Field Notes

Salut! Welcome to my Field Notes, with stories from San Francisco, Paris, and elsewhere. This is a collection of adventures: the people I photograph; the kitchen escapes; tidbits from my life; special projects; and a California/Paris guide. Whew! I hope you'll come along; it's going to be a lovely time!

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Welp, I’m late. A lot of things slid this year and I’m learning to give myself grace to not be on time. However, having been featured in a couple sweet friends’ Small Business Saturday roundups, I wanted to return the favor. There are so many beautiful, amazing makers and small businesses out there and these […]

mw art enterprises california postcard collection

Friends, I have been deeply troubled since the news about the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan broke. While the subject of how/why everything went as it did (as well as American responsibility) is a something that should absolutely be discussed, right now, I want to share some organizations we can support to help the thousands who […]

Covid-19 France Quarantine: Part 3 in the countryside. C’s birthday passed. The weather got warmer. Flowers were abundant, but the days were long. Already, twice, with hope, we had watched the state newscast as the president updated the situation. And there was nothing to look forward to. Despite the change in the weather and the […]

Covid-19 France Quarantine: Part 2 in the countryside. Quarantine became more bearable as the weather warms. The weathered stone of the cottage, though charming, was poor insulation. Although, at least it kept out the rain. There were many a tempest as I had never experienced before. Thunder, lighting, the most ominous skies. The Storm One […]

Two children push their bikes up a deserted country road in northern France.

Photographs from the COVID-19 France quarantine. When the first COVID-19 quarantine lifted last year, I hurriedly threw together a blog post so that I would remember it all. It all happened so quickly as we hastily packed up for the French countryside in the early spring. We were barely out of winter as we bumped […]

A barely-blossoming pear tree catches the golden rays of sunlight in a vast field next to a stone country cottage in Normandy, France.

I want to walk by my favorite blue door next to the Red Wheelbarrow. I want to see Thibault at Imprimerie Frag and know that my prints are going to be amazing, instead of emailing around and finding one local printer in the Bay Area who won’t even email me back. I want to go […]

The Pont Alexandre III bridge in Paris stretches diagonally across the frame, its signature iron lampposts stretching towards the sky. In the background, a bright blue sky streaked with clouds.

To welcome fall (you can tell I’m quite behind in filing these field notes), Lindsay, Shelby, and I got together and made a pumpkin cake! Well, Lindsay made the cake, Shelby whipped up the frosting, and I just showed up with my camera. Here are the results! I am a San Francisco Bay Area film […]

Coconut sugar caramel sauce is drizzled on top of a triangular slice of iced pumpkin cake. The cake sits on a pedestal in the background next to two filled champagne flutes.

This is a Thanksgiving-inspired entry, but I think gratitude should be a daily practice. This month, I have been keeping a small notebook and listing down things I am choosing gratitude for. The entries are not long — someone sentence fragments — but they help me to recognize beauty and appreciate it when I see […]

Three bulbous orange dahlias bloom in a field as the sun sets.

Elsewhere. It reminds me a bit of Lois Lowery’s The Giver, where the old are sent after they’ve led fulfilling lives. My Elsewhere is not so much the final destination, but where I’d rather be. My little post-Paris conundrum is that I’ve been too busy thinking of elsewhere to notice where I am right now. […]

Just before jaunting through Provence, Sarah, the picnic hostess to end all picnics, threw a Midsummer celebration in the Parc des Buttes Chaumont in the 19th arrondissement. There was an heirloom tomato and burrata salad and bundles upon bundles of flowers as we gathered to celebrate summer on an ironically cloudy and eventually rainy Paris […]

Paris & California strolls; plenty of flowers; stories; and looking for the beauty in the everyday. I hope you'll come along as I take the year to document the entirety of my home state!

LET'S BE INSTA-FRIENDS