Dear Henry

I came out to Los Angeles for work and I am writing this to you using my telephone. Pretty cool.

I had lunch today with my friend Glen in a part of town called Beverly Hills. After Glen left I decided I would take a little walk around. It is very warm and sunny. It was 12 degrees in Washington early yesterday morning.

I walked through this place that seemed like a nice shopping mall with the exception that it was outside. I came up to a family who were about to take a picture of themselves. Actually, the mom was taking the picture and her husband, son and daughter were sitting in front of her on a bench. It kinda reminded me of a lot of the pictures that I take - the 3/4 family shots, or counting you, the 3/5 family shots.

I walked up to these people and asked if they wanted me to take a picture of all of them together. They said that would be nice.

I took their camera and ran away. No, I asked them if they wanted the picture to be close in just of them, or did they want me to include some of the background so they would know they took they picture in Beverly Hills. The stores are very fancy looking. There aren't a lot of other places like Beverly Hills.

Just then a stranger came up and sat on the bench next to them and asked if he could be in the picture too. I said that I should widen the shot so they could include this man and really know the picture was taken in Beverly Hills.

The man, it turns out, was Woody - or the actor who was the voice of Woody. His name in real life is Tom Hanks. He is a big movie star. He was in a baseball movie about girls who played baseball during World War II. I don't know if you ever saw a movie with him in it. He was also in a movie called Forrest Gump. Maybe you saw that.

He was very nice, just like Woody.

It was a big treat for that family to have him in their picture. I made sure I took a bunch of shots. It was pretty cool.