Every year I have done a lengthy “Year in Review” piece chronicling the passing year’s significant events. With it, I include an “In Memorium” section that lists and recognizes all of the noteworthy people that passed during the year. I have decided to forgo both for two reasons.
The presidential election so dominated the news, and the result has created so much division amongst brothers, sisters and strangers alike, that I will forgo it this year. I do what I do to make people feel good and reflect upon the little things…
the good things in life and the goodness in people.
In addition, so many people have passed, particularly from the entertainment world, that to list them as a group would minimize each one’s individual significance.
Instead I am submitting for your perusal, a piece about the place where I live, Benicia, California. I hope you love the place that you live as much as I love the place where I do.
Thank you one and all for your continued readership and support.

I wish each and every one of you the happiest, most prosperous New Year ever!
–Jefe

To Love a Town

The morning sun’s rays of warmth and light, peeked and pushed their way through the buttermilk clouds and the chilly air of a cold December morning. They called out to the collective spirit of the people in their homes to rise and fill the streets and stores. It reminded the combined spirits of the living that comprise my home town, to wake up and come to life. To live another unique and special day. Rise to work. Rise to play. Rise to supply this place where so many have lived and died and laughed and cried for so long, with its humanity.
I stopped to take stock and try and put my finger on what I was feeling about the place I had chosen to live out my days. Feelings of safety and security. A sense of wellbeing, inclusion, pride and well…love crept through my bones. Love? Of a Place? A bundled, bordered collection of houses, stores, streets, cemeteries, trees, flowers, cars, dogs, cats, birds and people? Could it be possible to love such a thing?
A sense of community is what makes a place real and warm, and enables it to form into a living thing that can be loved. And so it was, and so it is, and so it will be. Each home in a town is a repository for the energy of all that has ever happened in it. Every single dwelling encapsulates the first steps of children, proposals of marriage and the shared experiences of each family’s triumph and tragedy. Every newborn baby brought into it. Every person who’s life ended in it. A new neighbor. A new business. The rising and falling and the winning losing. The slow steady steps of progress. These are the pulse and breath of a town.
Benicia, California is my hometown. It was the third Capital of the State of California back in 1853 and 54. It was home to politician, soldier, sailor, traveler and the lady of the night. Jack London drank here. If you are ever in the San Francisco Bay area and you get close to the Carquinez Strait, stop by and visit us. We’d love to share with you what we know already. Benicia wraps its loving arms around painters, poets, sculptors and glass blowers. The Bay laps up on its shores and has always provided a living for its inhabitants. St. Paul’s Church was built by the shipwrights that lived and worked here. If you look up into the rafters you will see an upside down hull. It was a stop on the pony Express. Word of the California Gold rush spread from Edward Von Pfister’s little adobe general store and saloon to the rest of the world from right here. It is friend to humankind and dogs as well…
And I love it.

Jeff Burkhart’s “Rhyme and Reason”
© Copyright, December, 2016
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