In Praise of My Father, an Architect

     Maybe my eye for things came from my father. He graduated with a degree in architecture and had worked in that field until we moved to the United States when I was six. After we moved here, he did a little bit of drafting work for UCLA and ABC TV studios but spent the rest of his career as a facilities manager. Thereafter, architecture was an occasional hobby or favor he would do for friends. I loved watching him work on his drafting table at night. He not only designed buildings but did sketches of nature and people to adorn his buildings. He definitely had done enough studies of people and trees to render decent work. He recently told me he once dabbled in photography as a young adult in college. He and his friend would use their Leica and Hasselblad cameras to capture mostly pictures of people and perhaps nature and buildings too. He still has the canvas portraits he took of my mom and brother.  

    So in honor of him and of course my loving mother, who together conceived, bore, and raised me, I present these pictures of a building and its campus.  It will be the first part in a series of studying the church in which I worship and also live. 

Park Day with Beautiful Children

So I went to the park a couple days ago with my homeschooling friends.  There is something about swings and slides that brings out the fun in kids and makes for very cool compositional angles.  And yes, these are the children God gave me.  Am I blessed or what? :-)

More Diamonds in the Rough

      Sometimes I am surprised by how much nature there is around me.  I live by 4 gas stations, even more liquor stores, and plenty of traffic.  But somehow nature and all its wonders are not intimidated by the presence of Man and His not-so-pretty fabrications.  I do at times long to be elsewhere, far from the hustle and bustle and drama of loud neighbors, police sirens, stumbling drunks, gas smells.

     I comfort myself with thoughts of God's sovereignty and nature's audaciousness as I find in the Hopkin's poem, "God's Grandeur":  "Yet for all this nature is never spent;/  There lives the dearest freshness deep down things./  And though the last lights off the black West went,/ O, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs,/ because the Holy Ghost over the bent world broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings."  God still overcomes all of man's meddling with His wondrous other creation.  It continues to grow and thrive because He lives.  Amen. 

A Beautiful Ballerina

M is a young aspiring ballerina.  She will be spending this summer at the Joffrey Ballet in Chicago, so way to go M!  She radiates beauty from within and from without.  I know she will go far. 

Sneakpeek: Madison, A Ballerina in the Making

   I spent the afternoon at the Mission Inn.  It was a perfect match for this lovely lady.  More pics later:

Serial Files: Etiwanda Falls

     For the 4th or 5th time, we returned to Etiwanda Falls.  It's at the northenmost end of a local suburb.  Man and nature here have learned to reside in harmony.  And every time we come back, we unearth more of its beauty.