When I hit 65 I realized I had knees. When I hit 75 I realized I can say whatever I dee well please

Glory be! As Psalm 66 for Sunday says, “make a joyful noise to God,” it’s actually cool out here on my back screen porch, for the moment it feels almost chilly, cool enough for this light blanket. Probably not the temperature but the 35% humidity. Linda is asleep, otherwise I’d go to the upstairs front porch off our bedroom.

It’s a small world after all, and a great life. I hope it’s as great a life for Caroline and Charlotte. But the smaller world is a larger threat. In seventy years when Charlotte is my age, will the United States and all the world be Afghanistan and Iraq, rocked by suicide bombers, hatred, chaos, anarchy and fear. Indeed, will the United States be. When I walk down to My Laughing Place under the cedar tree by the Bay down front, look back up at my house and wish I could have lived here with Alfred in his golden age of trains, dirt roads through the woods and brass era cars, and St. Andrews Bay teeming with fish, it finally occurs that this, my life time, has been a golden age at least for me. But for penicillin coming in the 1940s, my golden lifespan would have ended in 1947 at age twelve with a burst and gangrenous appendix. I marvel at my laptop and weather satellites, nevermind air conditioning and that with my iPhone Kristen in Atlanta can, before the professor hands the next student his/her paper, text me that she made an A on her calc test. When Caroline, Charlotte and Kristen are my age may they think back and be grateful for their own golden age that was far better than the primitive olden days when Papa was alive. I pray so!

Here we are with a government shut down, I’m guessing it’s still shut down, haven’t checked the news this morning, been enjoying the cool too much. In truth, it’s a partial shutdown, isn’t it. Oddly, what strikes me negative is not the bullheaded Washington autocracy playing politics when only I know how to deal with them, but the arrogance of the park service, our own budding stormtroopers taping off parks and such to keep people out. Taping off parts of the Mall to keep Veterans out, ayfsm? The heroic park service has suddenly dropped below zero. Not as far down below the subbasement underworld as Congress or the IRS, but way, way down. A little authority goes a long way and your true personality, what you really are v. what you seem to be, erupts when you’re at the bottom of the barrel, in uniform, and wanting someone to bully is a primary lesson of the first half of the 20th century and all human history. However for all their mission to keep terrorists off airplanes, today’s most prominent example is our own 21st century brownshirts the TSA bullying children and elderly under the guise of airport screening. “Do what you like and like what you do” says my coffee mug, and they are doing and liking.

Does Uncle Bubba hate government? No, it’s simply that, given the chance to bully, all government is always all bad all ways and never misses a chance to prove it. So far at least, every American is entitled to slam the government, but we’re fast heading beyond so far. Who’s that knocking at my door, when I haven't even pressed Publish yet?

Still cool out here. A chilly autumn morning. It’s about time.