Ocean Beach, a small beach community in San Diego, CA is one of those unique beach communities in Southern California. Sadly, like so many other funky hideaways, it’s slowly being gentrified, with OBceans kicking and screaming the whole way. But when the sun goes down there’s still a a whole lotta flavor.
I’ve been walking a lot lately. I’m walking places I’d normally drive. I know, nobody walks anywhere in Southern California. I get the weird looks and double takes when people ask me how I got there and I say I walked. But it’s summer in Southern California The weather’s great and I’ve got a creative itch. I carry a camera. I’m looking to get back in touch with my roots. Every couple of years I need to scratch this itch. Back in school I carried a camera with me everywhere. I fancied myself quite the street photographer. I was inspired by the greats; Cartier-Brasson, William Klien, Walker Evans, and all the rest. So when I want a jolt of inspiration, I get back to my roots, I get back to the streets.
I recently listened to a conversation between environmental psychologist Ming Kuo and Shankar Vedantam on the podcast Hidden Brain. They discussed attention restoration theory which proposes that spending time in nature has a profound affect on mental and physical health. In short, spending time in nature improves your state of mind and boosts your immune system. Kind of a no brainer, but I learned that spending as little as a 3 day weekend in the forrest increases your natural killer cells 50% on average. And these benefits can linger up to 30 days after you return to the big city.
You need more reason than that!
Get out there and explore!
This summer @cindysaylor and I hit the road to restore and rejuvenate our natural killer cells in the furthest north reaches of California. The state has no shortage of natural wonders. The northern third tends to get lost in the shadow of Yosemite, Death Valley and Big Sur, etc. The area is exquisite and far less crowded. From the hot springs and mid summer snow of Lassen Volcano National Forrest to the many water falls, the lost coast and the great redwoods, we were able to immerse ourselves in natural wonder and build up our immune system too.
Nothing better than a summer road trip to recharge the batteries and revive the creative juices. Living in California, there’s no shortage of destinations to explore. Death Valley, the low point in North America, is in California. Mount Whitney, the highest peak in the continental United States is in California. The oldest and the tallest trees, a bristlecone pine in the White Mountains and the General Sherman Sequoia, are also in California.
Besides the decade I lived in Louisiana (another state worthy of extensive exploration) I’ve spent most of my life in California. California is huge. 163K+ square miles big. Almost twice the size of the UK. I’ve explored the state extensively over the years. Yet there are still a couple of places I haven’t been. Northern California is one of those places. Generally, when people refer to NorCal they’re talking about San Francisco or the Bay area. However, geographically speaking, San Francisco is only about two thirds up the California coast. That leaves roughly 375 miles north of San Francisco to the Oregon border. This is the area I set my sights on for a summer rejuvenator. Since this area is also 170 miles wide (and I had limited time) I decided to stick to the coast; the Lost Coast and the giant redwood forests. So I fired up the Prius and hit the road with my partner in crime, favorite travel buddy, budding herbalist, and wife, C Saylor.
Day one and 665 miles later we made it to Fort Bragg. We then began the slow crawl north along the Lost Coast, into the Giant Redwood Forests, up to Eureka and then back down again along the coast to Point Reyes National Seashore and Marin County, where we ran out of time and high tailed it home. 5 days on the road plus 2 a day hikes in some of the most beautiful areas California has to offer and I am completely recharged, rejuvenated and ready for the next road trip. 4 weeks sounds about right.
Get out there and explore!
On March 25th 2018, over 200K people gathered in Washington DC in support of March For Our Lives: the youth movement challenging politicians and the electorate to action. Action to change gun laws in the United States. Below are a few of the faces from that march.
Independent filmmakers are by nature creative, tenacious and passionate. They embody all of the elements of craft, hard work and dedication that have inspired me to photograph and explore workers from all walks of life. I present here a selection of the passionate independent filmmakers featured at the 2017 San Diego International Film Festival.
I’ve been in DC a couple of times this year. I love the city. There’s an intensity there. The politics, obviously. The young go-getters. The hustle. Even the weather. But there’s also a calm serenity grounded in the throngs of tourists who slow the pace to their own agenda. Set to a backdrop of intense security, these groups commingle and collide daily among our national treasures.
2:41 EST – American University, Washington DC
My new favorite phrase to enter the American lexicon: “path of totality”, to be worn as a badge of honor; as in, I will be / was in the “path of totality”.
Warning: The following post contains a couple of images that some may find graphic.
Chicken Harvest: what does that even mean? When I embarked on the Who’s Your Farmer project I was told if I wanted to understand how natural, free range chickens get from pasture to table, I needed to experience the chicken harvest. The word harvest threw me. I’d seen crops harvested, but not animals. Naturally I was curious, so off I went to Autonomy Farms in California’s Central Valley to learn how chickens get from farm to market.
A side note: I’m not a big meat eater. In fact I don’t eat beef or pork. There’s no religious or moral reason. It started as one of those things you try when you’re young, like vegetarianism or Buddhism, and it stuck. It’s been years now. I’ve had a sampling or 2 over the years, even a steak recently (that’s a whole other story from the ranch…). One of my “rationales” to not eat red meat or pork has been that I should be willing to kill anything I was going to eat. As my reasoning went, I would never be able to kill a cow or a pig but I felt pretty confident I could kill a chicken. Of course, I’d never been in a position to kill a cow, or a pig, or even a chicken, so this was all completely theoretical. I honestly didn’t know how I would kill this imaginary chicken. Perhaps I would have to wring it’s neck? Well that’s not how they do it on the farm…..
Harvesting chickens is a bit gruesome for this city slicker.
But the process is actually quite simple: catch chicken, slit throat, bleed it out, (that’s the gruesome part), blanch in boiling water to loosen quills, drop in plucker machine, remove feet, head, and innards, package it up for market.
That’s about it – most of the harvest is nothing I haven’t done myself, in my own kitchen.
And there’s an air of respect for the birds here. Sure, they’re being raised for human consumption, but there’s nothing excessive about it. Most parts are harvested, including the organs and feet. The chickens look like chickens. Autonomy Farms is proud of their birds. They don’t have over inflated breasts. They run around the farm freely. And they actually taste like chicken, not the artificially plump, overly brined meat we’re so used to today.
So could I kill a chicken? I think yes, but it wouldn’t be as easy as I had rationalized…..
