After the show today, Elizabeth and I visited the Temple of the People and talked with Eleanor Shumway, the wonderful woman who is the Temple Guardian. I don’t know about mysticism or Magnetic Lines, but I DO know that every time I’m in Halcyon, my blood pressure seems to drop a little and I seem to relax. So that got me to thinking about special places in my life. I bet you have them, too. Here’s a few on the Jimmy List:
1. Halcyon. Wind chimes required.
2. San Francisco. Still my favorite city. My first trip there, I was six, and there was a lightning storm. I was impressed. Then I saw the Golden Gate Bridge. I was overwhelmed.
3. The American Cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer, above Omaha Beach. It’s beautiful and incredibly serene. You are compelled to touch the crosses and Stars of David. With the sea air, the marble is so cold that it startles you. You keep brushing the markers with your fingertips anyway. You want so badly for those young men to know that you are there.
4. Assisi, Italy. Both for the hilltop view and for being near Francis.
5. A little square between Branch Mill Road and Arroyo Grande Creek, where I grew up.
6. Mission Santa Ines. It was my Mom’s favorite mission, my fourth-grade mission project, the place where Elizabeth and I were married, and there are miles of open country that front the place where you can imagine what it might have been like two hundred years ago.
7. Gettysburg. Yes, it’s haunted.
8. The Uffizi, Florence. I think I could live there.
9. Rural Missouri, summer, when the lighting bugs start to come out.
10. St. Stephen’s Park, Dublin, on a typical (wet) Irish day, when the sun suddenly comes out, brilliant and clear. Miraculous.
11. Anne Frank’s home, Amsterdam. No other place has ever evoked so much sorrow and compassion in me. The family’s presence is palpable.
12. Metz, France, nearing sunset, when trout start to nose up and leave little ringlets on the surface of the Moselle.
A Work in Progress 