BACK AT THE PARK behind the National City Library:  A couple of photos that I haven't posted here on the Blog are a piano and a mural at the front of the art center.  The piano is an old upright that invites anybody who wants to do it to play.  The other is a mural with a flavor of the country that begins just ten miles down the freeway.  I like the mural so much that I go back to see it often.  It is worth a trip to National City just to see it.  If you are lucky when you come to see the mural someone will be playing the piano.

O.K. I know I've posted a photo of my shadow... more than once, but here we go again.  Just inside the door of the elevator room for my building at Paradise village, in the morning the sun is shining so brightly and so directly on whoever is standing at the elevator, that a shadow is projected on the wall and the furniture and even on the painting.  I couldn't resist taking another one this morning.

The Sun Harbor Chorus came to Paradise Village today, and the music was good... better than good. The men, all from San Diego, were dressed as Santa's elves.  The music was exactly what you would expect in December... Christmas.  First  I was impressed with the costumes: that men would dress in whimsical elf costumes.  Then, these guys can really sing.  The program was presented seriously, and it was received by residents of Paradise Village as a serious program.  I was proud to be a member of the community.

Anywhere in the world where trees are recognized as precious objects, works of natural art, the citizens of that place will survive.   And places where trees are sometimes used as surfaces where people carve their initials or their names, the very idea of art in that place is distorted and the education of citizens lacks something important. 

In a beautiful space behind the library in National City where I live there grows a beautiful tree.  It is respected by citizens who use the park and there aren't carved initials anywhere on the trunk of the beautiful tree.  In Balboa Park, not far from several museums where wonderful art is exhibited, near a parking lot there stands a tree that is marred by names and initials carved in the bark. In National City, there is a building which declares that "Arts" are a reason to survive.  That building with its colorful sign on the front looks out over the park where the beautiful tree with leaves that don't fall in the autumn stands boldly, unscathed by people with knives who carve their names on tree bark.  All of us who recognize that "Arts" are among the reasons we survive are invited to come and celebrate and appreciate art... and all of us who recognize the truth of the idea that art helps us survive come to Balboa Park to enjoy art from all over the world.  Why isn't it obvious to everyone that spoiling the bark of trees is basically wrong.

Paradise Village has crossed some kind of calendar line that turns every wall and every open space into something that screams "CHRISTMAS."  Garlands are hung on every rail, and the nativity scene as big as life is set up near the front fountain, and in the small park in back of our building two deer and a white Christmas tree are supposed to make us old people remember places in our youth where there was snow and and and...  Margaret and I attended a concert in the auditorium this afternoon that featured women singing Christmas carols.  I'm worried that the reason for the season may be lost in all the decorations... but that's an old worry that won't go away when December 25th comes and goes.  The decorations are beautiful and fresh.  The figures in the nativity scene out front recall an important event in the history of the world.  The garlands are grand.

I am going to try hard to think about peace on earth during the weeks before Christmas... and I am going to appreciate the tired old palm tree on 4th Street  in front of the village... and I am going to think about peace especially for North Korea.  I am going to refuse to feel afraid even when the President goes on another rant about the people of that country and their president.

I am one lucky son-of-a-gun.  These two boys (men), Michael and Jeremy, are the sons of my God Daughter, Elaine and her husband, Patrick.  They call me Grandpa, and they call Margaret Grandma.  I think they know that we are not blood related, but what they do know is that Margaret and I could not have grandchildren that we love more than we love these guys.  The reason they are stars of this BLOG entry is that this week both of them have birthdays.  Michael will be 26 and Jeremy will be 24... so here's wishing the best to the best.  Today's birthday lunch was special because their cousin Dael, another Grandchild, made three lazagnia's, each with special ingredients, and the very special pear pie pictured below... an incredible creation.  Patrick made the delicious ice cream cake also pictured below (and his famous French bread.)  

The park behind the National City Library reassures me that Art in America is alive and well in small cities.  Actually, National City is a suburb of San Diego, but it is actually an independent city apart from the city of San Diego or of Chula Vista.  I don't know who the artists are who created the things I saw today, but they are artists worthy of the name.  If I live here long enough, perhaps I will meet some of them.

The sunsets this year are incredible.  This is our second year as residents of Paradise Village, and I remember the sunsets last year, so perhaps it isn't unusual for sunsets here to be spectacular.  We have three windows facing west, and often Margaret interrupts me in whatever task I am intent on finishing to say that I really must look at the sunset, and she is always right.  The sunset on any evening in autumn is worth stopping anything that is in progress to look... and to take a picture.

Outside the door that leads to the elevator is a strange cactus, one growing out of another parent cactus.  I stopped one day a couple of weeks ago and got a picture of this cactus, and I posted it on the BLOG.  Tonight I got it from another angle.  Enjoy!

Paradise Village is filled with Birds of Paradise blooming at their peak.  I am amazed at the natural designs of these flowers.  The colors are perfect.

Jerral and Margaret at Balboa Park.  A women was walking along as I was taking a picture of Margaret in front of a beautiful palm tree, and she asked if I'd like to be in the picture with the lovely lady.  Of course, I handed her my phone and here's the picture.

The other two picture are melaleuca tree images.  I don't remember if I'd ever made a picture of the whole tree, so I got it today.  This is the tree that makes abstract shapes whenever the trunk receives a wound. I got a picture of one of those as well.   

Margaret came into my study and asked if I had seen the deer and Christmas Tree on the back lawn.  I thought she had actually seen real deer ... and I didn't wonder what kind of Christmas tree she had seen.  She laughed at me when I asked, incredulously  where the deer might have come from.  She told me they were a Christmas decoration, and I knew I had to go out and take a picture.

Earlier in the day, I had been sitting in the doctor's waiting room admiring the photographs on the wall by a photographer, Robert Dunn... and I was reminded that somewhere in the world autumn was happening.  Dunn's photographs were of trees in a forest.  Wonderful!  I couldn't resist taking photos with my cell phone.  I know it's probably illegal to post some photographs by another photographer, so I found his name signed at the bottom of the prints and I borrowed  for my Blog.

Melaleuca Trees growing around San Diego are from Australia and the islands surrounding that place. I like the ambiguity of these fascinating plants.  The bark splits and peels and looks for all the world as if it is trying to becoming something else besides what it is.  On this Blog I've posted images of melaleuca trees in the area where I once lived, and now I've found another tree, in San Diego, that will probably provide many hours of inspection and will undoubtedly provide images for the BLOG.These trees continue to produce green leaves during the Autumn and December when other deciduous trees shed their leaves.  If the temperature fell only a few degrees below what is normal for this region, the trees would die.

Strange day... strange times.  I sat for awhile in our living room early this morning, and the living room was still not light.  Looking west toward the ocean, a bank of fog was rising, and I watched it all day as it gradually covered the area with dampness, but no rain yet.  On a trip out of Paradise Village I passed through the elevator room downstairs, and I saw the shadow of myself on the wall.  If we can cast a shadow, it means we are still alive.  Later in the day Margaret and I went for a walk through the area between the four main buildings of the residence area of Paradise Village.  Nobody has told the orchid trees that autumn is here and blooming trees are not supposed to be showing off at this time of the year.

Eric and Tiffany Johnson with Nina, Margaret and Irene, dinner at Paradise Village.  Julian was with his grandparents in Julian.  I took the photograph of the snail after I picked up the mail around 10 o'clock. I thought about saying something about life creeping on etc. but decided against it.

The Davids' backyard was a perfect place this afternoon for a Thanksgiving feast... It was a place where seven people, The Davids, Jeremy, two guests from Germany, Margaret and I met for a time of being thankful for the blessings of being alive in this place on the earth and for a wonderful afternoon lunch.  The Davids are vegetarians, so the menu included wonderful vegetable dishes.  Margaret cooked a turkey and some of us ate that.  The deserts included an amazing plume strudle, and a chocolate cream pie.  Family and friends together on a Thanksgiving afternoon are enough to include in our thoughts and our thanks those family and friends who are celebrating Thanksgiving somewhere else.

Margaret and I just came into the house from seeing the movie The Great Gatsby.  The F. Scott Fitzgerald story was made into an earlier movie, maybe fifty years ago, and this one was made in 2013 with Leonardo de Caprio as Gatsby.  I recommend it now with at least as much enthusiasm as when I recommended the novel to students in my senior English classes.  We saw it today in the Paradise Village theatre, and I sat wondering how all those (we) older people managed all that sex in a story.  I wonder how my students managed it.  Now I'm going to have to reread the novel to see if it is really as erotic as the movie made four years ago makes it.

I had set out the photo of dried grass to use as my photograph for today, and then I found another photograph that I think serves perfectly with the grass and the movie.  It is Christian Rohfls' nude.  I took this photograph last Friday when Margaret and I were on a docent tour of the museum.  I'm not going to try to explain why I think these two photographs go together with Fitzgerald's story.