Author Archive

Lonely Horse

Remember that song from the ’80s by Yes? “Owner of a Lonely Heart.” When I heard that as a kid, I misheard the lyrics. I was convinced they were singing about the “owner of the lonely horse.” (I also thought Starship “milked this city.” I was wrong.) It was not until I was nearly [...]

31st December 2009 | Tags: , , ,
Posted in animals, music, photography, really? | No Comments »



Changing Wheels: More multimedia journalism very quickly

When trains cross certain borders—entering China from Mongolia on the Trans-Siberian Railway, for example—they have to stop and change wheels. The wheel assemblies, called trucks or bogies, used on trains in Mongolia (and Belarus and Kazakhstan and pretty much all of the old Russian Empire) won’t work in China. These two countries have different rail [...]

31st December 2009 | Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in anticipation, journalism | No Comments »



The Mendocino County Crab

Some time back in the summer of 2008, I joined my friend Mark Sung for a short trip to the Mendocino coast. We meant to go camping, but the tent spots were full and we ended up fishing until about 4 a.m., anyway. Actually, we weren’t fishing for fish, but crabbing for crab.
Mendocino’s a pretty [...]

31st December 2009 | Tags: , , ,
Posted in animals, anticipation, food | No Comments »



David Levine

A great talent whom I’d meant to write more about sooner. He died today. I knew his work through the New York Review of Books, for which he’d been drawing for nearly 50 years. Some of my favorites of his include:
He drew with an appealing wit and detail. The circumstances of the job meant that [...]

29th December 2009 | Tags: , , ,
Posted in art | No Comments »



Maiden Lane

A lot of text, lately, on this blog, so I’ll keep this brief. This is a picture I took after some rain in downtown San Francisco. This is Maiden Lane, near Union Square, a stretch of high-end boutiques and shops. A pair of opera singers used to set up at one end and sing, but [...]

2nd July 2009 | Tags: , , , ,
Posted in San Francisco, photography | No Comments »



Trip the Kite Fantastic

It’s fun to take pictures from high up. A few years ago, a friend working as a wedding planner let me roam around the top floor of the Bank of America building as she set up someone’s wedding ceremony. These were the best sustained views of San Francisco I’ve ever had.

In the picture above, you [...]

1st July 2009 | Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in art, cool | 1 Comment »



Devoted to a Fault, Conclusion: Education, preparation, and the stadium

Read Part I and Part II of Devoted to a Fault. You can download the entire text (without images) as one file here. The following was reported in late 2007 and early 2008.
The 1868 Earthquake Alliance held its April 2008 meeting in an Oakland building undergoing a seismic retrofit. In the lobby, plywood [...]

12th June 2009 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in earth | 2 Comments »



Devoted to a Fault, Cont’d: The past, the future, and the Claremont Resort

This is Part II of this article. Read Part I here. You can download the entire text (without images) as one file here. The following was reported in late 2007 and early 2008.

At 7:53 in the morning on October 21, 1868, a major earthquake struck the Bay Area. It had a magnitude of about [...]

11th June 2009 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in earth | 2 Comments »



Devoted to A Fault

The following is part one of a three-part series of posts. You can download the entire text (without images) as one file here. It was reported in late 2007 and early 2008.
Hayward Phil Stoffer squinted through the glass to see a sign of the past and, almost certainly, the future of this part of [...]

11th June 2009 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in earth | 3 Comments »



A Coast Process

All of California may not one day fall into the ocean, but right now, parts of it do.
Erosion occurs all along the coast. Every ocean wave pounds on the bluffs and scours the beaches.
Here is the Pacifica Municipal Pier.

It’s shaped like an “L” — you can see that it makes a right turn toward the [...]

8th June 2009 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in earth, environment | 1 Comment »



Beijing Umbrella

Last week, with June 4 marking the 20th anniversary of the crackdown on the student protests in Tiananmen Square, Chinese officials blocked filming around Tiananmen by physically blocking shots. Below, the experience of BBC’s Beijing correspondent.

Umbrellas are one of the things I remember from Korea, Japan and China. As a boy, I think I [...]

7th June 2009 | Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Asia, China, journalism | No Comments »



Enjoy it while it lasts: Woody, Ira, and the kindness of strangers

Inevitably, I will post at least one of the seemingly numerous videos available of Ira Glass telling people how to tell stories. But until then, I’ll stick with the video below. It’s a clip from a Woody Allen film.
If you haven’t seen his Hannah and Her Sisters, I’m spoiling things a bit by putting [...]

6th April 2009 | Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in journalism, life, movies | 5 Comments »