After my walk with Jim this morning at Parkview, I heard someone say there were going to be horses coming through the reception area.  My mental image of horses was of full grown mares and stallions.  I met Toby the male horse as I was leaving the place... and then I met the female horse... I think the shoes got my attention before anything else.  They did indeed go through the reception area, and Thor the white Doberman greeted them as if they were dogs, friendly dogs.  The two horses went into the main hallway at Parkview and were taken upstairs by elevator.  They were well received by residents of the place.

Dael, Bryn, and Lee, three Dutch-American beauties...  The picture was taken several years ago at their home in Amstelveen.  Margaret and I have visited them on several trips to Europe, and now we have the pleasure of seeing Bryn often in San Diego.  She is here for an internship at an American company. I can't resist including a picture of their parents, Susanne and Paulus, which I took on another trip.  I think we met up with them in France.  They were on their way to Spain.  The memory of meeting them and seeing them before their three beautiful daughters were born reminds me that Life is good... confusing and sometimes bitter... but good.

Watching television reports about the Texas storm disaster area of Texas, I saw the arrival of the President and first lady of the United States with the governor of Texas for a meeting that was to serve as a briefing occasion for the President, demonstrating and explaining what is being done by various groups and agencies to address the needs of the people in the region who are being affected by the catastrophic storm.  The governmental agencies and private groups are showing what kinds of people we Americans are.

If you’ve read my BLOG before today, you know I am not a fan of the president. During the Texas meeting, in the intervals between speakers, the President wanted to show his appreciation for the good work of the leaders, from the governor of Texas to members of Congress to the directors of various agencies who are assisting people affected by the storm.  It was obvious that the President was genuinely moved by the horror of the situation.  He thanked various national and state leaders.  He was clearly moved, but the man cannot express thanks or grief or appreciation without using words and phrases that are intended to say how great, how marvelous, how over the top in every way anything is if he is associated with it.  

Later A shocking television newscast included the mayor of Houston and the chief of police explaining that a police sergeant, a 32-year veteran of the Police Department who was determined to find a way to get to his duty station, drowned on his way to work.  Chief of Police Acevedo wept on camera as he described the death of the Police Department. Language hyperbole wasn’t needed to give all of us who viewed the newscast a clear sense that the officer who gave his life for others was a good man.  Chief Acevedo said the officer was a sweet man.

And along came a spider...  Why it was there, and where it came from, I don't know.  I sat on the sidewalk and looked at it for a long time, and I wondered if it knew I was looking at it.  I asked myself if the spider was male or female, and I couldn't say with any certainty, but I though it's audacity was definitely female, no offense meant, ladies.  Perhaps audacity isn't the correct word.  The spider looked as if it was in the place it had chosen, and it wasn't going to be intimated... It was clear that it was going to stay exactly where it was until it decided to make a move, and my staring at it, even up close, wasn't going to change anything.

Crepe Myrtle blooms all over the country, and it is especially beautiful in San Diego.  Someone commented to me this morning that she likes the flower photographs of this BLOG, and I looked up and just in front of us were a couple of Crepe Myrtle trees standing... So I took the picture.  Another photograph that I got this week at The Davids' house was of a Water Lily just beginning to open.  I thought that later I'd go back and get a picture of the flower completely open, but I didn't get back and, looking at the photograph I got, I thought the partial opening was not only sufficient, but perhaps more beautiful than it would have been a couple of days later.

I've been doing other writing, mostly about the inept president of my country, but I'll keep that stuff in my private file.  Sometimes it gets to be more than I can bear to keep in the file, and it comes jumping out.  Perhaps later.

The Water Lily in The Davids' pond is appropriate for today.  The pond, which once had fish, is full now of just water and the Water Lilies.  Something is going on with the lilies that doesn't seem healthy.  The Lily itself seems healthy, but it's the leaves that are blotched.  Some of the leaves have black splotches, and I can't determine if there is something that can be done to restore their health.  The question about where beauty is found and what makes something beautiful is unstated but clearly an issue with these plants.  The Hibiscus is blooming on a shrub at Parkview.  The other two flowers are blooming near the fountain at The Plaza de Panama in Balboa park.

Nancy, Bryn and I went out again to the look at the sea... This time we went to Point Loma land's end.  The tide was high, so the pools that most people go there to see were under water.  Never mind. We enjoyed the time.  This was one of those days when the sky and the water and the rocks were all exactly the most beautiful elements in the universe.  I had spent part of the day watching the Weather Channel presentation of the storm that is approaching the Gulf Shore of Texas.  It was difficult for me to believe there was anywhere on earth where the sea was threatening.  Bryn and Nancy waded in the area where on a day of medium or low tides the fascinating pools would have been the attraction, but today the world was perfect.  The tide pools weren't our reason for being in the area.  We were all that was needed in addition to the pulsing sea... And along came a submarine...

Margaret, Nancy, Bryn and I drove out to the Glider Port above La Jolla this afternoon.  Bryn stood at the point above Black's Beach, one of the most beautiful stretches of seascape in the world... and I took her picture.  We watched the gliders soar above the beach and the cliffs.  Margaret, Bryn and I had come from a visit to the San Diego Museum of Art.  

EVERY MORNING I go into the beautiful new park where I live, and only today did I see the other living things who are not human residents or workers or dogs.  A couple of weeks ago great strips of sod with grass growing already were fitted together to form a verdant lawn all over the park.  Wherever the sod was gathered and rolled into the bundles that were delivered to the park, these little toadstools were bundled with it and delivered to Arcadia Place.  Today they were alive and thriving all through the new lawn.  I'll pay attention to the place to see if they die out.  I'm hoping they will live on and on and on.  Why not? They are like magical living things... a veritable fairy garden.

Nancy has been to all of these places before today, but I like going there no matter how many times I've been there.  Coronado is one of the most beautiful small towns in America, and the setting of the town on the spit of land just across San Diego Bay from the City is hard to beat.  Margaret and I moved to San Diego thirty years ago.  The city has changed, and a photograph taken from this spot is a reminder of the changes in the skyline.  Today we drove from the bay front across town to the beach.  What a trip...

After newspapers and other media sources reported the death of Dick Gregory, 84, My friend John Baker received a note from John Scrempos.  I didn’t know how I could write something that said what needed to be said about Dick Gregory, and John Scrempos’ statement says it, so the BLOG writing starts here:

My friend John Baker forwarded to me a note from his friend John Scrempos.  I don’t know Mr. Scrempos, but I now know that I would like to know him.  I don’t usually send on this BLOG quotes by people I don’t know, but I can tell from the text that he won’t mind my using it… and I certainly know my friend John Baker well enough to include the quote without waiting for John to send back permission.  So… John Scrempos said,

“I met Dick. I walked with him in Forseyth, Ga. in a march led by Coretta King and children, Ralph Abernathy, Don Edwards and others. I had the good fortune of sitting with him on the bus that carried us from Atlanta out to Forseyth where we marched. He was a fiery man with a heart that covered the world....his love affair for justice was non ending. He helped many of us white guys to deal with white privilege/racism through humor.....first one to do that for me....laughing at my own foolishness was good medicine....giving me a chance to see myself and others in a new and important way....defining moment in my life.”

The pictures are a melaleuca tree near a parking lot at City Scene, the condo community where I lived before coming to Paradise Valley and a water lily I got yesterday at the Davids’ backyard.  I didn’t use them yesterday, so they seem to belong to Dick Gregory.  Dignity… YES!

Bryn and Elaine joined Nancy, Margaret and me for a family afternoon that none of will forget.  Bryn has come from Holland to stay in San Diego for almost two months.  She is eighteen.  We have seen her grow from a beautiful child into a beautiful young woman... mostly in Europe.  She and her sisters Dael and Lee and their mother, Susanne are fortunate to have dual citizenship, Dutch and American.  We are glad that they are part of our family.

Today Margaret, Irene, and I went back to our old neighborhood for tea with Bill and Ruth Derisi.  Nancy was with us. Ruth made her Pear cake and served Red Bush tea.  Bill served an iced tea drink called an Arnold Palmer.  We all agreed that family and friends are the best combination of people under the right circumstances, and the occasion was exactly the right circumstance. Life is good.

Late in the afternoon, after dinner, Margaret, Nancy, Irene and I did a little tour of the reception area at Paradise Village where we live.  The newest fountain out front looks as if it has been there forever. It was installed just a few weeks ago at the same time the new park was being prepared out back of the building where I live.  One week ago I noticed that another fountain had been installed. I like it. The picture I took inside the reception area around a fountain that has been there for as long as I have known the community was a good place to get a picture of the three good ladies.

Earlier today Nancy came to the room at The Davids' house where I was resting with THE DOGS, Cookie, Cali, and Tommy.  She took the picture.

Now a word about what is happening in Washington, D.C.  The White House continues to be in turmoil.  The only way the situation will begin to be corrected will be to get a new person in the most critical, the First Office.  Steve Bannon should never have been brought into the White House in the first place, and his being removed from his strategic role is a good move, but the trouble with the Oval Office is that the person who sits at the desk and tweets his nonsense to the world is still there.  Yesterday I was dreaming about a time when the players will all change.  I had come across a beautiful white rose, and I thought how pure and clean it is, and I was wishing the White House could be pure and clean again.  The whiteness of the rose is not what makes it pure.  The Whiteness of the house where the President of the United States was installed half a year ago is not what can make the place honest and pure. The whiteness of the rose and the whiteness of the house are symbols of the truth and the purity we expect to find in them. The person who was a two-term president and who lived and worked in the White House before the man who lives there now was a man of color, so we know the color of a person's skin doesn't determine his character. The man who is President now is proof enough that being "white" is not what makes any person pure and honest. The President's efforts to explain what he thinks America has been and is today signals clearly that he is inadequate for the job to which he was elected.

We shall see in the next few weeks that President Trump cannot become adequate for the job to which he was elected.  He has had enough time and many opportunities to demonstrate that he can correct his mistakes, and he fails in every new situation to show that he can learn from mistakes.  He is a flawed personality.  I pity him, and I am sorry he is inadequate for the job. My country needs a president who can do the job... This man can't.