SOMEBODY E-MAILED ME and asked "What are these things?" They are all palm trees of one sort or another... except for the Floss Silk Tree with the spines (at the parking lot by the carousel in the area with the little train). The Palms are all in the area between the Spanish Village and the San Diego Museum of Art.

GLOOMY...DARK...APPREHENSIVE...UNSETTLED: all component slices pulled on top of each other in the part of my brain that programs my mood for the moment. As I started typing this journal entry, my impulse was to begin with an exercise my high school typing teacher taught me. "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. "Yeah! Yeah! I know... and agree: I'm dating myself (what a strange expression that is... right up there with "self abuse.")... First, typing isn't a course that has been taught in high school for maybe half a century; and second, any self-respecting, politically aware teacher in charge of teaching "keyboarding" would develop an exercise that would include "Now is the time for everybody (or "for all good men and good women of all races, religions, and sexual persuasions") to come to the aid of their country." However it is phrased, that's what needs to happen NOW. Not the typing course... the coming together as a nation to save ourselves.

So here we are...With all the world watching...three days before an easily avoidable economic catastrophe... because our own excellent democratic system permits even the most ridiculous ideas to find a place at center stage... we are being jerked around by a relatively small group of people who know almost nothing about the government they have been elected to manage. Having repeatedly demonstrated their distain for intelligence and logic in the tool kit of problem solvers, three members of the "Southern coalition" of Tea Party congressmen left the House chamber in the middle of debate to "ask the Lord" to intervene. So that's what we've come to...