Be sure to click on these pictures to see them larger, 

especially the beautiful Maria Jose.

A couple of hours ago I got a picture of my beautiful neighbor, Maria Jose.  She seems to me to be the promise of hope for a confused and confusing world.  M.J. loves the dress she is wearing... which is the perfect sign that she is a person who knows how to dream.  She knows how to smile, whether she happens to be wearing her favorite dream dress or just tolerating my request for a picture.  Some children put on a fake smile, one they undoubted learn from grown-ups who tell them to say cheese or from cheesy characters on television... Not M.J.  What you see with her is what she feels.  It's a Mona Lisa smile, one that leaves us all guessing.  She is wonderful.

I went back into my house from getting Maria Jose's picture in time to listen to Michelle Obama's speech to the Democratic National Convention.  Wow!  Another promise of hope for a confused and confusing world.

I'm including three pictures that I got earlier in the day... I had come out from my volunteer job at the Museum of Photographic Arts in Balboa Park, and I decided to go the long way back to my car... around by the reflecting pool that was befouled by some thoughtless revelers a couple of weeks ago... just to check up on how restoration was coming along.  To my delight, a little fellow who lives in the pool had come up out of the water to sun himself.  It tolerated my getting close for the portrait.  So today my pictures are beauty and the beast... and the beast is in his own way, as beasts sometimes are,  with their strange and unlikely combination of parts... beautiful.

Life is Good!