It's way too soon to be drifting this far off the track.

Even with a good night's sleep it takes time for the brain to begin to function. It's overcast, it's nine in the morning, it's still a bit dark. We're feeling our way yet, here on this Saturday morning in Oakland.

Later. A bus downtown, then a walk down to Jack London Square. The place was practically empty before ten this morning, the sky still overcast, but with brief periods of blue and sun breaking through. A picture here and there, nothing that struck me as rivaling an image of the end of the rainbow, but a good walk for all that. I liked the mural on the side of this truck. It's an old, nondescript, white truck, but with the mural it's something unique and quite different. I suspect not everyone would say that, but I made it a point to complement the dude as I passed.

I remembered I hadn't looked at my kitchen calendar this morning, the one over the sink where I enter the various appointments and events I'd like to photograph. Wasn't there a Juneteenth celebration today, late morning, early afternoon, just down from my place at the boat house on the lake? And here I was walking around Jack London Square? An empty Jack London Square? So I walked back to catch the bus at 11th, thinking I'd look it up on both the calendar and on the web, remembering the yard sale sign affixed to the light pole by my bus stop this morning as I set out. The nicely done yard sale sign with the wrong date written on it? Juneteenth? June 19th? Wasn't this the 19th?

Indeed, Juneteenth at the boat house. I set out around 11:30, tired, but game. It ran, according to the web, from ten in the morning until half past noon. Plenty of time to take a couple of pictures. I found them near, but not at, the boat house, a circle of people, primarily African American, but a mix, really, of African Americans and everyone else, a series of speakers either reading, talking or leading the group in hymn or in song, all, I suspect, traditional for the celebration.

I've not been to a Juneteenth celebration before, a celebration of the official freeing of the slaves in the United States, the order delivered in Texas on June 19th, 1865. A small group, maybe fifty or sixty people, maybe more, maybe less, you can judge for yourself from the picture. I stayed for maybe twenty minutes, didn't get much in the way of photographs, but stuck to my decision after the MoveOn.org demonstration to take my portraits and not worry about anything else.

A walk then back along the bird feeding area, spotting a female Black Crowned Night Heron who seemed to be freaking out, strutting inside the fence across the ground, feathers ruffled, wings spread, eyes shooting fire. Now I didn't know this was a female Black Crowned Night Heron at the time, I looked it up later when I got back, but I wondered if I weren't seeing a marital tiff of some kind. The guy hasn't been out scrounging twigs and things for the nest? Hadn't been helping in minding the eggs? I'll leave it at that, I'm no expert on marriage other than the duck and run parts. A series of photographs, anyway. A bit of luck.

A short walk over toward Grand to sit outside at a table at the Coffee With a Beat café to drink a bottle of fruit flavored soda of some sort and eat a pastry. Not hungry enough to eat something more (nutritious, but tired and hungry enough to be glad for the chance to stop and sit. The walk then back to the apartment was a matter of five minutes.

And here you are.

And here I am on a Saturday afternoon in Oakland, all pooped out.