The nice thing about photographing trees is that they’re more cooperative than most other living things. They don’t whine like teens. They don’t move from the perfect pose to sniff at the lens like dogs. They don’t photobomb like idiots. Even when trees do move, or their parts at least, the effect can still be pleasing. Below: The wind rustles autumn leaves while the photographer -me – uses a too slow shutter speed. It was a mistake but one I was okay with.
Autumn leaves, Drytown, CA
The trees of autumn, like the one above, are among the most popular subjects, for their riotous colors; the different flavors of reds, oranges, yellows and brown. While I’m not going to pass up a photo of autumn’s arboreal splendor I do find myself particularly taken with the old and gnarled and the dying and the dead trees. Continue reading
Most of California is back on lockdown and, with the exception of take out or delivery, restaurants are once again shut down. Months ago, when the pandemic was still a novelty I applauded the complete restaurant closure and criticized the torch and pitchfork rabble that was protesting the closures.
With the resumption of the restaurant restrictions I was ready to give them my full throated blessing, not that officialdom really cares about my own irrelevant stamp of approval. I was ready to unleash a barrage of derision and vulgarity, in this very space, against the anti-closure hordes.
Double standards and mixed messages
And then, just before firing the first salvo I found myself compelled to hold my fire when I learned the story of restaurant owner Angela Marsden of Sherman Oaks, California where the local officials closed down both indoor and outdoor dining. Earlier this month she showed up at her restaurant, The Pineapple Hill Saloon and Grill to find an outdoor dining area in a parking lot just feet away from her own outdoor patio. The dining areas look almost identical to each other yet Ms. Marsden’s is shut down while the other patio was given a permit to operate. The difference? The other dining area belongs to a catering company, set up to feed the cast and crew of the T.V show Good Girls.
By all accounts and from the appearance of her own patio area Ms. Marsden had done the right thing and followed the guidelines issued by the Los Angeles County Health Department. As she put it in an interview with a T.V news station, “I did the dance,” and to the tune of $80,000.00. To add injury to the insult Ms. Marsden found herself without funds to support take out service only.
Is there anything that touches the senses like water? A drench of water cools us on a sultry day and a warm soak takes away the chill or soothes an ache. What tastes better than a cold draft of water at the end of a run? Water in its many forms and shapes provides us with exhilarating, awesome, beautiful and even frightening pictures. Listen to a rippling stream, or a surging river, the ocean’s waves, the lapping sounds of a lakeshore or the sounds of raindrops on a leaf. Ever smell the ocean? There’s really nothing like it. Scientists will tell you that the smell comes from bacteria digesting dead phytoplankton but without the ocean water that unique smell wouldn’t exist. So I choose to credit the ocean.
“No one can see their reflection in running water…
Stanislaus River, Calaveras Big Trees S.P., California
…It is only in still water that we can see.” Tao Proverb
bolognanoun
bo·lo·gna | \ bə-ˈlō-nē also -nyə, -nə \
: a large smoked sausage of beef, veal, and pork
Point Pinole Regional Shoreline is 2400 acres of scenic liberation located on the San Pablo Bay shoreline just north of the City of Richmond. The park’s web of trails leads you through meadows, past wildflowers, through a cathedral of eucalyptus trees and emerges on the bay shore where you take in the refreshing breezes and vistas of Mt. Tamalpais, the Marin shoreline, and the expanse of San Pablo Bay. Along the shoreline you pass runners, walkers, mountain bike riders and the occasional equestrian. If you want solitude you can take one of the lightly travelled trails into the eucalyptus woods where it’s silent and meditative.
I have a sentimental attachment to Point Pinole. Nearly twenty years ago I coached the Salesian High School Cross Country team and Point Pinole was the location for our team’s home course. A visit to the park with a walk or a run along the route of the course brings back some pleasing memories.
I was walking Lexi along the shore when the text came in at 3:05 telling Contra Costa County that a new stay at home order would take effect at the close of the weekend. Not even the stay at home order could spoil a sunny afternoon by the bay. I was expecting it anyway and figured to take it all in stride. Earlier in the day I’d warned Jessica that our Christmas plans might be dictated by the county. Continue reading
The signs at the beaches here in Central California, caution people to be aware of sneaker waves; “Never turn your back on the water,” they warn, lest a rogue wave wash over you and carry you out to sea. Here in the Bay Area we know all about sneaker waves, those rare large waves that appear at their own menacing whim, a deadly outlier in a series of smaller waves. You might be wading in a few inches of water when, without warning, a large sneaker wave suddenly sweeps you off your feet and pulls you out to a watery death.
We turned our backs on COVID-19; we got complacent and before we knew it a sneaker COVID wave swept over California and the nation. New highs in cases, new highs in positives, soaring hospitalizations and a death toll that’s spiraling unchecked. All of this in just a few short weeks. Continue reading
Get outside. Watch the sunrise. Watch the sunset. How does that make you feel? ~ Amy Grant
There aren’t many subjects that move a photographer like dogs, kids and sunsets and I don’t mean to impose any particular order on this distinguished trio of subjects.
Sunrise though doesn’t rate so highly. That’s not to rob from the beauty of a city sunrise silhouette…
San Francisco skyline at dawn. Shot from Pt. Cavallo on the north end of the Golden Gate Bridge
…or the first blush warming a mountain face. One has to work for a sunrise. The reward of capturing a mountain dawn means leaving the comfort of a warm bed in the chill of the predawn darkness.
Sunrise lights up the face of the Grand Teton range. Foreground is the Moulton Barn.
My last post was a tribute to autumn and with the season FALLing towards winter here’s a last photographic tribute to this colorful season in the Golden State.
Sonoma Valley.
Established as a Spanish settlement in 1823, the town of Sonoma is located in the colorful wine country valley of the same name. The valley is home to over 400 wineries including the Buena Vista Winery, California’s oldest winery, and Gundlach-Bundschu, the state’s oldest, continually operating family winery.
Below, a home sits in a bright autumn hued vineyard.
Since you went away the days grow long And soon I’ll hear old winter’s song But I miss you most of all my darling When autumn leaves start to fall ~ Songwriters: Johnny Mercer / Jacques Andre Marie Prevert / Joseph Kosma
I detest that song Autumn Leaves. Yeah I know, it’s a sort of sacrilege to throw shade on Nat King Cole. I’m more or less ambivalent towards the song and Mr. Cole. My issue is that the song brings back memories of Mr. Navarro, my chain smoking guitar teacher who insisted on teaching me “old people’s” songs, like Autumn Leaves, when I wanted to learn Beatles and Beach Boys songs.
Autumn just sort of happened this year. Seemed as if one day I was basking in a warm pleasant Indian Summer when whomever or whatever controls the thermostat decided to turn it down to autumn. One morning I was running in short sleeves and the next I was in long sleeves and watching the puffs of Lexi’s condensed breath as she trotted in front of me.
It can get cold in the Bay Area but it rarely gets COLD; COLDlike my cousin experiences in Wyoming. Below zero COLD. Our cold is lower case compared to parts of the rest of the country where you can only do justice to the raw iciness by expressing it in caps, bold and underlined – COLD– screaming COLD. Still it’s what you’re used to and if you’re accustomed to 50 – 60 degree (F) mornings a 35 degree morning is downright arctic. So you have to understand that when it comes to temperature extremes we’re a little wussy here in the Bay Area.
“I enjoy the spring more than the autumn now. One does, I think, as one gets older,” wrote Virginia Woolf.
I have to agree with Ms. Woolf. I don’t do autumn very well these days. Ms. Woolf didn’t just pull that saying from her ass. Then again great writers don’t usually pull phrases from their asses. They leave that sort of thing to political hacks. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz come to mind – but let’s not veer too far into that arena. There’s actually some science behind Ms. Woolf’s comment on old folk and cold weather. Something about changes in metabolism, less elasticity in the blood vessels and thinner layers of fat (As I look down at my belly and a layer that could actually use some thinning I’m not sold on that latter theory).
It’s taken 232 years but America is on the very brink of losing the boasting rights of being a true Democratic Republic. We may have been the first, back in 1788 when the Constitutional ratification was completed. Even with some built in flaws it was historic; a landmark in world history.
We’re in danger now of losing the high ground. The moral standing dribbling away with the hair dye that trickled down Drunkle Rudy Giuliani’s cheeks as he went on a bizarre, evidence free rant about rampant fraud in the presidential election.
What’s a “drunkle” you ask? A drunkle is the uncle who shows up uninvited to a family dinner. Arriving already tanked he sails straight to the rum punch to top off. Later, with the family seated for dinner in anticipation of food and fellowship, the drunkle raises a toast in honor of the hostess’s boobs and then wanders away from the table to throw up on the white couch.
It’s been ten days since the election saga began and at times it seems that we’re worse off than we were when this all started on November 3rd, election day 2020. I’ve been away from this blog since the 6th. In fact, I’ve been physically away having been on a short road trip to Lake Tahoe and California’s Gold Country.
The original plan was to continue to write posts about this melodrama while away but I was compelled by my lazier and certainly wiser angels to take a break and enjoy family and the dogs in cushions of fresh mountain snow (A post about that trip may appear on this very page. Stay tuned).
Victory and celebration
Departure day was Saturday the 7th, and when I got up Biden was within a poorly shaved whisker of having the race called for him. At some point while I was packing the car and we were all going through time honored tradition of pre-departure confusion, last minute trips to the bathroom and “what are we forgetting” antics, the networks called Pennsylvania for Joe Biden, giving him 20 electoral votes, 3 more than the required 270; game-set-match.
Cora and I alternately sighed in relief and revelled in joy. At times that morning I felt a welling of tears. Throughout the day Kool and the Gang’s anthem song Celebration washed away the troubles of the past four years. The Trump regime, a four year reign of terror, was finally nearing a visible end. News had it that the Donald himself was on the golf course when the results came in. Apparently his handlers realizing that the “Fuck Trump” grafitti was on the wall led him to the course where a few clubs likely lost their lives, drowned in lakes or wrapped around trees.
While Trump was communing with the nature that he never really appreciates except for what riches it’s desecration might bring him, an extraordinary thing happened across America. In cities and towns from coast to coast people spilled onto the streets, not to protest as has happened all too often since spring, but to rejoice; to bask in the release of four years of pent up tension, fear and uncertainty.
The scenes of Americans kicking up their heels, jumping for joy and dancing with people who moments before were strangers were all reminiscent of the day that World War II had come to an end. It was the same national joy that occurs when a dictator is shown the door, such as what happened in the Philippines when Ferdinand Marcos was deposed. It was a scene I never expected to see in my America. You have to be quite the shit heel when perfect strangers dance in the streets in the middle of a pandemic to celebrate your political demise.
On the way to Tahoe I bought some Champagne to celebrate the ending of the dark days. That night we toasted and celebrated as the Parisians and the Romans had done when the Nazi flags were toppled and trampled. Continue reading
The Life in My Years 