Journeys of a Bent Mind

Grandson Casey was around age 4ish and a favorite place to visit on our weekly Jiichan Outings was the Cal campus in Berkeley – for you Bear Alumni you’ll recognize the Campanile in the photo on the right – In that photo we’re just outside the paleontology building where there is a fine fossil museum where one of the dinosaur displays is of a T-Rex, shown in the photo on the left – On this day we were going thru the museum and Continue reading →

A summer’s afternoon at Maurie Jacobs Park, 2008 – On many lazy afternoons after supper the whole family would gather in the shade of the trees next to play structures for the children and the wide expanse of the soccer field where they could run like the wind – Other families and their children would join us and while the children played the adults spent time sharing the waning hours of the day in utter peace and quiet – Priceless…

Granddaughter Venice around age 4 doing finger painting – A masterful touch with her fingers on the pulse of creativity and art, but more because it’s fun to dabble one’s fingers and hands in wet and slippery liquids to create amazing images on paper…

Back 20 years or so (1996…?) Barb and I went on a tour organized by our dear friend, Joyce Copenhagen, to Oxaca, Mexico for an extended stay over the Day of the Dead weekend – That’s the Halloween holiday for us but a formal day to revere those who have died in the family especially – during one of our treks thru the city we came across this restaurant with the quaint name that I believe translates into “fast food restaurant”…

Window into a bent mind: This is one of my favorite photographs – It’s a holly leaf with a spider web taken in the Sierra foothills above Fresno, CA during a photo weekend with my favorite instructor, Barbara Brundege – It was in the fall and the morning was crisp and clear – Of all my nature photos this is one of my all-time favorite images…

This is a collage of photos on top of Pat Morita, the original Mr. Miyagi from the movie, “The Karate Kid” – the photos on the bottom row are of me taken at different times in my later life (note the grey hair) – When I was 20 years younger and around the time the movie came out I was frequently accosted and asked “Aren’t you Mr. Miyagi from ‘The Karate Kid…?'” My usual response was , “No, I’m not him…” and the questioner was disappointed, you could tell… Continue reading →

This is a selfie before selfies were a thing taken on a beach near Santa Cruz, California, circa 1997 (? – I’m bad with dating things) – I set my camera on a tripod and did an initial curving run down the beach, then returned along the edge of the water so the waves would wipe out my return path, set my camera on delayed shutter, pushed the button and ran slowly down the beach to take the selfie…

When I was around 5 I had clamp-on skates and used these “keys” to tighten them on my shoes – You couldn’t wear sneakers because they didn’t have soles that the clamps could grip, you had to wear regular shoes with soles – Skating on the rough county roads meant the vibrations would soon loosen the clamps and if you weren’t alert you’d go sprawling on the hard road surface Continue reading →

Daughter Diana took photos of me and my grandson, Casey, and inserted them in the original poster from the movie, “The Karate Kid” and juxtaposed it alongside the original – There is an eerie resemblance to the original – and the figure in the background doing the “crane kick” is a silhouette of my grand-daughter, Venice – another eerie resemblance… Continue reading →