Clik here to view.
Relationship Interview #8
This is the sequel to Relationship Interview #7. Mark and Bernice have gotten together in-person four times since they met through Find The One, a relationship-starting web site. Bernice is...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Relationship Interview #9
This is the sequel to Relationship Interview #8. For their fifth official date since meeting through Find The One, a relationship web site, Bernice comes for breakfast at Mark’s house on a sunny...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Friendship Dialogues #1
This is the sequel to Relationship Interview #9. Mark is sixty-four and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Despite the strictures of the pandemic, he had five dates with Bernice, who is fifty-seven,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Friendship Dialogues #2
This is the sequel to Friendship Dialogues #1. Mark is sixty-four, a book editor and denizen of a neighborhood where Berkeley morphs into Oakland. Though the pandemic rages on, he has embarked on a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Friendship Dialogues #3
This is the sequel to Friendship Dialogues #2. Mark is about to jump on his bike and ride the mile through a neighborhood connecting Berkeley and Oakland to Marlene’s house to help Marlene walk her...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Chinese New Year Stories
Happy Chinese New Year! “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Arthur C. Clarke 2021. Year of the Ox. I just made a new outgoing message for my answering machine,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Cozy Fart Head Mozart
There once was a dog named Cozy Fart Head who was the reincarnation of Mozart. We realize that may seem implausible, but tell us something that isn’t essentially implausible. We are, after all, each...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Conversation With Emily
Neal, a man in his late forties, is walking barefoot on a vast beach with his sixteen-year-old daughter Emily, who is barefoot, too. The day is sunny and warm, the ocean barely audible in the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Second Conversation With Emily
Neal, fifty-seven, a community college English professor, is sitting at the kitchen table in his house with his eighteen-month-old grandson Andre drowsing on his lap. Neal’s daughter Emily,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Third Conversation With Emily
Neal, sixty-two, arrives home in suit and tie from the community college where he is an English professor, and is greeted by his dog Niko, a big friendly five-year-old mutt. Neal’s daughter Emily,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Fourth Conversation With Emily
A warm sunny day at the beach, Neal, sixty-four, a community college English professor, is sitting on a big beach blanket with his daughter Emily, thirty-two, a marriage and family therapist. Emily’s...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Fifth Conversation With Emily
Emily, thirty-five, a marriage and family therapist, and her son Andre, twelve, live with Emily’s father Neal, sixty-seven, a community college English professor. On a lovely sunny day in May, Emily...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Art Installation
dear max, Today’s Max Portrait is one of my favorites in the series so far, for all sorts of reasons. Your focus in the moment illustrates what I’m aiming for in my daily work, really seeing what...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Rodin Driftwood
All the photographs in this article are of the same piece of redwood. On the Spring Equinox the sunlight came down through the skylight at just the right angle to illuminate the large piece of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Amidst the Wreckage
Zeke notes the exquisite form of the oncoming wave, turns his surfboard to face the shore, brings his legs up onto the board behind him, executes four powerful butterfly strokes to propel him forward,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Nathan and Del Part One
Nathan Grayson, his once brown hair mostly white now, is seventy-three, sturdy and healthy and still pruning fruit trees, Japanese maples, roses, and lemon trees fifteen hours a week from February...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Nathan and Del Part Two
Celia is still in her bathrobe as she sits at the dining table having a second cup of coffee while Nathan does the breakfast dishes, the morning cold and rainy. Sixty-five and soon to retire as a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Nathan and Del Part Three
On a brilliantly sunny day in March, Nathan and Margot sit on the deck of Nathan and Celia’s house waiting to be called to the dining table for a lunch of fish tacos and guacamole and horchata being...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Cecil B. My Father
The person who makes a success of living is the one who sees his goal steadily and aims for it unswervingly. Cecil B. DeMille From the time I was a wee lad, and no doubt before I was born, my father...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Our Run To Starved Rock
Todd and Dick 1969 The summer after my second year of college, 1969, as I was deciding whether to go back for another year of academe or take my chances in the outside world, my great pal Dick Mead...
View Article