Home again... We got home last night after 11 pm... and today we found the hummingbird nest on the back patio.  The hummingbird nest at the front of the house had in it a chick that was two weeks old when we left a couple of weeks ago, and the nest was empty today; so the little bird has grown big enough to fly.  The new nest and the new bird has at least one egg that we will watch and photograph for the next few weeks.  Huw and Betty had the pleasure of seeing the nest being built and the bird sitting on it laying the egg. Margaret and I will have the pleasure of seeing the baby birds hatch and grow into flying creatures in our back yard.

I'll choose at least one picture from each of the days of the river trip in Europe, and I'll post them on the BLOG... Maybe later today when my old body has recovered from the long day of flying from Prague to San Diego I'll post the pictures.

Berlin… I’ve never seen another place that changes itself as often as this one does.  This is not even close to being the oldest city in Europe, but since its beginning It has metamorphosed from decade to decade into something different from what was when it was just a small village. I find myself thinking and saying the United States cannot become a country that denies “different” individuals a safe place to live… and then I hear a politician who arrogantly promises people who follow him a place that denies sanctuary to fragile people who are “different.”  Immediately before World War II Berlin was a city of almost 4 million people. It has at times been a place of sanctuary for millions of displaced persons… and it has at other times been a place of terror for people who didn’t fit the appropriate definition of legitimacy.  According to city guides Berlin and its surrounding urban area make it the third largest city in the world. I'm not sure I believe their description of their city, but I'll check it when I get home.  

When I was first in Berlin fewer than two decades ago, it was still easy to find areas where great sections of the wall separated East Berlin from West Berlin. Now there are only a few pieces of the wall standing for tourist photographs.  The joke here is that desks all over the world display little pieces of the old wall brought back by people who have visited Berlin since the wall came down officially in 1989. I remind myself that responsible citizens of the United States must stand against political leaders who would make America a scary place to live for any group of citizens.

One of the things that I came across on a busy street was a display of TOM’S shoes.  My friend Hajime Birnbaum has been and still is an executive with the company that gives away to someone poor a pair of shoes for every pair that it sells on the commercial market. Tom’s shoes represents one of the best impulses of business in the world.  Berlin under Hitler represented the scariest, the worst reason to be in business.  We must be careful.  The world is still not a safe place for people whose race, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation makes them “different”  from the majority of people who see themselves as right and appropriate in their own race, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation.  

Berlin today seems to have become again a place of sanctuary.  Diversity among people is obvious even on the streets in this city.  It seems strange and is sobering when I get acquainted with a citizen here who is appalled by what some politicians in America are saying about what needs to be done to make that country a secure place for its people.

The future king
 and queen of England, now the Duke and Dutchess of Cambridge, have gone on a trip to Bhutan.  Their hosts are the young King and Queen of Bhutan.  Perhaps the world will take notice that Bhutan’s first and most important goal for the people of the country is happiness…  No Joke.  I haven’t been to Bhutan personally, but I know some people who have been there; and happiness is taken seriously.  I haven’t asked Peg Ross for permission to use her as an individual who has been to Bhutan, has worked there, and who is a good example of someone who fits the image of “happy person.” 

In a troubled world, a world that has been and continues to focus on material goals rather than something like happiness, perhaps it is time to refocus.  Today as Margaret and I walked around the hotel where we are staying in Berlin, we came across little sidewalk markers in front of houses where people were taken away to concentration camps by the Nazi.  They were killed because they were considered undesirables… because of their religion, their ethnic or racial origins, or their sexual orientation… Enough already.  

Berlin on Wednesday:  Today I revisited several places in the old German city that I had seen years ago.  Germany is incredibly modern today, but the old signs of war and conflict are still there everywhere.  The memorial church left as a bombed out shell in the middle of what was West Berlin is a good argument against war, and the small memorial tiles left on the streets where people once lived before they were taken away to concentration camps and death are grim reminders of evil that slips into the lives of people almost unnoticed by neighbors. The great Brandenburg Gate, built in the 1780s and during the Cold War separated West Germany from East Germany moved me today.  The German U.S. Embassy sits in what was once East Germany just inside the East side of the famous gate.  Today especially I was reminded to hope that America will not advance Donald Trump’s program to become a leader of American Government.  No one likes to hear a comparison between Trump and the old dictator Hitler, but unfortunately much of what Trump says in his campaign speech reminds me of Hitler’s blindness to the evil he brought to a nation not even a hundred years ago. I saw a water clock today that reminded me of Trump's speeches.  We live in the age of computers and electronic images, not an age of old fashioned ideas based in discrimination and tired rhetoric about "making my country great again." We have enough trouble in the world without building walls that some future generation will have to tear down.  

Flying all night from Newark to Berlin, I didn’t sleep well.  In the morning I took pictures of the cloud landscapes.  Wow!  Later after a late breakfast, we walked through the bombed out church build by and dedicated to Kaiser Wilhelm.  Built in 1893, most of the church was destroyed by bombers in 1943. It's a magnificent monument today, a testimony against war.

I am sitting in Newart Airport waiting for a flight to Berlin, and I’ll send today’s photographs for the BLOG tomorrow from the hotel in Berlin.  Margaret, Ruth, Bill and I happened into a March of Dimes fundraising supper sponsored by United Airlines employees… The people in the photograph are United employees who insisted on getting a picture for their effort to raise money for the March of Dimes.  Life is good.  We left San Diego at 6:30 this morning and will leave for Berlin just before 6 this evening. Where in the world is Trump getting his information that Americai sn’t great anymore?  I’ll write more later, but not about Donald Trump.  (There is an alarm going off in the airport.  Passengers aren’t hurrying.  The alarm stopped.  No explanation.)  Maybe we’ve been on the West Coast too long to understand the wonderful East Coast way of doing things. The United plane at dock 120 is the one we are taking to Berlin.

In the air again:  The flight to Berlin from Newark aims into darkness.  We will get to morning in Berlin and the end of the flight in under eight hours.  I am aware again that the earth is round, and I am fortunate to experience the planet as a ball in space. My grandmother refused to believe anything about the earth except what the Bible said it was.  The Bible spoke of four corners, so she thought it had to be square.  I last saw her when I was thirteen, and she said she believed the earth was flat.  It looked flat to her, and the only authority that made sense to her was the Bible.  I wonder what she would be thinking these days about Trump and Cruz and the folks in congress who deny what science tells them about the causes of the changes in climate.  

O.K., O.K...  I couldn't stay away from the container with the remains of the tulips I followed, day by day, for two weeks.  It is now Sunday again and three weeks since the little tulips began to bloom.  Here they are... finished.  There is a lesson here somewhere, but I've decided to let it go... to see the beauty still in these blossoms and to be satisfied with that.