Today’s Journal Photographs all have something to do with my morning bicycle ride. As usual, I climbed stairs from our ground-level apartment to the garage where I keep my bike; and as often happens, I passed close to a tabby cat that lives outside, belonging to nobody. Because the cat had a collar for awhile, all of us who live here suppose somebody moved away and left the cat behind deliberately. Nobody has been able to come closer to the cat than I was this morning. Coaxing, even with food, doesn’t work. When food is left in dish outside, it’s alway gone in a few hours, but nobody has seen the cat take it. Maybe it's taken by raccoons or opossums; so the mystery remains about where this beautiful, shy cat gets food. He appears healthy. I think perhaps he will one day come to me. He seemed to be considering it today when I got the picture; but when I knelt down and held out my hand, he scampered away.

I rode along the north side of the river today and then back along the south side to Old Town, San Diego’s earliest settlement, dating back to the beginning of the 19th Century. I got a few pictures... I guess transportation was on my mind. Just before I got to the entrance to the village, I spotted a baby’s shoe, just one, on the path. Shoes are for traveling. Of course, I wondered where the other shoe was, there were no shoelaces in the shoe, which I thought was strange. How could I not wonder about the baby... if it was a boy or a girl, if it’s parents are poor and would be a bit distressed by the loss of one shoe, if... if... if... I got the picture of the shoe beside a bit of my bicycle wheel... which set me to noticing wheels and wagons and carts. After riding around for awhile and checking R.D. Riccoboni’s art gallery, which was recommended to me by Clyde Yoshida... unusually good original works and prints, I took the trolley back to Mission Valley. What happened when I got off the trolley made me glad to be alive and awake on this fine day. I said, “Good Morning,” to a young woman when I passed her in the crosswalk as I was walking my bicycle across.

She surprised me by answering in a wonderful smiling voice, “It is a good morning. I’ve got a job. I’m going to work. It’s been two years,” and she lifted both hands in gladness.

I said, “Congratulations. I hope you have a very, very good first day,” and I hopped on my bike and rode toward home. I had never seen her before, and probably will never see her again, but today she made glad. I thought how wonderful it is that she had a job and that she is glad and grateful. All the way home I was thinking how I wish the people responsible for the stalemate in Washington could see her today... to see how important the work of ordinary people is to the well being of our country. One of the problems in Washington is that after only a few days in office, elected representatives and senators stop being ordinary people. Those who were once quite ordinary try to look and speak as if they remember what it was like being ordinary; but having salaries and health insurance and guaranteed pensions, many of them reveal that they have been almost totally self-absorbed all along and winning elections was all about them and not about the people who elected them, the people whom they are supposed to represent. My own political bias shows glaringly here, but I continue to believe President Obama, by some reckoning the most powerful person in the world, and his wife and his daughters are making a real effort to be as ordinary as possible, considering the spotlight that is on them all the time. I like his effort to give the same benefits to all citizens... like a job, healthcare, and social security for citizens in old age... that people in government enjoy. I can’t figure why such basic needs for all people is such a problem for one of our major parties. I admit that it is at least partly my political bias that leaves me surprised almost daily by the pronouncements and behaviors of most of the folks who want the President’s job, and by those in Congress who have made it clear that the thing they want more than anything else is to keep Barack Obama from getting a second term in the office. A good old-fashioned, very careful reading of the Gospel might give some of the people who can’t seem to get their feelings around and idea that all people in American should have access to basic health care, to enough food to stay healthy, and to assurance of security in their old age.