James Maguire

Anxious, heart thumping, all of us standing in the brilliant autumn sun. About 40 teenage boys lined up at the starting line, almost panting. Race day for the high school cross country team. The instant the starting gun went pop we’d scramble off …

I feel something so positive in America. The protests are sparking us back to health. All those voices rising up for justice. The crime was against a black person – as it has been, again and again. But the people gathering are white and black and all …

I love it that the apple tart sold in the Barnes and Noble cafes is called the Rustic Apple Tart. I also love (unfortunately) the tart itself, in a love-hate kind of way. It’s a soulless glop of industrial sugar-goo that delivers a Mike Tyson body …

Stepped outside today and realized…it’s autumn. The summer drifted away with hardly a whisper. Summer, when it’s here, seems almost stationary. For a moment around July 19 or so, time might stop altogether. September will arrive, we’re sure of it. …

Clearly, it's the dizzying Zen mountaintop of transcendent American consumerism: the Apple Store on Black Friday. Even for the privilege of talking to clerk about a MacBook, I was told the wait was 35 minutes. In that moment I stared into the …

Ah, life in the Bay Area: even the coffee shops can be techie in San Francisco and surrounding areas. I was walking down the street in Berkeley and spotted Algorithm Coffee. Perhaps a dude or dudette is dreaming of a start up in there?

The recently reopened SF Museum of Modern Art is full of treasures. And the building itself is architectural art.

At the grocery store. Oh, and I ate before I went -- bought less. Funny how that works.  Summer splendor....

An almost Norman Rockwellesque tableau, if the old master painted urban types. A tattoo parlor in downtown San Francisco. 

George Saunders on Trump supporters, in The New Yorker: An outstanding piece of campaign reporting by Saunders, more commonly known for his fiction. A must read -- balanced and deeply insightful.

Riding on Amtrak northward from the Bay Area to Sacramento.