Bill Zarchy

My First Photo Show

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My first-ever photography exhibit.
Congregation Beth El, Berkeley. Fall 2019.

I inherited my love of creating images from my dad.

He always had cameras and took photos to illustrate his books on crafts and the outdoors. I loved watching him print pictures under a red safelight in the darkroom. I oohed and aahed as images slowly appeared on the photo paper soaking in developer.

This collection of photographs is a smorgasbord of topics and styles. Faces and places, flowers and plants, and a few Jewish ritual objects. Also: some baseball shots. Because baseball is life.

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I’ll Be Telling It On Tuesday This Month … and Other Stories

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Storytelling Gigs Coming Up Soon!

On February 26th, I’ll be telling a new story — “The Elevator in Rome”  — at Tell It On Tuesday at The Marsh in Berkeley.

AND … I’ll be telling other new stories at three gigs in April in San Francisco and Oakland. Storytelling in the oral tradition — no text, no notes.

Come on down! Easily BARTable. Cheap entertainment!

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Health: Our Most Important Product

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Technology companies around the world spend millions of dollars on marketing media. Many of these projects rely on real people talking about their own experiences—that staple of corporate video, the talking head …

But I’ve come to realize that health is the most important product of technology, and that patient stories make the most interesting and compelling talking heads, not corporate executives, engineers, or software designers. Here are four memorable patients

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On Discarding Books

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How Not to Be a Library

Today we gave away over 300 books from our dusty shelves. Many bags, crammed full of books, all in excellent shape, an alarming number unread and unopened.

It started with a holiday season when our kids were away most of the time, coupled with a desire to reduce dust and sneezing, amplified by a dread of our kids someday discovering that our vast collections were both voluminous and virginal.

The latter dread, which is not uncommon for retired folks, is a byproduct of having lived in the same house for 32 years. Without regular purges of stuff, every closet, shelf, or cabinet would be stuffed. That’s why they call it stuff.

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A Storytelling Journey

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I gave a talk on Storytelling at my 50th Dartmouth College Reunion last month. Following is the text of my ten-minute introduction. If you want to see the whole, one-hour presentation, including video clips and stories, click on the video player below. Closed Captions (CC) available.

I never wanted to be a performer until I discovered storytelling.

About two-and-a-half years ago, a friend of mine had a gig playing classical guitar at The Marsh, a club in Berkeley that was hosting a monthly storytelling night called Tell It On Tuesday. She urged me to come along. After she finished playing, five people, all roughly my age, stood up in turn and told stories.

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BILLY SOLO Video — Part 2

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One-Man Solo Storytelling Soirée Salon
4/20/18 at Silk Road House, Berkeley

I guess gratuitous self-promotion pays off, eh? Every single chair was in use. I was so pleased with the turnout and the enthusiasm of the audience, even if most of them were friends!

They laughed a lot, usually at appropriate moments, and applauded each story. What fun!

Part 2 includes these stories:

  • “FDR: Fear Itself”
  • “Evelyn’s Story: Alex and the Cole Porter Show”
  • “Mendocino: The Essence of Nature”
  • “Snow Story: The Moon and Dr. Zhivago”

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BILLY SOLO Video — Part 1

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One-Man Solo Storytelling Soirée Salon
4/20/18 at Silk Road House, Berkeley

My solo storytelling show last Friday was amazing, a real peak experience!

What a fun evening! I had a terrific time and feel wonderful about having challenged myself like that. I did eight stories, about 75-80 minutes of material in all.

The place was packed. About 48 people in a medium-smallish room.

Part 1 includes these stories:

  • “Anansi”
  • “Dog Years: Pop, Sophie, and the West Wing”
  • “The Seven Lies”
  • “Chartres: Ecstasy at the Altar”

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Moose Encounter

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(Loosely inspired by a tall and nearly true tale)

Jake rushed through the door, sweaty and disheveled, to find Al playing solitaire in the main lodge.

“Al! I just had a moose encounter,” said Jake. “Up on Bacon Ridge. It was pretty great, dude. Wait’ll I tell the guys at home about this.”

“Was it sweet and chocolatey?”

“No, dipshit! Not that kind of moose, with a U! Moose with two O’s, like Bullwinkle. Huge, with antlers. I just saw one.”

“Tell me.”

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Listen to My Interview on FCC Free Radio

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Radio host Lilycat interviewed me recently about my writing on FCC Free Radio.

The show ran live on September 18, broadcast from their studios in the Civic Center/UN Plaza District in downtown San Francisco. For two hours, we talked, she played music, and I read three stories from my book, Showdown at Shinagawa: Tales of Filming from Bombay to Brazil.

Once a month, she hosts authors like myself from Left Coast Writers.

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Incense Cedar

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As we pass the 30-year mark in our home next week, the tall tree in the right rear corner of the yard, an Incense Cedar, stands tall and true, more than twice the height of the house. When we moved in, there were two tall trees. The left rear corner held a Monterey Pine, so

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A Chance Encounter

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Sometimes the course of your life can turn on one small thing, one chance encounter. It happened to me, many years ago, the day Beverly invited me to visit her. Of course I had the hots for her — pretty, round face, sparkling blue eyes, long blond hair. But ever since our one blind date

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We Loved Our First House

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We loved our first house in San Francisco, in the Excelsior district of the Outer Mission. We loved the fact that we owned it, loved that we had managed to move quickly enough to evade eviction by our last landlady (who had suddenly decided to move into our apartment), loved that our living space had

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Pop’s Podunks

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Whenever my dad wanted to speak metaphorically about Podunks — places that were remote and sparsely populated — he often cited Broken Elbow, Indiana, and Frozen Dog, Iowa. I always assumed they were real places, and recently I dug around to find out how they got their colorful names. Internet research truly is the best!

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Why They Call It Far-go

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At 9 am Monday, I left my home near San Francisco for what proved to be one of my longest trips ever. Twenty-nine hours later, I reached my destination, after a grueling air journey. But I hadn’t been hurled halfway around the world. I had finally touched down in Fargo, North Dakota, just halfway across

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