The Life in My Years

Midterm Malaise or What Keeps Me Awake at Night

Paul

November 1, 2026

Just for once I’d like there to be an election in which the fate of the nation, the democracy and the stability of the whole wide world isn’t hanging in the balance.

Just.

Once.

We used to have those. That was before 2016 when the United States lost its collective mind.

Presidential elections have always had a degree of theater about them. Obama – McCain in 2008 and Obama – Romney in 2012 were, during their times, characterized as the most consequential elections in history. There was a certain amount of hyperbole attached to those calls to arms.

I wouldn’t have been thrilled with either of those Republicans in office but I would have never expected them to be dumpster fires fueled by; unabashed support of Russia and other assorted dictators, the pissing off of allies, levying irrational tariffs, breaking laws, trashing the Constitution, naked robbery of the government coffers, and general incompetence and assholery. American democracy and her alliances would’ve survived McCain and Romney.

And the midterms. Unless you were a total junkie, taking your politics intravenously (like me), the midterms were mostly local affairs. That was until 2018, when it became clear that the Republican Party has debased itself and become a bootlicking, knee bending, pack of cowards, refusing to do its constitutionally mandated duty because it’s been cowed by a narcissistic president.

If you thought your own congressman and senators were giving you a fair shake you voted for them and let the guy in the next district or state deal with his own problem. My congressman might be a corrupt traitor to you, but hell, he’s my guy and mind your own fucking business. Suddenly Americans started to realize that the congressman two time zones away could actually have an effect on their lives. That no good senator on the other side of the country could be the one casting the deciding vote to confirm an incompetent for a cabinet position – or worse – a Supreme Court judge. Enter postcarding, phone banking and general unease over what’s happening in other states.

So here we are. Another election crossroads. Another fate of the nation, the democracy, and world stability hanging on a stinking midterm election.

By all rights, and according to the polls, the Democrats will likely take control of the House and have a better than outside chance of getting a majority in the Senate. But polls have been wrong and the Democrats have a history of vomiting all over themselves before snatching defeat from the jaws of victory (hence my reason for leaving the party and becoming Independent).

Given Trump’s polling, the utter incompetence of his cabinet, the rife corruption in the administration, a cadre of oligarchical bootlickers, a general ‘let them eat cake’ attitude towards the American people, and a feckless Congress, the Democrats should, by all rights, gain a supermajority in both houses. But in America these days things just don’t follow the logical path. And let’s be honest, it’s the Democrats, a party that hasn’t met a rake it doesn’t like to step on.

It’s unfortunate that when solidarity is most needed, Democrats, Independents, and Libertarians can’t establish anything resembling a coalition, something that isn’t uncommon in Europe. What is even more frustrating is that the Democratic Party itself can’t coalesce and is instead engaging in its traditional parlor game of ‘fuck the country’.

Thoughts at 73

Paul

10 comments

October 18, 2026

I got a call from my good friend Scott congratulating me on “another successful trip around the sun.” He’s a librarian and isn’t satisfied with something so mundane as “Happy Birthday.”

For my part I think I prefer his version, not for its scholarly tone but for the fact that, for me, birthdays aren’t necessarily happy. Nor are they necessarily sad. They’re just another day out of the 362 or so. The leftovers, Thanksgiving, Christmas and other random holidays I’m sort of compelled to deal with.

Clearly, I’m not big on my own birthday. In fact I’m miniscule on it. I don’t do the full on weekend or week-long celebration. That all seems a bit self indulgent to me but if that’s your thing then, by all means, party on.

This year, I’m completing my 73rd trip. When you’ve done that many orbits, success is often measured in terms of just gutting them out, or at the very least being grateful that you haven’t added another pill or two to the ever growing collection. Having had a cardiac ablation last February I actually reduced the pill count by one. I’m down to blood thinner. Happy birthday to me.

32 DEAD, 40 INJURED ON CARRIER LEYTE IN BLAST AT BOSTON

That was the New York Times headline on October 17, 1953. Meanwhile, 2100 miles to the west, I was being delivered (received?) at Latter Day Saints Hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah.

I’ve always found a certain amount of irony in the name of that hospital, given the fact that the deliverer (mom) was a Roman Catholic, from Rome, who favored a nice Chianti, and the original sower (dad) was partial to a nice cognac, and both smoked Camels like chimneys. Add to all of that the fact that the delivered (me) is a dyed in the wool atheist.

Three years after my arrival we were living in the more liberated San Francisco Bay Area.

My childhood birthday celebrations are obscured behind a curtain, seven decades old, and a personal choice to shut out a childhood largely best left forgotten. Mom presided over the obligatory kid birthday parties. That was a time when the local Safeway didn’t have an inhouse bakery that turned out sappy, mediocre cakes. Just about every town had a real bakery that put out real bread, real pastries and – yes – real birthday cakes.

The cakes didn’t have movie or super hero themes. Just a cake with some plastic figures – soldiers, race cars, fire engines, cowboys and Indians (it was, after all, the 1950s) – planted on top of half an inch of icing.

Parties weren’t really a thing until the kid reached four or five. Anything before that was just an excuse for the parents to have a cocktail party. Parties weren’t the lavish catered affairs, with jump houses and mobile video arcades that have become common. The host served some bologna or tuna sandwiches cut up into triangles, chips, soda, and cake and ice cream. There might be a planned game or two but for the most part the kids just had a free for all playing with the celebrant’s birthday presents.

And the invitee’s parents? They weren’t invited and they didn’t volunteer to stay. They dropped the kid off and rushed back home so that they could screw in peace with the bedroom door open. Or in the living room, or the kitchen, or, if they had one, the backyard pool – splish splash.

It was the usual neighborhood group. There was Biff next door, whose dad had served in the British Royal Navy during the war. Rusty lived two doors down. He was the daredevil of the neighborhood who climbed to the highest tree limbs and scaled hillsides that the rest of us begged off of. Rusty grew up to be Russ and died, far too young, when, as a young adult, he was swept away over a Yosemite waterfall. There was Danny, from across the street whose dad may have been the guy who introduced soccer to San Mateo. At least to our own neighborhood. There was Whitey who, even as a child, was identified by mom as a grifting con-man. Whitey was a coniving little shit then and probably grew up to be a big conniving shit as an adult (and who in the hell names their kid Whitey?). Paul W. could be best described as Whitey’s flunky – Igor to Whitey’s Dr. Frankenstein. Robby was the most steadfast kid of the group. When friends turned on friends, as kids are sometimes apt to do, Robby remained kind and loyal. His only shortcoming was his dad, Doug, who sported a George Wallace for President bumper sticker on his truck in the runup to the 1968 election, causing my dad to annoint Doug as a “thoroughgoing bastard.”

Thinking back on those parties I realize that I haven’t given enough credit to mom. By the time she was throwing parties for gangs of unruly imps she’d survived a head-on collision on the San Mateo Bridge that, by all rights, should’ve killed her. It left her with scars, a limp, jangled nerves and a lifelong prescription for tranquilizers. After gutting out those parties she decompressed with a martini or three and a few smokes. Dad spent those parties in the company of Steinbeck or Dickens in the relative quiet of the bedroom.

The excitement of those parties was about as fleeting as the sugar high from overly sweet buttercream. The real treat was the little family celebration – going out to dinner in a nice restaurant – just the three of us. I’ve little doubt that when other diners saw mom and dad walk in with me in tow they assumed that their quiet dinners were about to be disturbed by the little shit box with the cowlick. Ha, how wrong they were. Mom and dad schooled me early on in restaurant etiquette.

The Big Apple in Four Bites: The Fourth Bite – Slices

Paul

9 comments

October 10, 2026

Banner photo: The morning sun shines off the Manhattan skyline. Taken from Pier One, Brooklyn.

Six twenty in the morning and the runway lights are lit: blues, greens, flashing reds, and yellow direction markers. When I was a kid I thought they were the coolest thing ever. I still do. Mesmerized as the jet rumbles towards the runway before takeoff to New York City.

Throughout the flight, the plane is as dark as a tomb. Is it some new form of etiquette that all the window blinds are left down? What’s the use of the window seat if some new air travel correctness says you can’t look out the window? And just who came up with this bad idea?

Inflight coffee. Almost as bad as Nescafé but it’s a necessity on an early morning flight.

A Jason Statham movie. Oh look, a surprise plot. Jason plays the retired special ops operative. He was once the most lethal member of Her Majesty’s Army but now he’s just looking for a peaceful life as a recluse. Alas, trouble finds him and he’s compelled to kill scores of bumbling active duty special ops soldiers, none of whom can shoot straight. Gratuitous violence, the girl is saved, the corrupt government officials are foiled and

the dog dies.

Whaddya mean the fucking dog dies?

Damn it, I hate it when the dog dies. Why isn’t “the dog dies” included, in bold gigantic red letters, in the content warnings?

More inflight coffee.

Labored through more of Crime and Punishment. I started it because it’s one of those classics that they (whoever they are) say you must read to make your life culturally complete. The problem is, it’s just a treadmill of a story (Halfway through the book I cut my losses and deleted it from my phone. Color me culturally deficient).

More inflight coffee and one pack of the usual American Airlines cello wrapped biscotti. They’re really pretty good. I could eat a box of these. And dipping them into the coffee makes the swill taste slightly less like dishwater.

Wheels down.

The clicks of a hundred unbuckling seatbelts and moments later

the “fasten seatbelt” sign is turned off.

The jetway ejects the passengers. A file of automatons march in mindless obedience to the overhead signs that direct them to baggage claim. They make their way, benumbed and spiritless, as if programmed, through concourses, up and down escalators, and around countless turns to arrive – finally – at baggage claim.

At JFK it’s a trek, and by the time we’ve arrived at the carousel our bags have been offloaded and placed in a line, waiting like faithful puppies to be picked up.

Deprogramming happens when you have to figure out how best to get to your hotel.

Given the current state of air travel I’m not sure if it’s a good thing that in my younger days I experienced the “golden age” of air travel. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.

Depending on where I’ve landed, my financial mileage has varied when it comes to taking transportation from the airport. Before we step out of the terminal and into the fray I’ve asked Google which is preferable, cabs or rideshares.

Since cabs, the authentic ones, are bound to charge a flat rate, and they don’t add surge pricing, Google advises taking a cab from JFK to Manhattan.

The myth is dead. The one about New York cab drivers taking rubes for a scenic ride around the boroughs in order to fluff up the meter. Legit drivers are required to charge a flat $70.00. After taxes, tolls, and possible congestion and rush hour surcharges it’s maybe $80.00. After the tip it’s about $95.00. That is unless you’re a cheap, soulless fuck and you have no compunction about stiffing a workin’ man.

A yellow cab is as much a part of popular New York lore as lox and bagels, so it just feels right to take a cab. The scene would be complete if the driver, with a cigarette dangling from his mouth and wearing a flat cap, greeted us in a wiseguy Bronx accent with, “where to, Mac?” I guess I’ve watched too many movies. No schmag, no flat cap, and the accent isn’t Bronx. I’m guessing West African. Points for the Yankees cap though.

I take rideshares when it’s cheaper or necessary but I’m still more partial to cabs. The cabbies are blue collar guys who patiently waited to get their medallions, then put in the long hours and longer miles, only to have the rideshares muscle in – often bending regulations during the early days of Uber.

According to Gemini there are 13,587 licensed taxis in New York City. They’re ubiquitous. So much so that 13,000 has got to be a gross undercount. In the FiDi it seems like every other car is a yellow New York City taxi. On our way to the Museum of Modern Art, I glance down 6th Avenue to see a yellow train; cabs lined up bumper to bumper to bumper waiting for fares.

By contrast, in San Francisco the taxi is becoming extinct. Sadly, in San Francisco, the number of Waymo robotaxis will soon eclipse licensed yellow cabs. Within the stark cold gravitational pull of Silicon Valley progress is measured by human jobs lost to machines.

We’re staying at Club Quarters, a hotel on Washington Street just a short walk to the Trade Center. There’s construction all around. A building site is right across the street and I’m happy that construction hasn’t yet begun.

I selected Club Quarters because it offers kitchenettes. Not because we plan on cooking – we don’t – but because the kitchenette units are more spacious than most standard New York City rooms, which typically don’t have enough room to swing a cat, much less open your suitcase.

It’s not an auspicious start. When we walk in, the first thing that hits me is a funky odor. Also the carpet just outside of the bathroom is damp. We do have an unobstructed view of

the side of the building just across the alley.

During our first night we’re reminded that our room is right next to the elevator. It wouldn’t be any more noisy if we were bedded down next to the tracks at the Wall Street subway station.

In the end it works out. Next day the odor is gone, the carpet is dry (maybe some spillage from housekeeping mopping the bathroom), and the front desk has offered to change our room. We’re keeping the room. After the first full day we’re so tired that the elevator is no more annoying than a gurgling creek and crickets near a mountain cabin. The view?

Well, it’s the view.

The Big Apple in Four Bites: The Third Bite – The Lady in the Harbor

Paul

5 comments

September 25, 2026

The New Colossus

By Emma Lazarus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Emma Lazarus wrote this universally recognized sonnet in 1883, as part of a fundraising effort for a pedestal to secure the Statue of Liberty. The poem was engraved on a bronze plaque and affixed to the lower level of the statue’s pedestal in 1903, sixteen years after Emma Lazarus died. If the words describe a promise not always kept, they do nevertheless, represent a noble aspiration.

Given the current state of affairs in my home country, with the welcome mat having been tossed onto the refuse heap, I knew, before she was officially added to the travel itinerary, that a visit to Lady Liberty would be unsettling. I guess I didn’t realize the degree to which it would be heartbreaking.

It’s a drizzly, gray Manhattan morning, not unlike the day when the Statue of Liberty was dedicated. From Battery Park, the peak of the soaring Freedom Tower (officially One World Trade Center) is shrouded in fog and mist. It’s not an ideal day to visit the Statue of Liberty – but here we are.

We’ve been in New York for nearly a week and during our entire visit the weather has been capricious, everything from sunny and clear to downpours and thunder storms, so rescheduling would be a gamble. Travel during the shoulder season avoids the tourist hordes but the dark cloud to the silver lining is, well, dark clouds – full of rain.

During our last trip to New York we visited Ellis Island and skipped the Statue of Liberty. This time we’re visiting the statue. If we were visiting during what I often refer to as “the before times,” (the days before MAGA) I know that I would feel a swell of pride in that iconic symbol of acceptance and commonwealth. Today, as the boat churns and tosses through the chop of New York Harbor, and the Manhattan skyline becomes an apparition behind the dreary mist, I have misgivings.

Both the sonnet and The Lady are odes to a compassionate and a just America, an America as a haven for the oppressed, the poor, and the unwanted, a place of justice, hope and new beginnings. That has too often not been the case. America has a history of both upholding its ideals and struggling with them. At various times in history, those seeking new lives in the “land of opportunity” or those “yearning to breathe free,” have been met with the “No Vacancy” sign. For some, breathing free has – both figuratively and literally – been a struggle.

During the very decade when Ms. Lazarus wrote The Great Colossus, and The Statue of Liberty was dedicated, the ideals of both the sonnet and the statue were burdened by some inconvenient ironies.

As Ms. Lazarus, a Jew, was composing The New Colossus, systemic discrimination against Jews was on the rise. As a woman, Ms. Lazarus would never enjoy the right to vote.

In 1884, a year after The New Colossus was written, and two years before the dedication of the statue, the Chinese Exclusion Act was passed in response to a growing, nationwide anti-Chinese sentiment. By the mid-1880s, Reconstruction had long ended, and Jim Crow was on the rise.

The Big Apple in Four Bites: The Second Bite – Eating the Apple

Paul

8 comments

September 21, 2026

What does one do when one goes to New York?

Well, one visits the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. One goes to one of the many museums and stares at paintings while stroking one’s own chin in thoughtful contemplation, while making laconic comments about the artist’s motivation (extra pretension points if the chin sports a beard). One might take in a Broadway show, any show, even if it’s horrible, just to tell the folks back home, “I saw a Broadway show, and it was extraordinary.” One could go to Times Square, see the lights, gawk at the human sideshow, and fend off the scammers and pickpockets. If one has any appreciation for sports history one must go to Yankee Stadium, preferably if the Yankees are playing.

And there’s one other thing that one must do in New York –

savor the New York specialties.

It can be as simple as a hot dog from a cart or as extravagant as a gourmet tasting menu, but eating the foods that have made New York a food destination is a must.

Before leaving for New York, we put together our own foodie list of things to eat and restaurants to visit.

The Halal Cart
“There is nothing more vital to a city and a city’s health than good street food and more of it.” ~ Anthony Bourdain

That gurgling sound filling the hotel room is our stomachs demanding attention. It’s five-ish in the afternoon and we just arrived in New York City. Our flight from San Francisco left at 6:20 this morning, so at the airport we were more interested in coffee than food. Since we flew economy, the in-flight meal was just this side of table scraps.

We’re hungry and we know just where to go.

Before taking off we decided that our first dinner would be simple and stress free and something near and dear to the Manhattanite – halal from a cart. A veritible Manhattan staple.

Halal carts dot Manhattan. Having just arrived we don’t realize that there’s a cart not one minute’s walk from our hotel, and another just three minutes walk, and another two or three within five minutes. You get the idea. They’re all over. We’ve decided to take a 15 minute walk to the five star rated Maruf Halal cart on the corner of Greenwich and Murray.

We arrive at the cart and stare goggle eyed at the menu. Just two rubes from –

San Francisco.

That’s because San Francisco is a street food backwater. Outside of a few vendors selling danger dogs outside of Oracle Park after a ball game there are very few street food options in San Francisco. Why? Maybe it’s tight assed regulations. Maybe it’s a restaurant lobby that doesn’t want the competition.

Cora and I are street food rookies.

The halal guy is drumming his fingers on the counter while we figure it out. Finally I order chicken biryani, which comes with rice. Cora orders chicken teriyaki – hold the rice. Hold the rice? The halal guy and I stare at Cora in confusion. The halal guy is trying to convince Cora to take rice (rice or not, the price is the same).

After some back and forth it’s chicken teriyaki

hold the rice.

Whatever.

For a mere $26 dollars I’ve got a heaping container of biryani goodness and a water (my son who has halal cart experience suggested getting water because the food can be salty), and Cora has a less than heaping (because, hold the rice) container of chicken teriyaki and a Fanta. And the guy threw in two samosas each!

We find a small seating area in the shadow of the towering One Trade Center, where people gather just as we have, to eat some good street food. And it doesn’t disappoint. The chicken, caramelized onions, mint, cilantro, and spices are topped with a yogurt based sauce. (The halal guy had asked if I wanted ketchup or barbecue sauce. My impulse was to say “Are you out of your fucking mind?” but I went with the more polite, “No thank you.”). The rice? It isn’t just some conveyance for the sauce. I could eat a container of just the rice.

The samosas are wonderful and I try to talk Cora out of hers (after all she went, “hold the rice,” because she didn’t want starch), but she’s decided that a little samosa starch is better than none.

All for $26 stinkin’ dollars.

We’re stuffed and we decide to take a roundabout walk back to the hotel and marvel at the lights of Manhattan. Just two rubes from San Francisco.

The Big Apple in Four Bites: The First Bite – 9/11

Paul

7 comments

September 12, 2026

An eight day trip to New York City in four posts.

Note: I hadn’t originally meant for this to be the first in the series of four, but the timing of the anniversary compelled me to change my original idea.

The 9/11 Memorial and Museum
Why are we drawn to the places that break our hearts, the sites that remind us of man’s capacity for inhumanity?

I’ve personally seen plenty, and each time I’ve felt the same sorrow and I’ve always asked the same rhetorical why. I’ve stood on Cemetery Ridge at Gettysburg, looked down on the Sunken Road at Antietam, and wondered at the brutality at the Bloody Angle at Spotsylvania. I’ve walked the battlegrounds and war torn villages of Normandy. I’ve seen the homes of the enslaved on the grounds of southern plantations. I’ve stood inside of the Schindler Factory, walked the grounds of Auschwitz in Poland, and seen the mountain of abandoned shoes in the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. I’ve touched the ebony wall of the Vietnam Memorial in the nation’s capitol. And then there’s the countless square miles of cemeteries; Gettysburg, Fredericksburg, Appomattox Courthouse, Arlington, the San Francisco Presidio, and Omaha Beach.

We’ve just arrived in New York City, settled into the hotel and unpacked the immediate necessities – the phone chargers. We’d flown economy so naturally that groaning, creaking sound filling the room is our stomachs, reminding us that they would like some attention – stat.

Before we left for the trip we had already decided to check off one of our must do boxes and get dinner from one of the many halal carts that populate Manhattan. A highly rated one is about a 10 minute walk from the hotel.

Google guides us along some sidewalks and then send us across a wide park. We don’t realize where we are until we’re looking into a yawning square hole into which a perpetual waterfall is pouring on all sides.

We’re peering into the footprint of what once was a 1,362 foot tall skyscraper – the South Tower of the World Trade Center. Along all four sides of the pool there is a parapet with panels that bear the inscriptions of those who perished in the South Tower, and on Flights 175, 77, 93, and at the Pentagon.

It would seem reasonable that the names would be arranged alphabetically. But this isn’t a place to be guided by strict cold logic. The designers had a different, more meaningful approach in mind. The names on the plaques are arranged by “meaningful adjacencies,” described in the website as “where they were at the time of their death and what personal relationships they shared with other victims.”

Near the South Tower Pool stands a tree surrounded by a simple iron barrier that’s festooned with multicolored tags. It’s a Callery Pear tree and it stands on these grounds as a symbol of hope and resurgence. The 9/11 Memorial & Museum website describes the touching story of what is known as the Survivor Tree. “In October 2001, a severely damaged tree was discovered at Ground Zero, with snapped roots and burned and broken branches. The tree was removed from the rubble and placed in the care of the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation. After its recovery and rehabilitation, the tree was returned to the Memorial in 2010.”

Each of the colored tags carries a visitor’s personal message. After reading the inscription on a plaque that describes the tree and it’s meaning Cora finds a place to sit and cry.

Our walk to the food cart takes us through the park to the North Tower Memorial. It’s a similar pool, this one in the footprint of once was a 1,730 foot skyscraper. On 9/11, on the 106th and 107th floors of the North Tower, diners at the Windows on the World restaurants in the North Tower were enjoying a beautiful blue sky.

The parapets here bear the names of the victims of the North Tower and of Flight 11.

It’s a picturebook day. The sun is beginning to set. Puffy clouds and a still powder blue sky are reflected in the surrounding steel and glass skyscrapers of Manhattan. Maybe this is the best time to be here, under a calm, comforting canopy.

The park is nearly silent. People converse in hushed tones. There’s no running, no frolicking. The only punctuating sounds come from outside the park in perpetually busy Manhattan.

We only pause briefly here. All of the emotions, from Gettysburg, Auschwitz, the Vietnam Wall, Omaha Beach, and all of those other places where sorrow washes over all else, have come back to visit. What else is there to do but look down into the void, look up at the sky and the surrounding buildings and trees and wonder why?

And recall where you were on that morning 25 years ago.

Lens-Artists Challenge #409 – Best Ever. In the point of view of the beholder

Paul

11 comments

August 18, 2026

This week’s challenge hosted by Steve is Best Ever Images. While I judge my own work, I never know if my own opinion is reflective of what others see and think, so deciding on the criteria was a challenge in itself.

My best is none too good
My first thought in selecting images was to go off of the “like” reactions that I’ve received on photos that I’ve posted on Facebook. The image that has received the most “likes” is one that I took of an alley in San Francisco’s North Beach after an overnight rain. I love the composition, and on a Facebook page it looks great, but when I look at it closely and more critically, I see that it’s hopelessly overly pixelated and, since I took it at f5.6, it totally lacks the depth of field that the scene requires. The moment is lost forever. And while I can go back to that alley after an overnight shower, the rain puddles and the clouds will never be the same. In other words, it’s the best ever as a lesson in paying as much attention to the craft as I do the scene.

So, now what?

I’m going mostly with what moves me personally . . .

People. And the idea that every picture of people tells a story.

“The man is at the window” “credit to Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider“.
I was in San Francisco’s Chinatown, as I often am, with both a camera and an appetite for dim sum. This time it was during the Lunar New Year season. I was waiting to cross the street at Stockton and Pacific when I happened to look up at an apartment window to see a man gazing out over the crowded scene, and looking like he wished it was all over so that he could get some peace and quiet – as if you ever get those in Chinatown on a Sunday during Lunar New Year.

I extended my lens all the way out to 135mm and caught the man just before he retreated back into his apartment (no time for a second chance). It was one of those rare lucky moments and it did get a fair amount of “like” reactions on social media.

A French Journey: On the French Road Part IV. Village Hopping

Paul

4 comments

August 14, 2026

An American’s observations of a first time trip to France.

It wasn’t too long ago that the idea of driving in Europe was on par with sky diving; everything is in a language I don’t understand, how do you get gas (in the usual manner?), the driving habits and traffic laws are different, maybe the roads are bad (immaculate actually, especially when compared to California roads which resemble the surface of the moon), all the cars are manual transmission (not true), and hell, maybe they drive badly (there are few places that harbor more horrible drivers than my home state of California). A lot of different ways to rationalize my cowardice.

Our first road trip was in Spain and the results were, well, mixed. No problems at all while we were on the highways. Stopping to get gas at the Spanish version of a travel center was a fun experience. The difficulties arose when we entered the villages where, for some reason, I was surprised that 12th century roads weren’t built for cars – especially cars driven by Americans who are used to roads that can accommodate the oversized and butt ugly Tesla Cybertruck (aka the swasticar).

Who but an American would think that there’s a parking lot in the center of a town that was built while Chaucer was busy writing The Canterbury Tales? After all, in America it’s not improbable that the city council of a historic town would green light the razing of 18th century history to make room for a strip mall or “affordable” housing. If Americans can be so cavalier about history, why would I expect the Spaniards to be different?

So just before we got to Caceres, a city founded by the Romans in 25 BCE, I gave the order to Google Maps, “set sail for the Plaza Major” (which was built in the 16th century). It was a harrowing journey getting there and once in the plaza, we couldn’t get out. That is until a friendly, if likely annoyed, minion of the law led us out. Later that same day I managed to put a dent and a sizable scratch in our rented Mercedes.

With our patience spent, and our stress levels and blood pressures redlining, Cora and I erupted into an argument over the idea of cutting the trip short, torching the Mercedes (or at least returning it to the nearest agency), taking the train to Barcelona and getting the hell back to the land of Hummers and broad plains of concrete.

In the end, reason prevailed, we continued the road trip and once in Barcelona dumped the car at the airport rental agency and used public transit. (The bill for repairing the Mercedes was a surprisingly low $300 dollars).

Two years later, we rented a smaller car in Vienna, and drove through Bavaria before leaving the car at the airport in Munich, and then taking advantage of public transportation. By the time we decided on a French road trip we’d learned our lessons.

Except for getting slapped with a penalty for not paying a toll levied between Paris and Normandy in a timely enough manner, driving in France was largely problem free. I wasn’t crazy about the many ways you can get hit with a speeding ticket in France (especially after having driven the Autobahn where speed is not a thing), and the “priorité à droite” (priority to the right) regulation that gives the right of way to drivers approaching an unmarked intersection from the right. PSA – before you drive in another country watch some YouTube videos.

After leaving Normandy, our stays included stops in Trebeurden, and Gouesnach in Brittany, and Tours in the Loire Valley. These were our temporary homes, bases of operations, from where we took day trips to local points of interest.

A French Journey: On the French Road Part III. Gouesnach, The Germans, and Soft Boiled Eggs.

Paul

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July 29, 2026

An American’s observations of a first time trip to France.

“Travel is not a reward for working, it’s education for living.” ~ Anthony Bourdain

We hit the first traffic of any consequence on the eastern fringes of Quimper. Quimper advertises itself as a village, but with a population of 64,000, I feel l have to call connerie (bullshit) on that description. Maybe, small city with a quaint old section that dates back to the Middle Ages would be more forthright.

The area was originally settled during the Roman era. By the late 5th century the settlement became a bishopric. Bishopric; that bring a memory from the haze of ages past. It’s a term that’s been rotting undisturbed in the deepest, dankest, cobwebbed dungeon of my mind, a thing from a college course on the Early Middle Ages and quickly banished to the catacombs of my subconscious the moment I laid my completed final exam on the professor’s desk.

Simply put a bishopric was a territory ruled under the secular and spiritual leadership of a bishop. It’s something on the current wish list of American Christian Nationalists – that is, as long as the bishop is an evangelical who has a preference for folks containing a minimum amount of melanin. But that’s for a different discussion.

Old town Quimper is on my list of places to visit, but with stops along the way from Trebeurden the drive has been long, and I’m not up for spelunking into the historic town center and navigating what is apparently rush hour traffic Maybe another time. Maybe not. One thing I’ve learned about travel, particularly in Europe, is that you can’t see everything. It’s a lesson learned from exhausting and, in the end, unsatisfying experiences.

After leaving Trebeurden we took a quick trip to revisit the Pink Granite Coast, stopping at Ploumanac’h along the way.

At the Côte de Granit Rose we passed plenty of hikers along the lightly rolling trails that wind along the shoreline. Nearly every person we encountered greeted us with a smile, a wave and a cheerful, “Bonjour.” God, I love the French.

An hour’s drive on the E-50 took us past villages and country scenes towards our next stop, Château de Kerjean. (During this drive we make a brief stop at the village of Bodilis detailed in a previous post – link here)

Party On!

Paul

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July 21, 2026

“I urge our state legislature to reconvene to redistrict another Republican seat in Memphis. It’s essential to cement @realDonaldTrump’s agenda and the Golden Age of America. I’ve vowed to keep Tennessee a red state.” ~ Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn, on X in April of 2026.

As one can plainly tell, Marsha Blackburn is a true believer, a connoisseur of the MAGA KoolAid. For a little context, Blackburn; opposes gay marriage, opposes choice, opposes LGBTQ rights, opposed the Affordable Care Act, does not believe in climate change, compared subsidized child care for low- and middle-income families to Soviet-era communism, and is, no surprise here, an election denier. Marsha can probably turn out a great apple pie (her degree is in Home Economics), but her words and actions clearly demonstrate that she represents everything MAGA and everything that’s contrary to what America is supposed to stand for.

Blackburn made her comment in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Louisiana v. Calais decision which essentially tossed another shovelfull of dirt on the casket of the Voting Rights Act and at the same time, set off a renewed frenzy of gerrymandering.

What is gerrymandering? According to The Brennan Center, gerrymandering is “the process of manipulating election maps in ways that favor particular outcomes — (and) has long been a problem in the United States. Now, largely due to a series of Supreme Court rulings, it’s getting worse — and more frequent.”

Traditionally, redistricting is done every ten years following the decennial census, when the election maps are redrawn so that the districts are reasonably equal in population in order to satisfy the concept of “one man, one vote.” Typically, exceptions to the ten year tradition are a result of a court ordered correction. Gerrymandering is a partisan corruption of the process.

Gerrymandering is not a new phenomenon. It’s literally as old as the American nation, going back to 1788, and the very first congressional map. Historically gerrymandering has been an odious, if, grudgingly accepted, tactic. While the electorate’s outrage over gerrymandering is real and widespread, too many politicians speak out against the process but are loathe to do anything about it. One could reasonably call gerrymandering a cold war. It seems that there’s sort of an agreement among thieves (the party leadership) that gerrymandering is baked into the process and will continue, and any grievances over egregious examples will be settled in court.

One year ago, in 2025, the cold war turned hot, when Donald Trump,Texas Governor Greg Abbott, and the Republican led Texas State Legislature hatched a plot to redraw the election map in mid-decade in order to allow for the Republicans to gain five seats in the House in the upcoming 2026 midterms. Part of the impetus was the widespread disatisfaction with Trump’s unpopular policies and his broken promises that were pointing towards a Democratic majority in the House resulting from a midterm blue wave.

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