Mid-Autumn Festival 2017
I still wish I could have gotten a sharper result, but sometimes you have to make do with the equipment that you have on hand (a DSLR shooting at 250mm with a tripod). I was particularly taken by the prominence of Tycho in the finished picture.
Akihabara, Tokyo
Truth be told, I didn't understand Akihabara at all. But that's probably because I don't really watch anime or read manga.
Kiyomizu-Dera
Really didn't spend as much time in Kyōtō as I wanted - but at least I got to visit Kiyomizu-dera. There are so many beautiful temples and shrines in the city that I suspect it would take a couple of weeks to see them all.
Ukiah Reflections
Back in Ukiah, there's this pond near by house. In truth, it's not really a pond; it's just a reservoir for the nearby vineyard. It's been dry for most of the last few years, but this spring break when I returned I saw that it was incredibly full - almost…
Widow’s Memorial Arch – Sichuan
[caption id="attachment_890" align="aligncenter" width="564"] Widow's Memorial Arch in Sichuan, China. Photo by Wilson Edward Manly courtesy USC. [/caption] Reading Gail Hershatter's The Gender of Memory: Rural Women and China's Collective Past for a class this week and I was piqued by the mentions of the memorial arches (牌坊) that were…
Mendocino State Hospital and Foucault’s “Panopticon”
We recently read Foucault in our Historical Methods class; specifically, his chapter on Discipline. At the end of the chapter, Foucault raises the specter of the Panopticon and a society so throughly infused with self-regulated discipline. What makes discipline insidious is not that it can be seen, but rather, it…
Anti-Chinese Rhetoric, Late 1800s
"[Chinese] places could and should be filled with worthier immigrants — Europeans, who would take the oath of allegiance to the country, work both for themselves and for the commonwealth, fraternize with us, and, finally, become a part of us. All things considered, I cannot perceive what more right or…
The Hunanese Anti-Christian Tract
Professor Zheng showed this picture as an example of the anti-Christian (especially anti-missionary) sentiment sweeping through China in the last decade of the 19th century. I was intrigued - why had the artist chosen a pig to represent Jesus? I began searching, and found that this was part of a…