New photos taken with my cell phone

Keith Alan Hamilton, poet and photographer and creator of The Hamilton Gallery, came to visit from the Boston area a couple of weekends ago, and we toured him around some of our favorite places. Poems to accompany these photos will be posted soon.

Manhattan Beach

Marina del Rey

The Music Center and Disney Hall

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The Getty

Introducing Sonia Marsh

I met face to face with Sonia Marsh for the first time yesterday after a long virtual friendship and a lot of win-win networking.

She is the author of the newly released memoir Freeways to Flip-Flops (available at Amazon.com in both paperback and Kindle, as well as Barnes and Noble) and the Gutsy Living blog. I posted my gutsy story there in June, and I’m pleased to say, I won for the gutsiest story of the month. Please go over to Gutsy Living to receive a special gift. Just scroll down and look for the red starfish.

So Sonia and I talked nonstop – mostly about how to go about the business of selling a book. We shared websites, conference information, how to get on panel discussions, what organizations we belong to. I urged her to join our Greater Los Angeles Writers Society. Although Sonia lives in Orange County, GLAWS has members who come to meetings and events all the way from Arizona.

Yesterday’s highlight was meeting with one of the proprietors of my local indie bookstore: Pages in Manhattan Beach. Pages: A Bookstore held a wonderfully successful launch event for my memoir, Leaving the Hall Light On, in May 2011, and now Sonia will also have a book signing and reading there as well. 

Please look for more information about Sonia here at Choices. She’ll be my guest in September answering questions about her book, and I’ll post a review just as soon as I finish it.

Her topic – living on a tropical island for a year with her husband and three boys – is very reminiscent of the 19 months my family lived on a tiny island in the South Pacific back in the mid 1970s. 

Clouds

Whenever puffs of clouds are high in the sky I think of Georgia O'Keefe. While this morning's clouds against a true blue sky aren't really like Georgia's painted ones, they are just as beautiful.

July 19, 2012 - Manhattan Beach, CA

Georgia O'Keefe's Clouds

Yesterday's beauty

Seven-thirty in the morning - after the rain - Manhattan Beach

Family photos

I was practically obsessive about taking family photos – especially toward the end of Paul’s life. Like I had some sort of premonition. Unfortunately we don’t have a lot of early ones without my mother in them. She never wanted to be left out, and she always stood right up front and center. 

This first here was at the time of Paul’s graduation from grade school. The last was just a few months before he died. 

I am so fortunate to have this many. (Scroll down, there's a poem at the end.)

First Trophy

So after all

the dishes are washed

and put away

and she checks her emails

one last time

before closing her computer down,

she comes across an old photo,

a little crumpled

and faded

of her boy at age five,

her first-born son.

His blonde hair cut like

an upside-down cereal bowl

around his face,

his dark blue eyes twinkling,

his wide smile showing a gap

where his two front teeth should be,

he proudly holds up his

first soccer trophy

to the camera.

And she wonders if

she had hugged him more

would he be alive

and smiling today.

A perfect day for a walk on the beach

I usually take a big long walk to the beach on Sunday mornings, but now that it's lighter at six o'clock, I decided a walk this morning would be a nice change from the monotony of the gym. And I wasn't disappointed. As the sun began to appear I could see for blocks up the beach and all the way to Catalina. 

 The bike path looking toward the Manhattan Beach pier

 Hey, Catalina's out for a change

I could even see the strings of lights atop the pier round house

Heat wave reprieve

Today is the hottest day we've had this year, and it's way beyond the end of summer. Though I'm staying inside our well-insulated house and keeping quite cool, I still can't help longing for a nice long walk along the ocean.


As a substitute I've picked out a few photos I took of our beautiful Manhattan Beach shoreline this past year, and I plan to revisit it tomorrow morning before the sun comes up.

 View of the pier from The Strand

 The rocks at the north end

 On The Strand before full light

Ready for the game

Manhattan Beach September 11 Memorial

I had often wondered how our September 11 Memorial beams came to us. Our local paper, The Beach Reporter, solved the mystery for me this week. 


The article says Manhattan Beach resident, Jeff Neu, received the contract to recycle the steel from the World Trade Center, and he donated two red beams from the collapsed towers to the Manhattan Beach Fire Department. The memorial on the corner of Fifteenth Street and Valley Drive, in front of the fire department, was designed by Scott Yanofsky of the Terra Firma Group and dedicated on September 11, 2007. Yanofsky designed the placement of the beams to mirror the placement of the towers as they stood at the World Trade Center.


A memorial ceremony is planned for tomorrow, September 11, 2011, at 8 am at the memorial site. Since I live just a few blocks away, on Valley Drive, I'll be there. Please join if you can.

The Manhattan Beach September 11 Memorial

Launching A Landmark

I live in a land of landmarks –

the Hollywood sign,

the dinosaurs out in Cabazon,

the big brown donut (Inglewood’s claim to fame),

the light towers at LAX,

the hand and footprints of the stars

inlaid into the Graumann’s Chinese Theater patio,

and the giant windmills gracing the entrance

to our desert resorts.

All touristy and cheesy for my taste

except for the new sculpture

just down the street from my house.

Created from the I-beams salvaged

from the World Trade Center Towers,

it sits on our new Fire Department property

aligned to echo how the buildings stood

in downtown New York.

But, I fear it hasn’t reached the landmark stage -

I don’t yet see hordes

of people gaping at it

with tears in their eyes

and sighs of remembrance.

by Madeline Sharples

(April 2009)

"We Shall Never Forget."

Broken foot update

Today is five months and one day since Bob fell down a dark stairway in a Sutter Creek, California bed and breakfast and broke his foot. Those of you who follow my blog know the story – surgery two weeks later to pin the three broken metatarsal bones together because of all the ligament damage, months of his riding around on a scooter-like vehicle called a RollerAid, walking for weeks after that wearing the Boot, and months of physical therapy. Plus until he could get rid of the boot I was his chauffeur. Believe me, none of it was a pleasant experience.

So here’s an update. He is walking very well wearing New Balance extra wide shoes though his foot is still red and swollen. He does foot exercises and soaks his foot in ice water twice a day, he works out at the gym twice a week with a personal trainer and once on his own, and he has begun to walk for about thirty minutes each day.

I wish I could say that his exercise program is pain free, but that is not so yet. He’s thinking about going back to physical therapy to see if that would help ease the pain. However, he walks free from the back pain that was caused by his having to move around on the scooter and later the boot, putting his body totally out of balance.  So he is making progress. And he goes at a pretty good clip – he complained yesterday that I wasn’t moving fast enough for him.

Well, I improved my gait, and I take great pleasure in being able to walk with him again. But, because I don’t find those 30-minute walks enough exercise for me, we walk after I return from the gym.

However, since he picks the routes – different from the ways I usually go on my big long walks – I get to discover new things around my little beach city. I took a couple of photos of one of our new statues in the patio area between the Manhattan Beach police department, city hall, and library. The patio has four sculptures, but this one is my favorite. I don’t know the title, so I’ve named it Fire Lady. Anybody out there want to give her another name?

Fire Lady - front and back

A gray morning

Just as "Morning Has Broken" began to play on my iPod, the sun started to show through from behind the clouds. 

 The end of the Manhattan Beach Pier

Looking east up Manhattan Beach Boulevard from the end of the pier

The wonder of "room air"

It’s been quite a week. From Bob’s first day home until today we’ve been on a roller coaster ride. He was very weak at first and experienced shortness of breath just walking on his crutches from his bed to the bathroom – a few feet away. But by the time he went to his cardiologist on Tuesday, his second day home, he was like another person – with it, no shortness of breath, and moving quite agilely on either his walker or crutches. And when his doc concluded, after an EKG, chest x-rays, and a controlled test of Bob breathing “room air,” that Bob no longer needed oxygen, Bob’s attitude and mood changed in a flash. By the time we got home he was ready to go back to using his scooter to avoid the wrist and underarm discomfort he felt with the crutches. No more worry over oxygen tubing gave him the confidence.

We both began to feel so confident about his health and mood that we talked again about attending a family wedding in San Diego – a two-hour drive away – this weekend. But we would go only for one night, the night of the wedding, and miss the planned festivities for tonight.

I even took his tux to the cleaners and asked the owner to undo the right pants seam about ten inches from the bottom so he could get his big foot into the pants.

However, yesterday he began complaining about pain, the first time all week. He had been controlling it with Advil every 24 hours so he knew this pain was different. We got an emergency appointment with his foot surgeon who agreed there was something to this new unusual pain – we had done the right thing by coming in. When he took off the bandages and dressing he found a slight infection in one of the two incisions he has in his foot. So now Bob is on two antibiotics and a pain medication.

And 24 hours later he is feeling much better.

We still think we’ll go ahead to San Diego, but we'll make a final decision tomorrow morning. I’ll hate to miss it – I have a new dress for the formal occasion, but it wouldn’t be the first or last thing I’ll have missed in my life.

I must say thanks to all the help we received this week. My friend Marlene brought in lunch and took us to the cardiologist on Tuesday, my niece Dara took care of him so I could go to my own medical appointment on Wednesday, Ben came over countless times and helped his dad take his showers, our massage wonder-woman brought over her table and gave us both massages last evening, and she and her mate are bringing us dinner tonight. Plus we had two visits from home heath nurses and a physical therapist. It’s been a hectic and heartwarming week. We are very blessed even in light of this bumpy time in our lives.

I left Bob for a short while this morning to walk downtown Manhattan Beach to the grocery store, and I couldn’t resist taking a look at my ocean while I was out. It rained heavily last night, and the sky threatened more rain today even though the sun was bright and warm. I never tire of taking photos of my beach – it is just one more blessing in my life.

Saturday morning about 9:00 am

Last stone for NaSmaStoMo

Jan 31: 

I walked just one block toward the ocean this morning, and the salt air and sunshine told me just how glorious a day this is going to be. 

Small Stones seven through thirteen

Jan 7: I’m going through each page of my manuscript combing every line for my editor’s neatly printed turquoise blue pen marks.

Jan 8: We sit crushed together on hard folding-chair seats, gobbling down every word our writing gurus say.

Jan 9: The little babies converse across the booth seat as we eat at the Corner Bakery this morning.

Jan 10: I watch the tiny leaves sway in the yard next door under a gray, gloom.

Jan 11: One loud jolt, then a short rumbling shake. Yes, a small earthquake but I don't worry. (And I lived to write about it.)

Jan 12: The waves roll in lazily; their whitecaps barely able to touch the shore.

Jan 13: A starling family hops around a small garden near the beach, their dark metallic feathers etched with gold specks.

First small stones

North end of Manhattan Beach

NaSmaStoMo entries for days one through three:

Jan 1: The puffy white jet streams intersect the morning’s clear blue sky, belying those dire predictions of rain.

Jan 2: The bubbles dance on my cement pool’s surface, waiting for the birds to drink.

Jan 3: My little Buddhas in green, gold, silver, and stone, greet me with laughter, success, and good health. They watch me closely as I write.