefully, we begin to see more deeply. In the process, we learn that the ordinary things we pass without notice are indeed extraordinary.

All marriages have their struggles, but women whose husbands are running toward flaming danger while everyone else is running away face special struggles.

By Colleen Grzan

I recently came across a envelope full of old photos of my mom when she was a child. A relative had sent them to me after she passed away, and I guess I was not ready to look at them at the time. Now I see in the photos a beautiful child posing in front of a quaint south Boston brownstone, alongside relatives or friends whose faces I do not recognize. I remember my Irish family members as so much older than the folks pictured there. They were all characters who loved to sip whiskey and sing songs of the old country, but you would never know that looking at their stern, stiff expressions in the photos. I wonder what they were doing and saying just before the photos were taken, and I wish their names were listed on the backs. It would help me distinguish between my endless relatives named Mary.

Two months ago I shared a summary on a new down payment program designed to help buyers manage the high cost of living in the Bay Area through a shared appreciation investment. Since that brief introduction, the program has improved and is worthy of a quick refresher.

Don’t wear fragrance. Colognes can interfere with your (or other’s) ability to sense some wine’s delicate notes.