Categories Culture

4 posts

Meaning or Presence?

Based on the historical observation, however, that certain cultures, like our own “modern” culture, for example, have a greater tendency than other cultures to bracket the dimension of presence and its implications, I have come to propose a typology between “meaning cultures” and “presence cultures.”

Dia de los Muertos 2022

Oakland in 2022 is a town with many problems, and a very high murder rate (There were 107 murdered people between January 1 and October 30, 2022). Nevertheless, it is also a resilient city, and its diverse communities celebrate their cultures in spite of difficult circumstances. One of those yearly events is the Mexican “Dia de los Muertos,” celebrated in […]

Holidays in the Bay Area -2020

The holiday season starts with Thanksgiving (end of November) and lasts throughout December. It includes Hannukah,  the Winter solstice, Kwanzaa, Christmas, as well as a few other memorable events, like our tribute to consumerism, Black Friday. The year of 2020 was extreme: A pandemic, massive political protests, the worst wildfire season in California’s history, and more fire smoke in the Bay Area […]

Venice Beach

Venice Beach is California at its best: the diversity, irreverence, and playfulness of Venice Beach attracts millions of visitors every year. With all its diversity, it seems to remain what it always was: Street shops for tattoos, marijuana, and T-shirts, entertainers performing their shows with sizable audiences, graffiti, ballgames, roller-blades, and tourists. There is a back side, an older portion […]