Today was a great day! It started with driving from Gilroy
(Garlic Capital of the World, in case you missed that post - you really can smell it all over town) to attend services
at the Center for Spiritual Living in San Jose. What a wonderful experience...
it started with lively music and a skit with spiritual lessons. The skit was based
on the movie Willy Wonka and the
Chocolate Factory with Gene Wilder. (It was one of Suzanne’s favorite
movies as a kid; Ty was at sea, and didn’t see it).
Reverend David Bruner, the minister at CSLSJ, was an
engaging, eloquent speaker, and had much to say about the recent tragic events
in Aurora, Colorado. Suzanne and I were introduced and welcomed, and the
Messages of Hope documentary showing on Thursday evening and S.O.A.R! Workshop
on Saturday were announced. We look forward to meeting more of the CSLSJ
community later this week at these events.
We then drove north to our next campground. But on the way,
a couple of sights of interest caught my attention. Just north of San Jose is
the now-closed Solyndra solar panel plant; Solyndra, controlled in large part
by a major Obama fundraiser, was the first company approved for a loan under
the Obama administration in 2009, even after an Energy Department panel
recommended unanimously that the loan not be approved because of high risk. It
is unlikely that the $527 million dollar loan funded by taxpayers will ever be
seen again. It was a depressing sight.
The more positive encounter was passing the Rosie the Riveter
Memorial in Richmond, CA, at a former WWII shipyard. This poster made everyone
aware of women’s contributions to the war effort. The memorial sculpture, made
of stainless steel, evokes a ship’s hull being built, and honors the estimated
18 million women who worked in US defense and support industries between 1941
and 1945. For more information about the memorial and women’s efforts in WWII,
see http://www.rosietheriveter.org
Driving around San Francisco Bay, we saw the Golden Gate
Bridge looming out of the fog. Suzanne’s step-grandfather worked as an engineer
designing the bridge in the 1920’s/30’s. We hope to make a visit to Golden Gate
Park later this trip.
We arrived at our new campground this afternoon. It consists
of only six sites, the smallest RV campground we have ever seen. It is located
on a small lake at the US Coast Guard Training Center in Petaluma, in the
middle of a ranching and farming area. You can’t see the Pacific Ocean from
here, but I guess it’s a good place to learn (the Coast Guard has EMT, medical,
culinary, operations specialist and electronics training here). We have seen
more deer here in two hours than anywhere else on our trip. Here are views from
The Bus and on the lake shore.
“Cougar?” Even though
we don’t watch TV, we have heard the term “cougar” in the pop culture
vernacular. No, Suzanne has not told me that she’s replacing me with a young Chippendale
guy. This warning sign in the campground gave me pause to reflect. Guess I’ll be
carrying my knife when I walk Rudy and Gretchen.
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