Yesterday, as I sat gazing out at San Diego Bay, I recalled how the larger oak trees in the grove had seemed so very . . . old. How they were bent and cast dark, spidery shadows. And a bittersweet story came to me.
It’s titled Dale’s Tree. There aren’t many words. I published it here.
We all have deep-seated desires that can never be fulfilled. It’s an essential part of being human.
There are horizons that cannot be reached, dreams that cannot be realized. But we keep moving forward through life, in that place where we find ourselves, and we never stop hoping.
The Gingerbread Man emerged from a hot oven and arrived in Chula Vista today, thinking he could easily outrun families and kids attending Arts in the Park. But, alas, the famous little cookie met his fate.
The story of The Gingerbread Man was acted out, to the delight of the audience, in a very small wooden theater.
It was a fun demonstration of Kamishibai, a form of outdoor story telling that was popular in Japan during the first half of the 20th century.
The Kamishibai version of The Gingerbread Man was presented by Write Out Loud, who brought their live reading performances to the annual Arts in the Park event, held at Memorial Park in Chula Vista.
Run, run as fast as you can! You can’t catch me. I’m the Gingerbread Man!
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
Back in Middle School, a bunch of classmates and I spent a summer weekend camping on Catalina Island. At the Parsons Landing primitive campground to be exact.
We hiked all over the north part of Catalina and saw bison, cliff dived into the ocean, sat around a campfire, and even went on an afternoon snipe hunt. (We saw bison? That’s correct! A small herd of bison was transported to this Southern California island by Hollywood for the filming of The Thundering Herd, a 1925 silent movie.)
The snipe hunt fascinated me. We headed up one of the trails above the campground searching right and left and occasionally beating a bush with a stick. Everyone knew from the start that the snipes weren’t real, but we all had fun “hunting” them anyway. At least for a little while. I think what made the snipe hunt fun was the shared joke, and the fact that we were heading up a trail that was new to us.
An idea for a short story came to me some time ago, based loosely on that snipe hunt experience. Of course, I changed many elements for my fictional story. It was necessary that I make the setting of the story a dark night.
You’ll see why when you read my new story, The Snipe Hunt, by clicking here!
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
Readers who are new to Cool San Diego Sights probably don’t know that, when I’m not walking around the city taking photographs, I love to write fiction.
Well, I’ve completed another very short story. This one is about a school teacher and a very peculiar lesson taught to her students.
The lesson isn’t merely strange–it might be one of the most important lessons any person, young or old, could learn.