February 25, 2011
Sedona
Saigon, Tokyo, Seattle, Sedona – in two days. Ooops, I forgot to take a photo in Seattle,which was covered in snow. I’m here to watch some films at the festival, and shoot some photos for a book.
February 24, 2011
My Generation
There’s no question that the rate of change is accelerating. Just this morning I was thinking, “My world was different from my parents’ world. But the world of our children – and the world they are creating – is far, far more different.” It’s a world that I can still sort of grasp but which, [...]
February 22, 2011
A Change of Planes: A very short walk through Shibuya
The red eye from Saigon arrived at 7:00am, and I had about seven hours before the connecting flight was to leave for Seattle. The weather was beautiful. So I ditched the airport and took the train in to my favorite part of Tokyo, Shibuya – “crowded valley” – popularized by the film “Lost in Translation. Those Japanese [...]
February 21, 2011
Wedding Dress Street
Ho Van Hue – the main street near our office here in Saigon – is filled with wedding dress boutiques. Paradoxically, it also has a more-then-average number of casket shops. Still, from one person’s viewpoint, you’re never too young to start wishing….
More photos in my Vietnam Gallery…
Saigon Prayer
There’s something about the garish neon, the smoke, and the piety of prayer. I’m not sure what, but there’s something…
February 18, 2011
Proud Mothers
I was invited to a Vietnamese wedding here in Saigon and was expecting to see a traditional wedding but it turned out to just be the reception dinner in a fancy entertainment complex. Still, I managed to get a photo of the proud mothers of the bride and groom…
February 16, 2011
Over Siberia
Usually the flight from San Francisco to Hong Kong arcs out over the Aleutians and down acrosss Kamchatka, but our “circle route” was much higher. Should have known. We dropped right over Siberia and into Beijing for a quick refuel before heading on to Hong Kong and then Saigon. Just an iPhone snap.
February 13, 2011
The Technology of Democratization
The implied promise of technology – as articulated by George Jetson – was that things will get easier, we’ll go faster, and life will get better. And technology delivered. But there were off-setting side effects: because things got easier, we tend to do more, creating a confusion surplus and an attention deficit in everything we do.
February 12, 2011
Window to another world
Just wondering what’s out there after this one is over…
February 11, 2011
Images of Egypt
Okay these weren’t taken today, but J-E and I were there just a couple of years ago, so here’s joining the celebration…
Somewhere on the Karakorum Highway…
The Karakorum highway crosses the backbone of Asia, connecting Chinese Turkestan and Pakistan. The Kunjerab Pass, at 15397ft, is probably the highest border crossing in the world. This shows the highway as it leaves Kashgar headed for the Pamir Plateau.
Somewhere on the Silk Road…
This picture was taken at about the half-way point on a train trip from Singapore to Norway, at a place called Jiayuguan （嘉峪关） in western China…
Human (vs) Nature
I’m in a provocative mood. Not sure why, maybe it’s the dogs. Nature is amazing. It will be around long after we are gone. And nature will probably be the reason that we (humans) are gone, at least if we do not follow some of its rules. But as long as humans are here on earth, there [...]
February 10, 2011
Frigid
Actually the Pacific Northwest is anything but frigid. But this morning, with frost encrusting the windows of the truck and the dogs exhaling long streams of steam as they waited for me to scrape the windows, it actually felt like we were joining the rest of the country’s cold snap. Maybe it’s just a sympathetic cold…
February 7, 2011
Signs
I love this sign. Found it in the middle of the Wadi Rum desert in southern Jordan near the border with Saudi Arabia. Originally the train line was built to carry pilgrims to Jeddah, but it has long been abandoned.
February 6, 2011
Sunday Morning
We don’t have a lot of sun up here in the Pacific Northwest, but we do have some interesting combinations of weather and scenery. While the rest of the country is frozen or under snow, up here everything is verdant, lush, moist, spongy, misty – even sometimes mystical. And it somehow makes the morning coffee [...]
February 5, 2011
Panama Limited
Good morning America how are you? Say don’t you know me I’m your native son? I’m the train they call The City of New Orleans, I’ll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done.
In 1960, when I first rode this train, Illinois Central ran two trains between Chicago and [...]
February 3, 2011
Magazine Street
This is a snap shot taken from my iPhone. I find myself using this more and more often….
