Ten Years Later

Sunday, September 11, 2011

Why does that date sound familiar?  We are in San Diego, exactly where we were ten years ago.  All of the radio stations and TVs seem to be hell bent on examining every little detail of that date.  All I remember is that my first thought was that I needed to get to my office immediately and make sure that our Muslim students at our language program were safe from the yahoos that I knew would be coming around campus in their trucks and SUVS.  We all made sure everyone was safe and arranged for counseling for anyone in the college that needed it; none did, and we continued to do what we normally did.

We landed in the mid-afternoon yesterday and had time to take a lovely walk along the harbor and for the life of me I can’t understand why we ever left.  This has to be one of the most magnificent cities in the world.  It is a typical day here in San Diego.  The weather people on the radio and TV have the best jobs in the world.  Every day they only have to say, “Sunny with blue skies, high in the mid-seventies, lows in the mid-sixties, no chance of rain, snow or hurricanes.  

We are here for two days and then I head to Phoenix for meetings and Cindy to Ellensburg for meetings with friends.  We’ll reconvene here on Thursday for another four days before heading back to Charles Town.  We had five days of rain and I had to mow the lawn in the rain since the grass was as tall as corn on the fourth of July.  I finally figured out that I had an attachment for just such mowing, but it took me half a day to figure that out.  Things went much faster after that.

We had a marvelous time in Florida for Megan’s wedding.  We now have a new son and two new and beautiful granddaughters aged 13 and 16 and we couldn’t be happier.  Everything went like clock work and we were able to find some quiet time to be with the grandkids and with Valley and Kent.  The wedding was at an old chapel on the beach in Boca Grande.  We all had a ball and the reception was just delightful with no drama and lots of laughs and great dancing.

Our trip to Florida taught me that when it comes to hotels, sometimes less is much more.  Our little hotel in Punta Gorda came with free Wi-Fi, bottles of water, great coffee in the lobby and more smiles that you can imagine.  Everyone was so helpful and genuinely happy to be of service, all for $72 dollars a night for a lovely room with a balcony overlooking the marina.  Our first night was in a grand hotel in St. Petersburg, which turned out to be one of the loveliest cities I’ve ever visited, at least the water section was.  I’m told that downtown can be a bit raunchy but we had a ball.

We, and a few hundred others, had a lovely run along the harbor this morning.  There was an awareness race for Crohn’s Disease and there were three or four hundred folks running in the early sunshine to the driving rhythms of a rock band, who judging from the way they were playing, had not seen sunshine for years.  We got off the beaten path and while Cindy continued to run, I walked along the park where the USS Midway is based.  It is now a lovely museum and there are tons of great planes on her deck.  I walked near a family - father and mother and two-year-old girl.  All of a sudden the little blond girl stopped walking and pointed to the ground yelling for her mother who was a few steps ahead.  I had thought that perhaps she had seen a bug or something but the mother said something to her in a Slavic language and then called to the father who came back and stood next to her making motions with his hand and talking in a funny voice.  Well, it turned out that the little girl was afraid of her shadow and he was showing her his shadow and how it moved when he did.  She was fascinated and began the same arm motions and began to laugh with excitement.  Cindy had seen most of this but didn’t know what was happening until I explained it at coffee.  She then said that they must have been from some northern Slavic country were the sun never shines and this was the first time the little girl had seen a shadow.  That cracked me up!

We had dinner last night with our dear friends Beffini and Gladys, and like all good friendships we took up right were we left off three years ago as thought it had been three days.  There are no signs of recession in the Gaslamp area of San Diego.  The bars are filled, the restaurants are filled, and people are spending lots of money on good wines and food.  They are all beautiful people dressed to the nines and you would have a hard time convincing anyone that the country was going to hell in an economic handbag.  So we are going with the flow and heading out for lunch. 

Hope you all have a lovely Sunday, Cindy and Wm.