Skin and Bones

Rain Gloom, Rain Glory

Passing time on a rainy evening.

 

 

Silences of a Summer Morn

The net of city noise

Lies taut on summer's voice.

Sunken freeways pulse

With dull traffic's roar,

Low C-17s

Wheel suspended 

Between battles afar

And worries sighing

On the airport floor,

Power mowers weave

Their looms of grass,

Blowers plow leaves

Beneath the trees

Into loose sheaves

Collecting bags take,

Century freight trains

A hundred cars a mile make

Screech their warning horns.

Yet in the interstices

Life finds fertile

Silence in which to grow,

Draws memory for rain,

Hope for fresh air.

A world recedes.

The morning shapes

A silent nave.

A world grows near.

Cooper's hawks whistle,

Subaltern finches squeak,

Racoons scamper last foraging,

Coyotes yawn to bed for the day,

Bees contemplate

Perfumed purple bells

Fallen from towers of

Jacaranda,

Gnats hover over

Moist grass.

New Hampshire

Summers past,

The glassy stillness of Squam lake,

No ducks or loons or motor boats

Break the morn,

Deer drink at water's edge

Beneath high pines,

Long legged bugs ride

A concert of rings.

Distant a trout

Stirs the surface of the pond.

Santa Rosa Plateau

On Sunday, a hot mid-August day, my wife and I visited the Santa Rosa Plateau. The Santa Rosa Plateau is a 7,000 acre ecological reserve on the eastern slope of the Santa Ana Mountain range in south Riverside County.

The following information about the reserve is from the visitor's guide, "Santa Rosa Plateau Ecological Reserve," available at the visitors' center. The reserve is reached by taking Interstate 15 to Murrieta in south Riverside county. Exit Clinton Keith Road. Go west on Clinton Keith Road into the hills, pass the new housing developments. The signs are clear and will direct  you to the visitors' center.

The reserve was created in 1984, when the Nature Conservancy, in San Francisco, purchased 3,100 acres. In 1991, the County of Riverside purchased another 3,825 acres. The reserve is cooperatively managed by The Nature Conservancy, the Riverside County Regional Park and Open-Space District, the California Department of Fish and Game, and other agencies.

I am embarrassed to say that this was our first visit to the reserve. We should have visited it before. It is an extraordinary glimpse of native California habitats. The 3,000 acres of grassland is the largest remaining bunchgrass prairie in California. Other formations include Chaparral and coastal sage scrub. The bird population includes owls and hawks. The mammals include deer and mountain lions.

The reserve ranges over 2,000 feet in elevation. From the hilltops, it is possible to look east, over south Riverside County, and see what California looked like before settlement. Several vistas provide no view of the massive housing developments that sprawl across the County. Staring across reserve, across the valley, to the hills and mountains to the east, I was struck, so suddenly that I gasped, this is what Southern California looked like, 200 years ago.

The County has cut a half dozen trails of varying lengths and hiking difficulty in the reserve. We hiked the easiest trail, Granite Loop, about 2.5 miles of reasonably level ground, a wide trail, and several modest rises. The trail goes through beautiful oak groves, prairie openings, crosses a stream (water below ground at this time of year), and skirts a vernal pool.

The photographs were taken from the Granite Loop. Click on the thumbnails below for a full-size image in a popup window. Panoramas are 400 pixels wide. Portraits are 500 pixels high.

Shrines - Edward-Dean Reflection Pond

Goose Fountain

During the past thirty or so years, the reflection pool at the Edward-Dean Museum in Cherry Valley has been a favorite destination shrine for my daughter and me. We have visited the stone-bound pond perhaps a half dozen times to share a moment of quiet contemplation. The pool has come to be special place for me to realize the gratitude I feel for the unknown forces of cosmic arrangement that brought my lovely daughter to me. The garden also evokes my love of Japanese haiku poetry (though the garden and pond are classical, rather than Asian, in references). On one occasion, when my daughter was a small child, I took my favorite volume of translated haiku to the garden to read and to write.  Today, the pond has koi, whose swimming silently animates the pool. A fountain in the pool provides the quiet music of dripping water.

Over the decades, the Museum, its gardens, and its several open acres have become an increasingly singular refuge, as housing developments have encroached on the nearby fields. Yet, even today, while land developer's grading tractors and carpenter's pneumatic nail guns are within earshot, the grounds provide unobstructed view of the charming mountainside landscape, from the rising escarpments to the North, snow-covered when we visited yesterday, to Riverside County's huge MWD reservoir, Lake Perris, to the South. The small pond in the garden is not a reflecting pool, in the architectural sense of term; but it has been a place of peace and contemplation mirroring the psychic meaning of the word, reflection, and I so use label for this photo-blog.

According to a museum brochure:

"J. Edward Eberle and Dean W. Stout were long-time admirers of European decorative arts and spent much time in England and France touring and admiring the musuems and houses. In the 1950s they decided to purchase a cluster of buildings on beautifully landscaped grounds in Cherry Valley - now the home of the museum.

"In 1964 Edward Eberle and Dean Stout gifted the museum and its property to the county. With this gift a treasure trove of 16th through 19th century decorative arts was passed on for public consumption."

(Images are thumbnails. Click on the images to obtain larger pictures with more detail and better color. Pictures will load in a separate pop-up window.)

Photographs of the Reflection Pool

Benches

My Daughter

Venus Statue

View of the reflection pool, looking south with Lake Perris in the distance (in the enlarged picture, the lake is visible as the small silver streak in the center of the image)

Miscellaneous Images of other gardens at the Edward-Dean Museum

Looking through the wedding gazebo to the reflection pool

The San Bernardino mountains to the north, viewed through the wedding pagoda

Statue of a child

Urn with flowers

Two boys, hunters

Photographs of the decorative arts museum

The decorative art objects are housed in a building with several galleries. The permanent collection was selected and arranged by Eberle and Stout in the building of their own design. Since coming into County ownership, the museum administration has devoted one of the rooms to rotating exhibits meeting the broad themes of the Edward-Dean main collection. I was able to photograph some of the objects in the current temporary exhibit, but not any of the permanent collection. The objects collected by Eberle and Stout are too sensitive to light to permit flash photography. I have scanned several pictures of the gallery rooms from the museum brochure. These scanned images are of poor quality, but they serve as references.

(Temporary exhibition)

(Temporary exhibition)

Pine Room permanent gallery

"The spectacular paneling in the Pine Room was originally in the State Bedroom of Cassiobury Park, the home of the Earl of Essex. William Randolph Hearst purchased the paneling and had it installed in a home of Marion Davies. When Mr. Eberle, an admirer of this paneling, learned that Ms. Davies' home was to be demolished, he bought the paneling and had the museum, which was already  under construction, reconfigured to accommodate it."

Picture Gallery (also known as the Music Room)

Photographs of the open landscape setting of the museum

Such views as these, unobstructed by buildings, are now quite rare, even in the inland valleys of Southern California. The first photograph looks south from the museum site toward the Lake Perris reservoir. The second photograph looks north to the snow-capped San Bernardino mountains.

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All historical information and quotations are from the Riverside County Development Agency's brochure, "Discover the Edward-Dean Museum & Gardens." The museum is located at 9401 Oak Glen Road, Cherry Valley, California 92223. It is open mainly on weekends. Call 909-845-2626 for information. To visit the museum, take either the I-10 or Freeway 60 in Riverside Country, east toward Palm Springs, to Beaumont. Take the Highway 79 exit, in Beaumont, and go north on Beaumont Avenue, which turns into Oak Glen Road. The Museum is about miles from the freeway.

Shrines - Mt. Rubidoux

Mount Rubidoux

Mount Rubidoux is a small but prominent mountain on the south side of the Santa Ana River around which historic village of Riverside was settled in the late nineteenth century. The mountain was owned by Frank Miller, one of the city's early promoters and builder of the Mission Inn. Miller originally planned to develop the mountain for expensive homes; but this plan failed. Miller transformed the mountain into an inspirational park. He graded a road, circling around the steep hills to the top, where, in 1907, he installed a cross. On April 4, 1909, the American reformer, Jacob Riis, a friend of Miller and a guest at his Inn, proposed that Easter sunrise services be held on the mountain top.  The first ceremony was held a week later, on April 12, and a service has been held each year since.

Over the years, the top of the mountain was developed as an amphitheater with the cross and seating steps at one end and an American flag with more steps for seating at the other. The winding road became a pilgrimage road; and, indeed, offers inspiring glimpses of the cross as the hiker approaches the top.  In the 1920s, Miller added more structures along the road and at the top. Not all of these remain; but the surviving Peace Tower is a moving testament of Miller's nineteenth century faith in internationalism and the abolition of war, similar to Andrew Carnegie's views.

The mountain is now a Riverside City park. The road is no longer open to regular vehicle traffic. The narrow, paved road is a popular jogging path. There are two main routes up the mountain. The route with the least incline is exactly two miles from the park entrance to the top, hence, four miles altogether. Quarter-mile stones mark progress. There is also steeper road that is considerably shorter.  Foot trails drop down the hillsides on several sides, providing good training for athletes. One trail goes through a tunnel under the road. Small wildlife are frequently seen - skunks, rabbits, hawks, coyotes. Dogs are welcome on leashes.

We start our photo tour with view from the road as we walk toward the mountain top, since the historical purpose of the development was to provide a pilgrimage path for an important Christian holiday. Historical plaques are grouped at the bottom of this photoessay.

(The photos here are thumbnails. As usual, click on them for larger images with more detail.)

The Peace Tower

Near the Top, 1

Near the Top, 2

At the Ampitheatre

The Northeastern Side of the Amphitheater

(American flag on the promontory, Peace Tower visible to the right)

Landscape Views from the Mountain

Our next group of photographs are simply snapshots of views of the surrounding river valley and the City of Riverside. Except where noted, all photographs were taken in late morning. Clouds from several days of rain were lifting and breaking. By the time our hike was over, the sun was shining in a partly cloudy sky. The rains of late December 2004 and this week in February 2005 have made the hills as green as Ireland - a refreshing treat.

The Santa Ana River (flowing southwest within flood levees)

Looking North Across the Santa River

(Toward Rubidoux and the Flabob Airport with the white buildings in the center of the photograph)

Looking East to Riverside City

(Downtown and Civic Center, early evening photograph)

(Late morning photograph)

Cactus Gardens

One of the pleasures of a Mt. Rubidoux hike are the large fields of cactus ascending the slopes of the mountain and flowing downward into the backyard gardens of homes at the base of the mountain. We were captivated by the cactus, their insinuation into the rocky landscape, and the graffiti hikers have carved into their sturdy branches and leaves over the years. The following photos are in no particular order and are not individually titled.

Plaques

Plaques are placed around the mountain to memorialize historical and prominent personalities associated with Riverside and the mountain. Here are most of the plaques (in no particular order).

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Historical information from Tom Patterson, A Colony for California: Riverside's First Hundred Years (Riverside: Press-Enterprise Company, 1971), pp. 250-260.

Shrines - San Juan Capistrano

Will Interrupted

The traditional Christian village commmunity is unified by the sound of bells. One unifying experience of living within this community is walking within the call of the bells toward the center of community. I had this experience when growing up in a small New England village. The experience is difficult to recreate in suburban Southern California. For families who attend church, the experience is usually truncated. They drive in a car to a parking lot near the church; then, they walk a few feet to the sanctuary. San Juan Capistrano provides an opportunity to experience this historical community. The historical district of the town is compact. The Mission San Juan Capistrano is nearby. Tracing through and along the historical village is a bicycle and hiking trail, maintained as a city park. The photographs in this article provide views of this unique historical environment.

The Trail

We walked the center section of the Robert McCollum Bicycle Trail from Oso Road along Camino Capistrano (a parkway that goes directly to the center of the village), through a low-income housing project, along an equestrian center, then skirting Los Rios, a museum village of historical dwellings, and along a flood control channel. The entire trail is about four miles. If you leave the trail to walk along the Camino Capistrano, the parkway takes you past the Mission Basilica San Juan Capistrano, a modern church building at the northwest corner of the Mission San Juan Capistrano, along the western wall of the Mission, to the village center and Mission entrance. We visited the village on Saturday when the church bells were silent; but I am confident that if  you visited on a Sunday about the time of Mass, you could walk into the village to the sounds of bells calling you to worship.

All photographs are thumbnails. Clicking the thumbnails will produce a full-size image within a pop-up window. (Also see the note about quality of displayed images, at bottom of article.)

Here are several photographs of the Trail that runs in the El Camino Real Park.

My  Vision of Ruins

One of the phenomenological themes that has guided my vision of archaeological ruins and historical monuments is the intrusion of the willful intent of ancestral generations into our civic and personal lives today. These historical remains erupt into our lives (to use the language of Sartre); they are revelation. The human-made cityscape in which we live is, not simply by definition, the product of intentionality; so that we may say, our intent to act today (for instance, by driving along city streets to a store) is guided by the accumulated physical manifestations of the intentions of historical planners. Normally, the way we experience our own lives is that we are aware of our own intent, but not the historical intent which guides - or structures - our own intent. We tend to be aware of the intent of the past only when we see that intent broken, so to speak, so that we cannot use it. By being museums and no longer functioning as they were originally intended, ruins and monuments reveal the will, intent, plans, and goals of our cultural forebears. History is a philosophy lesson, as Europeans have learned the hard way. Philosophy is a history lesson, too; this lesson is equally difficult to learn. These two lessons are true, whether or not we like them; watch the news from Jerusalem and see for yourself.

In the United States, especially in California, such ruins are rare. Their rarity gives us today the illusion that we live self-sufficiently within our own personal plans and schemes. Careful analysis and self-examination would quickly expose this illusion; but few of us take the time for introspection. The ruins and monuments of San Juan Capistrano might provide revelation of the same insight, if we allow them to do so. I hope the photographs below will illustrate this theme. (The photos are not presented in a particular order. Most of the historical information is from the Mission guide.)

Mission San Juan Capistrano

The Mission was founded by Father Junipero Serra in 1776 for the Spanish Crown, one of a string of mission settlements along the coast. Spain wanted to stake a claim to possession of upper California.

Padres' dormitory and living quarters, constructed, presumably, before 1800.

Chalice Vine, Solandra guttata, West Indies.

Door, windows, chair, patched brick, pavers.

Looking along the columns of the cloister of the southern extension to the East Wing toward the padres' dormitory and living quarters.

Great Stone Church.

Construction was begun in 1797, and completed and dedicated in 1806. An earthquake in 1812 destroyed the church, killing worshippers. I would describe the architecture as Romanesque, albeit with a few more modern decorative elements, for its use of the classical barrel arch, irregular stone construction, and rough simplicity. I have not measured the ground plan dimensions, but I will venture that they are whole-number ratios, though they might include right-triangle ratios (which includes the irrational hypotenuse) obtained from a wood protractor (rather than by numerical calculation). This style (Europe 900AD-1200AD) would have the easiest for the padres to design and the Indians and Indian stone masons to build  under their supervision.

Sacred Garden and Bell Wall.

The Garden is adjacent to the west side of the Great Stone Church. The large bells are replicas of the original bells n the Church, recast from their bronze. The small bells were cast in 1804.

Looking into the Garden.

Central Courtyard

Entrance to the Courtyard, near the vestibule to the Serra Chapel.

Serra Chapel. Completed in 1788, restored in the 1920s.

Looking west along the northern side of the dormitory wing in the Central Courtyard.

Door to a Padre's Dormitory Suite.

Detail of patching texture around the upper window next to the door.

Brickwork and cement patching below the window.

I think the door and details of texture of the entryway provide an appropriate conclusion to our history-philosophy lesson.

(A note about the quality of the images. On some monitors, shadows in the images are displayed as black without detail. Such display is not faithful to the original images and is not intended. On most monitors, the shadows in the photos are not black, but are filled with details that add to the meaning of the image. The likely cause of this problem is the brightness setting of your monitor. Use your monitor settings - usually accessed by buttons on the monitor itself - to set your 'Brightness' setting to maximum or 100%.)

The False Map

Several years ago, I had an appointment with a teacher at a new high school in Sprawling Suburb. I had talked with the teacher by phone; he gave me directions to the main office and his classroom. The school was located in a new neighborhood of new single-family dwellings, which spread across the hills like a red blanket of tile roofs. I have lived in Sprawling Suburb for a long time, so I did not doubt where the school is. I followed with interest over several years stories in the local newspaper about civic struggles to site, build, and name the school. As it turned out, the school site chosen was in a previously rural area, which had thousands of acres of orange groves before the subdivisions sprouted. My wife boarded her horse in the area, and we frequently passed that land purchased for the school.

Despite the fact that I knew where I was going, I decided to take a Thomas Bros. map of the city with me. The area developed so rapidly that perhaps new streets and traffic routing around the school might be unfamiliar to me. My appointment with the teacher was important to me; I did not want to miss it because I got lost in a new grid of streets. Like everyone else in Southern California, I rely on Thomas Bros. maps, and had complete faith in their accuracy; they had not failed me in decades. I have repeatedly been amazed at how rapidly the company updates and republishes their maps to keep up with Southern California's rapidly changing urban landscape. I checked the map to reassure myself of the location of the school and off I went in my vehicle.

When I arrived at the school site, in an area entirely familiar to me, as I said, there was no school! I was initially confused, but not concerned, because there were new streets being built all around and new housing developments in various stages of competion. I checked the street names on the map that bordered the school. I drove them, around the school. Still no school! Fields, wire fences, dirt streets with poured concrete curbs waiting for macadam; but no school. I did not doubt the map. To find the school, I started driving the immediately neighborhoods. I found a new elementary school, not yet occupied, but no high school. Indeed, troubling me, I found no signs of life at all. The entire area seemed empty. There were no people around. New houses, obviously inhabited, had no cars in the driveways or at the curbs out front. There were no pedestrians on the new sidewalks. Perhaps some disaster had struck and the area and it had been evacuated. I turned on the radio. Music stations blasted out their musical styles, a few talk shows chattered about this and that; but no indication that some tragedy had lifted everyone from this area of the city.

I became worried that I might not make my appointment in time. I decided to widen my search. If I could find a gasoline station or market, I could ask someone there if they knew where the school is. I drove down the empty through streets. No public amenities. I drove into other neighborhoods. Still no high school. I began to believe that something was wrong with reality. I slowed and pulled my vehicle - a pickup - over to the shoulder of a street. I could feel blood drain out of my head. I parked the pickup. I started to faint. Where was I? I had passed the place where my wife once boarded her horse, so I knew, or thought I knew, I was in the right area of the city. Why was the school missing? Why were there no people in sight, on a bright, sunny afternoon, in mile after mile of suburban subdivision? Was I in a movie about unreality? As I slumped onto the bench of the pickup, I looked again at the map. Yes, the map depicted the school as located where it should be; but the school was certainly, beyond a doubt, not there. The map was real, but I was not sure the neighborhood was also real. I slowly recovered myself. I drove slowly along the street. My hands trembled on the steering wheel. I wasn't sure I should be driving. No cars behind or before me. A few miles along, I encountered a large thoroughfare, with which I was familiar. A few miles west was the neighborhood where I lived. I turned down the road. Now cars were around me. I passed a filling station. Someone was standing at a pump, gassing their auto. I drove home.

What was happening to my life?

False Turns in the Road

Rules are supposed to follow themselves. By definition and as a practical matter, rules should not change into their opposite. Our construction of reality is predicated upon the expectation that things will be and shall not be what they are not.  Just as parallel lines should not meet, so sidewalks should not become streets and throughways should not become parking lots.

A False Turn

I have had several experiences in Southern California where rule-expectation was so transformed. One episode occurred while I was at a conference in Los Angeles. I was staying at a downtown hotel (the conference was over two days), and the meetings I was to attend were held at another downtown hotel, perhaps ten blocks distant. In the dimming light of a warm evening, I decided to walk from the meeting hotel to my residence hotel, rather than riding a shuttle. I was generally familiar with Los Angeles, so it did not occur to me to take a map with me to guide my way. I began to walk along sidewalks, crossing from block to block at crosswalks, following a zig-zag route to my hotel. After six or seven blocks, the sidewalks began to narrow; nonetheless, the street signs seemed straightforward and I made my way to my hotel with confidence.  Geographically, my hotel was located on a hill. As I expected, my route took me up a long, slight rise in streets. The sidewalk, narrowing now to barely two feet in width, curved up around a building as I approached my hotel, which I could see was several blocks away. The concrete sidewalk was now only 1 foot wide. I walked around the corner of the building. As I did, I found myself standing on the top of a concrete retaining wall, seventy feet above the Harbor Freeway. With no fence separating me from the freeway space, I looked down upon six lanes of roaring rushing automobiles. I was completely surprised; I felt faint. The sidwalk had transformed into a freeway. Fortunately, I did not pass out; if I had, I would have fallen to my death, to be crushed beneath dozens of automobiles on the highway of hell below me. I turned around and slowly walked back. I traced my route back toward the buildings and surface streets of the city. After several blocks, I found a different route to my hotel.

A False False-Turn

A second episode occurred only a few months ago when I was driving at night through the interchange of the 91 and 60/215 freeways in Riverside. I was going to transition from travelling southeast on the 60 freeway to travelling west on the 91 freeway. I have lived in Southern California for 34 years. I have made this transition hundreds of times. Every foot of the transition ramp was familiar to me. I knew precisely how the ramp would merge with the outer lanes of the 91-west. Although the interchange was being rebuilt, the signage was perfectly clear, indicating the ramp to move from the 60 to the 91. The older signage, which had been in place for decades, was supplemented by new signs, including mobile CalTrans flashing light signs. Completely certain of my route, I turned on my right-signal, crossed lanes, and moved onto the ramp. I could see, in my automobile headlamp beams, the ramp curve gently down toward the 91 freeway. I thought, for a second, that it seemed odd to me that I was the only driver taking his automobile onto this ramp. Traffic was rather heavy, though moving swiftly. As I approached the interchange, I saw no cars taking the ramp; all vehicles were continuing straight ahead on the 60/215. This concern was brief; the signage was clear. I began the ramp. Construction equipment, trucks, and tractors were parked in the waste acreage along side the ramp, unattended, waiting for tomorrow's work shift.  I slowed my car as the ramp curved around and down. I was somewhat surprised that the painted lane lines peetered out. At its edges, the asphalt of the ramp broke up, the distinction between highway and the rough gravel and dirt of the land disappeared. Travelling at fifty miles an hour, I suddenly thought that I was on an abandoned ramp. I must have made a wrong turn somewhere. Panic rushed through me. I struck the brakes, trying to bring my car quickly to a stop. I began to look for a safe place to park where I could figure out where I was and what I should do. As my car rounded the curve, decelerating to thirty miles an hour or so, just as suddenly, I found myself on the merge lanes for the 91 freeway west. Now I had to accelerate rapidly. The merge lane ended a hundred yards ahead. I had to enter lanes of hundreds of fast-moving vehicles.  My sense of unreality now snapped back to the familiar anxiety of maneuvering in Southern California's freeway traffic.

Where was my life going?

"Shrines"

Seeing Southern California Through Basho's Journey

Each stage of Basho's journey took him to shrines and historic sites. What "shrines" and historic sites might qualify as goals for a Southern California walking journey? Here are some, probably quite obvious to anyone familiar with the region, that occur without research to me. In no particular order:

Mission San Juan Capistrano
Union Station, Los Angeles
Slushy Meadows, San Bernardino Mountains
Japanese Garden, Huntington Museum
Estudillo House, San Diego
Garden and pool, Edward-Dean Museum, Cherry Valley
Children's Forest, San Bernardino Mountains
Aqua Mansa cemetery, Rialto
Palomar Observatory
Death Valley

What places occur to you?

Southern Californians Who Walked

Seeing Southern California Through Basho's Journey

Let's start by applying Basho to Southern California in a simple and straightforward manner. We will identify persons who walked on a moral, spiritual, or political journey in Southern California. We should know who these individuals were by name; they should have written or otherwise provided a historical or physical record, because they wanted an audience to know and learn about their journey. They do not have to have lived their entire lives in Southern California, but they should have walked on foot a significant moral journey here. We have used the past tense, but by no means should we assume all interesting personalities are historical; given Southern California's outdoor ethic, many such individuals are active today. Later, we can look in their writings and into their paths for memorials of their journeys.

Here are names that leap out of Southern California history:

Father Junipero Serra
Charles Fletcher Lummis
George Whorton James
Abbot Kinney
George Chaffey
Willy Boy
Robinson Jeffers
George S. Patton, Jr.
Edmund Jaeger

Possibilities:

John Muir
Mary Austin

I will add names to this list as I discover them through research. On the above list, Edmund Jaeger is from Riverside and a desert naturalist. George Chaffey helped develop Ontario, but extensively surveyed and travelled throughout the Imperial Valley. George Patton Jr., from Pasadena, was associated with the desert in training world war two tank corps. Muir was primarily associated with the High Sierra, but did hike and explore the San Gabriel and San Bernardino ranges. I know little about San Diego and I am eager to have suggestions, in addition to Father Serra, for that region. I invite you to nominate such persons of whom you know, who would fit our criteria. Just post a comment this article.