There is this small photo, badly faded, i have kept with me since 1974. It captures a two-year old as a bike rider. She is in a Texas A&M sweater and knit cap, and she is making the Aggie’s “gig ’em” sign with her left hand, her thumb jutting up in the air, with a big smile on her face.

i cropped the photo down to fit in a small frame and put it on my fold out desk in my stateroom on the U.S.S. Hollister in Long Beach. i would have put it in the log room, the chief’s engineer’s headquarters on a FRAM destroyer, but i seldom used my desk there because of so many engineers needing access to the space.

i did put it in the first lieutenant’s office when i transferred to the U.S.S. Anchorage in March 1975. The smile of  the girl in the photo lit up my day every day while my ship was on a seven-month deployment to the Western Pacific.

Even before my next tour at Texas A&M, the marriage was unraveling, and i realized i would not be a at-home dad for the girl in the photo. At A&M, the photo was on my desk in the NROTC office. The girl’s smile gave me hope in my darkest hour ever.

Then i truly went away. The girl in the photo stayed with her mother in Texas. That was the way things worked in those days. Regardless, i was faced with making a heart-breaking decision because i was determined to do what was best for my daughter regardless of the pain i felt at my loss of being with her every day.

From then on, the photo always has been near my desk, wherever  that might be. Tonight, it is on the lower hanging shelf above my desk. It is the first thing i see in the morning, and i greet the day with the thought of “Gig ’em.” The photo has always made it easier to take on the day, regardless of the impending good or bad.

Ironically, the girl in the photo, one Blythe Jewell Gander, eventually graduated from tu, or the University of Texas, Austin as it is called derisively by the Aggies, and she is not an Aggie fan.

i am not wise in the ways of modern photo touchup technology, so this is pretty much the way it looks in my small frame.

But it makes no difference for that photo of her smiling with that thumb pointed to the sky makes me smile, and i am ready to get it on every day.

i often write about how the weather in the Southwest corner is impacted by the marine layer. Sometimes i praise it. More often than not, i complain about it causing “May Gray” and “June Gloom.”

Sometime in early July, it goes away.

If the truth be told, in spite of San Diego having the best weather in the world year round unless you like below freezing temperatures, snow for four months out of the year, or hot and humid days, one of its real attractions for me is the marine layer giving the Southwest corner an aura of the place being a real seaport town, not a paradise. When the marine layer rolls in at night, i can smell, feel the sea where i spent a significant part of my life; i remember other sea towns in far off places; and for brief moments, i am a mariner again.

But for most of my readers, the marine layer is an unknown. It’s hard to describe, hard to understand.

Friday during our weekly early morning round of golf, the sun came through around 10:00 a.m., or four bells to an old sailor. We had just finished the fourteenth hole when i looked up and saw the perfect example of the marine layer. It had receded from land and west off of Point Loma and was hovering waiting for the perfect July weather in the mid-70’s to give way to the evening cool and swoop back in to give us a gray evening.

Perhaps this might give you a better idea of my marine layer:

For all of those who might wonder, Maureen and i arrived home about an hour ago. We have unpacked. Maureen is doing a quick grocery run, and i fooling with this dagnabbit contraption before a serious nap.

We had an incredibly wonderful time with Alan and Maren Hicks in Sonoma. Our dinner last night with Bob Thiel and Peter  in Santa Barbara was, as it always is with Bob, a great dinner and a super reconnect.

More later, but a NORP is waiting.

i have just had a wonderful six days, including celebrating our 240th Independence Day. As Maureen sleeps in our motel room before we complete our journey from home to Sonoma and back, i find myself sitting here with an innumerable number of things i would like to write about but probably never will. The sad thing is all of these things make me sad.

Without going into specifics, what makes me most sad is most of my friends and damn near all of the people in this world cannot treat other people with respect because they are so focused on themselves, they have been duped into believing stupid things, they refuse to think, and they are too lazy to think deeply.

Wake up, world. Your primary job is to live well and treat other people well. Start caring and quit hating.

i want to explain but it will not resolve anything more than my thoughts here will have any impact.

Our forefathers did not create the Declaration of Independence or write and adopt the Constitution for personal gain. They wished to establish a country of freedom and equality. Even if they weren’t aware of the long-term global significance of freedom for everyone, that was their intent. They and many others after them have died or suffered greatly defending that right to be free.

Dressing up in our country’s flag or some sad replica of our flag’s parts (mostly against our flag’s code), shooting fireworks, having parades, gorging on food, getting drunk, or all other sorts of odd behavior has a feel-good aspect because people are trying to celebrate our independence.

But the real celebration should be respecting everyone else’s independence. We, meaning all of us who live in this wonderful 240-year old country to which all, and i mean all of us immigrated at one time or another, need to practice that.

That, my friends, is the way we should celebrates our independence.

i have intended to post an annotated pictorial on yesterday’s parade in the Sonoma Plaza, but i am not sure if i will ever get to it. We hit the road this morning for  our drive back to the Southwest corner with a stop in Santa Barbara tonight and dinner with another close friend from Vanderbilt days.

But there was one photo of a parade moment that captured me. As the beautiful horses were doing their struts for a slew of Vaqueros, there was one near the rear who had checked out. His father, one could tell, was a caring man: