A noon hour rally in front of the Oakland City Hall today protesting school budget cuts so I'll bus on down and shoot some pictures. Not like shooting the forming up of a parade, where the people expect their photographs to be taken, more difficult in this kind of a crowd, but we'll see what we can get. I hope this street photography stuff, shooting strangers on the street, if you do it long enough you get better at it. It worked that way with parades. It's time I took a step forward, not so much to be more forward to the point of being rude, but rather learning when you can be aggressive and get the photograph without freaking anybody out. There's always a certain level of paranoia at a political gathering, their's, of course, and mine.

What does that mean?

We don't trust our government or the various political flakes that scamper about in the margins. Why is that old guy taking pictures? Is he with the press? The state police? The FBI? Homeland Security? The mayor's office? A John Bircher? One of Sarah Palin's little acolytes? Silly in many ways, these thoughts, but it's always there as a kind of undercurrent, particularly for idiots like me who read too many civil liberties screeds. I'm not suggesting I should never have read 1984 as a teen in the fifties, but it evidently set me on a more paranoid than necessary path.

So, your phone is tapped? You find video cameras peeping out from under your rugs?

I'm sitting here comfortably writing in my apartment. Not much daring-do up here in my apartment. Need a little imagination to give the day an edge. Maybe it will produce better pictures, maybe it will be inhibiting. Either way, after it's over, I'm due in San Francisco to share a beverage or two with the usual crew, this being a Thursday, the day (for some unknown reason) we all seem to get together whenever the moon is full.

Later. We shall skip going into San Francisco this evening as I'm pooped. Good pooped, but pooped. The gathering in front of the Oakland City Hall ended up being two hours on the ground running around (ambling, actually) and, although I got a bunch of pictures and, I think, taught myself something about shooting gatherings like this one (useful, as I plan to do more), it was enough for a day's outing. I'm going to work on the photographs and then get to bed. None of this fooling around in San Francisco. Yes I am.