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Hit It with a Hammer
Bubble warning: Here There Be Liberal Sentiments. If the thought of drug-testing-free welfare turns you into a frothing rage monkey, you may wish to go elsewhere for today’s light political entertainment. A few weeks ago an elderly neighbor sent me an email entitled IF YOU CAN’T FIX IT WITH A HAMMER, YOU’VE GOT AN ELECTRICAL…
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The Wild Things
When my grandparents were still alive they lived in the remote Pennsylvania woodlands in a small stucco and stone home that my grandfather built himself. I spent a summer there just before my teens. I remember wandering through my grandmother’s garden of dahlias and snapdragons, mesmerized by all the color. I remember afternoons spent curled…
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Dispatches from the Exercise Front
If there’s a gene for proclivity to exercise, my family doesn’t have it. Give me a choice between a vigorous bike ride and curling up with a book and I’ll take the book every time. I got away with it in my twenties because a heavy backpack and a university built on a steep hill…
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Macro San Miguel
I’ve always found something simultaneously appealing and off-putting about California missions. The architecture nestles with organic seamlessness into the surrounding environment (aesthetic intent as necessity, perhaps, since at the time local building materials were likely the only viable option, but still). On the other hand there’s the way they were built and maintained: typically with indigenous laborers who, even if they came…
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Subject and Object
On the first day of my first metaphysics class, the professor asked a student to count the objects in the room. She confidently totted up the people, the desks, and had started working on the whiteboards and pens when he interrupted her. “What about the chair legs?” She looked perplexed for a moment. “Or the screws…
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Lessons Learned at the Aquarium
A weekend in Monterey and 683 photos later, I have made certain discoveries. Photography lessons learned: Social lessons learned: Monterey Aquarium California, March 2014 (for higher resolution versions see SmugMug gallery)
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Spring
I’ve lived in Atascadero for seventeen years and towards the end of every winter I become a fretful Demeter waiting for Persephone: unconvinced that thistime the decimated, disconsolate yard will emerge from Hades. It always seems to, mostly. The fragile, fragrant white apricot blossoms peek out first, their temerity usually rewarded by a crushing late…
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Noah
I probably wouldn’t have gone to see Noah if Darren Aronofsky’s name hadn’t been associated with it. When I was six an older brother’s well-intentioned attempts to introduce me to Jesus ushered me into the dark world of night terrors and panic attacks (“They nailed him to what? And put a spear where? And it was my fault?”).…
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Faces of Monterey
Monterey always catches me a little off guard when I visit. Growing up in Southern California I was accustomed to beach grunge chic: wind and salt and the scouring sands made a pristine exterior out of reach for even the most dedicated (and wealthy) residents and merchants. Beachside buildings were always a little bit dirty,…
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Birds, Water, and Lazy Weekends
As my SmugMug galleries can attest, I love taking photos of birds. So when Skip’s boss loaned us his telephoto lens my first thought was to head out to Atascadero Lake and its teeming flocks of ducks and geese and grebes, with the occasional swan drifting elegantly among them, to see what I could see.…
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