Miami, Fl

My partner and I are planning a trip to Miamia, Fl. We have already been to Oahu, HI this year. The beaches there were wonderful, of course. I bought a wonderful Frommer's guide for the Oahu trip and I have purchased one for the Miami. I have acquired an appreciation for excellent maps and these guides have them. I buy the guides new, although, I enjoy shopping for used books, Insight guides, to give me a perspective about where I am going. I remember when I first moved to San Francisco, and I didn't know where anything was. I asked someone on the street in what direction the Golden Gate Bridge was and he looked at me like I was out of my mind. I was from New Hampshire, and very naive.

It is a good thing we have a large home, otherwise there would be no place to put all the books. They are like treasures.

I am searching for the perfect place to sit and watch the ocean. The Pacific is my favorite ocean so far. I remember sitting in a cafe in San Francisco on Polk street, a cafe long gone due to the turbulence of the economy. I asked someone sitting nearby who was knitting, why the oceans were salty and he said, The oceans were fresh water eons ago, but, salt is common everywhere in the universe, and, once the salt gets into the water, there is nothing in nature to get it out again. He also explained that, for political reasons, desalination was not an option to increase the drinkable water supply in California for its growing population.

I hope the latest plan, hatched by governor Schwartzenegger, to dig massive culverts all around California to redirect the precious little that falls as rain and snow never gets off the ground. It would be an environmental disaster.