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The Birds and the Beasts of El Niño
Meteorologists have been promising drought-stricken California an El Niño event since sometime in 2014. That year the rising temperature of Pacific Ocean waters characteristic of the phenomenon came too little, too late to combat the Pacific “blob,” a new and puzzling region of unusually warm water and its associated high pressure system that kept storms…
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A Is For…
San Luis Obispo’s Apple Store looks like it swaggered in from Manhattan or Union Square to see the sights, then decided it liked the low-key vibe and settled down on the corner of Higuera and Morro streets to stay a while. All chrome and glass and gleaming white, it cuts an aggressively stylish figure among the earth…
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Some Random Thoughts at the End of the Year
– We haven’t had enough rain – not by a long shot – but what we’ve had has washed the oaks clean and they no longer look like treasured knick-knacks that an old, ailing lady hasn’t had the energy to dust. – The contractor who remodeled our kitchen built a snug little shed to replace…
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A Walk in the Tiny Woods
The first time I drove from Long Beach to San Luis Obispo I was in my late twenties. A college boyfriend had graduated and decamped to Cal Poly for a masters degree, and despite it being the time before smartphones and Skype shrank emotional if not physical miles, we embarked on the folly of a…
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A Primer on Persecution
Even as I type this presidential candidates Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz are off to Kentucky to console jailed county clerk Kim Davis in her hour of despair, yet another victim in the relentless assault on religious liberty waged by unsavory political and judicial elements in the United States. For those who haven’t been following…
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GTA and Witcher and Women
There’s been a lot of thievery and magicky swordplay going on about what we lovingly refer to as Casa de Pepe the last few weeks as my husband and I immerse ourselves in GTA and The Witcher, respectively. We bought swanky new video cards just for the event and, unusually for us, hide under headphones…
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El Andaluz
Because I didn’t want to spoil the magic or be ejected from the premises, I didn’t ask why a man to whom my husband and I were complete strangers let us into the locked courtyard of El Andaluz. We had visited Santa Barbara before, even with cameras, but never with an eye to urban street shooting.…
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The Old Sky
According to the Yanomami people, the world before this one was crushed when forces of chaos collapsed the sky, hurling Earth’s inhabitants into the underworld. Kinder deities raised a new one, and from the back of its fallen predecessor grew the forest where, when they clawed their way back above ground, the Yanomami came to…
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Lessons Learned on the Cambria Boardwalk
A morning in Cambria and a mere 383 photos later, I have made certain additional discoveries. Lessons Technical Lessons Natural I keep dreaming of taking pictures at the Cambria Scarecrow Festival. Which was, in fact, this weekend. But first I would have to get over expecting scarecrows and finding only papier mache. Trying out my…
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Thunderbird
The first time I saw a turkey vulture I thought it was an eagle. It soared along a ridge, far too large to be a hawk, elegant and majestic as it rode a thermal nearly out of sight. When my friend said it was a vulture I didn’t believe him. The first time I heard…
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