Pith Helmet - An Exploration

2006-05-24T21:33:00.000-07:00

on de plane

Its Time...

2005-09-10T12:28:00.000-07:00

Impeach George Bush!

Cheers to New Orleans

2005-03-16T11:08:00.000-08:00

New York Times editorialist David Brooks gets a little taste of New Orleans, and it makes him rethink his value system.

Saturday Night Lite

It happens to the best of us.

10 C's

2005-03-15T09:29:00.000-08:00

Christopher Hitchens on the Immorality of The Ten Commandments

If the Supreme Court allows the 10 Commandments to be placed in any courthouse, then I will push to have a large Oak tree placed in the middle of the court as well, festooned with runes, so that we can have sacrifices and worship the tree gods and goddesses just as our Celtic ancestors did about the same time that the 10 C's were handed down. How can they deny me? Once you allow religion to be supported by the government, how can you then say one is O.K. but not the other? Or maybe I will push, instead to have a statue of Yoda put in every courtroom, because I and many others are true Jedi's and worship the force. There are a lot of Star Wars fans out there. Or maybe now the Mormon Church, (that's a "real" religion right?), will now want golden statues of Moroni in every courtroom. Or at least Utah, where there is overwhelming precedence, and the majority wishes it. Who are we to say no? A Baptist or Catholic in Utah, much less an agnostic? Too damn bad. Those in favor of the 10 C's posted everywhere: Put the shoe on the other foot and see if it feels a little tight.
And as Hitchens argues, they're not all that great anyway.

I'm no student of prophesy but...

2005-03-12T00:01:00.000-08:00

I'm no student of prophesy but I pay attention to what those that are have to say. I was tuned in to the Christian Broadcast Network the other day and a heavy deep-voiced man with silver-white and impeccably combed hair said that according to Deuteronomy, verse something or other, and the whole of the book of God-Destroyed-Some-Shit, the end of the earth was nigh. Now I wasn't exactly and completely, totally straight when I heard that shit, so you can imagine. I took a step back and thought...shit man! Does that dude take himself seriously. I mean shit, he's on non-cable TV, beamed all across fucking Southern California and shit, yelling the world is about to end. What the fuck!? Now what the Hell man. If you really thought the world was about to end (because there have been ominous signs that biblicaly predicted events in the middle-east have transpired to produce a war between the Russians and the United States)wouldn't you be calling the president and Condi Rice? I mean the guy asked for donations for his starving African childrens charity, and offered advice on how God can help you achieve financial success. If the god-damned world was ending it should be a big fucking deal...riight!? Maybe the charity stuff could wait. Maybe its too late to save the children!?

Yes, I got a bit miffed at the guy but, you know, its shit like that, that keeps me tuned in to the Christian Network. If you want drama, destruction and singing, you can't beat it.

New Orleans Bathrooms

2005-03-07T14:37:00.000-08:00

In New Orleans, sometimes it is interesting to see which is more interesting- the décor of the restaurant or bar- or the bathrooms. Since many of them are located in old, retrofitted buildings, who knows if you will have to walk through the kitchen to get to the bathrooms, or another small building on the other side of a courtyard? Will it be the size of a closet? Will it be shared-sex? Will it have little antique knickknacks and look like your grandmother’s bathroom? Will it be a collage of 70’s era Playboy centerfolds? Will a little old man be there to hand you a towel and cologne for a small tip? It will be guaranteed that it will not look like the bathroom stalls of your Applebees-Olive Garden. At worst it could be a French Quarter dive, or Tulane college student dive, with those awful metal trowels. God knows what the women’s bathrooms would be like in such places such as “The Boot”. A poem inscribed upon the wall at Fat Harry’s:

“I’ve shat in Spain
I’ve shat in France
But before I shit at Fat Harry’s
I’ll shit in my pants.”

I took a look around and found that I had to concur. At the other end of the trowel there was a disgusting little metal toilet without even a stall to block anyone’s view!

But many New Orleans bathrooms are very cool and make you want to do your bathroom up like them, a lot of art and stuff. Someone should do a coffee table book (or one to sit on the back of the throne) of just photographs of New Orleans bathrooms.

A visitor has landed

2005-03-05T23:45:00.000-08:00

In early February a visitor came to LA. While meditating on the existential nature of the day she beheld the sea. "A la mer" she said while staring out into the endless horizon. And then she knew in silent epiphany, she would be the queen of medical emergency.

Johnny Depp

2005-02-27T13:57:00.000-08:00

Something interesting. In the great scheme of things my name is, I think rather common. Not as common as say Lee, smith, or some Chinese names. Well it turns out that Johnny Depp was born - John Christopher Depp in Owensville Kentucky while I was born John Christopher X in Pikeville Kentucky. When I finally meet Johnny Depp that will be the first part of our breaking the ice conversation-the naiming of names in rural Kentucky. Followed quickly by, will you play Goodfellow in the movie version of my novel. Then I will tell my wife to kindly quite staring at him or we'll leave. There it is then.

Lake Isle of Innisfree

2005-02-26T12:58:00.000-08:00

"I WILL arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core."

By Bill Yeats

Deep Thoughts

2005-02-18T00:09:00.000-08:00

"When I get the urge to exercise, I lay down until the feeling goes away."

Traveler, there is no path. Paths are made by walking.

2005-02-01T08:06:00.000-08:00

-- Antonio Machado

2005-01-30T16:47:00.000-08:00

Mardi Gras parades have begun. Time to drink on the streets.

2005-01-30T16:45:00.000-08:00

Sara Gras

2005-01-30T16:43:00.000-08:00

Gen Patton float

2005-01-30T16:42:00.000-08:00

Lobster claws

2005-01-30T16:40:00.000-08:00

Me and Sara at Halloween

2005-01-30T16:38:00.000-08:00

Jay and Dave make their appearance

2005-01-30T16:36:00.000-08:00

Sara went to Chicago last week

2005-01-30T16:34:00.000-08:00

View of Lake Michigan from Sara J's gramma's house

2005-01-30T16:32:00.000-08:00

Brrr..

2005-01-30T16:31:00.000-08:00

The "L"

Parade Time

2005-01-29T15:39:00.000-08:00

Mardi Gras Parades have begun. Some of them can be viewed live and archived here:

NOLA CAMS

Click on the ParadeCam

Feather, Orange and Glass

2005-01-29T15:38:00.000-08:00

If a feather = lightness
If an orange = you
If a glass = god

Then when held in opposition
A still life is made,
That it may be interpreted
By our own subjectivities.

A delicate moment,
Detached from purpose.
A fractal impression,
A subset of the universe.

The fruit of yourself,
Organic, but with structure, full
With seeds of things that will grow
Nurtured by the pulp of incarnation

An empty vessel we make
To hold the liquid of ourselves in,
Define the extent of ourselves by,
Visible mainly by the contents within.

Feather & Orange
Orange & Glass
Glass & Feather

I speak to you with these symbols,
Which is how we must interpret one another,
When our minds cannot be read,
When the words I speak lay between us
Like objects to examine.

Selfishness of the Worst Kind

2005-01-27T09:06:00.000-08:00

I found it interesting to note that tsunami victims worst needs are not of the temporal kind, food, shelter and medical assistance, or dealing with the loss of so many friends, family and countrymen, but rather their eternal salvation. The people don’t need help as much as they are now “Ripe for Jesus” according to this article:

Mix of Quake Aid and Preaching Causes Concern

and

Indonesia Muslims Warn Against Evangelism

It seems some evangelical relief groups are offering their “help” with strings attached. Not quite altruistic, but rather self-serving. (“That is what evangelical groups do” replied a letter who didn’t see what the big deal was about the article a couple of days later). I wonder if these groups would actually go somewhere and really try to help people, like the Peace Corps, or whether they would go at all or offer any kind of help at all if it were not associated with any church or “faith based initiative” whose main purpose is to “Glorify God”, and make you do it too.

The question is whether these groups are actually interested in helping anyone, or whether they are mainly interested in gaining converts to increase their power and influence as a religion (as larger, better established cults are called) in the great game of world-wide ideological influence. They don’t look at it as an opportunity to help anyone, as much as to further their goals of expanding their group by force feeding what would sound to someone who didn’t grow up in the Bible Belt as patently absurd ideas about ghosts and people raising from the dead, and that if you don’t believe that stuff, it will be your humble fate to burn and suffer in some alternate reality for all of eternity. It’s almost cult-like. Imagine if a disaster hit your town and a bunch of Hindus told you: “we’ll offer you help, but first we must spread the word about Siva” who came in the form of destructive fire, but would soon morph into the god of creation from the ashes. And not in a metaphorical sense, but a down to-earth, “really” sense. And you also had to believe that the world balanced on the back of a turtle and that if you were bad and did not believe this (in your profound emotional state of loss) you were likely to return as a cockroach or dung beetle—Or Mormons told you that you had to believe that Joseph Smith crossed the desert with gold tablets that only he could read with his “magic glasses” that told him all about the Israeli tribes that lived in America that no anthropologist (but what do they know with only scientific based “theories”?) had ever found a single tool from. Ridiculous you would say. And you would be right. Sound like coercion or cult-like emotional and psychic manipulation? Sure does.

Mother Theresa, even, has been taken to task over this. Christopher Hitchens wrote a scathing expose about the hypocrisy of her “mission”. Showing that her main goal was not health care or healing of the poor, which she actually did very little of, when you get to the facts and figures of it, but rather gaining money, power, and influence for the Church in third world countries while being in cahoots with ruthless dictators, who lauded her, so they could seem like they were doing something. One telling moment was the revelation that Mother Theresa had written Judge Ito (yes that one) to have Clemency in the case against Charles Keating, who along with Neil Bush (yes that family) and others defrauded billions of dollars from Americans and caused the savings and loan scandal of the 80’s, because he had given a lot of the money to her mission. The prosecutor wrote back that if she cared so much, she should return the money (which was being used to build churches, not help poor people) to the defrauded victims of Keating, Bush, et al. Of course she never returned a response or the money. Mostly, it appeared however, that she was rather ambitious about being made a Saint, which is bizarre, pathological, kind of crazy, and about the most selfish and egotistical thing I have ever heard of.

But you’ve got to hand it to Texas, everything is much bigger, bolder and dumber there. Even the Catholic Church, the most corrupt institution in the History of the World, at least has learned some tact after all of their witch burnings, inquisitions, and forced conversions of natives of the New World. This particular group was from religiously crazy-ass Waco, where, I guess in a couple of hundred years when nobody remembers what actually happened, David Koresh will have a cult built around his death, that may one day aspire to be a religion.

Here we can see how the situation is, how when people have nowhere else to turn to, they can turn to God (or, cults or religion or what have you) for comfort and aid:
“W. L. P. Wilson, 38, a disabled fisherman with a sixth-grade education, said he allowed the Americans to pray three times for the healing of his paralyzed lower leg because he was desperate to provide for his wife and three children again. Mr. Wilson, a Buddhist, said that he believed that the Americans were trying to convert him to Christianity but that he was in "a helpless situation now" and needed aid.
"They told me to always think about God and about Jesus and you will be healed," he said. "Whenever I ask for help they always mention God, but they do not give any money for treatment."
It sounds to me like the main thing tsunami victims need to be “saved” from are supply profiteers, malaria and American evangelical groups.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

2005-01-25T20:51:00.000-08:00

Debt is a form of social control.
If you are in debt are you likely to make waves at work, or organize for better wages and benefits?
Health insurance is a form of social control.
How many people have you heard say that they hate their job but, they can't quit because they need the insurance?
These forms of social control keep workers tied to jobs they don't want and insure that employers can intimidate workers who ask for more benefits, better pay, and more vacation.
Who benefits from the American workforce being heavily indebted and having limited options for health coverage?
What would happen if people didn't identify themselves with what they own?
What would happen if the government insured the American workforce?

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

2005-01-18T22:54:00.000-08:00

The ACLU is a communistic organization that hates America and all it stands for.
Intelligent design is as valid and scientific an explanation for the creation of the universe and the rise of man as the Theory of Evolution.
Unions are socialistic and are not beneficial to the American worker who does not need the power to negotiate with industry for his wages.
Business persons can be trusted to pay their workers a fair wage without socialistic union interference.
Giving people access to safe and affordable housing, healthcare, childcare and a living wage will make them lazy.
The tens of thousands of Iraqi's who have died because of UN sanctions and the US invasion of Iraq are the price that must be paid to make the world safe from the threat posed by Sadam Hussein.
The war was not about oil.
A person working in retail or the service sector should not expect to be paid a wage that they can raise a family on, the economy has changed, paying them higher wages would make American industry uncompetitive.
Global warming is a sham put forward by a conspiracy of left-wingers and tree-huggers to advance their anti-worker, anti-American agenda.
Islam is a murderous and intolerant religion.
Slavery and 100 years of Jim Crow do not explain the failure of blacks to achieve the American dream today.
Blacks don't need affrimitive action, afterall its been over 30 years since they gained equal rights with whites.
Your average white person would vote for a black person for president.
The death penalty is just-it should be applied more broadly.
Jesus would have supported the death penalty.
The environment is fine.
There are more trees than people.
Immigrants are bad for America.
Mexicans are taking American jobs.
As long as I am not breaking the law I do not need to be concerned about how my actions affect the lives of others.
Rugged individualism best describes America.
Michaeal Moore is a lunatic film-maker who lied and took things out of context in his movie Farenheit 9/11.
America should leave the UN.
America is not the world's biggest polluter and should not sign the Kyoto protocol.
Liberals are funny and misguided.
Republicans are practical everyday folks, who don't want the government telling them what to do.
Schools would be better if there was a time set aside each day for prayer.
The ten commandments should be placed at the entrance to all public schools.
A woman should have the right to choose whether to keep her child, or put it up for adoption.
Fox news is unbiased and can be counted on to provide fair and balanced reporting.
Capitalism is natural, it is not based upon regulations and laws created by a few wealthy industrialists, and is the fairest way in which to distritibute the bounty of the earth.
Palestinians were not the majority of the population of Israel from antiquity to 1948.
Jews did not force Palestinians from their homes in 1948, and the Palestinians living in the West Bank should not be allowed to return to their homes in Israel.
George Bush is right, Social Security should be privatized.
The public education system in the US should be privatized.
All publicly owned utilities should be privatized.
The French were wrong when they did not support our invasion of Iraq.
Nationalized health insurance would cost too much.
A smart and industrious person should have no trouble making a living and buying a home in the US.
The top 10% of the citizens of this country do not control 70% of its wealth, and even if they did they earned it.
Universities are hotbeds of liberal activism and university professors are know-it-alls who hate America.
America is right, the world is wrong.
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and, John Quincy Adams may have been highly educated students of the enlightenment but, they didn't know it was wrong to enslave other human beings.
America was a better place back in the 50's than it is today.
Martin Luther Kings birthday should not be a national holiday.
Most poor people are poor because they're lazy.
Most rich people worked hard for what they have.
Welfare programs are a waste of money.
America would be a better place to live if the richest Americans didn't have to pay more in taxes than the poorest.
A little torture is OK.
I believe that the government should amend a few of my freedoms in the interest of security.
I trust the government.

2005-01-15T13:06:00.000-08:00

Final thoughts on San Fran: Allison looks out at the Haight on Thanksgiving Day.

2005-01-15T11:56:00.000-08:00

The weather in sunny So. Cal is once again perfect. In fact as I write this I am preparing to go to the beach for the afternoon. Shoes off, feet in the sand, and the freak show in full force. I thought though, to post one more memoric pic from the "Rain of '05". Water somehow gives LA a weird ambience that I have never felt in other places. Perhaps that's because of it doesn't often fall from the sky.

A Look Forward Into the Future.... A Look Back In Time...

2005-01-14T08:05:00.000-08:00

A probe has just landed successfully on Titan, a moon of Saturn that has long intrigued scientists. Supposedly its organic soup makeup mirrors what evidence has led scientists to believe is similar to Earth's very early in its geologic history, with many of the basic precursors for life. Of course Titan is too cold and far from the sun for its atmosphere to develop from methane to life-supporting oxygen, but it is a window into the early development of the Earth and the solar system.

Apparently it will be hours until the quality of the signals being sent back from the probe can be determined, but it seems like the mission was an unqualified success and much important information will be gleaned from the wok-shaped probe. Exciting stuff.

Probe reaches surface of Saturn Moon

Let Us Trim Our Hair...

2005-01-12T14:55:00.000-08:00

Tidy Haircuts... What both Communists and Right Wing ex-marines from Alabama have in common- a love for military haircuts. Nothing like mandating certain haircuts and behaviors to squash individualism and promote conformity and sheep-like behavior. Kim Jong Ill, Deaest Leader, he of the oh-so-stylish doo, has mandated a pallete of 4, count'em 4, approved haircuts, with a bonus of 7 cm. to men over 50 for use in comb-overs (starting to sound like a zoning ordinance). North Korea Wages War On Long Hair That's two more haircut styles than what was allowed in my boot camp. So don't dress like a bunch of Commies.. whoops, I mean dear servents of our beloved U.S. Armed Forces, but rather, let your freak flag fly high for freedom.

2005-01-10T20:22:00.000-08:00

Tea Garden Panoramic

San Francisco

2005-01-09T20:17:00.000-08:00

Visiting a place as a tourist, and visiting a place as a tourist with an eye towards moving there are quite different. Enjoying oneself is not enough. Everything you see is greeted in your mind with a: “this is very cool, but would it continue to be as cool if I lived here?” Having lived in a city whose primary business is tourism, I am well acquainted with the advantages and pitfalls of such an arrangement. I find that, for the most part, if the people are coming for “The City”, to see it in all of its glory and warts -- just how it works and how it feels to be there, rather than for just particular points of interest (i.e. Disney World, and Disney-World type places such as Adult Disney Bourbon St., Fisherman’s Wharf) and it still holds a particular draw, then it might be a place to consider living. Truthfully, it was a place that had always intrigued me from afar, like New Orleans did, and I had wanted to go there for a long time.

San Francisco truly is a jewel of a city. The cool fog. The California light shining like gold on the pale buildings of the city (when it wasn’t raining). The constant rolling of the steep-as-advertised hills with huddled Victorians clinging on for dear life, resting against one another like a massive domino trick waiting for the trigger to tumble clacking up and down the streets. I must say, as a tourist with an eye for moving, the thought of earthquakes and wondering which buildings would be safest was not one that visited my mind unfrequently. The flat we were renting was in a very sturdy building that survived the “great quake” and subsequent fire of the early 20th century. There were framed black and white panoramic pictures of the destruction adorning the dark wood hallways of the place.

Our building was in the Castro neighborhood, just southwest of downtown. The Castro is considered to be San Francisco’s “gayest” neighborhood, and had the rainbow flags festooning many of the lightposts to prove it. But it didn’t seem all that different or wilder than anyplace else however, that I could tell. Besides a local Gym with fashion model looking men coming out with ultra-hip duffel-bags, and about half of the couples sitting at restaurant tables in the area two men couples and occasionally two women, you would hardly notice a thing. Certainly not the bastion of sin and disco lights as its reputation had preceded it . It even had a nice old cathedral where my girlfriend’s mother went to mass each morning. The Castro was no Las Vegas (or New Orleans, for that matter), though the neighborhood bookstore, did have a larger-than-usual section of gay and lesbian literature, interior decoration books, and (architecture and landscape design- which I liked) as well as an unbalanced proportion of men’s modeling, leather, and Bunz- type magazines on the periodical rack. The place had “flair”, but truthfully you could throw a rock up in the air anywhere in the city and hit a great neighborhood. Most cities have some great neighborhoods, and the dense, 3-4 story average building heights and street level activity reminded me of Adams-Morgan or DuPont Circle in Washington D.C., no better or worse, but in San Francisco the entire city was like that. There were so many good restaurants and bars in the area, that though we cooked a lot in the flat’s kitchen, we never ate at the same place twice.

By the end of the week I had become very fond of the Castro and its mix of shops and housing, the health food grocery nearby, the coffee shop three doors down, the beautiful architecture, the efficient trolley (compared to the N.O. streetcars) two blocks down that took you straight up Market St. toward downtown, or to the BART station if you needed to go farther and faster. In fact the transit system is so good, we managed to get everywhere we wanted to go, even across the Bay, by transit ($20 weekly pass + BART -click for station maps- fare), with the exception of one day where we rented a car because of the dual nature of a day where we had to meet familial duties by visiting my girlfriend’s great aunt and uncle (who had a thrilling story about escaping Nazi Germany as a young Jewish athlete) in a retirement community in the picturesque hilly suburbs beyond the East Bay, and then haul ass to Marin County, north of the city to try and catch Muir Woods’s astounding cluster of Giant Redwoods, which we barely did before dusk settled. With Sara J driving like a downhill Michael Shoemacher down the twisty mountain roads, we arrived as darkness fell at a cold and barren beach tucked away between the cliffs with bitterly cold wind blowing in from the Pacific and the waves crashing loudly against rocky crags jutting out from the coast.

One night we went across the bay to Berkeley to meet more distant relatives at a party celebrating the winter solstice, as best as I could gather, or just an excuse to have some kind of party amongst a large group of aging hippies. The house was fairly ramshackle, and seemed practically taped together, but in the tight Bay area housing market it is untelling how much the place might go for. The people were all very nice and along with the, hippy-formula Geritol there was a little spread of mediocre potluck food which, to my surpise, was pretty typical, with very little food one would associate with old California hippies. There were some salads and nuts, but there was also one of those disgusting canned hams, like the kind David Letterman gives out for jokes, that few people had dared to touch. In fact, the only thing I liked were the (decidedly un-organic) greasy potato skins, slathered with bacon bits- somewhat welcome to me after several days of eating good but very healthy food with Sara J’s gastronomically fit family, both vegetarian and kosher in turns. Mostly we spent time in the back kitchen talking with the owner of the house, a pleasant man with a greying ponytail, handlebar mustache and glasses (While hanging up my coat in the back and seeing his substantial music collection I absentmindedly picked up a couple of cd’s from the top and we had brief conversation on the merits of Hawkwind’s influence on the satire of Spinal Tap, and the good transitional period of Genesis just after Peter Gabriel left but before the beginning of the pop period with “duke”) and Sara’s step-cousin who was very cool and closer to our age. In the front room there was some kind of drum, acoustic guitar circle, whose sad but hopeful sounds drifted back to us like a crackling, half-forgotten folk record from the days of yore. Sara and I composed poetry on the side of the refrigerator with words from a “magnetic poetry kit” (TM). Our fridge poems were very good. I wish I could remember them to post here.

The BART back late at night was tired, darkly fluorescent and forlorn, as midnight transit would be in any large city. One day we went to the East Bay and Sara visited a place she was applying to in Oakland while I walked around the campus of U.C. Berkeley, which was indeed a great campus, but was fairly empty being during the holidays between semesters. We met and had lunch in a rainy downtown Oakland, which isn’t nearly as vibrant as San Francisco, but appeared to have a few interesting neighborhoods. The middle of town is built around a small lake, (Lake Meritt) which is ringed by rows of condo towers. Oakland looked like it was coming up.

Mostly we stayed about town, and there was plenty to enjoy there, even in the intermittent rain. One of the nicest moments for me was surely the Japanese tea garden at Golden Gate Park, a place I could see visiting often, should I move to the Bay area. We arrived early in the morning while it was cool and misty, and hardly anyone else was there. The gardens were immaculate, zen-like and pretty much perfect and balanced. Clearly the best garden I had ever been in. It was as it every branch, bloom and twig had a carefully planned aesthetic purpose, bringing a small something to the whole while still seeming very free and natural. Apparently it was started in the late 1800’s by a Japanese man, who worked on it for decades thence. At the end of our stroll we settled for a cup of green tea in a large gazebo, which had benches facing outward over a small pond, where one could contemplate the beauty of the garden while sipping on some jasmine green tea. It was very nice. I noticed Sara J’s brother talking to someone on the opposite side of the gazebo. I actually recognized the guy from being on a cable show one episode we were watching. He’s a guy with boundless enthusiasm and sharp wit which made me remember him from the show, and it all fit because I remember they introduced him as a landscape architect from San Francisco. He was having a cup of tea with his daughter (who at one point was given the most gentle, yet effective scolding for her bored antsyness I had ever heard). He was stopping on the way to visiting a worksite. I ended up talking to the guy for a while. It turns out his work has been featured on a couple other of those cable-renovation shows. I talked to him about the bay area, biking, surfing, as well as the Japanese garden- he had apparently studied in Japan for a while. In fact, after learning my interest in design and ability in drawing and site planning, he pretty much said he could have work for me should I move to the Bay area because he doesn‘t enjoy the drawing aspect of his work as much, and it would keep him out of the office more, though he promised lots of field work would be in order. Serendipity- life is strange. He pointed us to the arboretum which was also very cool. The Bay area has such a climate, that almost anything will grow there. There was a section for various microclimates. In other words, you would be walking through the Mediterranean, then you were walking through New Zealand, then a Redwood forest, then Southern California arid scrub, amongst others. Very interesting.

One afternoon it was sunny enough to go to the beach. It was New Year’s day and a few intrepid surfers, wetsuited like seals fought with the wicked currents. We had a nice long walk, hiking up the cliffs to Lincoln Park, a piece of forest in the city. From there are fantastic views of the Ocean and Golden Gate Bridge. We then took a bus to the North Beach neighborhood, hoping that the City Lights Bookstore (click here) would be open on New Year’s day, as many other things were closed. But pretty much everything in North Beach was open, including the bookstore.

At the City Lights Bookstore, I could feel the ghosts of Keroac and Ginsberg seeping from the walls once I climbed the old stairs to the local S.F. and Beat author section, where a couple of chairs lay scattered about for reading, and oddly enough an 80’s vintage poster of New Orleans-based author and poet, Andrei Codrescu adorned the wall above the staircase. The store did have an element of touristy-ness, as it was listed in several guides as an old North Beach haunt, but it’s hard to complain too much about tourism and tourists whose draw is based upon a love and respect for great books and authors, and City Lights, did have an interesting and varied selection of books for the modest size of the place.

I guess I am going through San Francisco withdrawal now, but it is eased by the fact that there is a moderate chance I could be moving there within the next year (this whole moving thing is another story). Even with the earthquakes, high rent and wandering homeless, the place has a certain draw for those who really appreciate a good city. Beauty, variety, the strangeness of the Chinatown markets, interesting people, all part of the attraction. Chris said after his own trip to San Francisco: “It makes you wonder why so many places in America, just don’t get it, how a real city should be”. My thoughts exactly.

The Child Strikes Back

2005-01-08T13:39:00.000-08:00

Crazy weather. Raining in L.A. Raining in S.F, Light snow in New Orleans for the first time in over a decade (of course I was out of town and missed it), blizzard in the midwest seriously messing up my holiday travel arrangements, and now it is a muggy mid-70's January afternoon in the N.O. El Nino strikes again.

2005-01-07T22:08:00.000-08:00

Ocean Ave., Santa Monica

2005-01-06T21:35:00.000-08:00

The Christophers after a healthy dose of Makers Mark.

2005-01-06T16:49:00.000-08:00

My favorite place to get a cup of coffee, if no smoking is the order of the day.

Pith Helmet - An Exploration

2005-01-06T11:28:00.000-08:00

This blog will post the thoughts, opinions, stories and art of Brian and Chris, as well as links to interesting sites and articles, with ocassional guest posts or commentary
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