Hang In There... Retirement is good.  As much as possible, always try to see the big picture.  This BLOG practice that I do daily is mostly a way of reminding myself that the world, after all, is a good place to be alive. At the end of every days, I take some time to select the one photograph that represents the day... and sometimes I write something that relates to the picture; and on other days I just write something... a riff, like jazz without musical instruments... or a rant or a rave that explodes out of something I’ve seen or heard... The photograph I choose may, or may not, have something to do with the writing.  Occasionally, I have a day when it’s difficult to choose which photograph will be the picture for the day.  The journaling practice goes back to New Year’s Day, 1987.  Since that day I have written at least one sentence (usually many sentences)  in my journal, and I have pasted in alongside the writing a picture, the photo du jour.  I like going back to one of the journals, any one from any year, and opening to a page, usually at random.  It’s amazing how the picture brings back to my mind some experience that I might have forgotten altogether if I hadn’t made the photograph and selected it to represent the day.   Today I opened the 2003 journal to March 3rd and found a photograph I took of Mrs. Aileen Buford on her hundredth birthday.  Wonderful memory, not just of the birthday dinner, but of a beautiful lady whom I had known since I was a boy.  She died a few months after the party.  

Today is a rare day when I’m having a hard time deciding which photograph will represent October 26, 2012.  On my bicycle ride this morning out alongside the San Diego River to the ocean, I got some pictures of water birds in their natural habitat... photographs that I think are quite stunning, even if I do say so myself... but I didn’t choose one of them.  Later in the day I visited a friend at his place of business and work, his Beacon Artworks Gallery in Old Town.  I got a photograph of my friend R.D. Riccoboni, artist and author and all-around good guy, in his natural habitat. He was surrounded by his work, his art.  That has to be the photo du jour.  Years from now when I open the journal to the October day in 2012, I will feel great satisfaction remembering the day I took another friend, Karla Duarte Ramirez, to meet R.D. 

Life is Good.