...a break today from teeth grinding over "stuff" the President is doing...

"Future events, whatever they may be, will not deprive the
Americans of their climate or their inland seas, their great
rivers...their exuberant soil...(or)that love of prosperity and
spirit of enterprise, which seem to be the distinctive characteristics 
of their race..."
                                    --Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

I went looking through my files and found the perfect pictures to go with the quotes from Alexis de Tocqueville and Walt Whitman.  I confess that I was looking for a photograph I know I took of a great tree in Balboa Park; but before I found that picture, I came across this one I took three or four years ago after a visit to our house by Karl Backus and his two beautiful daughters... a drawing of a tree done by Sophie Backus.  I've always considered the tree in this picture to be my favorite.  Sophie may not even remember making the picture, but I won't forget the day or the tree.  

"I heard the mighty tree, its death-chant chanting...

In the echo of teamsters' calls and the clinking chains,

and the music of choppers' axes,

The falling trunk and limbs, the muffled shriek, the groan...

Clearing the ground for broad humanity, the true America,

heir of the past so grand

To build a grander future."

              --Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass