Thursday again, no, it's Friday, Bonehead!

What bothers me these days? Interests, bothers, intrigues, exasperates, concerns me? 

Truly, bothers me, not much. Glancing through the obits in any morning's online New York Times (for NYT, I only get headlines, I don't have a paid subscription except for the past several decades annually automatically renewing paid access to daily online NYT Crossword Puzzles for Linda, who has the intellectual ability to do what goes completely over my head; if I click on any story the paywall blocks me or tells me I've used up my free articles or reminds me that I've only got one more free article this month, or some such), most of them are younger than I am, dying in their seventies or sixties or low eighties, which keeps me on notice about not being so careless with life - - don't salt food, limit fried food, do more walking, weigh more often and so have more FuroForty days because my ankles have disappeared, skip the ice cream, take more naps, limit to one martini or one glass of red wine a week, but keep on munching a square of dark with the predawn mug of hot & back. 

Most of America's and Earth's political, physical, and social issues have become irrelevant to me or beyond me or behind me or so totally out of my influence - - gerrymandering, abortion, climate change with more tornadoes worse hurricanes and melting glaciers, affirmative action, LGBTQ+, wars, racism, woke, nationalism and populist politics, &c - - that I choose to sit back, watch the water traffic, browse online, or read magazines and books, instead of elevating my anxiety by fretting, agonizing, despairing. For me, 7H is the perfect retirement venue to withdraw from the world and the cares that people have brought into it. 

Comes to mind again, the delightful but subtly poignant scene C S Lewis wrote in The Magician's Nephew, when the children inadvertently take with them, not only the Lamp Pole from a London street, but the Witch, into the pitch black dark scenario where Aslan the Christ Figure is singing Narnia into existence: it's people, the humans, who brought evil into the world. Biblically, a bit of contrast with the JE Writer's story in which the Lord God included the Tempter in Creation as the most crafty of creatures.  

So, beyond friends and family, what does interest me? Well - - the universe, religion. World War Two. Cars still somewhat but not so much anymore. The New Yorker magazine that arrived in yesterday's mail has a jolting piece "Divine Comedy" by Mary Beard, former professor of classics at the University of Cambridge. Beard is "jolting" because her essay about Roman emperors being made gods, often as they died and their funerals were held, explains a lot about Roman culture at the Time that outraged the monotheistic Jews in whose midst it developed, but facilitated, enabled, lent normal Roman/Greek cultural acceptance and unquestioning credibility to, and empowered the development of Christianity itself. If one is interested in more than just saying "I believe" in order to be admitted into Heaven, the history of our religion begs contemplation - - Professor Bart Ehrman has a book, "How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation Of A Jewish Preacher From Galilee" and there are other writings. This is the kind of thing that intrigues me as I check The Conversation and The Guardian, whose integrity I trust, for what's going on in the world; and the PCPA Vessel Schedule for ships I should be watching out for. 

What else interests me? A course in conversational German that I have going online, downtown St Andrews where I started working when I was nine years old, wondering whether I should bother taking Kristen's ex-Volvo that is now my daily driver to the shop about that loud cracking noise that sounds forth from the undercarriage whenever the steering wheel is turned in parking and backing out, an osprey nest a thousand miles away. Oh, and whether there's too much on the calendar to make this a FuroDay - - today, for example, is a trip to PCB to visit Pacey, a haircut, a visit with Malinda at Pruitt Health, and a stop at the Downtown Post Office - - four things for a couple of people in extreme old age who have resolved to limit ourselves to One Thing A Day. 

RSF&PTL anyway, and Life is Still Good.

T