No news - -

- - is good news. One of the joys - and, yes, for all the twilight zone-ness of it there are joys in it - of hurrication, is never watching television news, or indeed any kind of television; though there are four large screen TVs here, and at least one is always going though thankfully not blaring, and seems to me I did once or twice watch something on television in the six weeks that we've been at this SouthWalton location. Football, that was it, bowl games, I watched some bowl games, didn't I. And a few days after Hurricane Michael, while we were at the first in our succession of hurrication abodes several miles east of here on Front Beach Road PCB, the horrid remnants of a Pacific hurricane swept through here adding outrage and further injury, and I watched that even knowing what it was doing to our property. So well yes, if there's bad weather at hand I may watch, Ross Whitley on Channel 13. But news, the news, never "the evening news" - and never ever glued to one or more of the national networks channels. Indeed, whoever put this News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier ...
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-rolf-dobelli on line was right, as I've discovered in spades since being here, where "in spades" means "to a very high degree" and, yes, just so. 

God love her and rest her, in conversation, my mother had, it was almost a drive, as if she was driven, to repeat horrifying news, terrible things that had happened to people, even tell about an event again long after. They were such as would be painful to hear and remember all over again even years later. But she would tell them almost as a reminiscence. And so as I moved into and beyond middle age and realized their effect on me and my state of mind, I started interrupting her lovingly saying, "Mama, please don't tell that, I remember when that happened, but there's nothing I can do about it, and it's so sad that hearing about it again will bring me down all day. So, please don't tell it," and she would stop, and it never seemed to bother her being stopped, and we would go on to talk about other things. That's the way national and much world news affects me and my state of mind; horrifying things happening to people, unconscionable things being done to people, things that I can do nothing about, and that hearing about brings me down depressingly in mood, state of mind. So I go to another place in space, Time, or mind, and have my own Being. 

Anyway, I have a plan for today, actually it's not a plan at all, not thought out, but something I'd like to do that, if I get to do it I hope may take me out of the Twilight Zone for a little while. Going to Stinky's does that to some extent, but it's not that, not even in that direction. Never mind what it is, it's NOYB. It's not really necessary to do it today, and I'm not essential personnel at it, it's just me needing a break; so it's as psychological for whatever the soul may be as it is physical get in my car, buckle up, start the motor, rev up to hear the beautiful V8 hum, back out, put it in D, and step on the gas. If that sounds sad, it most certainly is not!

Or, this place itself is also magical: I may ask Linda and Malinda if they would like to go down 30A and have lunch at one of the places that friends have recommended we not miss while we are here. We can go in my car, I'll drive. 

I like my car, of sixty-something cars, better than any car I remember, IDK, maybe even better than the magical new red Tahoe we bought in 2001.

My early morning treat was finding and reading today's Delanceyplace.com piece about papyrus; which caught my eye because early Scripture was written, like business records and in time other things, scratched into flat rocks or tiles, then ink on parchment of animal skins and scrolled; and eventually and locally as feasible, on papyrus and scrolled and eventually paged into books. It was interesting for starting my day, so I copied and pasted below, scroll down.   
  

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Today's selection -- from The Book by Keith Houston. The papyrus reed was a key commodity in Ancient Egypt: "Cyperus papyrus has always been an interloper in Egypt, if a wel­come one. To the south, beyond the country's borders, the banks of the White Nile and the shores of Lake Victoria, its source, are crowded by stands of papyrus sedge. Here, triangular, grasslike stems crowned by sprays of fine leaves grow from submerged roots to reach around ten feet in height. ... "The inhabitants of the fertile Nile delta cultivated papyrus for papermaking purposes from the fourth millennium BCE onward, though papyrus reeds were adapted to a bewildering array of other uses too. ... "In a country that was marshy and arid by turns and conspicu­ously devoid of trees, papyrus reeds provided a convenient alternative to importing timber. The roots of the plane were robust enough to be carved into tools and utensils, and, in the form of charcoal, they burned hot enough to smelt iron and copper, reaching temperatures of 1,650 degrees Fahrenheit (900 degrees Celsius). ... "Papyrus stood in for wood in ancient Egyptian boatbuilding, especially for the simple, flat-bottomed punts used for hunting and harvesting in the Nile's papyrus swamps. Dried papyrus is around four times more buoyant than balsa wood, and, while it eventually becomes waterlogged and loses that buoyancy, a boat made from sheaves of plen­tiful papyrus reeds was easily replaced. But papyrus boats were prized for more than just their buoyancy. In Egyptian myth, the goddess Isis sailed the Nile on a papyrus boat to search for fragments of the body of Osiris, her husband (and her brother, so the story goes), and it was said that the river's crocodiles feared to attack any such craft lest they encountered a wrathful deity aboard it instead of a cowering human. "Other papyrus vessels, both larger and smaller, plied the Nile along­side the simple rafts of hunters and farmers: papyrus barges may have helped transport the colossal stone blocks used to build the pyramids, while some translations of the Old Testament say that the basket in which Moses was hidden among the reeds of the Nile's shores was made from papyrus, not bulrushes. Moses may have had Isis to thank for preserving him from the Nile's ravening crocodiles as much as he did his mother. "Also in a nautical vein, cords made from papyrus were famously strong and light. The thin green skin of the reed was peeled off in strips and plaited to make rope, while cables up to three inches in diameter could be woven from whole stems. Papyrus rope was so renowned, in fact, that a number of ancient writers mentioned it by name as they recounted near-mythical events of their recent history. Scene of papyrus gathering in the tomb of Puyemre "Writing in the mid-fifth century BCE, for example, the Greek historian Herodotus described how the Persian king Xerxes, preparing for an invasion of the Greek mainland, ordered the Hellespont strait in northwest Turkey to be bridged with ropes made of Egyptian papyrus and Phoenician flax. The current proved too strong, however, and the bridge's pontoons were swept away. Displaying the sort of theatrical fury that informed his recent reinvention as a comic-book villain, Xerxes ordered the waters of the Hellespont to be whipped three hundred times. The straits now suitably chastised, two more bridges were built -- successfully this time, employing four papyrus and two flaxen cables per bridge -- and the invasion proceeded. "The papyrus plant was also used in more domestic settings. Herod­otus wrote that the Egyptians ate the lowest cubit, or eighteen inches, of the reed's stem, and that 'Those who wish to use (papyrus) at its very best, roast it before eating in a red-hot oven.' Modern experiments reveal that papyrus contains few calories and is meager in nutrients, though the spongy white pith may have acted as a source of dietary fiber. "Aside from its dubious value as a foodstuff, papyrus was a com­mon ingredient in medicinal preparations: papyrus ash healed ulcers; macerated with vinegar, it treated wounds; the pressed juice relieved eye complaints; and, somewhat redundantly, it was mixed with wine to cure insomnia. A patient who imbibed such a draught could sleep it off on a mattress of bundled papyrus reeds, huddled under a blanket woven from papyrus skins. "Papyrus's centrality in the daily lives of Egyptians was a potent symbol of the land, its traditions, and its social strictures. Ancient Egyptians called the plant papuro, or 'of the pharaoh'; the hieroglyphic symbol for Lower Egypt, where the Nile delta spreads out to meet the sea, was a clump of papyrus reeds; and the sign for a single stem stood for youth, vigor, and growth.  "Hapi god of the yearly flooding of the Nile, which carried essential nutrients into the fields along its banks, was depicted with papyrus growing from his head, and leafy crowns of papyrus reeds were used as decorations at religious services and funerals. Priests were forbidden from wearing sandals made from anything except papyrus, and the temples over which they presided featured columns modeled after the papyrus stem." Sign Up Here The Book: A Cover-to-Cover Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of our Time Author: Keith Houston Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Copyright 2016 by Keith Houston Pages: 4-8 If you wish to read further:  Click for Purchase Options About Us DelanceyPlace.com is a brief daily email with an excerpt or quote we view as interesting or noteworthy.