On October 18, 2025, millions of people all over the country and around the world gathered to protest the authoritarian regime of Donald Trump. We joined a crowd of a thousand or so at the Hayward City Hall. It was totally peaceful but it was good to see that so many feel like we do. I took a bunch of photos with my phone and thought about combining some of them to show more of the crowd, but I finally chose this view with the city hall in the background which seemed to sum up the occasion. It took longer than my usual paintings and I worked on it over three sessions of my open studio class.
One afternoon I went for hiking after my painting class. I didn't want to drive far, so I went to the Zeile Creek Entrance to Garin Regional Park. I did a loop from the creek past the barn where we once boarded our horses. It's been closed for years and I could see that a large section of the roof of the main barn has caved in. It's too bad because we liked riding on the trails of Garin from there. Near the creek I noticed some leaves from a big leaf maple, and I took a photo. Sometimes I find beauty in a simple close-up view of the natural world.
On another afternoon after my painting class I went to Sunol for a short hike. I started off up the Canyon View Trail heading towards Little Yosemite, but I had forgotten that the trail is quite steep at first. When I reached a cross trail that would take me back down, I sat on a rock and thought what to do. As I was sitting, I noticed this oak tree on the hillside that seemed to glow, and I took a photo. I decided that I was tired enough and took the cross trail back down.
We rented a little house near downtown Hayward from 1975 to 1986 at 1299 Russell Way, and just down the block was an interesting old house that backed up to the creek. We used to walk by it whenever we walked that way, and one day I took a photo of it. Sometime in the 80s it was torn down to build the senior living facility Casa Sandoval, so now it is just a memory.
