My friend has a bumper sticker on her car saying DRIVER SINGING. She lives to sing, she lives for music.

What do I live for? Tonight I am too tired to figure this one out. Maybe tomorrow.

I am struggling with getting our zen center's voice mail system working. I call to retract the messages and I am told that it is closed.

I call the number the voice says to call and the line is either busy or rings endlessly with no message.

I feel so frustrated in trying to resolve this. I suspect that there is an easy solution that I can't see as long as I am frustrated.

Sigh

Today I am bored by everything I am reading, bored, bored, bored.

I am in a funk, reading 20 pages from the stack of books on the floor and then saying NO this doesn't work for me. Maybe I am just bored with my life, I don't want to think that.

My friend Ken gave me a book that he is sure to shake me out of the doldrums, BRIDGE OF SIGHS by Richard Russo. I have always loved his books. And yes I am at page 20 and I am going to continue.

Thank you Ken

A solitary Blue heron is visiting the communal nesting site down the street. Hurray.

Day light savings time has started. Late afternoon walk. Warm day is becoming full of long cool shadows.

Somewhere a Taiko Drumming program is going on. Loud rhythmic drum beats, cymbals and bell sounds fill the downtown neighborhood.

Families leaving the beach, cranky kids, tired parents.

Now it is dark. For the next four months the days will end early.

Time to eat soup and turn on the lights.

Early morning walk by the harbor. Still there is a red tint to the water. Long lines of pelicans fly close to the surface. Sail boats on wheeled carriages are waiting to enter the water. A warm fall day.

In the inner harbor I see two dead grebes, white bellies floating up, necks trailing in the water.

I pick up donuts and return home to read the morning paper.

I sat in the back seat while my friend drove to Menlo Park.

I wondered again who thought of lining the 8 lane highway in the hot Santa Clara Valley with long lines of desperate looking, unhappy redwood trees.


This is not their home, this is jail for them. Tall skinny trees lined up in a row, witnessing the madness of cars roaring by.

Sigh

Spent two days in Disaster preparedness for chaplains at our local hospital. Two days of envisioning fires, earthquakes, epidemics, floods, plane crashes, terrorists attacks, various ways of becoming homeless, starve, be ill. It was all so exhausting.

One story came out of the San Diego fires and evacuation of a million people. They had shelters, food, water, cots, medical care. They handed out bags of food. What no one remembered to take when they fled their homes, was a can opener to get to the food.

So remember to put in your car today, now, a can opener so if you have to evacuate in a hurry, you can open the donated food.

Now I feel like I have started training to do chaplain work in a disaster situation at the hospital.