The Art of Relaxing By John Steinbeck

 July 11, 2026

   My son, Tomas, asked me last night what classic movie I wanted to watch after the kids went to bed and without hesitation I said, "Viva Zapata" from 1952. Turns out my wayward offspring had never seen it and as we watched the epic black and white on the Mexican Revolution unfold he kept sniping in, "Wow! How come you never shared this with me?" The truth is, I don't think I discovered it until he was a teenager, when all is lost from the father to the son for a brief period of about twenty years (if you are lucky).

Marlon Brando as Emiliano Zapata at the fiesta

      This morning, we decided to have a family photo taken to commemorate our quality time in Flagstaff, so we all put on our Dude commemorative shirts, went out in the yard and Amy jerryrigged a lawn chair with a pillow on it to work as a camera stand and then hit the timer on my phone and ran into the picture and got this.

The Bell-Pothongs out standing

in their VRBO yard.

"The art of relaxing is part of the art of working."

—John Steinbeck