Mainly because I can’t do anything about the problems in Washington or Ferguson or Iraq or Iran anyway, I’m going to set a short-term personal goal of trying for some up-beat BLOG writing and no depressing photographs.  

On the subject of pictures, everybody who lives anywhere near San Diego should get over the Museum of Photographic Arts in Balboa Park to see the new multimedia exhibition, 7 billion others.  You’ll find the museum has a whole new look that you will like; and the exhibition will definitely lift your spirits… and not in a Pollyanna, short-term sort of way.  As part of the Balboa Park Centenniel Celebration, the exhibition will be here until September 13.  The pictures change so you'll want to see this exhibition more than once. A couple of things to keep in mind:  When you approach the entrance to the museum, you may think it’s closed, but if it’s not Monday, it won’t be.  The entrance atrium is kept dim to show the exhibition to greatest effect, so come on in… and beginning next week if it’s a Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday you can come in free.  Between March 18 and August 28, on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays the museum will be open on a Pay What You Wish basis.  

MOPA is pleased to have been chosen for the U.S. premiere of this exhibition which is part of the GoodPlanet Foundation work and is supported by BNP Paribas.  It’s different from anything else the museum has done, so don’t miss it. 

MOPA hours:  Tuesday-Sunday: 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

The Eucalyptus on the West Side of the Bridge that Crosses from the Fountain 

to the Cactus Garden

Two Ficus Trees in Zoro Garden near MOPA

Tom Cotton and his 47 fellow senators have quickly become subjects of  interest even to citizens who hadn’t been paying much attention to the partisan divide in American government.  Senator Cotton’s letter to Iranian Leadership is just the latest example of blatant determination by some members of the House of Representatives and the Senate to discredit and undermine the presidency of Barack Obama.  Citizens of both parties have expressed surprise that the letter to “the Leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” could actually have been signed by as many at 47 Republican senators.  Undoubtedly some of the signatories are wishing they had read more carefully and thought longer before they affixed their names to the letter.  Several Republicans are scurrying to distance themselves from it. Others have decided the best self defense is to blame the President saying if it were not for Obama’s failure to consult lawmakers about the negotiations the letter wouldn’t have had to be written.  

Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said, “I think that, no doubt, the fact that the president, you know, issued a veto threat on a very common-sense piece of legislation, probably evoked, you know, a good deal of passion.”  The Corker statement makes about as much sense as the Cotton letter. 

This is sounding too much like a Saturday Night Live skit, so I’ll stop and post a pretty picture I got over on University Avenue this morning.

I can't find an appropriate picture to go with my rant today...

O.K., O.K., although it’s been a long time since I lived in Arkansas (until the beginning of my adolescence), I confess that I am sorely embarrassed by the action taken against President Obama and my country by Tom Cotton, the junior senator from my birth state.  First, it's that opening of Senator Cotton’s letter:  “An Open Letter to the Leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran," which in a news conference he pronounced I Ran… leaving me thinking he probably calls people in Iran’s neighboring countries A Rabs.  If his letter isn’t a silly political stunt, which he insists it is not, shouldn’t he have addressed the leaders by their names?  Did he write the letter to the supreme leader, the President, the Revolutionary Guards, the Parliament…or hasn’t he bothered to know the actual names of leaders or their offices? If this was meant to be considered a serious letter to Iranian leaders, it’s especially odd that it didn’t come from the Senate Majority Leader, one of the 47 co-signers, instead of a virtually unknown senator who has been in office for only a couple of months. 

The letter is clearly meant to undermine the President of the United States. What the stupid stunt does is show the world the extent of disfunction of our Congress in these dangerous times.  Does Cotton imagine Iranian leaders will believe his letter represents the keenest thinking and clearest writing that can come from our Senate?  The first sentence is especially idiotic: “It has come to our attention while observing your nuclear negotiations with our government that you may not fully understand our constitutional system.” Good grief!  This from a senator of the United States… and endorsed by 47 other senators! Is it possible that Tom Cotton doesn’t know about the other countries participating in the negotiations? Didn’t any of the senators endorsing the letter read it before signing or maybe talk about it with members of their staff? 

Enough already…

Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity brothers at the University of Oklahoma reminded us that racism is alive in America and will continue be alive as long as there are people who expect to be ushered to the front of the line because of who they are and how they look. Tongue clucking over events in Madison, Wisconsin, Ferguson, Mississippi,  and Sanford, Florida, may signal personal distaste or disgust with the idea of racism in America; but solutions will be developed to solve the very real problem of racism as it affects the daily lives of victims only after those of us who are not victims face and acknowledge the familiar but seldom owned white privilege and male privilege phenomenon in our culture. 

Elizabeth's Birthday

Tens of thousands of people joined President Barack Obama and former President George Bush in a peaceful walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, today retracing the steps of freedom marchers who fifty years ago began a transformation of the civil rights movement… a transformation which will not be complete until all Americans who have been marginalized because of their sex, their ethnicity, their skin color, their sexual orientation, their physical or mental disability, or their religion are allowed full, unrestricted participation in American civil life.  Joining Presidents Obama and Bush, their wives and President Obama’s daughters, some of the marchers today had been victims of white supremacist brutality fifty years ago at the same place. In spite of Ferguson, Missouri, and Madison, Wisconsin, the nation is acknowledging racism and is getting better. I must believe we are is getting better. The alternative is unacceptable.

COMPARING NOTES
   AND PHOTOGRAPHS...

...and just saying I don't know if I could ride my bicycle
today in Rockville, Maryland, where Nancy lives.
She took this picture through her living room window this morning.
I got pictures on my morning bicycle ride along the San Diego River.

LIFE IS GOOD

Mom Lisa and Jordyn

Jordyn

Grandpa Ed and Bristol

Of all the Greek stories the one that fascinated me most when I was a boy, and still does today, is the myth that tells how Theseus killed the half man, half bull monster called the Minotaur that lived deep inside a labyrinth on Crete. The story has symbolic significance that I didn’t fully understand until I was much older. At the San Diego Museum of Art I took some pictures of the sculpture done around 1840 by Antoine-Louis Barye in France of Theseus and the Minotaur wrestling just before Theseus plunged a sword into the head of the monster and killed it.  It is an amazing not very large bronze sculpture that seems when you walk around it to move as wrestlers move. With only a little imagination, it's easy to let the small sculpture and the story it tells represent any terrible conflict that rages between any two enemies... think ISIS and the civilization it is determined to destroy.

And afterwards...

Peace.

I don't expect many who read this BLOG post will remember Robert Browning's "Pippa's Passing," and those who do will probably recall, "God's in His heaven-- All's right with the world!"  ...but it's the few who remember that last line near the end of the poem, "But at night, brother Howlet, far over the woods..." will understand why I thought of it today when I walked back to my car from the San Diego Museum of Art.

     The year’s at the spring,

And day’s at the morn;

Morning’s at seven;

The hill-side’s dew-pearled;

The lark’s on the wing;

The snail’s on the thorn;

God’s in His heaven—

All’s right with the world!

.........

"But at night, brother Howlet, far over the woods..."

I was thinking how good life is... David, our son, in Balboa Park today... talked about specific works of art at the San Diego Museum of Art...with Margaret and me... and Pat and Ed from Houston... and then we went for lunch at the cafe next door... and then...

...walking to the car park I saw them... a family of seven... the parents and five children, the youngest in a stroller and the oldest perhaps thirteen… There they were sitting on the curb of the sidewalk with three grocery carts pilled high with personal belongings… in an obvious limbo… waiting for… what?  waiting all in a row for nightfall… and tomorrow… What happens tomorrow?  Today was Tuesday, and the children weren’t in school in the middle of the day.  Prime Minister Netanyahu went back to Israel, I guess. Washington went back to gridlock... more cold weather swept down from the North aggravating the Midwest longing for spring... 

...but at night... far over the woods...

Cabrillo National Monument at the southern tip of the Point Loma Peninsula has never seemed  more perfect than it did today after a fierce rain squall washed over it followed by brilliant sunshine.   This was the exactly right day for writing with light.  Our friends Pat and Ed made the day even brighter.

Australian Tea Tree (I think)...  not sure.
Balboa Park on a rainy first day of March.