Archives for 2022

The anniversary.  Two years ago, March 16th, 2020, the last time I lived in California. I took these shots on what was the eve before the world shut down. Looking west, the sun was setting over San Francisco’s Seal Rocks just north of Ocean Beach. This was as The Bay went under the Shelter in […]

I had finally googled it sometime in lockdown – ‘kenophobia,’ or a fear of open spaces – subtly different from agoraphobia (the fear of leaving the house for a public space of any kind – a given.) This was what the events of September 11, 2001 had wrought in me, twenty-one years on. On that […]

Repressive societies, like those ruled by regimes that rely on heavy policing to enforce state policy, have a way of creating unique situations and throwing up special characters. Often, the most interesting people are those who know how to navigate skating the edge, and who comprehend the perils involved for many concerned. They might have […]

I’ll never forget the opening sequence of the 1960 film The Magnificent Seven, the western remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Sumarai.  This is not because of the Elmer Bernstein Marlboro Man theme music.  Nor is it due to later memorable lines like the nefarious villain Eli Wallach’s one, “Can men in our profession worry about […]

A recent art exhibit in San Francisco got me thinking about immigrants and immigration, which has long been a hot topic in the US. I can relate on a personal level. Rodney Toy, 53, the artist whose powerful work was exhibited at the Canessa Gallery, is a descendant of a Chinese couple who arrived in […]

After twelve years of blood and guts, AMC’s post-apocalyptic zombie epic The Walking Dead (TWD) is finally being laid to rest. With almost all of the original cast long torn to shreds since its 2010 debut, and much of the show’s dramatic events a distant memory, TWD can be likened to a post-apocalyptic General Hospital, […]