En route home from Berlin this morning, on Autobahn 6, we got stuck in a traffic jam. An hour north of Stuttgart, traffic came to a complete stop. For at least ten kilometers, or so we were told, nobody was moving.

An hour into our ordeal, I got out of the car and started taking pictures. Four automobiles in front of us were two camouflaged US military vehicles. One was a tanker, the other, what looked like a troop transport.

“Where are you guys from?” I asked two GIs, loitering outside their vehicle. Stunned by the question, as though on command, they both answered in unison, “California.” “Me too,” I replied. “San Francisco.”

Socialist realism is alive and well, if not exactly socialist. The fall of Baghdad, reimagined in the heart of the American desert. 29 Palms, California, June 2008.

On the road to 29 Palms US Marine Corps base, California, June 2008.

It was hard to miss this sign, in 29 Palms proper, after seeing the prosthetics advert.

On July 1st, I stepped down from my editorial position at Allvoices. With two months to pack up our home and move to the United Kingdom, I couldn’t have had a better reason to punch out. I’ll be spending the next eight weeks at home writing and editing a couple of terrific books while we get everything ready. To make the transition back to book editing, after being immersed in the world of blogs and online periodicals is interesting to note, (as a format exercise), given the direction that this kind of work now moves.

Leaving my office in San Francisco’s financial district (pictured above) for the very last time, I couldn’t resist capturing the signage of the cylinder shaped newsstand that sits at the building’s front entrance. Housing not only my ex-employer, but also a Reuters office, and the headquarters of the local Jewish weekly, The J, my former firm’s new abode hosts an above average number of news publishers for such a small, albeit significant, American city.

Just before I left, however, I received a call from the very first periodical I ever worked for, in between my freshman and sophomore years of high school, in 1982. Serving as a summer intern for the legendary Mother Jones (whose building, pictured above, is three blocks west of my former office) has earned me a semi-annual email or phone call from what sounds like another MoJo intern, keeping tabs on alumni. “You’re a writer, right?” asked the young man who called me. “Yes,” I told him. “And an editor, too.”

1 of 4 photographs of our neighborhood, featured in a new photo essay of mine published today in Zeek. Focusing on the imbrication of the Middle Eastern in San Francisco life, the article is a brief portrait of an increasingly multicultural city, bisected by two regional conflicts, and immigrants living peacefully together, side by side.

The main supermarket in 29 Palms, California, home to the largest Marines base in the U.S.

Back from Iraq, the troops bring home a taste for middle eastern food, American-style.

The new desert couture: three keffiyehs, next to a U.S. flag in a surplus store down the street.

Jennifer and Joel. Joshua Tree, 2008.

A Shell station adjacent to a U.S. Marine Corps vehicle depot.  May 2008.