Tag: hope

Young Ukrainian filmmaker visits San Diego.

Thirteen-year-old Ukrainian filmmaker Marusya Shuvalova spoke today at the 20th San Diego International Children’s Film Festival. The event was held in the Neil Morgan Auditorium at San Diego’s downtown Central Library.

Shuvalova’s two films, Me. My Eleven Years. War. and What’s Going On With Us? were among the outstanding selections featured in 2024. Both films document her young life in Kyiv, Ukraine during the Russian invasion.

Please watch the short Me. My Eleven Years. War. on YouTube by clicking here. There are English subtitles.

You will see how Marusya’s life as an ordinary eleven-year-old girl was disrupted by the war–how she had to forgo loved activities, learn remotely, listen constantly to loud sirens, take shelter, and live with fear of an unknown future, and a constant fear for her family’s safety. Her ambitions to be a young actress and film director had to be largely put on hold.

But now she has visited Los Angeles and San Diego for their respective International Children’s Film Festivals and hopefully her future is becoming brighter. Even with her limited knowledge of English, and emotions that you and I might hardly understand, she spoke before the audience in San Diego with perfect professionalism and poise. She is truly inspirational.

Learn more about Marusya Shuvalova by clicking here.

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

Silhouettes of homeless people speak on a sidewalk.

Motionless figures confront pedestrians on a downtown San Diego sidewalk. Three life-size transparent “silhouettes” stand beside UC San Diego Park & Market. For those who pause and wish to understand, the figures will freely speak, telling true stories of people in our city who are homeless.

What Does Home Mean to You is the name of this public art installation. It’s just one temporary installation of many along the Bay to Park Paseo. The Bay to Park Paseo is a unique walking experience that leads from San Diego Bay to Balboa Park. Learn all about it by clicking here.

Earlier this year I participated in the inaugural walk up the Bay to Park Paseo. One of these three silhouettes was on display. Last weekend, when I walked up Park Boulevard again, all three were arranged on the sidewalk.

The UC San Diego Design Lab created this thought-provoking installation. An explanation of the public art includes: Visitors will see life-size silhouettes of people who will share their perspectives on housing at the push of a button. Throughout the installation, passersby can use their mobile devices to scan QR codes to dive deeper into other housing experiences from the greater San Diego community or share their own stories through voice or text.

I noticed words by the feet of these silhouettes. The stories are real, but names have been changed.

I took photos for you to see…

“Like my dad said, ‘It’s not over till it’s over.’ That’s his motto. I gotta live by that, no matter what.” A foster youth shares his family story, hopes and dreams with maturity and grit…

“Don’t wait for things to come to you. Chase it.” A single mother of three was unhoused, despite having a steady job…

“I…turned toward survival mode–a mode that most of society isn’t aware of in themselves, but, you know, I think is in all of us.” During his darkest days, he found resurrection through his community, who gave him a hand when he was at his worst…

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

Elie spreads hope and love in San Diego!

I met Elie Kennedy today. She was at a table painting small, smooth stones inside the UC San Diego Park & Market building. She was participating in today’s Destination JOY event, which would bring San Diego Trolley riders into her smiling presence.

Elie makes lives in San Diego better. She does this by spreading hope and love with positive, affirming messages painted beautifully on stones. Perhaps you’ve seen Elie at art and craft events around the city. I also met her seven years ago in Balboa Park.

Elie has helped sick kids at Rady Children’s Hospital paint happy, hopeful stones. Above all, she’s an advocate for Suicide Prevention and Awareness. Her own family experience, and a day of painting stones on the beach for a loving memorial, propelled her down this road. The selling of her stones raises funds to bring awareness to the issue of suicide prevention.

Today, seeing the stones arranged on that table and her smile lighted my day. Chased away dark thoughts. Reminded me of important things.

How many lives she has touched?

Many.

Please look at her Instagram page here.

Always be kind. You matter. Hug.

Sometimes you forget that you’re awesome. This is your reminder.

You light up my life.

You are not alone.

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

Lids of Encouragement provides hope in San Diego.

Can you imagine being homeless or very poor and hungry? How difficult your day-to-day life would be. How depressed you might feel. How hopeless and inescapable the situation might seem?

I was walking home from San Diego Comic-Con a couple days ago when I met a couple of smiling guys selling water by the sidewalk. They had this sign:

What would you say to make someone’s day?

When I stopped to learn what those words meant, I discovered these guys are working to help the homeless and hungry in San Diego with Lids of Encouragement.

On their table I saw container lids with positive messages written on them. Lids of Encouragement uses these lids to seal care and food packages for those in need downtown. I told them I’d write a blog to help their effort.

I found this article written a couple months ago. It explains how the founder himself was homeless for a while. He must certainly understand what it’s like. The organization has been around for many years now. Lids of Encouragement might be small but it’s still going strong!

I also see students in downtown San Diego are writing encouraging messages on many of the lids.

You can check out the Lids of Encouragement website by clicking here. Perhaps you can help them in their very important mission to make lives better.

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.

Incarcerated women and Voices on the Inside.

A new exhibit is being readied at the San Diego Central Library. Voices on the Inside presents the written words of women who’ve been incarcerated.

The exhibit is created by Poetic Justice, an organization that provides writing workshops for women serving time in prisons and jails, including the Las Colinas Detention Facility in San Diego.

As their website explains: Poetic Justice’s in-person writing workshops are typically offered for 6-10 week sessions…the participants explore therapeutic writing prompts and community building activities. At the end of a session, the participants graduate and receive an anthology of their writing and a graduation certificate.

Many of the women share their innermost thoughts, filled with humanity and new wisdom and hope that otherwise might be ignored or dismissed. The exhibit will be filled with examples of what they’ve written.

The opening reception for Voices on the Inside will be held at San Diego Central Library on Sunday, May 5, 2024 at 2 pm. Learn more by visiting the Instagram page @capoeticjustice.

To see this new exhibit, simply walk into the Central Library and turn right when you reach the main elevators. Many faces and words await you.

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X (formerly known as Twitter)!

Boat loads of inspiration in San Diego!

An inspirational art exhibit is now on display at the Japanese Friendship Garden in Balboa Park. Beautiful paintings remind us that rebirth can come unexpectedly after a period of destruction.

Boatloads of Mizuaoi are works by artist Shintaro Araki, who is a member of the Mizuaoi Project.

As the Japanese Friendship Garden’s website explains:

The Mizuaoi Project, initiated by a group of artists receiving a seed found in Fukushima from an artist, Shigenobu Yoshida, celebrates the “rebirth” of the nearly extinct Mizuaoi plant…a genus of flowering plants…considered a weed species in Japan…exterminated so as not to corrupt rice cultivation.

Thought to have been eradicated throughout most the country, the Mizuaoi lay dormant until the Great East Japan Earthquake, on March 11, 2011, and tsunami, brought the Mizuaoi seed back to life and sparked a poetic Movement, spreading the Mizuaoi image as a symbol of hope, and regeneration throughout Japanese society.

Members of the Mizuaoi Project cultivate the plants in pots, metaphorically referred to as “Boats” and distribute their boats nationwide…

These individual works by Shintaro Araki do indeed resemble boats filled with robust green life. Their simplicity and beauty float before our eyes, flower in the mind. The art expresses hope. It reminds us of nature’s inherent power to renew living things.

The exhibition can be viewed in the garden’s Exhibit Hall through April 28, 2024.

Here are just a few of the beautiful pieces on display…

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X (formerly known as Twitter)!

Children play in rain, and hope for the homeless.

As it rained in San Diego yesterday, children played hide and seek on a sidewalk near Father Joe’s Villages. The bronze sculptures of small children caught my eye as I rode a bus past the Saint Teresa of Calcutta Villa, where homeless people transition into permanent housing.

I had discovered the Father Joe Memorial Promenade.

The promenade was completed two years ago. It honors Father Joe Carroll, who during his life helped thousands of unsheltered people in San Diego. His footprints are in the sidewalk. A memorial plaque remembers his unselfish love. There are words to be read on several planters. More plaques can be read near the Saint Teresa of Calcutta Villa entrance.

The Father Joe Memorial Promenade and its hopeful sculptures were designed by architect Jowaan Lee from J2 Ventures.

Would you like to follow Father Joe’s footsteps? Will you touch many in San Diego who feel hopeless, and provide hope?

Learn more, and perhaps provide a donation to Father Joe’s Villages on their website here.

THE FATHER JOE CARROLL MEMORIAL PROMENADE

During his 40 years of service in downtown, Father Joe Carroll taught the San Diego community to see those living on the streets as neighbors. Through the eyes of grace, he looked beyond the difficulties of the past and the challenges of the present to believe in a better future for each person he met, and taught others to do the same.

As they beckon us to join in their game of hide and seek, the carefree children playing along this path–Faith, Grace, Hope and Peace–remind us that everyone we encounter was once a child whose life was full of possibility…

Faith sees the light in your heart when all your eyes see is darkness.

Grace silences the past and opens you to the opportunities of a brighter future.

Peace hears the calm within you amid the noise of life.

Father Joe’s Villages has always been about neighbors helping neighbors. This is a place where people from all walks of life–rich and poor, educated and not, needy and well-off–come together as equals to change peoples’ lives. –Father Joe Carroll

In 2013 the Congressional Medal of Honor Society honored Father Joe Carroll as a Citizen Hero for his selfless service and dedication to all…

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X (formerly known as Twitter)!

Photos of annual MLK Parade in San Diego!

Kindness. Smiles. Laughter. Compassion.

This morning I saw this and more as participants prepared for the 42nd Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day Parade along San Diego’s beautiful Embarcadero.

Every year the MLK Day parade along the waterfront is a big deal. Thousands come out to watch community groups celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. and his enduring message of human dignity, equality and love.

Dancers, marching bands, students, veterans, beauty queens, activists, club members, law enforcement, politicians, businesses, car lovers, charitable organizations . . . all would move proudly down Harbor Drive.

I took photographs of everyone coming together before the start of the parade.

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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!

I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!

I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X (formerly known as Twitter)!

11 Short Stories About New Beginnings.

It’s true: time flies. Soon another New Year’s Day will have passed us by.

Every year, on January 1, many people vow to make positive changes in their life. Of course, every day, every hour, every moment provides us with a new beginning.

Cool San Diego Sights readers might know that I also write short fiction. Occasionally I’ll post a blog concerning stories that I’ve written. The approach of New Year’s Day provides an opportunity to share eleven inspiring short stories about new beginnings.

If you enjoy reading, you might explore the following links:

An Unexpected Sunflower is a short story about changing lives with generosity.

The Firefly is about friendship, hope and a moment of forgiveness.

One Strange, Shimmering Dream is a magical story about a dreamlike transformation.

A Half Dozen Odd Things concerns elements of a past life gifted to the future.

Night Walking is an odd tale about renewal.

The Wheel concerns creativity. Is there no end to beginnings?

The Hand of Fate is about mysterious human acts that change the world.

A Secret Junkyard is about the despair and hope of those who create.

The Ghost Ship is about unexpected bright moments that can change a life.

Every Butterfly is New shows a world that is always beginning.

Here We Go is full of eagerness for life ahead.

I hope you all have a Happy New Year!

Richard

Ten year anniversary of Cool San Diego Sights!

WordPress notified me just now that my blog Cool San Diego Sights is celebrating its 10 year anniversary today.

Ten years? Good grief! That means I’m already ten years older!

It’s been fun so far. Hopefully there’s much more to come!

Back when I started Cool San Diego Sights, I didn’t imagine these posts I publish in my spare time, using photographs taken with a rather old camera, could end up on popular news apps like Google News and Newsbreak. Believe me, if you’ve discovered my posts in those places and wonder how they possibly rate as news articles, don’t ask me. As I understand it, it’s all determined by mysterious algorithms. Take my blog for what it is. A curious guy walking around San Diego taking photos!

But what a wonderful opportunity to express my love for my city.

And a great opportunity to meet all sorts of interesting people, too!

Perhaps I’m most thankful that Cool San Diego Sights has allowed many people to discover my Short Stories by Richard website. As a consequence, my short story One Thousand Likes is now included in a 12th Grade textbook, and part of at least one English Literature course at a major international university.

Ten years ago I had no conception such a thing might happen. If there’s a lesson here, it’s that persistence can pay off. Never lose hope!

Once again, thanks to those of you who swing by Cool San Diego Sights from time to time for a few moments of enjoyment. I keep learning new things. I hope you make a few fun discoveries, too!

Onward!

Richard

P.S. I spied a mysterious garden today in a very unexpected place. That’s coming up!