Tag: love

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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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.

Powerful, true words for Memorial Day.

I hope somebody recorded them–those words spoken today by First Sergeant, US Army, Brian Bennett. They were eloquent. They were true.

After eating a hot dog in the San Diego sunshine, I sat listening to Brian’s speech during the Memorial Day event at Balboa Park’s International Cottages. He was the first of five distinguished speakers. They had served in the United States Army, Marines, Navy, Air Force or Coast Guard. All of the speakers were excellent.

Brian is a teacher at Mount Miguel High School. He confessed that he began to prepare his speech the way many of his students do their homework–by using AI. We in the audience laughed.

Brian, however, found that AI’s predictable answer about the meaning of Memorial Day wasn’t quite right. True–the holiday is about duty, dedication, courage and ultimate sacrifice—but the computed answer wasn’t complete.

A true understanding of Memorial Day, explained Brian, involves long years of service and often difficult experience. It’s only then that one can fully understand the great and meaningful sacrifice made by those who’ve fallen in service to their country. Ideals easily spoken of become real.

Ultimately, he explained, Memorial Day is about love.

Love for those in your life who are precious. Love for a country whose founding documents grant us a life of freedom. And love for those who’ve come before, sacrificing so that we may live this life.

Yes, I thought, a life where people from all walks can freely gather together and speak or listen to powerful words without fear.

I hope my few, poor words did Brian’s great speech justice.

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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.

Help make Balboa Park more beautiful!

Would you like to help San Diego’s world-famous Balboa Park become even more beautiful? There are many volunteering opportunities for you to explore!

Today I spotted a bunch of volunteers picking up litter in the park. I learned from a friendly lady at the Forever Balboa Park canopy in the Plaza de Panama that a similar cleanup is scheduled for next weekend! Get your coworkers and friends involved!

I also learned an Arbor Day Tree Planting event that you can join is coming up! It will be on April 26th, from 9 am to 11 am.

Would you like to learn more? Check out the Forever Balboa Park volunteer web page here! And to remain informed, join their email list!

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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)!

Love’s dance at La Jolla Playhouse’s WOW!

Stunning. Powerful. I’m not sure how I can adequately describe one performance today at the La Jolla Playhouse WOW Festival.

Two acrobatic dancers from the Taiwanese circus troupe 0471 Acro Physical Theatre in their performance of Duo acted out the passion and turmoil of love. The crowd watching in UCSD’s Revelle Plaza was completely mesmerized.

Not only was the performing couple incredibly athletic, but they convincingly displayed the many emotions of troubled but enduring love. There was reluctance, passion, the pushing away, the pulling together. There were moments of sky reaching ecstasy.

There was interesting symbolism, too. It seemed to me the clothing they carried and displayed at times was symbolic of an ideal partner as lovers might see it. But the hesitation, indecision, conflict, resentment and other emotions made the actors, whirling about without that fancy clothing, more human, more true. Through the motion of their bodies, they transmitted their inner impulses and desires.

How the two acrobats could expressively move and fly about for half an hour nonstop was jaw-dropping. I thought their acting was even more impressive. It expressed what love is.

I saw people in the audience with hands over their heart.

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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)!

A painted memorial to Tibor in City Heights.

There’s a beautiful memorial to a cat named Tibor in City Heights. I noticed this painted rock beside the sidewalk as I walked with my camera last weekend. I was photographing the parade that preceded the Festival of Love.

The colorful stone honors the life of Tibor aka TT, a cat that was loved by the neighborhood.

I thought you might be touched by this small memorial.

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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)!

Parade in City Heights before Festival of Love!

There was a parade through City Heights in San Diego this morning!

The parade started at Joyner Elementary School, wound through several residential streets, and ended up at Officer Jeremy Henwood Memorial Park where the 4th Annual City Heights Multi-Cultural Festival of Love would be held! (Photos of that fun event coming up!)

No floats or marching bands? No problem! The parade featured a bunch of cool lowriders and even more awesome smiles! It might not have been the biggest parade in the world, but all the hearts moving down the sidewalk more than made up for it!

The banner leading the community parade read: Diversity, Solidarity and Love in City Heights. That pretty much summed up the positive vibe. Neighbors smiled as we passed! (Or blinked with astonishment.)

I arrived at the staging parking lot before the parade began, then followed along on foot for the 1.3 mile route.

Enjoy some photos!

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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)!

Spread kindness and love in Escondido!

Your opportunity to spread love and kindness in Escondido is coming in early February!

Love Esco is a community effort kicking off this weekend that offers a range of service projects whereby volunteers beautify and improve Escondido!

Many of the projects require no special skill and provide necessary tools. You can help a food pantry, engage in neighborhood cleanups, donate blood, bake treats for first responders, help create school gardens, provide encouragement… Click here to see all of the volunteering opportunities, then sign up!

The Love Esco Day Kick-Off Party is this Saturday, February 3, 8am-10am at Grape Day Park. You can meet World Cup Champion Shannon MacMillan and radio host Jesse Lozano. There will be giveaways, entertainment and a whole lot of inspiration!

I plan to be there!

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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)!

Monsters, myth and love in National City!

At the corner of Plaza Boulevard and Highland Avenue in National City, you’ll find monsters, myth and love!

These four electrical boxes have been painted this way for many years. Today I enjoyed a long walk through National City before the rain started. As I approached the intersection, I remembered that I hadn’t yet photographed this particular street art!

So here we go!

One box has a cool design that appears to have been inspired by mythology. Another shows Godzilla battling King Ghidorah. Then there’s the abstract elephant, a feline rocket ship and a rainbow-powered cat! And love on roller skates!

As always, if you know more about this very creative artwork, please leave a comment.

Stay tuned for more street art photos from my walk. The next blog post will be amazing!

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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)!