Yesterday the rains came and the drought was broken in San Diego.  The sky was clear today and the air was wonderfully crisp.  Everything was beautiful, even the downtown skyline of the city of San Diego.  Balboa Park where I got the flower pictures for yesterday's BLOG was clear in the skyline north of downtown. To west the Pacific Ocean was clear with the largest of Mexico's Coronado Islands clearly nestled into its place in the blue Pacific.  Closer to shore the ships of the U.S. Navy were docked for refitting or repairs.  Hotels are close to Interstate 5.  In addition to the skyline of San Diego and the Silver Strand from Coronado to Imperial Beach, looking south we see Tijuana, Mexico, from our balcony.  National City is a magical place.

Balboa Park again today.  We are fortunate to live in this area where flowers bloom in winter.

IT’S THURSDAY, and I went to my volunteer job at MOPA… and on the walk from the car to the museum, I passed the area that was a nudist colony when the park opened (I think it was in 1915).  It’s a lovely place in the garden, and my imagination runs wild when I think about what it was a hundred years ago.  I was contented to get a photo of some interesting eucalyptus leaves and a pair of ducks.  The ducks, female and male, were nude.

Earlier in the day I opened my copy of Harper’s magazine which came yesterday and I read the Editor’s Notebook “Mourning in America” by James Marcus.  Marcus says what I’ve been thinking.  His is perhaps the best analysis of what we are going through in this country after the November election that has shocked more than half of us and left some of us in a state of mourning.  “Mourning in America” is worth the price of the December copy of the magazine.  I particularly like the cover.  Also in this issue there is a reprint of Gerald W. Johnson’s essay from 1931, “A Peculiar Virtue.”  Besides the Marcus notebook piece, there is another essay about the same subject, “The Monument Wars, by Rebecca Solnit.  Wow!

America the Beautiful… I’m guessing that most of us who are Americans don’t think about what a blessing it is to have citizenship in a country that is clearly a democracy.  The elected leaders of the country have traditionally wanted to strengthen the democracy.  In my experience as a citizen with the word Democrat as the name of the political party to which I belong, I have rarely had deep reservations about the motivations of the person who has been named to lead the country as its President. I didn’t like Ronald Reagan well enough to wish I could know him personally, to want to go fishing with him, to sit down and have a talk with him.   I suspected Richard Nixon was inadequate when he was elected, and I was not surprised that he was secretive and supportive of “dirty” political dealings that he thought would make him look better than he was. I didn’t like the war that President George Bush initiated.  I thought Bill Clinton should have known better than to let his sexual behaviors soil his career and embarrass all of us who who had voted for him. I am old enough to have lived through the presidencies of eleven people.  I voted for six of the eleven. Although I disagreed politically with some of the men who held the office, I never felt until now that the country was in danger of losing its way as a democracy.  The President-elect who will become President in January 2017 worries me because he seems not to understand, or if he does understand, he seems not to value some of the things about America that make me very glad to be a citizen of this country.  He is choosing people to be included in his administration who seem inadequate for the jobs to which they are being assigned. The country seems to be at the edge of a time in history when we need someone in the White House who understands and values the democracy that is the United States of America.  Donald Trump is clearly not that person.  He seems to value his own “stuff” more than he values the idea of democracy for all citizens.

Margaret and I had a wonderful dinner tonight with Ruth and Bill DeRisi at their apartment.  Jim and Irene Fudge were also with us.  

ALL OF US EXCEPT Jacqueline and Helen...  This afternoon Margaret came in to me with a print and asked if I could make a copy to send to Alice, Pat, Bill, and Jim.  I've been going through old prints and slides from the years since the five people in this picture, including the tall guy, were in elementary and high school.  It's possible that the tall guy was in college already, but I think I was probably a senior at Live Oak High School at the time the picture was made.  Jacqueline was married with children in Louisiana, and Helen was married and living somewhere in the Bay Area with her husband who was a sailor.  I looked at the picture and thought perhaps Bill, standing in front of Alice, might object; but I decided to make copies.  Bill is perhaps the smartest of the bunch even if he looks in the photograph like someone who isn't cooking on all burners.  Anyway, the point is that I love these guys  and the absent Jacqueline and Helen, and am very proud to have been born into the same family as these beautiful people.  Life is good.

Exploring National City...  8th Street East...  This is an old part of San Diego.  National City has its own mayor and its own city council, but there is only a street between the two cities: Division Street. The houses in National City seem much older than most of the parts of San Diego that I knew before we moved to this place.  There is a small town feel to National City, and I like that.  The pictures I took today I got while driving the car.  There is nothing artistic about them, but the places in the photos are real.

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN, SYMPHONY NO. 9 IN D MINOR, OP. 125

I can't think of a better way to spend Sunday afternoon in the Christmas season than sitting comfortably in San Diego's symphony to hear the symphony orchestra with the master chorale presenting Beethoven's 9th Symphony.  Beethoven, at age 22 when he was not deaf, began at least thinking about putting Shiller's "An Die Freude" to music.  Twenty years later by the time he had actually finished the work so it could be played he was completely deaf.  We hear today "Ode to Joy" grateful that Beethoven, the cranky rascal that he was, actually lived and that we have the ability to hear his work... all of it.  It moves me to tears.  Life is good.

A Christmas Flower (San Diego) style.  The daily high temperature is not mid- to upper-60s... Not exactly Christmas like for most of the country, but it's the charm of San Diego and National City and Chula Vista... and Tijuana and other  parts of Mexico just to the south of us.

Of course, the people who read this BLOG know that what I'm really doing is finding ways and reasons not to talk about the political situation, but that unfortunate subject will not go away.  President-elect Trump is more worrisome as the time comes for him to shed the president-elect part of his title, and he will become President indeed.  The country, and indeed the world, is trying to figure out what the U.S. will become when he is President. I am trying-hoping to find at least some reason to be optimistic, but every day as his appointments to offices for his administration are becoming known I am becoming less hopeful.

So... I resort to finding beauty in the world around me, and the flowers are here.

  

Every year Steve Awe's Christmas Party is the event that begins the Christmas Season for the community where we lived for many years.  His house is always decorated with better taste than any other place in town, including the stores that sell Christmas decorations.  He also has the best people and the best food and ... I could go on and on about why this party is the best event of the season.

In the middle of the day Margaret and I had lunch with John and Carol Baker.  They go back to Washington State on Sunday, and then on Tuesday John makes a trip to Standing Rock.  He is the eternal social activist.  He will call from Standing Rock to give a report... What he finds there will be the real story.  These guys, too, are the spirit of Christmas.

The Christmas tree at the Miles home is the same one that stood at the previous home before the move... same tree, same ornaments, same spirit.  Life is good.

'Tis the Season...  National City doesn't let this holiday go unnoticed...especially at night.  The Harrison Street house isn't fancy, but the Joy of the Season shows in the decorations on the lawn and in the outline of the place... at night.  I hope the people there are happy.  Sixth Street houses aren't rich, but this one shouts CHRISTMAS. 

Just listened to the President's address... and was reminded that there is nothing the President-elect
can say that will be as clearly and intelligently articulated as the speech I just heard.  I miss President Obama even before he leaves office.  I am actually feeling sorry for the person who will take his place in the Oval Office because he will appear even less able than he actually is.  I am trying to be fair, but...

CHRISTMAS SEASON is here:  The other homes near us are celebrating Christmas with wreaths and trees and baubles and...  Stores are decorated with Christmas displays calculated to sell whatever it is the store is in business to sell.  There is a negative way to see the holidays and there is a positive way to see Christmas.  I am choosing the positive way. "You pays your money and you takes your choice."

GOOD DAY... SPECIAL VISIT... HAJIME AND MAILY:  Hajime was a student of mine once-upon-a-time.  He and Maily live in Hong Kong now, after living for a time in Shanghai.  What great friends! Life is good!

IS THE SUN SETTING OR RISING in America.  In National City and San Diego I know it is setting because there are no mountains in front of the sun and it is sinking into the Pacific.

I’ve been listening/watching today to the furor the President-elect has caused by his having had a  Phone conversation with the President of Taiwan.  In some other time the President-elect wouldn’t be talking with the President of Taiwan because he/she would know about a diplomatic agreement that was made between the U.S. and China.  The big question today is whether the President-elect knew but decided the conflict his phone conversation would make in the world would be interesting, or did he simply blunder into a diplomatic situation that surprised him and China? Whatever the reason for the President-elect’s conversation, the world will have to make an adjustment.  America will make an adjustment.  Another situation like this one could lead to war.  War would lead to lives being damaged, even lost.  That’s going to be the nature of the next four years. 

SUNFLOWER:  I came to the end of the day and didn't have my picture, so I saw a bouquet of flowers in our house and the solitary sunflower in it was droopy, on its way to the nevermind.  I decided that flower is a story that needs no words... only several pictures from several angles. Just as I was starting to write about Donald Trump's choosing a Defense Department head, I stopped short and decided the sunflower can tell its own story.

I went over to the old place again today, and I looked for the lizard.  He wasn't there, perhaps because his home had been eliminated... so I went back to the pictures I took yesterday when he was there and I found this one that I got very close up.  He is a monster if you look closely.  He is enough of a monster to scare the living daylight out of just about anybody... when seen up close.

Before I went over to look for the lizard, I sat at the new home and watched President-elect Trump and his vice president, the two of them made a special trip to the Carrier plant in Indiana, as they lied through their teeth about "the deal" the President-elect made with Carrier.  The President's lie extended to what he is promising to America when he actually steps into the role of president.  The untruth was the President-elect's story, a matter of nearly three hundred people who will join the other large group of people who will not have jobs when the company moves everybody but eight hundred (not the 1100, President-elect Trump said) whose jobs will be saved for at least the present time.  The company still move a great many jobs (but not the people who now have the jobs) to Mexico...  Perhaps as many as 2400 jobs will be lost in Indiana.  What the President-elect didn't say was that the deal he made with-for Carrier will cost the government, which is all of us, a huge amount of money in taxes that won't be paid by Carrier to say nothing of the value to the company of the publicity all over America that Carrier got by hosting the President-elect and the vice President at their plant in Indiana.

This new President is a showman who says one thing then does another.  We are going to see a different Donald Trump in his role as President when he moves into the White House in January. As he fills his cabinet and the other jobs in Washington that a new President has the responsibility to fill, we are already seeing something very different from what he described when he was campaigning.  Stay tuned for more of the same to come.