Swatiska graffiti reportedly found on Ironhorse Trail in Walnut Creek

Police received a report Thursday that several swatiskas and "words" had been spraypainted on a wall along the Ironhorse Trail near Las Lomas High School.

The report came in a little before 4 p.m., and the grafitti was just past the high school and near the support for the "overpass," presumably the pedestrian overpass the crosses South Broadway.

Perhaps it's time for some kids and teens in Walnut Creek to get lessons in history and in how some words and images have very painful associations in our culture.

That same afternoon, as I was waiting in the 7-Eleven parking lot on Oak Road to pick up my son from Walnut Creek Intermediate, I heard another student, a young white male, use the N-word to greet a friend, another white male student. You can read about the discussion that incident provoked on this post, "Hey N-----! A greeting between some Walnut Creek middle school boys."

I walked down the Ironhorse Trail this morning and looked for the grafitti, but didn't find it. The Walnut Creek police Daily Bulletin indicates that the police had referred the report to the East Bay Regional Parks District, which has jurisdiction over the trails. Perhaps the parks district got it cleaned up as quickly as possible.

Gideon Bible guys passing out New Testaments to Walnut Creek Intermediate students Thursday

A different but discussion-provoking incident happened during afternoon pickup at Walnut Creek Intermediate...

My son and his friend, whom I meet at the 7-Eleven parking lot on Oak Road, plopped into the car, and my son announced "This guy was handing out Bibles after school."

Bibles? Handing them out? At School? What? Isn't there some Church-State separation here?

My son held up up a pocket-sized volume of the New Testament, bound with faux, orange leather binding and embossed with gold lettering.

The book looked shiny and new, but I wondered, who in Hades was handing out Bibles to Walnut Creek Intermediate school kids?

As it turned out, as my son continued to explain, the Bible Guy wasn't standing on school grounds when he handled my son the good book. Rather, the guy was on the trail--the Ironhorse Trail--when he made his offering. The Ironhorse Trail runs alongside the WCI playing field and is part of the East Bay Regional Parks District.  

Still, hearing about this Bible guy made me wary.  Not because of the item he was handing out, but because he had approached my son and some other kids. I envisioned some disheveled guy, with a crazed look in his eye, hearing voices, and mumbling "Repent! The end is near!" Also, as I've reported on this blog in the past, there have been a couple incidents involving WCI kids on that portion of the Ironhorse Trail, at least one of which involved a suspicious behaving man approaching a student.

So, I followed my son and his friend back down to the trail, and I saw that there were two guys--two nicely but casually dressed older gentlemen. They each held cardboard boxes and, with smiles on their faces, were handing out the little orange Bibles to kids. "Would you like a Bible," they were asking.

I approached them and asked where they were from. The Gideon organization, one of the gentleman told me, offering me a New Testament, which I took.

Back in the car, a discussion popped up among my son, his friend, and me, about the religion, Christianity, the difference between the New and Old testaments, and our beliefs. As I may have mentioned before, I'm not religious, and my family doesn't attend church, but I told my son he might want to read some portion of the book he received. I said both the Old and New Testaments contain interesting, famous stories and lessons about life, and some beautiful writing. I mentioned that I had a former high school English teacher who now teaches a class on the Bible as literature at Diablo Valley College.

As if to punctuate my statement about the Bible's literary value, my son's friend happened upon a passage from Chapter 20 of the Book of Revelation, and read it aloud: "And He said to me, 'I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. I will give of the fountain of the water of life freely to him who thirsts."

Home (under the bridge) for the holidays!

A roof over one's head? Well, that's something right? Found one man or woman's retreat under the Ironhorse Trail bridge that crosses Ygnacio Valley Road this morning. A sleeping bag, a pair of shoes ... Maybe someone slept there last night, and will do so again tonight, and tomorrow night, Christmas Eve. Or maybe this denizen of our community, temporary or not, has found another place to stay, has moved on--but left behind some belongings that could still be very the cold nights we're having.