I’m finding it incredibly difficult to divert my attention from the trickle of announcements of one-after-the-other mostly newbe politicians determined to become president of the United States. I managed to keep my focus on family and my current sentimental journey to places in California that I have loved for a long time even when one of the least mature of the bunch declared in loud, ringing voice that he is determined to “take America back.”  I could have written a blog full of descriptions of the conditions which ethnic and racial minorities, women, LGBT people, and a whole host of people in poverty don’t want to revisit; but I resisted.  I can wait.

Instead of writing today, I enjoyed a long walk along the edge of the Pacific Ocean north of Mendocino… around the Headlands and then through a grove of mostly dying Coast Pines losing their hold on life on the cliffs ringing Russian Gulch. Several times I mounted my little SONY QX100 onto a monopod that converts to a tripod and practiced using my iPhone to trip the shutter.  At Russian Gulch I posed alone for the “selfie” and pretended my friend Антон Гуленцов was standing with me. Life is good.