[This article appeared on page G-39 of today’s 96 Hours Magazine of the San Francisco Chronicle.]

Flickr Pickr: Jim Arnold

Charles Howard
Thursday, April 10, 2008

TechnoMonk:: Jim Arnold, known as technomonk on Flickr, is an academic dean at a junior college in the North Bay. Although his day job is administrative, he says his true passions are photography and writing. There is no higher calling than “artist,” he says. Arnold has been photo-documenting the world around him since the mid-1970s, and for a few years he made his living doing event photography. He says he used manual-focus 35mm equipment longer than anybody he knows, but finally embraced the digital world in 2004. “When anybody asks me what kind of photography I do, I just say that I’m a wandering documentary photographer ... and then point them to my Flickr site.”

Want us to pick your flickr picture? On the photo-sharing Web site www.flickr.com, tag your images “SFChronicle 96Hrs.” If we like it, we’ll run it here. We especially like Bay Area images and local photographers. To view the 96 Hours gallery of flickr picks, go to sfgate.com/96Hours. For more great Bay Area photography, check out Frederic Larson's “Mystical Photography” on sfgate.com.

- Charles Howard, choward@sfchronicle.com

It’s no secret that I used to party a lot (back in those alcohol-saturated times of my misspent youth). Once in awhile during those mostly-hazy days, in my often-stuporous state, I would dream of really big-time partying: you know, the kind that takes place in New Orleans at Mardi Gras, or in Las Vegas or Hollywood any ol’ night of the week.

Well, I never made it to The Show. As things turned out, I was only ever a minor-league partier. By the time I made it to (pre-Katrina) New Orleans it was 1999, at which time I had been sober for 16 years. And it was just two weeks ago, in March of 2008, when I visited Las Vegas for the first time (now working on my 25th year of sobriety).

I was only in Vegas for a little under twenty-four hours, and then, specifically, for the occasion of my niece’s wedding. This event took place in a nice little (actually very tasteful) wedding chapel, with just a few guests in attendance. I was lucky enough to be on hand with my camera to document some parts of the occasion. When the champagne corks were popped, I abstained.

The little bit of the town I saw was everything I imagined it to be…and, really, I only saw a small slice of life there. But in just my little taste of the Vegas experience – from airport, to hotel, to dinner, to breakfast, to chapel, and back to airport – there were several sights familiar to anyone who has ever watched CSI.

And then, this last weekend, I got to visit the place all over again. Sort of. I went to see “21” – a film that has been out a couple of weeks now, and is the number one movie in the country. The movie has not enjoyed favorable reviews, but, at least for me, it’s easy to understand why it’s so popular. It is mostly set in Las Vegas (and partly in Boston), and the plot allows us to totally escape our everyday realities for a short time.

It’s the story of a small team of young, smart, good-looking college students (from MIT) who are recruited by their math professor to learn card counting. They eventually get good enough at their craft to make numerous visits to Las Vegas and win tons and tons of money.

It’s based on a true story, but, for most of us, it’s total fantasy. Personally, the movie was a vehicle to dare to imagine another kind of life: a different way to (perhaps) have utilized my math skills – and have ended up among the rich and famous. Well, at least the rich.

In these trying economic times, who can’t use a healthy dose of escapism to get our minds away from our everyday bill-paying struggles? And, if you’re a Boomer, as I am, who still doesn’t see a retirement date in sight…well, any way to find a “quick fix” to a tenuous financial situation seems quite an attraction.

When you watch “21” you’ll find yourself vicariously living a high-risk, high-adrenaline, beautiful-person life.

But don’t get too used to it. Afterwards, you’ll go home and heat up some left-over pizza.

Reality resumes.

Soundtrack Suggestion

I used to smoke, I used to drink
I used to smoke, drink and dance the hoochie-koo
I used to smoke and drink

Smoke and drink and dance the hoochie-koo, oh yeah
But now I’m standing on this corner
Prayin’ for me and you…

(“Saved” – Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller)

When I moved down here to the Bay Area, and accepted a new “permanent” position as an academic dean at the College of Marin, I vowed to not use my work life as fodder for blog material. I just don’t want or need the kind of scrutiny that that kind of reporting might bring.

Not that my day job isn’t worthy of some commentary. Au contraire. For now, though, I’ll continue to leave it to other folks to describe my current workplace…

From the February 22 edition of the Pacific Sun (Marin County’s weekly alternative newspaper), you can read this cover-story article: “COMbustible: This Semester, College of Marin is Offering Courses in Resentment, Accusation and Infighting.”

And from the front page of today’s Marin Independent Journal (Marin County’s daily newspaper), we learn about: “College of Marin in Crisis.”

Soundtrack Suggestion

When you’re down and out,
When you’re on the street,
When evening falls so hard
I will comfort you.
I’ll take your part.
When darkness comes
And pains is all around,
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down.

(“Bridge Over Troubled Water” – Simon and Garfunkel)

Every Thursday, the San Francisco Chronicle publishes a weekend guide to entertainment and the arts that they call 96 Hours. One of the great features of this magazine is that most weeks they include the “Flickr Pickr” – a tiny section near the back of the publication designed to showcase the images of a Bay-Area photographer.

Yesterday, I received an inquiry from a photo editor at the Chronicle asking if I would like to have my Flickr images featured sometime soon.

Well, yeah…

(I’ll keep you posted.)

You’ll remember that two weeks ago, I was eagerly anticipating The Big Peace March scheduled for March 15 in downtown San Rafael. And, indeed, I was in attendance yesterday as a few interested citizens showed up to protest our continued involvement in Iraq.

This morning, the Marin Independent Journal reported…

Several hundred people attended a march and rally in downtown San Rafael on Saturday to protest the continued presence of U.S. troops in Iraq, just days before the five-year anniversary of the invasion…

In my opinion, this is truly a misrepresentation of the event.

I was there. I estimated the crowd at between 100 and 200 during the noon-time rally…after which I left. Unless there was a massive influx of participants for the actual march itself, immediately following the speeches, I believe our local reporter over-reached in doing his crowd estimate.

I found the turnout yesterday to be tremendously disappointing. As you may recall, I was similarly dismayed last year in downtown San Francisco when we gathered to protest the fourth anniversary of the war’s beginning.

My observations are more-or-less validated by a front-page article today in the San Francisco Chronicle, which states that…

The war in Iraq has gone on for five years now, but there is almost no sign of it in the Bay Area, a region where 7 million people live…

The Bay Area has a reputation for being a hotbed of anti-war sentiment, the legendary “Left Coast” where all the politicians are liberals and all the citizens are activists.

It is also the home of Travis Air Force Base, one of the country’s largest with a direct role in Iraq, and a place where anti-war protesters plan to mark the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war with parades and demonstrations.

But mostly, Bay Area people seem to have put the war in the back of their minds. They are not indifferent about the war. They just don't want to think about it.

I agree. People seem to have, mostly, put this war out of their heads: we seem to be in a kind of massive, nationwide, State Of Denial that the U.S. has so royally fucked up.

I ask: What will it take to shake us up? When are we ever going to get off our duffs and demand that this insanity stop?

Soundtrack Suggestion

Where have all the soldiers gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Gone to graveyards every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

(“Where Have All The Flowers Gone?” – Pete Seeger)