February 2026

Clockwise from upper left:
• Tree outside social hall at Saint Mary's Mariposa
• Wall collage at California African American Museum
• Cherry Blossoms
• Purist Still Life by Roy Lichtenstein at The Broad

• Black History Month

• Tuesday 3rd California African American Museum • This is the DC-8 outside.

• Tuesday 10th Armand Hammer Museum • The bookstore!

• Saturday 14th • Valentines Day

• Sunday 22nd • Pink Trumpet Trees

• Tuesday 24th • The Broad Museum

• Friday 27th • Cherry Blossoms

September 2025

Clockwise from upper left:

• St Mark's Los Angeles God's Work Our Hands shirt
• Parking lot graffiti at Saint Mary's Mariposa
• Late September Birthday Cake for a guest in our usually all girls dormitory
• Bright flowers in flower boxes along Mariposa Street

• With the many updates to Season of Creation observances and the lack of updates to my own existence, I haven't been designing for each Creation Sunday, but I did create a banner using a favorite Isaiah design as the backdrop to illustrate a flourishing world.

• On Sunday 07 September I went back to Saint Mark's LA. Happily it was their God's Work/Our Hands work day and I bought a Saint Mark's shirt. Serendipitous, because my other two GWOH shirts had expired. (Not really. They'd gotten faded and worn so I recycled rather than donating them.) Google AI made this collage. As I've observed, they use templates not available for us to use, though we get a good variety of collage layout options. I especially like the angular ones they started about a year ago.

• Thursday 11 September 911 Twenty-four years. I blogged a reflection similar to those I wrote several previous years because I still couldn't say it better.

• Sunday 14 September I planned to attend the liturgy at Saint Mary's Mariposa that's about a two minute walk from where I'm staying, but the website had the service time wrong. That means I arrived too late for worship, yet in time for snacks and conversation.

• I have a long ago history with Saint Mary's. A few previous lives ago, I was organist there for Patti and Gordon's wedding, and I designed the wedding invitation. There's also some recent anecdotal stuff that's too complicated to write here.

• You may know my (now previous, maybe?) stance on reserving the sacrament? When I told the priest in charge how sad I was to miss the eucharist, she replied they had it reserved in the tabernacle, so I was able to receive (in one kind only), after all.

• Wonderful graffiti decorates the parking lot walls.

• Thursday 23 September Flowers along Mariposa Street preceded fourth Tuesday lunch in Santa Monica.

• Google AI made outstanding collages of our tasty lunch.

August and Summer 2025

• June2025 :: Around Town

• July 2025 :: Back in Koreatown

• Tuesday 12 August :: Wilshire & Vermont

• Sunday 17 August :: Saint Mark’s ELCA

• Tuesday 26 August Santa Monica Brunch Again :: Google AI made this fun collage

July 2025 :: Back in Koreatown

• Urban Wilderbess Lectionary Blog for July

• Google made a couple of impressive collages of the food pics I took at the monthly Santa Monica Tuesday Brunch.

• With an interesting turn of events and employment in late July, I've come back to Koreatown.

• Street view my first morning back in Koreatown

• One of three presentations of succulents and assorted posies at the entrance

• It's been since South Central, so I was ecstatic to see yellow cassia trees. I got several good pics; this one won a spot here because of the Metro Bus sign.

• RIP, Walter Brueggemann. I'm reading his Sabbath as Resistance and wanted to show off the Vanille Ice Cream Cone desk cup I serendipitously bought.

Five Minute Friday :: Journey

• Five Minute Friday :: Journey Linkup

It's about the journey, not the destination is a commonplace observation because it rings so true. I even have an Old Navy shirt that announces that reality! Do you think of it as a Journey or a Trip or an Adventure? After observing me for a while, a coworker told me I loved the thrill of the chase. Indeed I do. But is that a chase or is it a pursuit? (Check out last week's Five Minute Friday)! Is a chase or a pursuit an intrinsic part of the journey or is it an added after market component?

Any of us could write or talk forever about their journeys so far and their hopes for the days and moths to come. But right now the church is in the season of Lent.

As we prepare for Easter during this forty day long season, many slow down, become more intentional about study and service, possibly take on a meaningful project or activity and often relinquish a sensual favorite such as meat, wine, or desserts.

In Luke's gospel, the journey to Jerusalem and to the cross is particularly focused and incessant. Jesus first sets his face toward Jerusalem in Luke 9:51. Toward Jerusalem—the cross and the empty grave. Does knowing Jesus' persistence working through his calling and destiny help your Lenten considerations as we anticipate death, resurrection, and the possibility of a new creation?


• About my header picture: When we enjoy a recipe from a different culture or country, when we have tea, coffee, fruit, or condiments that actually originated elsewhere, is that a way of taking a journey, making a trip? As we receive a literal taste of Greece, a hint of the Caribbean, a portion of Southern Soul, it definitely is! The Koreatown Los Angeles coffee and tea stop with its international customers and international bill of fare felt perfect for today's topic.

• I've piggybacked parts of this from my scripture blog for this week: Lent 2 :: Reminiscere

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Five Minute Friday :: Compromise

photograph with reuse rights by y6y6y6 on flickr

• Five Minute Friday :: Compromise Linkup

It's hybrid! It's fusion! It's a gift of compromise!

In a world that's becoming even flatter than Thomas Friedman could have imagined, almost everyone everywhere needs to compromise on almost everything, but vittles, cuisine, mealtime probably are the most fun and interesting and also endlessly challenging when people from different cultures or simply different preferences get together for a quick bite or an elegant repast.

Whether they settle inland or near an international border, immigrants gift a place with ingredients and recipes from their homeland. You easily can discover what sections of which major cities have neighborhoods named after relative newcomers. Los Angeles has Chinatown, Little Tehran, Little Tokyo, and Koreatown, where restaurants and markets offer food that reflect the residents' origins. Cali-Mex has become southern California's stereotypical blended cuisine, yet this most diverse ever settlement has residents from every South and Central American country, with all the varieties of menus and ingredients that implies. When inputs to recreate or duplicate a recipe are too rare or too costly, compromise often becomes necessary rather than optional.

Food, language, and overall culture around here is multi-ethnic; especially Latin American and also Russian, Armenian, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai… it may not be quite in the "compromise" category, yet *even* local national fast food outlets almost always offer agua fresca and horchata at their drink dispensers—and, of course, so do fast casual along with the plethora of food trucks.

But that's not quite the compromise I've been thinking of. Compromise especially happens when you're close to a port of entry with constant movement between countries; familiar dishes get changed due to some ingredients being unavailable, sometimes because others might blend in or add an interesting taste—those compromises almost always turn out well. Regarding ingredients, regional and indigenous specialties all began because of local and seasonal produce. When fruits and veggies grown outside the region started to be hauled and sometimes flown into town, people had more opportunities to duplicate their faves, yet local and seasonal always is better in almost every way.

In addition to compromises based on ingredients, family and individual favorites get tweaked because someone doesn't care for or would rather not try a certain spice or flavor, yet they're excited to try compromises that actually end up creating a new dish (that's sometimes so different it needs a new name).

These renewed, re-imagined dishes are hybrid. They're fusion! They're the happy results of compromise! Someone in the Home Country – a.k.a. "Old Country" – might not quite recognize or call a dish by a name they already know, but like blends of country and jazz, mixes of rock and blues, new menu items assume a life and a legitimacy all their own.

What creatively compromised, newly named main dishes and side dishes will we enjoy in the near and distant future at a nearby café? What new cuisine do you expect to appear on a bill of fare and on a table in your 'hood?

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Five Minute Friday :: Represent

• Five Minute Friday :: Represent Linkup

These days I often seriously consider what represents my dreams. What concrete image or object, which less visible thought or memory is a good enough stand-in for the direction I trusted my life might take. "Seriously consider" is about agonizing not so much if anyone did anything "wrong" to derail and dislodge the momentum, because everyone – including me – has taken less than optimal actions and many times if not quite every time the mis-step or wrong turn has been corrected or redeemed into something better or simply surprising.

There's a very big difference between breakfasting with Suzanne on the back porch in Koreatown during late winter 2016, less than a year in Current City, and assessing my current situation minus a couple years of Covid. There's "best construction" on people and circumstances and then there's lying about stuff that (surprise!) can be quantified. Did you know you can't change what you don't acknowledge?

But what represents me? What's my place in the world versus the place or land under my feet, underneath the house or other building I'm in?

A house, a place, the land, the beach. The particular style of each is critical to my self-image. They're my passions! Obsessions! To be around, write about, illustrate. Style may be important and you know it is, but even though you could say that's a "Leah style" house or loft, the type of turf Leah loves, an urban strip beach or country sand spot that works well for a daily or sometimes refuge, they don't truly represent my heart, my abilities, or my sense of call.

Seriously considering, what does represent my dreams? My art and design website—suntreeriver design, so you definitely could say my beach house header painting represents me. This blog! My other main blog, Urban Wilderness.

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Five Minute Friday :: Coffee

• Five Minute Friday :: Coffee Linkup

From Main Street to Wall Street, Downtown into Uptown, coffee shops – single location indie, regional ones, globe-circling chains – offer watering spots, meeting places, and work stations.

When drinking and savoring coffee first reached Europe, many considered it an antidepressant. By the time Johann Sebastian Bach [1685-1750] reached legal majority, coffee had become a ubiquitous habit with vendors absolutely everywhere. Always responsive to culture and context, that great composer who's been styled "The Fifth Evangelist" because of his devotion to Jesus and the church Jesus founded, because of the hundred plus cantatas grounded in scripture he composed for worship, simply had to write a Coffee Cantata.

Not to worry if you don't drink coffee or tea! Emporia officially called "coffee shops" all have expanded their menus with specialty lemonades, other beverages, and snacks to accompany whatever drink's your pleasure. Anyone can enjoy one as a place to linkup with friends or colleagues, to accomplish some work on a laptop (free wifi if you don't have your own), sketchbook, or notebook.

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• Header image is one of many I've taken of Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf outlets around town; this one's in Los Angeles' ultra-international Koreatown neighborhood. Top footer icon is via google docs with full reuse rights, so I photoshopped it for impact and interest.

January 2022 trippin'

• 4 more Reflections on Scripture During a Worldwide Pandemic on my other main blog: Urban Wilderness Lectionary Project

• Float Fest happens the day after the Rose Bowl Parade. They charge not low $$ admission and these days you need to prove your vax status, but especially after watching the parade on TV a few times the day before, admiring the floats up close was fabulous! Due to their scale and my proximity I didn't get enough good shots, but here are a few; my header collage includes a couple others of my fave pics.

• A first ever venture into nearby world-renowned Forest Lawn, where I saw their stained glass version of Leonardo's Last Supper. Good Friday and Easter need to wait because they were closed to visitors. They didn't allow inside photographs and I didn't attempt to capture the green grounds.

• Next stop the same day as Forest Lawn was the almost brand new Academy Museum of Motion Pictures that forms a trilogy with the Petersen Automobile Museum and LACMA. They do allow guests to take pictures, but due to the nature of the displays and other factors I didn't try very hard to get anything memorable.

• Lastly, we sauntered to the Farmer's Market for dinner. Some vendors already had closed, and astonishingly the venue was new to me despite my having become an Angeleno (as in no longer a "San Diego transplant") and despite having lived in nearby Koreatown.

• This year there were many online observances for MLK Day, but I didn't participate in or watch any. So sad. Hopefully 2023 will be different.

• On the fourth Sunday of January that wasn't its last, Sepulveda Basin Wildlife Area "A Symphony of Sounds" started mid-afternoon and transformed into the golden hour.

• Enjoy these tangerines! I LOVE this picture!

• Formally and officially I began living local in 2020, not long before COVID became a worldwide reality. I was happy to revise typography and year on my banner.