Essay

I’VE WRITTEN some here about my summer trips to Louisiana and just how and why New Orleans became part of my yearly ritual as a child.

The old luggage tag from my mother’s old train case.

It wasn’t, however, until I was fully grown that I understood just how significantly New Orleans had marked me — both inside and out. Nor did I realize how much it mattered within my being.

Consequently, in the last few years, after a very long time away, I have been trying to make up for lost time. An editor and friend of mine had a conversation a couple of years ago that finally (just a few weeks ago) worked its way into an essay.

The piece went live this week on Zòcalo Public Square. You can read the piece here.

One of the first streets my early forebears lived on in New Orleans

MY ESSAY — in words and pictures — about what it means to be a Californian is now up at Boom California.

At the edge of it

I have been thinking more and more of late about how being both an inheritor and a native of a place, shapes the way you see and move through territory as well as how you understand your place within it.

Keepsakes and Souvenirs

I want to thank especially my former SF roommate, Shelley, for spending endless hours with me roaming around our old spaces and chasing vanished addresses in the Bay Area. I can do that for hours and hours. I do a fair amount of this roaming on my own when I’m here in Los Angeles but it was great to have a second set of eyes and someone with whom to bounce ideas back and forth.

California, I do love you, but I have to wonder sometimes if you’re moving faster than I am.