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It is late Sunday afternoon, and I am wonderfully exhausted. Catherine and I hosted three couples here this weekend, friends of long-standing, and it was perfect. The weather cooperated, I did not discredit myself at the grill, and much mirth-making was had.

Knowing as I do that I blew off this passion project last week, I thought it best not to try your forbearance with another no-show. I cannot promise any central theme to today’s meandering, as my muse has not been piqued to any real degree.

When you read this, it will likely be the day before the first day of September, a day that I greet with relish. I’m very happy to be moving toward fall, what with football returning (How bout them Hoos! More on this later), the geese beginning to chatter, and an eventual decline in the heat. Hell, Christmas is just around the corner.

Dash 2 is coaching JV Field Hockey this year at her old boarding school about an hour away, and I’ve got three home games on my schedule. I love driving out there—it’s a really beautiful school and I like watching the games and sometimes going out for a bite to eat. She’s just back from a summer in the Caribbean where she ran sailing programs, and I love the life she’s fashioning for herself.

September 1st FEELS like summer is over, although there remains the punctuation mark of Labor Day weekend. I am unaware of any visitors on the schedule at this point, and I don’t mind saying that I’m just fine with that. The other day, I remembered that I needed to renew my hunting licenses, which the People’s State of Maryland makes very easy online. I hope to hunt a good bit this autumn, goose and deer top the list. We’re starting on another round of renovation/renewal in the next few months, and part of the plan is a serious upgrade on our shoreline. We’ve a goose-blind on the cove that needs a little love, so I think I’ll likely roll that in. I need to get some water-borne decoys (incorrectly pronounced by many in these parts… de-COYS’…) and a little skiff, and then I’ll be able to hunt both in our fields and on the cove. Progress.

Football

As I indicated earlier, football has returned, which for me means intense interest in UVA football and passing interest in all other forms. Last season was my first in decades without season tickets, and Virginia’s 11 win season may have been providence’s judgment on my action. As much as I enjoyed the games, the drive to and from, most games including an overnight, just got to be a grind.

Yesterday, the Hoos dismantled NC State, which surprised me. Vegas had us as favorites, but less than a touchdown. We appear to have a good team, and a lot of predictors have us with a successful season. And while what I saw yesterday was a treat, I also saw yet another UVA offense featuring a running quarterback who does not slide. That’s a recipe for injury and disaster, so I hope we get a little more balance in the attack.

I’m not sure where college sports are going to land, what with all the lawsuits and money and hullaballoo. I watched the whole game yesterday (with a break at halftime for Yard Games with the guests, including hatchet throwing and cornhole), so I can’t say my own consumption is going to go down, but I cannot predict the future.

EV Update

I’m getting ready to start year three of the three-year lease on my Lucid Air Pure, so I’ve begun cogitating on what may come next. I’ve REALLY loved this car. I mean REALLY loved it. But I leased it because of my uncertainty as to the long-term viability of the brand, and that uncertainty has not improved. I am almost certain to turn it in at lease-end.

There are two competitors in the running for CarNext. The first is a certified, pre-owned 2026 or 2027 Tesla Model Y. I love Teslas, these look great and are roomy, and the technology is simply unmatched. This would be a no-brainer.

Not far behind and closing fast is the 2028 Mercedes GLA. They will be available in the back half of 2027, a new model that’s getting a lot of buzz.

Both of these cars are electric, as I don’t suppose I’ll ever go back to driving a gasoline car as my daily driver. I like having my gas station attached to the side of my house.

Ok—that’s all for now. I promise to keep my eyes and ears open for better subject matter next week.

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I apologize up front for what I am about to do. It is something I told myself I wouldn’t do once I retired, but I cannot seem to avoid the urge to purge. I am going to write about the Navy.

I determined that I would not do so once this new phase of my life started, as I purposely and purposefully reduced the pathways through which I maintained currency when I was working. I figured if I were not up to expert snuff, no one ought to pay any attention to my rambling.

These days, I learn about problems with the Navy as I imagine other generally well-informed people do. It takes quite a bit of newsworthiness for a story to make it above the background noise and appear in the general interest feeds I access. This is not how it used to be for me. I followed a ton of sources of detailed and granular stuff, and I sifted through it every day. I no longer follow them, and I no longer sift. I read the news and make determinations about the world around me from a more generalized information stream.

This has two main impacts. The first is, that I don’t spend nearly as much time thinking, writing, or talking about the Navy. This is a joy, most of the time. When it isn’t a joy is when the second impact is felt, and that is truly bad things need to happen for me to know about them now. And there are some important, bad things happening right now.

What are the problems?

1. The Navy is too small and under-resourced for what is asked of it. This is not a new condition, it has existed since the early 1990’s. Most importantly, it existed when this administration took office, before it began the war against Iran. No amount of my scribbling and kvetching over the past 19 years has changed this.

2. The war against Iran is gobbling up difficult to replace resources—mostly precision munitions—that were and are the backbone of ANY response to our primary strategic challenge, Chinese adventurism. The conduct of this war—against a nation that really did deserve significant punishment—has been a strategic failure based on a gigantic strategic blunder. The sense that a decapitating strike on Iranian leadership would solve all problems and preclude their predictable, certain response in closing the Arabian Gulf was incredibly risky, especially when the consequences of failure were weighed. Iran’s response shocked NO ONE in uniform. No one.

3. Let one thing sink in: Iran is no China. We’ve expended our all-too-insufficient stockpiles of precision munitions against a third rate military power who is acting exactly as military experts predicted it would. Now, think about where we would be six months into a war with China, starting from the same point. No, don’t think about it. The consequences are too terrible to consider.

4. The Navy and its sister services befouled themselves participating in the extrajudicial murder of suspected drug runners in the waters between South America and the Caribbean. No amount of gussied up rationales produced by administration lawyers guilty of motivated reasoning will ever change the basic truth that we likely committed war crimes in this theater. The strong do what they will, the weak bear what they must.

5. Because our Navy is too small and its resources (including people) are being expended in a strategically dubious manner, the decline in readiness for primary strategic challenges is not linear. The more we use our Navy, the more we use up our Navy. Ships need parts and maintenance, and crews need rest and time to train. We are heading downward in a readiness whirlpool.

6. There is no Secretary of the Navy. There is an “acting”. There is no Under Secretary of the Navy. There is an “acting”. There is no Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development, and Acquisition (read: shipbuilding). There is an “acting”. This is largely the fault of Democrats in Congress, but the administration could at least feign seriousness by nominating people to these jobs.

7. Congress is supine. This administration is destroying our most important military service through its mismanagement, and Congress does nothing. Where is the legislation directing the Navy to maintain its current aircraft carrier design program in opposition to the President’s incredibly short-sighted tantrum directing the Navy to change how the ship looks because the Toddler-in-Chief doesn’t like it, and also to replace the launching system the Navy FINALLY got right after years of trying, a system crucial to the future of increased unmanned air?

What is to be done?

1. Congress needs to do its job. It needs to hold hearings that publicly expose the degree to which the Navy is in decline. It needs to recognize that the President is an irresponsible steward of this power, and it needs to wrest its own authority back from his runaway authoritarianism. I noted with interest that the Congressional Commission on the Future of the Navy (to which I was appointed, and from which I resigned to protest its delayed birth) held public hearings this week, and while I find it encouraging, no commission’s deliberations are needed for Congress perform its oversight function.

2. If not already done, I suspect the Navy needs to essentially stop doing virtually everything that isn’t strategic deterrence, China, and Iran. And it needs to stop doing Iran as soon as we can extricate ourselves without basic principles of freedom of the seas being forever repudiated.

3. It is long past time for senior admirals to resign in protest. One appears to have done so last September, but has remained silent as to his motivations. Love of country and institutional loyalty HAVE to mean more than pensions, and the American people and their representatives in Congress must be informed of the degree to which this administration is destroying our nation’s competitive advantage.

I spent the rest of the service thinking about death, as the announcement in church was the third brush with it I had had that morning, the first being a text from Brother Jim to the family collective noting the one year anniversary of our Mom’s death. I use that term—death—rather than any of the more gentle versions, like “passing” or “passed”. I’m not sure why, but I do not prefer them. What I do know is that whether one passes or dies, they are no more, at least in any corporeal or conscious state. That immediate disappearance of consciousness became the center of my thoughts. One day, she is here. The next day, she is not. There are memories of course, and they sustain us, but the finality of the concluding breath is unmatched in its power to terminate.

I am especially attuned to death in Catherine’s orbit, which, while I am a church member too, this latest death falls squarely into. She, for whom death has left scars deep and wide, summons compassion from a seemingly bottomless lake of it when others are grieving. Along the way, she has improved my previously inept and cowardly approach to the grief of others. A man two rows in front of us—an occasional usher at the church—lost his wife several weeks ago, (my second brush with death today) but I learned of it only recently. When we arrived at our standard spot in the back of the church, I saw him sitting there by himself, in thought or prayer or some combination thereof. I quietly approached him and told him how sorry I was about the death of his wife. We had never passed words before this outside of “good morning” upon receiving a bulletin on the way into church, and I could tell he was surprised, but he cracked a painful smile.

I have written before of the social club I have joined in town, where at 61 years of age I am probably in the youngest fifth of members. I have acquired a great many dear friends in the past three years there who are at least fifteen years older than I and who are slowing down. I said to Catherine the other day that I will have to reconcile myself to attending more funerals than I have been accustomed to. I sat at lunch the other day next to one of my friends from the club, a man I recently saw in the Amish Market in a motorized scooter, which was the first time I’d seen him on that apparatus. I mentioned it to him, and I asked if he thought he’d make the trip to Florida this year, a place he spends the winter. No, he answered, he was going to go for a little in September/October, but his declining mobility argues for being at his Maryland place. We talked a little about getting older, about how much the club meant to each of us as a means of social interaction, and then he said something that I’ve heard Catherine say about her grandmother who died at 97. “All my friends are dying” he said. I nodded. I understood.

This conversation was just a few minutes after I’d chatted with the gentleman to my right at the table, a man of ancient civility and rectitude. I asked about his wife, who I knew to be ailing. He teared up almost immediately. “Not good”. He talked about the continuity of care she is receiving, and the fact that she spent three quarters of the day asleep.

That’s a fair amount of death in a couple of days, which I guess is why I dilated on it for so long this morning. But as I sit here writing this, I am also aware of the lives that preceded death, of the great loves my friends have had and the wonderful lives they’ve led. I am centrally aware of the wonderful life my mother led, and the great pride she had in her family and herself, right up to the last moment. And then I thought about my own life, and what an enormously good run it has been. Each new day is—in fact—a gift, especially in retirement.

And as certain as I am that death is the end of life, I am just as certain that a new life begins, a new consciousness emerges in that moment. And that “life” never ends.

Sunday Roast Chicken

There is little in life to be desired so much as a Sunday Roast Chicken, and that is what will grace our table later this afternoon. Rarely are roast chickens prepared the same way twice, as either spicing, presentation, or vegetable beds are subject to alteration. This approach has costs and benefits, with the cost being that some approaches are better than others, and the benefit being that some approaches are better than others. The choice of approach usually flows from what is available at the victualer, a trip to be undertaken upon conclusion of this essay.

The general scheme of maneuver for this day will include a bed of potatoes, onions, a shallot, garlic, carrots, asparagus, broccoli, and parsnip, and some white cooking wine. I’ll shake a little poultry seasoning on the bed and mix it up well before depositing a 3-4 lb. bird atop it, olive oiled and well-salted. I start cooking in a hot (450) oven and and after ten or twelve minutes, reduce heat until the sorcery of my internet enabled temperature probes tell me it is time to pull the works out. After I remove the chicken, I mix the vegetables again, turn the oven back up, and roast them a little while longer as the chicken rests.

Sometimes I cut up the chicken. Sometimes I spatchcock it. Sometimes I do a root vegetable bed. Sometimes I just cook the chicken atop a thin mattress of orange slices bathed in wine and vinegar.

Because of the applied technology, the dicey part of cooking chicken—timing—is not a problem. So the fact is, even a lesser version turns out delicious. The Kitten is especially fond of today’s likely version, and will eat little stashes of the leftover root vegetables for days.

Nineteen years ago this day (July 26, 2007) started as any other day would have at that point in my uneasy life. I was in my last summer in the Navy, my retirement request having recently been approved, and I had no real sense of what I would be doing on April 1st 2008 when I would no longer be accepting the crown’s coin. I was dating here and there, but there were no known threats to long-term solitude. I had recently begun to talk on the telephone (after a few emails back and forth showcasing my jaunty wit) with a woman who was geographically undesirable, but who had an awfully cute giggle. She had been described to me by a mutual friend as “a beautiful young widow who lives on the water surrounded by books”, and two days later, I was scheduled to drive out to her Eastern Shore locale to meet her for dinner (a Saturday evening). I decided to get a hotel room for that night so that I could get up early the next morning and drive home rather than doing so after dinner.

I left the Pentagon that day (Thursday July 26) and headed home to change before meeting up with a friend of mine for dinner, a retired Navy captain who was now working in the defense industry. This was what the retirement seminars referred to as a “networking” dinner, and I was making the rounds of friends and mentors who could give me some advice as to how to make the transition from Navy to civilian.

About halfway through dinner, I got a text message on my pocket sized Nokia from “the giggler” that said something like “What are the chances that I would run into you at McGarvey’s in Annapolis tonight at 9PM?”. I showed my friend the message and he asked what I thought of her. I told him she’s really smart and has a great voice and an awesome giggle, but she lives an hour and forty-five minutes away WITHOUT DC TRAFFIC. I also told him I had not met her yet, but that I really wanted to. He said, “why not?”. So I texted her that there was a fine chance she would run into me.

After dinner, I hopped in my car and drove out to McGarvey’s and stationed myself across from the entrance. I had decided that I liked her a good deal by this point, and that she had only to be not unattractive for there to be reason enough for me to be interested. Then she walked in.

God’s honest truth, I was blown away. Not just because she was good looking (which she was), but because something inside me clicked. I had had a good deal of literarily suffused emails back and forth with her, and a few long phone chats, and through these channels I had come to realize that this was a really serious woman, a widow raising two daughters on her own who didn’t have time for unserious men. And I am nothing if not unserious.

I leapt out of my chair when she walked in and made the first of countless mistakes. I gave her a big kiss on the cheek. She was a bit flummoxed by this, and she quickly maneuvered a table for two between us to return to her some semblance of personal space. I was SKYING! As I sat there realizing that Catherine was likely going to be in my life for a long, long, time, Catherine was sitting there wondering who this crazed lunatic is who accosted her upon entry. Seriously. It all could have ended right there on the spot, but in the first instance of her infinite patience, she gave me time to redeem myself.

I walked her to her car at about 0100 and began my drive back to Arlington, knowing I would have an utterly grueling day at the Pentagon ahead of me that would start at about 0700. A few minutes after I got underway, the phone rang. It was HER! She did like me! She wouldn’t call right away to keep her company on our drives (hers was about as far as mine) if she didn’t!. We had a lovely chat, and sometime after two AM, I began my three and a half hours of sleep before a busy Friday.

On Friday afternoon, I left early, around 3PM. As I walked out toward Pentagon South Parking on a brutally hot afternoon to begin the Bataan death march to my apartment in Crystal City, my cellphone got coverage and displayed a text message from Catherine. “How would you like to attend the Youth Sailing Auction with me at the Yacht Club tonight?” I’d never been a a yacht club before, and visions of Judge Smails danced in my head. Honestly, milliseconds before reading this, all I wanted was the air conditioned comfort of my apartment, the wall-to wall carpeting under my feet, and a giant bag of Chinese food from the place down the street. I would eat until I fell asleep, and it would be a glorious Friday night.

But remember, everything had changed. There was now a SOMEBODY. That SOMEBODY seemed as interested in me as I was in her. Keep in mind, we had a proper date SCHEDULED for the next night and I had a hotel room. I quickly called the hotel and asked if I could add the present night and they said “sure, come on out.” So I texted her my plans and drove out for the first time to her geographically undesirable location fueled by 7-11 coffee applied liberally to my exhaustion. She picked me up at my hotel in her giant Toyota Land Cruiser and we headed out to the auction.

The next morning I awoke to the sound of my phone ringing. I was in a strange place, and it was pitch dark. I looked at the phone, and it said it was a little after 11AM. It was Catherine, asking if I’d like to go to the park and have an ice cream cone. I was utterly disoriented, I had only just realized where I was, but instinct kicked in and I said yes, give me thirty minutes.

After the park and ice cream, I went back to my hotel for a serious nap to try and recapture some of the sleep lost over the two previous nights. What you just read is how I fell in love and how I had three dates with that woman before our first date ever really happened.

Almost nothing about my life is the same as it was before that day. And that…is a very good thing.

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Throat Clearing

First of all, I'd like to apologize for leaving you hanging last Monday. We had company over the weekend--two weekends in a row, really--and writing was just hard to get to. In general, this is a busy summer of visits, more so I think, than usual. We live in a bit of a summer paradise, and it is wonderful to share it with friends and relatives.

This is one of the special weeks in the town I live in, as our annual “Plein Air” art festival is well underway. Year after year, this weekend is some version of a biblical weather horror story, mostly featuring ridiculously high temperatures but this year, the prospect of flash flooding.

Catherine and I made our way into town for the festival, and it was unbelievably hot. It was obvious however, that the biblical downpour was on the way, and we wound up getting it later in the day.

There are two big festivals a year in this town where my sweet inamorata finds it difficult not to buy art. Plein Air is the first, and the Waterfowl Festival in November is the second. She’s partial to landscapes, and within this category, waterscapes. We simply have no room left on the walls in our house, so she has latterly become expert at propping new acquisitions up wherever they might be accommodated. We have a large screen TV in one of the bedrooms over the front of which hangs a large, angry night-time coastline scene. She has hung a painting using the faceplate of an electrical outlet on the backside of our kitchen island.

To update those of you who were left hanging, I put in the paperwork for the local country-club, so we’ll see if they lower their standards and let me in. I may have committed a great act of violence against friendships I have with fellows down in St. Michaels, as they lobbied hard for me to join their club. The money’s about the same, but there isn’t yet a clubhouse and I didn’t want to be on the hook for some massive capital campaign in the future. I will work to mend these fences.

The Dog Question

My acupuncturist was often accompanied to work by her dog Gus. Gus was a good boy, but it was obvious he’d lost a step or two and was not long for our world. News travels fast in this town, and when I heard of Gus’ demise, I reached out with condolences. While walking around town the other day viewing the art, Catherine and I ran into said acupuncturist who said she was driving to Ohio this weekend to adopt Rusty, a four-month old version of the dog Gus once was (some sort of herding dog, largish, long hair, etc.). I was genuinely happy for her, because it was clear that the dog sized hole in her heart was giving her trouble.

We have a two-dog sized hole in our collective heart, but for us, getting back into dog ownership will take some time. Catherine’s heart was well and truly broken by Zuzu’s death, coming quick on the heels as it did after Baloo’s demise. She is simply not ready to love another dog yet.

I could love another dog, but the logistics and practicalities of dog ownership are keeping me from being on “Team Dog” just yet. Even as the dogs aged, we were pretty open about holding off on getting new ones as we moved into our “active senior” years of travel. But those conversations were always in the future, so hypothetical. It is sad now to be facing those circumstances, but I think holding off for a few years will be the right thing to do. Right, but no only, because if Catherine wakes up one day and decides on a dog, we’ll be right back in the canine business. As it should be.

Homeless, and Loving It

I am politically homeless. Not ideologically, mind you. Politically. I remain a rock-ribbed, traditional, American conservative, but neither party is particularly conservative these days. One preens at it, but is at best a personality cult to a populist demagogue. The other seems to be headed toward actual socialism. So our choices are increasingly, socialism or crypto-fascism.

If you had told me that one day I would be politically adrift but that it would not raise an existential crisis, I’d have have taken issue. But that’s how it is. The last ten years of American politics and my decision to retire at the ripe old age of 60, has landed me in a position of not NOT caring, but caring a good deal less about politics. I listen to friends and acquaintances cheer for their team, and I am profoundly disappointed in them. Their judgment, their humanity, their grasp of basic arithmetic. I get it—I’m judgmental. I think I’m better than they are. I am disappointed in them. Sue me. I think we are in this incredibly bad and unstable period politically in no small measure because more Americans than ever…just suck. That’s it. They suck. They don’t use their brains, they don’t use their hearts, they’re convinced that feelings and impulses they possess that we once suppressed as hateful or anti-social are now acceptable and laudable. Want an example? How’s this?

I had to drive to Washington the other day, and along the way I had a long conversation with an old friend, a friendship forged when I was at the height of my interest and activity in national security circles. He still is, and as we talked, I heard the familiar words and themes, but I could not be moved. Not only was I considerably less familiar with the actual state of play, but I honestly didn’t care.

I suppose that’s how it ought to be. I’m not a productive member of society anymore, I don’t take the time to be informed like I used to, and I don’t have any real desire to change any of these circumstances. Unf***ing this world is someone else’s job now. Don’t get me wrong—I’m not pulling up the ladder. I’m not going to actively make the world a worse place. But the chuds who think Tylenol causes autism, that rent control solves problems, that Donald Trump is a Christian, or that everything else is caused by “THE JEEEEEWWWWWWSSSSS”—-they’re in charge. This is their circus, these are their monkeys.

It has been a delightful few days, days in which the blessings of owning a pool were manifest in the face of triple digit heat. There is talk that our visitors will be leaving this morning to try and get ahead of the traffic, but there is always a chance they'll stay another night beat the traffic tomorrow.

Like my birthday weekend last week, I have defiled myself with sugars and carbohydrates, and I dare not venture near the scale until I've had three days of proper eating under my (lengthened) belt. We (the Kitten, me, and our three guests) went over to another friend's house Friday evening for a delightful cookout, after which we all proceeded to still another friend's house for a delightful event on the Tred Avon River with ringside seats to the Oxford fireworks, an open bar and a ridiculous assortment of desserts. I had been good, very good, all day until I saw that table, and then I was no longer good. There were little pecan pie squares, and I must have had a dozen of them, and there were shortbread cookies in the shapes of stars with red, white, and blue icing that simply begged for my patriotic consumption.

We hosted last night's event, and as the grill-Meister and second in command, I was responsible for attempting to time things around what were purported by our various meteorological services to be nasty summer storms approaching. The buttsweat heat drove an early decision that we would eat inside, but my menu choices (ribs, Italian sausage, grilled portobello mushrooms) drove the use of my grill and the kitchen oven, and so I needed to be as sure as I could that the grilling part was done before the lightning part started. As luck and good fortune would have it, the rain held out until well after dinner, and my inamorata was even able to lead a little party of guests into one of the corners of our yard to exercise some good old Native American/Colonial American hatchet throwing skill, something that is always sure to energize her (and cause me some hesitation at her skill therewith).

We capped off the evening watching the televised fireworks from New York, which can only be described as epic. Between the local display and the New York televised display—and my reading of the Declaration after dinner last night—my great love of country was right in my throat, and I was warmed to be a citizen of this great land.

At one point, Catherine turned on (gads!) Fox and there was live coverage of some room in which the President and his wife were standing, apparently readying himself for a speech I would not note at a time of day when proper Americans were already abed. I am somewhat unhappy with myself for my churlish reaction to the President's role in these festivities, but I feel quite confident that if I were to review his performance later on today, it will have validated my decision to skip.

Soccer/Football

I am enjoying the World Cup, and watching a good bit more soccer than normal. Since normal is virtually nothing, this is not hard to do. But like most of America, I am not only now an expert on the game, I have come to a number of conclusions about the game. Here they are:

1. The game is not as popular here as it is in the rest of the world, and it is not as popular here as the basketball and football. It seems to have edged out hockey and baseball, and that seems fine. I think there is no chance the sport will ever displace either football or basketball in my remaining lifetime. Of American sports, its closest kin is baseball, which is boring and has largely become a niche sport that interests people only during the playoffs. Though the game is inestimably improved by making games shorter.

2. Euros like to make fun of American football because of all the stoppages of play. Ok. Watch a World Cup game…not only are there a TON of stoppages for over the top faking of injuries, even when the game is in play there are MANY slowdowns that approach the status of stoppages. I get that it takes a lot of athleticism to play men’s professional soccer. But there is also an AWFUL lot of standing around.

3. What there isn’t—is rigid timing. For heaven sake, just stop the clock when Rodrigo is rolling around on the ground seeking his first BAFTA. This “extra time” stuff is falderal.

4. Overtime in US football is kinda wacked, and so it is in big time soccer. You tie after 90 minutes—and then you play 30 more? And if there still is a tie THEN you go to penalty kicks? I am told they used to have a sudden death ending during the two 15 minute extra periods, and I think Americans would vastly prefer that.

I’ve listened to the soccer is going to be our biggest sport crowd for fifty years, and at no point in that time have I believed it.

A Big Decision

I am mulling a big decision, one I haven't discussed with The Kitten yet, but since she won't read this--likely at all--but if so, until tomorrow, I will share with you here now as I'll bring it up with her later today. I am trying to decide whether to join a country club. Or as the case may be, another country club. I’m still a member at a club I joined in my 20’s, but an “absent” member so my obligations are quite modest. This would be a local club, with the obligatory offering up of a lung as an initiation fee followed by monthly minimums for the rest of time.

There is simply no good economic case for this. I think for the past 39 years, I’ve averaged one or two golf rounds a year, and if I joined the public course close by, I could play over 600 rounds just for the up front money at the private club.

But the next twenty years of my life—as far as golfing is concerned—are likely to look more like the FIRST twenty than any other period in my life. And I played a LOT of golf before I entered the Navy. I STILL will never be able to justify the expense based on a per round basis, so I won’t even try. I DO know that if I joined a club, I would play a LOT more than I do now, and that is very consistent with how I want to roll.

There are all sorts of other emoluments that come along with joining a proper country club, including pools (I got one of them), pickleball (I may never play again), and tennis courts. Besides the golf, the dining room is pretty much the other big draw for me, as I’d really like to have a place where, when Cat and I don’t want to cook, we know we can go and get a table and eat a good meal.

I also cannot help but think that if Jimmy Wires were around (my Dad), he’d say “this is a no-brainer. If you can afford it, do it.” Hell, he belonged to two country clubs in his seventies (and maybe his eighties)!

I realize this is a first world problem. And every time I look at even a modest projection of where I’ll be financially some day, I think to myself that I wish there were a way to shift some of that money/living to the left. Any of you that track your investments probably have access to a graph that looks something like this:

That one all the way on the right is a conservative view of my stash when I’m 91. Ninety-one. And while I obviously cannot make the leftward shift I dream about—financially—I can shift the living part.

I’ll keep you posted on this.

The Lady of the Manor asked me what would make for a perfect birthday, and I muttered a few inconsequential words, but the truth was that the day was shaping up perfectly as it is. Surveying my domain for a bit in bed, a rainy day with no responsibility or commitments, and a gourmet dinner to top it all off at our favorite special event restaurant. The only concern I have is that my digital scale continues to state that I am “60”, and I must suss out the instructions necessary to right this cosmic wrong. I remember having this same problem on my last birthday. Why a scale needs to broadcast one's age is a mystery to me, but my OCD will not allow for error.

A very special friend appeared out of nowhere last night with an email and attached gift certificate good for redemption at the very restaurant at which we will dine tonight. I was blown away. Dudes don't buy each other presents! At most, you say Happy Birthday and pay for beer. Because I am unpleasant, I called him on it. “What is this outlandish gift?” I asked. His answer was (characteristically) perfect, citing the 27 years of our friendship. I was deeply touched, and to be honest, blown away that 27 years had piled up. I have been friends with Tim as long as my oldest girl has been alive, and she is a grown-ass woman. Such things are hard to fathom.

Dash 2 just checked in with birthday video greetings on WhatsApp, and General Dan just texted me. His birthday was two days ago, and we have solemnified this critical month together since 2001.

A friend of long-standing checked in this morning, out of the blue, unaware of the day's great significance. No matter, his appearance after years of lost contact, was a little gift all its own. He indicated that “…your name had come up in conversation…” yesterday, and while I was initially curious as to the context, I decided that the context was inconsequential. What was important was his communication.

I had targeted this morning (in my weekly plan) for a two-hour walk, but the weather appears not to want to cooperate. No great loss, I'll find my way onto the treadmill later and burn some calories that I'll turn into chocolate cake at days end. The fun continues tomorrow, as I am to be the guest of a local friend at his she-she golf course for a round of 18, what should prove to be my third round since establishing my handicap, which the app tells me is the minimum before it will calculate.

I thought this morning of my (also) early-rising mother, who for the last twenty years or so of her life, would call me bright and early on this day to sing Happy Birthday to me. I was almost always already awake for these calls, but not always. She was born in July, a Cancer like me, which likely accounts for my status as her favorite among her six children, something my siblings deeply resent to this day. (This was humor).

Preps for the Fourth

We will busy ourselves next week slaying the fatted calf for our annual Fourth of July gathering, which is centered around a group of girls (Catherine’s) boarding school chums. These ladies are a hoot when they are together, and we Y-Chromosomed attendants cater to their every need. The great origin story of the Kitten and me springs from one of these couples, as a boarding school pal married a UVA dorm-mate of mine, and twenty years after graduating they connected us. The twenty years of seasoning was important, as the 22 year old version of me would not have had a chance with The Kitten, and her standards declined enough over time for me to be minimally qualified as her inamorato.

This group was together at New Year last, and a great discovery was made. One of the ladies brought along some ridiculously scrumptious French butter to adorn my ridiculously scrumptious scones, but as I was giantly fat from my September calf tear, I did not prepare any. But the seed was planted, and as luck would have it, in conversation recently with the proprietress of a local housewares shop specializing in French items, I discovered that she and her husband also ran a gourmet food shop thirty miles from us, and that they carried the butter in question. She agreed to become my “butter pusher", and a few days later (after providing my order and credit card) I walked out of her shop with four blocks of this manna from heaven. A few moments ago, I ordered two scone mixes, and next week, we'll be in business!

I have discussed with you my feelings as our nation's birthday approaches and my sense that when I was 11, the Bicentennial was just better, more participated in. I could be wrong. I could just be a curmudgeon. But I will “do the work" this week and celebrate with gusto on the Fourth.

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My friend Jack Henneman is an immensely intelligent and socially affable gentleman. A lawyer by training, he spent years as a panjandrum in the health care industry, and now spends his time in some odd form of retirement that likely includes board slots and definitely includes opinion writing and podcasting from his peripatetic movements around the country and world. His podcast is—along with The History of England Podcast and The Rest is History Podcast—is a favorite.

Jack has a wry, sardonic wit that comes across in his podcasting and his writing. He often refers to himself as “cranky”, and so I figure I create no friend injury by terming his thusly. I suspect he likes it.

Jack’s latest Substack (linked to above) gives you a sense of his scope and mastery, but my reason for honing in on him in this essay is my terribly judgmental determination that he is insufficiently tough on the President, a charge always sure to elicit a raised eyebrow from me. Not that he cares all that much. He’s on solid ground.

Fear not, Jack does not appear to be a supporter of the President. He is a man of principle, and one of the few consistent callers of balls and strikes on policy matters. When the President does things he likes, he says so. When the President does things he thinks are unwise or otherwise not positive, he says so. He is tougher on Trump’s (over the top, emotional) critics than he is on Trump’s (limited capacity, amnesia-riddled) supporters, but he’s about as well-adjusted as a modern analyst can be, and that is what I find so frustrating. Because I’m obviously not.

The time for balls and strikes is over. That the republic has not fallen does not mean that it is not under serious threat. That the steadily diminishing influence of American institutions has not ended is not a sign of their continuing relevance. And most importantly for this essay, the fact that the while the President is running like the wind away from his ill-conceived war with Iran—a good thing in the sense that when you’re in a hole you need to stop digging—he can, should, and must be witheringly criticized for all manner of executive errors to this point, including the ways, means, and agents he is using to achieve his tactical surrender.

My friend Jack has had a few tweets lately that were like little pieces of crab shell between my teeth in the past month.

The bottom line here is that while in these three examples, Jack is not stanning for the President, in his quest to be fair, he drives me nuts. That’s on me, I understand it. HE is the mentally healthy one. But for heaven’s sake—the President started a war that EVERYONE on his national security team would have cautioned could precipitate a petro-economic crisis (because maybe a few of them have actually thought this through and realized it was the most likely to occur and most disastrous for us course of action), at the same time he is conducting an illegal and immoral murder campaign in the Atlantic and Caribbean, around the same time that he threatens a NATO partner with invasion and confiscation. I could go on, but you get my point. The President deserves unremitting opprobrium for his mistakes of commission, and continuing to try and treat him “fairly" by suggesting he’s not as bad as he could be, strikes me as an exercise in signaling one’s virtue, at least as much as this essay of mine is.

I tipped Jack that he might be mentioned in dispatches today, and he met it with good cheer (without knowing my angle). And so, if he wishes to respond to this unprovoked attack on my part, I will offer him unedited space here to do so.

Father’s Day

I hope those of you with a Y chromosome and sufficient fecundity had a swell day yesterday. The sibling chat was alive with classic photos of my Dad, including this gem.

In honor of Jimmy Wires and in recognition of my determination to golf with more regularity, I signed up online for the USGA online handicap service. It’s been a long LONG time since I had a handicap, and I am reliably informed that I only need three rounds to get one started. If the weather holds up this week, I will play rounds two and three and be well on my way. I spent some time thinking yesterday and realized that I had not played two full 18 hole rounds in a week since high school. I played a lot in college, but mostly in nine hole increments, and at most only twice a week. The man above got two rounds a week in for most of his adult life, and when his sons took up the game, he got a third one (but he had to take us).

Looking at that picture, I think about a few things. The first is how much I like saddle shoes on the golf course, and the second is how much I miss the sound metal spikes made on cart paths. Hell, I put my golf shoes on at home now, they are basically sneakers with interesting soles.

I can’t be on a golf course without my Dad’s voice in the back of my head. I can’t play gin rummy without my Dad’s voice in the back of my head. I really don’t want to not have my Dad’s voice in the back of my head, as I am incredibly grateful for the wonderful life he set out for me.

It is a lovely day, and I have lovely plans. I will shortly rise from this comfy prop and make myself some breakfast before plodding off to a session with the acupunturist. I cannot tell for sure whether the relief of arthritis pain in my hands is more attributable to low carb/sugar (inflammation) dieting, or to the acupuncture, but as long as there is relief, I will not “mess with a streak". After I’ve been properly pierced, I will go for a two-hour walk at a brisk pace, something I’ve kept up two or three times a week since my trip to Crete. My friend Russell has inspired me. There is nothing else in my diary for the day, so all after breakfast, acupuncture, and walking is icing on the cake. The Kitten indicated marked indifference to my activities today, so I suspect she has a day of puttering around with her vegetation, bunnies, and watercolors.

There is a man in our town who is of some controversy. Apparently quite wealthy, he has purchased a number of buildings in our downtown and populated them with high-end businesses of his choosing. He has remade Easton’s downtown, and I am reliably informed that he did so in no small part because he wanted to have an interesting place for his friends to visit, a la Marie Antoinette and Petit Trianon. I am a big fan of his efforts, as he has brought my favorite restaurant in the world to my door, a centrally located coffee shop, a lovely bookstore, and of interest for this essay, a dessert shop that serves “high tea" on selected afternoons. I have not had high tea since our trip to Scotland a few years ago, so as part of her birthday haul, I gifted the Kitten (and me) with high tea yesterday afternoon. The tea experience was, as you might guess, lovely. I can do without tea, to be honest, but to play along I had a pot of Earl Grey whilst the Kitten had some “Blue Tea” concoction that delighted her so much that I need to secure her a stash. There were little finger sandwiches (“savory”) and tasty confections (including my favorites--scones with clotted cream), a right proper time it was.

As I said, this fellow has polarized the town a bit, with some comparing him to Mr. Potter from “It’s A Wonderful Life”. I don’t remember Mr. Potter bringing nice businesses to Potterville in George’s dream, but every place this modern day version opens, I tend to like.

I lay out these scenes of comfortable contentedness to you, gentle reader, to set up the back end of this scribbling, which is the looming suckitude of my Thursday colonoscopy. This will be my second, as my first was a keystone event of my 50th birthday summer. In advance, I wish to extend my deepest condolences to anyone who has lost a loved one to agues of the colon. I wish it upon no one, and I am not trying to be light with a heavy subject. I do believe however, that after the experience eleven summers ago, I considered the possibility of taking my chances and never having another again. Yet here I am, days before the Bataan Death March of fasting and seeping that is the 24 hours before the Edward II--like procedure, thinking about how much I despise this whole business. I suspect the Phoenicians gave us this process 3000 years ago, and in a world where a (mostly not) conscious computer can provide the lonely with companionship, I am staggered that some means other than this massive invasion of my undercarriage has not been developed to confidently diagnose calamities of the gastro-intestinal tract.

My inamorata will of course, provide me with the required transportation back and forth to the big city (Annapolis), and as the procedure is first thing, there may be an “if you're a good boy" trip to Cracker Barrel on the way home. So I got that goin' for me.

I wonder if we (as in the entire medical community) haven't gotten comfortable with an elaborate procedure that lines various pockets when some far less invasive procedure might do (or “do-do"). I know there are services where once can harvest samples of one's excrement and mail them for analysis, but the guild seems to frown upon this less invasive (and likely vastly less-profitable) test. My friend (AI) tells me that deaths from heart disease in the US outnumber those of colon cancer by 17 to one, yet we don't send cameras on spy missions internally unless there is some reason to do so. Are there no imaging technologies that can be applied here?

Gads! I just consulted AI and to my joy, was informed that progress is being made on a “virtual colonoscopy” which is a lot like a CT scan of the heart. BUT--you still have to do the prep day, and let's face it, the only redeeming thing about the colonoscopy is the propofol-fueled nap. More research indicates that the American Cancer Society has reached a consensus that routine screenings for average risk individuals (me) should stop at 75. So unless there is some continued progress, I've got this one, one at 70, and presumably a walk-off effort at 75.

Something to look forward to.

The World Cup

To say I am interested in the World Cup is to go a bit too far. In a couple of weeks, I will be MILDLY interested. And I’ll likely look in on the final. But I’m just not that into it. What I AM into is a genre of Tweet posted by mostly European football (soccer) fans who are encountering the splendor and majesty of this country for the first time. It really is something to behold. The world simply does not really understand how prosperous this country is. I LOVE the fact that per capita GDP in our poorest state (Mississippi) is higher than that of Great Britain and just about the same as that of Germany.

Take that.

Platner, Paxton

As is our custom (see Constitution, U.S., Article 1 Section 3, as amended by the 17th Amendment), roughly a third of the Senate is up for grabs this autumn, and two particularly unsavory characters seem to be grabbing much of the spotlight. I do not care to go into the specific personal failures of Messer’s Platner of Maine and Paxton of Texas, as there is plenty publicly available information to convince only the most ignorant among us that neither man possesses the character, ethics, and morality necessary to serve in the Senate. No, the people of those two states—a pox on both parties—are responsible for raising two men to the precipice of service in the world’s greatest deliberative body—who are execrable, seeping pustules of misconduct and ethical failure. I cannot imagine being able to hold an intelligent conversation with ANYONE who believes either of these man fit for service. Oh sure, I’d get a lot of “whataboutism” and finger pointing about what the other guys do, but I’m talking about a real defense of these men as HUMAN BEINGS. Such is not possible.

Our political parties are failing us, and we as a body politic are failing ourselves.

The Ballroom

I think Donald Trump is right. I wholeheartedly support the construction of a proper ballroom worthy of this great nation and its enduring Constitution. My support for the President’s desire mirrors my support for the construction of a southern border wall, in which I have always been in favor. That support, for both projects, is consistent with my understanding of how our government works, and because I understand how that government works, I am left with the inescapable conclusion that the ballroom is illegitimate. Putting aside the fact that virtually none of the procedures for major alterations to buildings within our national patrimony were followed, and the fact that a major alteration to that national patrimony has been made without ANY input of the legislative branch, the fact that it is funded by cronies of the President (many of whom have —surprise, surprise—won contracts to build said ballroom) reflects terribly on the perception of our government not being for sale. The ridiculous notion of the roof of the building’s use as a UAV pad simply underlines the unseriousness of this effort, and the regard shown by the President for the simple fact that it is NOT his house, and while he may have a good idea for how it could be improved, HE doesn’t get to make those calls.

UFC 250

I hate mixed martial arts/ultimate fighting with the heat of 10,000 suns. The emergence of these spectacles suggest civilizational decline like few other variables. But I understand that many disagree with me, one of whom lives in the White House. Wrapping his desire for bread and circuses with his blustering, blundering love of construction, we have this monstrosity popping up on the lawn of the White House, soon to serve as the location for ugly blood sport.

What KILLS me about this is the use of “250” in the title, as if this tragedy were in some way connected to the nation’s upcoming celebration. It isn’t. It just so happens that the event is scheduled for—-here it comes—the President’s birthday! We are living with an 80 year old toddler in charge of us. Last year he had the Army conduct a parade on his birthday, this year it is a bouncy tent of inhumanity.

Don’t even get me started on the painting of the reflecting pool.

The Iran War

I was wrapped up in Republican national security circles for about five or six years 2011-2016, and the thing I tired of hearing more than anything else was the ridiculous, adolescent, braying of the isolationist crowd about GOP “forever wars”. The nation raised the leader of this braying to the Presidency in January 2017, and he continued to criticize his predecessors for their use of American military power. Here we are nine and half years later, and he is elbows deep in a war that is entirely offensive in nature, was not started in response to any attack or reasonable threat of one, and was planned and executed based apparently on some of the most specious operational thinking available. The suggestion that a decapitation strike was all we’d need and the mullahs would stand aside was faulty from the start, and Iran’s overall strategic position may be BETTER than it was when this war started.

But…as I’ve said before…no country on EARTH had earned a punch in the nose more than Iran, and I would have been foursquare in favor of military action HAD THE PRESIDENT DONE WHAT HIS GOP FOREBEARS had done, which is to seek the sanction of the Congress before going to war. He didn’t. He didn’t feel that he needed to. And now he’s trying to pin everything on Netanyahu because the Iranians didn’t roll over and play dead like he thought they would.

A pox upon all these cry-baby, forever wars, MAGA-ts, I’m glad you’re getting an opportunity to participate in what world leadership entails.

Murdering Drug-runners

We are up to over 200 suspected drug runners murdered on the high seas in the waters off Venezuela. That’s right. Murdered. These attacks should rightly be considered war-crimes, and I am ashamed that men wearing the uniforms of our Armed Services haven’t had the courage to just lay down their stars and walk away, choosing the coward’s way which is to wink and nod at manufactured political cover coming out of the White House. They know what they are doing is wrong, but they do it anyway because they think they can’t be punished for it. Terrible.

Conclusion

I’ll rise in a month and read the Declaration of Independence on the morning of July 4th as I always do, and I’ll try to think about this nation with renewed confidence and spirit, the kind that always comes from re-connecting with the great and good men who created it. I pray that “we the people” will get our shit together and start not only realizing that WE are the problem, but that also, WE are the only solution. Only through a great awakening of moral and ethical action can this nation arrest its—perhaps fatal—decline.

I don’t expect that many will take on the entire text of this document. That is a shame, as it is superbly organized, reasoned, and written, not to mention of inestimable value to world civilization. As I read it, my heart swelled with pride in the knowledge that the church is led by such a deep and supple thinker, a man of great humanity. Reading it also brought to mind my practice of occasionally reading the entire text of Supreme Court decisions, and the pride I get in that activity from the beautiful logic and writing of both majority and minority opinions, especially in deeply divided cases. The headlines that accompanied its release this morning tended to focus on the Pope’s apology and request for God’s forgiveness for the church’s role in slavery. While important (and click-worthy), this utterly misses the great weight of the document and comprises a few hundred words out of the total.

My sense is that we are in a particularly perilous time, certainly within the lifespan thus far allotted me. The Pope is respectfully but firmly asserting his views on these times, and offers suggestions and calls for action to requisite authorities and individuals.

And he quotes Tolkien once, which was magnificent.

The Pope is especially interested in how technology and humanity are to be reconciled. He gets around to this by building his argument atop the foundation of centuries of Christian thought on humanity, personhood, life, and spirituality. He has talked about this since the day he put on the ring, and in this work, he has given full flower to his hopes and his reservations. I’d like to do a little “call and response” for the remainder of this post, but as a means to highlight some of what I consider to be the most meaningful parts of the document, and also to potentially convince some of you to dive deeper. The bolded parts of quotes are from me. Please ignore any footnote numerals that remain embedded.

21. Recognizing that God upholds the freedom of men and women in the unfolding of history, the Second Vatican Council affirmed the distinction between the ecclesial community and the political community, emphasizing that each must operate with full autonomy. The Church’s presence in the world is also expressed through her relationship with civil society and public institutions. By engaging with these entities, the Church acknowledges the value of social and political realities and honors their specific responsibilities, supporting everything that fosters the wellbeing of individuals and strengthens the fabric of society. The Church does not claim to assume the functions belonging to the State. On the contrary, she esteems those who serve the common good, and she firmly acknowledges the responsibility that civil institutions hold within society. At the same time, the mission entrusted to the Church prompts her to address the real suffering of the men and women of our time. This closeness does not stem from an intent to supplant civil institutions, much less from an implicit criticism of their work. Rather, it stems from evangelical charity, which impels the Church to draw near to the wounds of humanity whenever they surface with greater severity. When the Church intervenes, she does so following the example of the Good Samaritan, with discretion and closeness, aware that what arises from urgent necessity cannot become the norm, nor replace the institutional responsibilities proper to the civil community.

I like this paragraph and proximate ones because it answers the charge of those who might say “stick to your knitting, theology, religion, and the afterlife. Leave politics to the earthly authorities.” We have heard this recently.

27. In light of what has been said so far, the Church’s Social Doctrine can be seen more authentically. It is not a handbook of principles and norms to be applied, but a process of shared discernment. It is born from the encounter between the eternal truth of the Gospel and the questions of history. It allows itself to be challenged by the signs of the times, and draws nourishment from the contributions of science, culture and human experience. Therefore, when the dignity of our brothers and sisters is violated, when politics fails to address the tragedies of humanity, when the economy turns against the person or science oversteps the limits of its competence, [22] the Church — together with other Christian denominations and believers of other religions — must make her voice heard, not in order to dominate, but to promote communion. Understood in this way, Social Doctrine becomes a theology of communion in history, a history in which the Word made flesh continues to be present through dialogue, memory and prophecy.

More to the responsibilities of the Church when government or other authority fails, but particularly important here, the Pope seeks communion with other faith traditions.

31. Pius XI’s Encyclical Quadragesima Anno was published in 1931 on the fortieth anniversary of Rerum Novarumat the height of a major global economic crisis, marking a further step in the Church’s social teaching. Rather than limiting itself to addressing the “workforce question,” it broadened its focus to encompass the overall structure of the economic and political order. The Encyclical denounces the concentration of economic power in the hands of a few; criticizes both unlimited competition and collectivist projects that undermine the freedom and responsibility of the individual; strongly affirms the workers’ right to association; and reiterates the requirement that wages be proportionate not only to performance, but also to the needs of workers and their families. Within this framework, Pius XI systematically formulated the principle of subsidiarity, which was to become one of the cornerstones of Social Doctrine. According to this principle, whatever can be carried out by individuals, families, intermediary organizations and local communities should not be carried out by higher-level authorities. Alongside these contributions, in various interventions of his Magisterium — from the Encyclicals Non Abbiamo Bisogno and Mit Brennender Sorge to Divini Redemptoris — Pius XI clearly recalled the societal role of private property and denounced forms of totalitarianism that demean the dignity of the person, stifle life in society, exalt the State above its just value and discriminate according to race. At least three insights of his social teaching remain particularly relevant today: the awareness that injustice concerns not only individual behavior but also economic and institutional structures; the importance of the principle of subsidiarity, which calls for the strengthening of the fabric of associations and communities while avoiding further centralization of power; and the link between the dignity of work, fair remuneration and the genuine possibility for families to lead a dignified life.

Reading this paragraph, I first came to the notion of the place of Catholic social teaching along the generally recognized spectrum of modern American politics. A Pope in 1931—as the Depression raged and Fascism was emerging—warned against both rapacious capitalism (how the Right in America is often portrayed) and collectivism (as the Left in American is often portrayed). I WANT to live in a world in which religious leaders affirm both a shared responsibility to lend assistance to the weakest among us AND an economic approach that supports the “…freedom and responsibility of the individual.”

37. The rich social teaching of Saint John Paul II lies at the crossroads of the crisis of the great ideological systems of the twentieth century and the onset of economic globalization. His Encyclical Laborem Exercens, written ninety years after the publication of Rerum Novarum, opened up a new avenue for reflection on work. It presents fair wages as the concrete means of verifying the justness of the entire socioeconomic system because they reveal whether the worker is treated as a person or merely as a cost of production. [35] Work is not considered simply as a problem to be dealt with or a means of generating income, but a fundamental good for the person, a principle of economic activity and the key to the entire societal question. Through work, human beings bring their freedom, creativity and capacity for cooperation into play, contributing to the cultural and moral elevation of society. [36] In light of this, the various kinds of job insecurity, fragmented career paths and automation must not be evaluated solely in terms of efficiency, but in relation to the dignity of the worker, the right to sufficient remuneration and the genuine possibility of participating in society.

Leo here is setting the stage for later exhortation of governments and policy action to sustain the dignity of the individual through work in the face of technological displacement.

51. Saint John Paul II stated that, “this heightened sense of the dignity of the human person and of his or her uniqueness, and of the respect due to the journey of conscience, certainly represents one of the positive achievements of modern culture.” [57] This statement follows the line already laid out by the Second Vatican Council, which had noted a growing recognition of the sublime dignity of all persons, their superiority over material things and their universal and inviolable rights and duties. [58] It is important to ensure that this growth in appreciation of human dignity is not obscured by the pressure of new ideologies or very powerful interests in today’s world. Among these ideologies, I consider particularly insidious the one that suggests that every person must earn or justify his or her own worth, to the point of attributing greater value to those who are more efficient or effective. From this perspective, persons end up being reduced to a means of achieving results, a resource to be used and exploited, and are no longer recognized as a proper end in themselves who should never be instrumentalized. The value of persons, however, does not depend on what they achieve or produce. There are rights that apply to everyone simply by virtue of being human, and no human power can legitimately deny or arbitrarily limit them. [59]

Wow. This is powerful stuff, and you can tell that this is coming straight from the top.

64. This also applies to international politics. As the divide between nations widens, a mentality of confrontation and aggression begins to take hold, and the difficult path toward a more united and fraternal world suffers new and painful setbacks. In this context, speaking of a shared journey toward a more just development for the entire human family “sounds like madness.” [83] Yet we must not lose hope. I invite everyone to conceive of ways of cooperating and of more effective international institutions, capable of safeguarding the global common good without compromising the legitimate diversity of peoples and nations. Indeed, the promotion of the common good can never be separated from respect for the right of peoples to exist, to preserve their own identity and to contribute their unique qualities to the family of nations. [84] Moreover, any attempt or plan to eliminate or subjugate a nation is gravely immoral and therefore unacceptable.

The Pope in this work, really rails against those who believe international institutions and the pursuit of peace are vain activities given human nature. An the final sentence in the paragraph is aimed directly at Vladamir Putin (Ukraine), Donald Trump (Iran), and those who subscribe to the goal of wiping Israel off the map.

70. This principle encourages us to move beyond any form of paternalistic or welfare-based management of societal life, but instead to promote a culture of shared responsibility in a State that values citizens’ initiative, and a civil society capable of forging bonds and mobilizing energies in the service of the common good. In accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, decisions are made at the closest level possible to the persons involved, thereby fostering community life and avoiding people being presented with decisions that have already been taken. In this way people can participate in the decision-making process. When families, associations, local communities, volunteer organizations and those in the so-called “third sector” are recognized and supported, social life becomes more accessible to people, services become more attuned to real needs, and solutions are more creative and respectful of the dignity of each person. [95]

This ought to appeal to even the most conservative among us, though I do wish he had made a nod to “personal” responsibility here.

71. The principle of subsidiarity applies especially in the context of the digital revolution. Here, the highest level is not the State, but rather major economic and technological actors that exercise de facto power over the conditions of everyday life. This level, which monopolizes expertise, data and decision-making authority, involves companies and platforms that define conditions for access, rules of visibility, forms of interaction, and even economic opportunities. The principle of subsidiarity requires that such processes not be imposed from above in an opaque and unilateral manner, but instead be directed toward the common good with transparency, accountability and meaningful forms of participation (including independent checks, transparency regarding algorithms, equitable access to data and avenues for recourse). [96]

72. In this context, States and transnational institutions are called to ensure fair rules and effective safeguards, so that local communities, intermediary organizations, schools, universities, religious institutions and associations have a voice and can contribute to the discernment of choices that affect people’s daily lives, such as employment, access to services, data management and digital environments. When it comes to decisions regarding economic flows and digital platforms, as well as the governance of data and algorithms, we cannot allow a handful of actors to dictate these processes on their own; instead, we must build forms of cooperation that respect the various levels of the global community and make them jointly responsible for the common good. [97]

Cutting edge stuff for a Pope, no? AI is coming, governments are behind the power curve, super-empowered individuals are making decisions that all of humanity will benefit or suffer from. This has had the Pope’s attention since Day 1.

79. The idea of “social justice” helps us recognize that injustices do not arise solely from the wrong choices of individuals, but also from structures, mechanisms and economic and cultural systems that produce inequality almost automatically. Saint John Paul II spoke in this vein of structures of sin [108] that oppose God’s will and require a commitment to personal and social conversion. In this perspective, justice is not merely about the fairer distribution of resources or the correction of current injustices, but also assumes a restorative dimension. It aims to mend broken bonds and reintegrate those who have been excluded, taking into account the wounds caused by injustices, such as wars, colonialism, racial or gender discrimination, violence against entire peoples and exploitation. This may include restoring dignity and a voice to those who have been ignored, fostering processes of healing for collective memory, opposing discriminatory laws and practices, and providing concrete support to those who still bear the consequences of wrongs suffered in the past.

Quite frankly, THIS is the way I want a man of God to think. He recognizes that individuals ARE part of the problem of injustice, but he reminds us of the structural and cultural elements that remain.

81. A litmus test for social justice today is the treatment of migrants, refugees and those forced to move due to poverty, violence, climate change and environmental disasters. The way a society treats them reveals whether its sense of justice is driven by fear or by the spirit of fraternity. Pope Francis urged us to see migrants not simply as a problem to be managed, but as a living image of the People of God on the move. [109] They are people with dignity, resources and dreams, who have the right to be treated with respect and to ask to become active members of the societies that welcome them. Social justice in this area entails at least two complementary commitments. On the one hand, this means protecting the rightful hopes of those forced to leave by ensuring safe and legal routes, dignified conditions for receiving them, and genuine pathways to integration. On the other hand, it means promoting the right to remain in one’s homeland in peace and security by addressing the root causes that force people to migrate, including those linked to economic injustices and the climate crisis. When these rights are respected, migration can become an opportunity for encounter and mutual enrichment among peoples.

While this is a global problem, I cannot help but feel that Pope is speaking directly to Americans here.

95. Here, we must recognize another crucial aspect, which I have noted earlier. In many cases within the digital context, control over platforms, infrastructure, data and computing power does not rest with States, but with major economic and technological actors. These entities effectively set the conditions for access, determine the rules of visibility and shape the very possibilities for participation. When such power is concentrated in the hands of a few, it tends to become opaque and evade public oversight, increasing the risk of distorted forms of development that give rise to new dependencies, exclusions, manipulations and inequalities.

The Pope is really worried about concentration of power in the few, and he is right to be.

99. It is not possible to provide a single, comprehensive definition of AI. What can be stated, however, is that we must avoid the misconception of equating this type of “intelligence” with that of human beings. These systems merely imitate certain functions of human intelligence. In doing so, they often surpass human intelligence in speed and computational capacity, offering tangible benefits across many fields. Yet this power remains entirely tied to data processing. So-called artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships and do not know from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean. Nor do they have a moral conscience, since they do not judge good and evil, grasp the ultimate meaning of situations, or bear responsibility for consequences. They may imitate language, behavior and analytical skills, or even simulate empathy and understanding, but they do not understand what they produce, for they lack the affective, relational and spiritual perspective through which human beings grow in wisdom. Even when these tools are described as capable of “learning,” their way of doing so is different from that of a human person. It is not the experience of those who allow themselves to be shaped by life and grow over time through choices, mistakes, forgiveness and fidelity. Rather, it is a form of statistical adaptation based on data and feedback, which can be very effective, but does not imply inner growth.

I simply LOVE this definitional paragraph.

100. In light of what has been said, we can better understand why AI can be a valuable tool and, at the same time, why it calls for a measured and vigilant approach. In recent years, its private use has expanded significantly, prompting growing reflection on both the opportunities it offers and the risks tied to its rapid spread. In personal use, three aspects in particular deserve careful consideration: the ease with which results are obtained, the impression of objectivity and the simulation of human communication. The speed and simplicity with which information, complex analyses, media content and practical assistance can be accessed undoubtedly makes life easier. Yet they can also encourage excessive reliance and the search for ready-made answers, and weaken personal creativity and judgment. The apparent objectivity of the responses and suggestions these systems provide can lead us to overlook the fact that they reflect the cultural assumptions of those who designed and trained them, with all their strengths and limitations. The artificial imitation of positive human communication — words of advice, empathy, friendship and even love — can be engaging and at times genuinely helpful. However, for less discerning users, it can also be misleading, creating the illusion of a relationship with a real personal subject. When words are simulated, they do not build genuine relationships, but only their appearance. The artificial imitation of care or support can become particularly risky when it enters contexts where real relationships and emotional bonds are lacking. Here, the danger is not so much that a person may believe they are communicating with another person, but rather that they may gradually lose the very desire to form genuine human connections.

This is particularly trenchant criticism of the perception of humanity in AI.

104. From this follows a simple but compelling consequence: we cannot consider AI to be morally neutral. In reality, every technical tool embodies choices and priorities through what it measures, ignores and optimizes, and how it classifies people and situations. If a system is designed or used in a way that treats some lives as less worthy, or excludes them without the possibility of appeal, then it is not merely a tool “to be used well,” since it has already introduced criteria that contradict the inalienable dignity of the human person. For this reason, ethical discernment cannot be limited to asking whether we are using a system for good or bad purposes; it must also examine how that system is designed and what vision of the human person and society is embedded in the data and models that guide it. [126]

The logic/reasoning here is world class, and self-evident.

132. The use of digital platforms and AI systems is driving profound changes in public and political communication. Tools that could foster dialogue and participation are often used to construct distorted narratives and blur the boundaries between truth and falsehood, mixing facts with opinions. Disinformation did not begin with AI, yet today it finds a powerful amplifier in AI. The ability to manipulate content, images and videos exposes people to biased or misleading perspectives. This problem has both cultural and moral dimensions, since the quality of public communication depends directly on social trust and, in turn, shapes it. At the same time, truthful information does not arise from centralized or automated control. In public discourse, the truth of facts has a rational dimension, as it requires verification, cross-checking of sources and responsible argumentation. Moreover, it is deeply relational, built through bonds of trust and shared practices, as well as an honest exchange with others and with the world. Only the shared pursuit of the veracity of facts, perceived as a common good, can provide a solid foundation for just communication.

133. Those who command powerful technological and economic resources, along with substantial human capital for intervention, possess significant capabilities for influencing cultural change. Ultimately, they can influence a significant number of people concerning the truth about humanity, the world, the meaning of existence, the family and even God. This is pure power detached from truth, which subtly or overtly imposes what it wishes others to accept as true. At its root lies a deeper and often unrecognized “sickness”: the fact that “modern man is wrongly convinced that he is the sole author of himself, his life and society. This is a presumption that follows from being selfishly closed in upon himself.” [140] Consequently, people believe that they can construct reality, and that whatever best suits their claims corresponds to what is true. Saint John Paul II reflected on the consequences of this “crisis of truth,” going so far as to state that “once the idea of a universal truth about the good, knowable by human reason, is lost, inevitably the notion of conscience also changes.” [141] In such a context, universally valid truths, which precede us and which conscience must accept, are no longer recognized. This led Pope Francis to ask with realism: “What is law without the conviction, born of age-old reflection and great wisdom, that each human being is sacred and inviolable?” To which he concluded: “If society is to have a future, it must respect the truth of our human dignity and submit to that truth. Murder is not wrong simply because it is socially unacceptable and punished by law, but because of a deeper conviction. This is a non-negotiable truth attained by the use of reason and accepted in conscience. A society is noble and decent, not least for its support of the pursuit of truth and its adherence to the most basic of truths.” [142]

Two of the most important paragraphs in the encyclical.

190. Today, however, we are witnessing a real paradigm shift in public discourse and in decisions regarding rearmament, with a troubling revival of war as an instrument of international politics, while the very ethical principles that had previously limited its use are being eroded. Regional conflicts that drag on over time, escalating tensions and reciprocal threats are becoming almost commonplace, and forms of conflict driven by the desire for territorial expansion that were thought to be overcome are re-emerging. Public opinion is gradually being shaped and conditioned by polarizing media narratives, which are often amplified by algorithms that prioritize conflict and confrontation.

Boom. Again, he is talking to the world, but he is talking to us, his fellow Americans. We are currently elbows deep in two undeclared and at best, legally dubious wars (in the Caribbean and versus Iran), and national security circles are abuzz with chatter about a third on the back burner, Cuba. We just indicted Raoul Castro, for a 1996 crime, and it is hard to believe this is not part of whatever reed-thin case this administration will put forward when and if they illegally move on Cuba.

205. At the core of these issues is a false realism, based not only on the prevailing mentality of force, but on the cultural and anthropological belief that war is an inevitable part of human nature. It is said that things have always been this way, except for occasional pauses, and that it will always be so! As a result, the concern is no longer the search for peace — which has been lost as a point of reference on the international stage — but rather how and when to take military action. This same argument maintains that it would be irresponsible not to prepare for conflict. I would argue, however, that what is truly irresponsible is Realpolitik, the form of political “realism” that sows in consciences and in society an attitude of resignation to the inevitability of war, and dismisses peace and dialogue as utopian or irrational positions that ignore the risks at stake. In fact, peace is neither a naïve hope nor merely the absence of war; instead, it is always possible as the fruit of justice and charity.

206. In such a climate, nihilism and pragmatism become intertwined and end up normalizing grave errors. Religious extremism and identity-based fanaticism ally themselves with irrational economic policies, while politics often turns to misinformation and ridiculing opponents, and systematically cultivating fears and resentments. Thus, diversity is increasingly perceived as a threat, which fuels a desire for possession, a will to dominate, hegemonic ambitions, abuses of power and a fear of those who are different, thereby creating an environment in which new conflicts can develop almost imperceptibly. [186]

Two very powerful paragraphs.

212. At this point, however, a subtle temptation may emerge, namely the thought that the problems are too big and we are too small, and that our choices, therefore, cannot make a difference. This is a polite form of resignation, often disguised as realism. Certainly, not everyone has the same power to make a difference. There are those who govern, make investment decisions, lead institutions, conduct research, educate, produce or provide information, and then there are those who only seem to live their daily lives. Yet, no one is without responsibility. We all have our own areas for action, and it is precisely there — and nowhere else — that we must choose whether to fuel the mentality of force (even if only through indifference, cynicism, lies or hatred), or to preserve the mindset of peace (with truth, moderation, closeness and care).

213. The twentieth-century Catholic author J.R.R. Tolkien, in the words of a protagonist in one of his novels, described our responsibility in this way: “It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till.” [187] The civilization of love will not arise from a single or spectacular gesture, but from the sum total of small and steadfast acts of fidelity that serve as a bulwark against dehumanization. For this reason, it is worthwhile pausing to reflect on some aspects of how we, each in our own way, can cooperate in building the civilization of love. Without presuming to exhaust this theme, I would like to propose five paths toward daily and public responsibility: the need to disarm words, building peace through justice, adopting the perspective of victims, cultivating a healthy realism and reviving dialogue and multilateralism.

Here, the Pope reminds us that we are not without responsibility, and we are not without options for action.

214. The first contribution we can make toward a more humane civilization is to be mindful of our words. “Let us disarm words and we will help to disarm the world.” [188] Words have enormous power, something we experience in our daily interactions; for example, spoken words can change our mood for better or for worse. “Peace begins with each one of us: in the way we look at others, listen to others and speak about others. In this sense, the way we communicate is of fundamental importance: we must say ‘no’ to the war of words and images, we must reject the paradigm of war.” [189] We must all, therefore, examine our conscience regarding the words we use, the prejudices we have and the explicit or implicit aggression that lies within them. We have a real opportunity to contribute to the common good each time we speak the truth, offer wise advice, support those in need of comfort, denounce injustice and give a voice to the voiceless.

One of my favorite paragraphs. The coarsening of everyday conversation and the cesspool that is the internet set the stage for the Pope’s charge here. I will continue to believe as a matter of personal preference that he is talking to us all in general, and to our President in particular.

I think that’s about all for today. I do sincerely recommend printing out a copy and reading it, take a few notes in the margins, and thinking deeply about what is written.

I am reclined in bed, looking out into the blackness of my yard, trusty cat beside me and fortified by the day's first cup. I am aware there is a bill to be paid for the disordering of my circadian rhythms, and I am getting on with the punishment.

As for the journey home, it was very smooth. Ride to the airport, on time. Security at first airport, quick. Free airport shuttle to hotel in Athens, available. Restaurant near hotel without one, walkable. Free airport shuttle to airport, on time. Lux lounge to while away a bit of time, provided. Flight to Dulles, without incident. Metro from Dulles, predictable. Pickup, dinner, drive home. All as planned.

Thinking About The French Revolution

Before reading this portion, I should get two things out of the way. First, I am no expert on the French Revolution. Second, I am CERTAIN that what I bring up here has been done much better by others, elsewhere. That said:

My second favorite podcast is called “The Rest is History" (the first is of course, “The History of the Americans"), and I spent a great deal of time listening to it during my long walks in the past month. The show features two Brit history professors, one mostly a classicist, the other mostly studies the 21st century. They are sharp, really quite funny, and work well together. They have put out shows for a number of years, and as I am listening to them in the order they were recorded, I am still several years behind. As it happens, the last few runs and walks I went on were accompanied by a series of shows devoted to the coming of the French Revolution.

Revolutions are in the news these days, what with the 250th Anniversary of our own just two months hence. I was a living, breathing being in 1976 when we celebrated our 200th, and for some reason, I felt like that was a bigger deal. Not to me, mind you, but to the country. I remember watching New Years Eve 1975 programming as a precocious 10-year old, and it was all about our “Bicentennial Year". As a fifth (?) grader, we were exposed to all manner of learning about our great country and its birth. I wonder if today's 11 year old’s are getting that.

Never mind that. I am writing this because I tried to write it first as a multi-tweet series on Twitter, but intermittent internet on the airplane conspired against my pulling it off artfully. So I return to this line of thought here. Back to those English guys.

The podcasters, Professors Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland, are very likeable, save for one slightly irritating tic. They are mildly anti-American. Not full out mind you, they give us our due, and there are a lot of things about America that they respect, but their commentary is suffused with a certain low-grade animus and high-brow derision. Some is clearly for kicks. Some isn’t. Part of the issue is that they are both thoroughly patriotic Brits, and the circumstances of this nation’s birth seem not to sit well with them. Nor I suspect—for at least one of them—has America’s role in the world in the past few decades been admirable.

When they began to introduce the topic of the French Revolution, they became positively gooey with admiration for the “importance” of the French Revolution, concluding that it was more important than their own Glorious Revolution, our revolution against them, or the Russian Revolution. Every year--on Bastille Day (July 14th), Frenchmen (and English history dons) celebrate the French Revolution, this incredibly important event, without any real consideration of the fact that as revolutions go, it was an abject failure. What do I mean?

First of all, it was repulsively and unnecessarily blood-thirsty. To their credit, Sandbrook and Holland (remember--I really like these guys and this show), make no bones about this. But any inquiry into the “Republic" and the revolution that spawned it has to account for this.

More importantly though, when judging “importance", one has to overlook a very inconvenient fact about the French Revolution. An absolute monarch and his wife were murdered and the result was so unstable that an Emperor took power who plunged the continent into continuous war. In other words, the Revolution failed. The Republic in the middle was an utter train wreck and failure, and rather than evolve THAT government into something lasting and influential (see, “Revolution, American"), French society doubled down on monarchy.

Ah, you’re saying, scholars don’t adore the French Revolution for its prosaic impact on French government. No, silly, that is far too limiting for the grandeur of the event. The French Revolution re-ordered European society, created the modern nation state, and signaled the end of the feudal order in Europe! It is important because of the knock on/trickle down effects. If the Glorious Revolution were more important, it would have lit the fire of revolution in Europe. But it didn't. If the American Revolution were more important, it would have been more causal in overturning the established order in Europe. But it didn't. It took THE FRENCH REVOLUTION to destroy the established order in Europe, and that is why it is so important.

I disagree. It strikes me that there are few ideological first principles created by the French Revolution, with the sole exception being that terror in the pursuit of political gain. Don't give me this “Rights of Man" stuff. That the “Rights of Man" codifies these rights does not mean it invented them. Yes, I know. The Bill of Rights comes after the “Rights of Man", but the Constitutional convention, its ratification, and the HUGE public debate over the lack of a Bill of Rights--mostly preceded the French document. That one of the loudest voices criticizing the Constitution's failure to include a Bill of Rights was America's Ambassador to France--Thomas Jefferson (who helped shape the “Rights of Man") further solidifies the cribbed nature of the French document. The positive ideological impact, of the French Revolution-is borrowed from the British and their American offspring. And once the British and Americans overturned the concept of sovereignty deriving from anywhere other than the people, all that was left was twenty five years of disorder, murder, and war that were not completely settled until World War I for the rest of Europe to get the message. If we are measuring the importance of the French Revolution based on the forces it unleashed on Europe, then surely it was the activities of Napoleon that created these effects, because the ideas (which his reign in many cases, repudiated) were borrowed.

Ultimately, I suspect this is all attributable to Eurocentrism, that the French Revolution was important because it happened in France, because it happened in Europe. But as I reflect upon the revolution in my native country in 1776 and the blessings it bestowed not only on our people but in subsequent generations worldwide who have been the beneficiaries of the system it created, I have a hard time agreeing with Professors Sandbrook and Holland that the French Revolution was more important.

Summary Reflections on the Cretan Odyssey

My recent month-long solo trip to Chania, Crete was never about going to Chania, Crete. It was about testing a theory by conducting an experiment. That experiment is over, and summary findings are available.

To remind, I had been frustrated in previous travel with the concept of moving from place to place and never unpacking. I desired to go somewhere and “burrow in" (my phrase) to a locality, and really experience somewhere on an elemental level. A difference in how such a trip would be conducted led The Kitten to suggest I go by myself, and so the Walden-like concept of splendid isolation was born. Bottom line up front? The theory was better than the reality.

It was a wonderful trip. I am glad I went, I had a splendid time, I ate tasty food, saw a bit of the surrounding countryside, had a bit of culture, and lost eleven pounds while exercising like a fiend. I returned to the United States in better health with some rare (for me) evidence of having been in a sunny place.

Thirty days was a good length of time. I definitely got lonely toward the end, and was really glad to get on that plane in Athens to come home.

Chania was the wrong place to go. Keen readers will remember the discussion with The Kitten that led to this trip having sprung from her desire to go someplace that we could make day trips elsewhere from. This struck me as inconsistent with the “burrowing in” concept, and so the solo trip was born. I chose Chania based on faded thirty-five year old memories, and it turned out to be a poor choice. Not because it isn't delightful, but because both the nature of the experiment and the geography of Crete conspired against it. Truthfully, Catherine's idea of a hub and spoke approach (have a place to strike out from) turned out to be far more in alignment with my desires than the whole “burrowing in" approach. This is because Chania's charms held up for a week or so, but it is relatively small place that caters to weekend tourists. I found myself (as I admitted here) wishing I could hop on a train and head over to some other wonderful experience. There are other places in Crete, but there are no trains, and they are--for better or worse--pretty much smaller versions of Chania. I could have rented a car, but to what end? To see another charming little coastal town? Had I selected a little French village served by rail, I could have had the isolation I sought (or thought I sought) and the means to shake things up.

I did not “burrow in". The (beautiful, well-appointed, comfortable) apartment I rented was in a neighborhood that was not conducive to “burrowing". Surrounded by lots of other buildings with temporary lodging that was mostly empty as the high season had not started, there was no real neighborhood to burrow into. I discussed in earlier essays that little mini-mart down the street, but that was the extent of things in that neighborhood, and no one in the mini-mart seemed all that interested in yet another transient who stayed a bit longer than usual.

Greek indifference. I got home the other day, and yesterday, I went for a six mile walk on the rail to trail here in Easton. I passed many people moving in the other direction, and to a person, they nodded, waved, said “hello" or “good morning", or otherwise in some manner exchanged greetings. This simply did not happen in Crete. I walked SCORES of miles at all times of day, and the locals (because I was walking in a lot of non-tourist areas) had little interest in even turning their head or lifting it from the sidewalk. I am not trying to say the Greeks are bad people or that they are unfriendly, but the general atmosphere--probably driven by my choice of a tourist town--was not warm.

I missed Catherine. I was thousands of miles and seven time zones removed from the central organizing principle of my life for thirty days, and that was unpleasant. Her busy life went on as normal when I left, or more to the point, it got even busier. I knew I would miss her, but I had not mentally prepared for how the seven hour time difference would intensify my self-imposed isolation. For whatever reason, I just figured we'd have a bunch of video chats and everything would be great. But for a good deal of the day, our waking and sleeping times were so out of phase as to really limit the windows for such things, and when we were both conscious, there was her busy life to contend with. Bottom line, the splendid isolation itch was scratched. I do not think I'll undertake a solo trip of this nature again.

That's it. A great experience that taught/retaught me things about myself and the world around me.

Today is Dash-2's 25th birthday. Hard to believe she was just a tyke of six when I first encountered her. On our meeting, ice cream cones were had, and she babbled away happily in her booster seat from the backseat of her mother's urban assault vehicle. Her older sister was a little more reserved, as I think she suspected I might not be temporary. She has grown into a whipsmart, hard-working, accomplished, and beautiful young woman, and I am proud to call her my daughter.

This may prove to be the final dispatch from this trip. I'm really not sure. I could very well hold off on posting it until next Tuesday morning when I vacate, and handle anything interesting in the transit within my first return to homeport effort.

To say that I have settled into a routine here understates things. At home, my routines are sometimes interrupted by the delightful intrusions of domestic life. Such do not exist here, so the only thing that shakes things up is the weather. I have seen a massive amount of the town and surrounding suburbs through extended walks, some of which are visually pleasing and some of which are less so. I am amazed as I walk that in a first world country, a member of NATO for heaven's sake, in the (many, various) roadwork projects I encounter NO ONE on jackhammers is wearing either hearing or eye protection.

Speaking of long walks, through the magic of AI, I was able this morning to lay out a five mile walk about my awesome little town of Easton that starts and ends at the YMCA where I exercise with the ladies. On days where the weather permits, I can “low intensity aerobics and strength training" with the ladies of the Easton ton, and then power walk afterward. I will see if the Kitten wants to join in, but she prefers a less regimented and scheduled approach to things.

One of the regrets I will take with me when I leave is that I will lose accesss to the magic hands of Despina, who will massage me Monday afternoon for the fourth and final time on this trip. She has a little studio off a busy street upstairs from a cafe, and I usually have a latte beforehand, and follow up with a long walk before dinner. I have done a passable job of sampling the local dining fare, having visited seven different restaurants while here. There are three within a stones throw of my crib that I tend to hit most often, one in particular with a couple of attentive young waitresses who dote on me and who know my preferences (ochi psomi, parakalo!)

I beat myself up quite a bit for tackling my Greek language studies with less fervor than I thought I would, but at this point I think I got it about right. There's a lot of English spoken here, and the ability to handle twenty or thirty simple Greek phrases goes a long way.

I shaved this morning after not having done so since the morning of 12 April. In the meantime I had two weeks of novelty and ten days of itching and realizing that it aged me at least five years. Knowing full well what a relationship foul I have committed with this closely-shorn haircut, I decided to end the misery today rather than expose my inamorata to twin horrors on my return. This necessitated a trip to the local grocery to buy shaving cream this morning, which was an easy tack-on after my trip to the Stadio.

As a non-smoking, non-drinking, white male who is not morbidly obese and who monitors his vitals, I have a fair chance of another 30 years on this planet (both parents also cracked 90). One mystery that is forever solved I think is “are my looks improved with a beard?” The answer is a resounding no, and I think that I can go slowly into the West without another run at it.

Last Day

It is Monday, 11 May, just after daybreak, and it is my last full day in Chania. Tomorrow, Nikos will convey me to the airport for a midday flight to Athens, where I'll perch near the airport for a night before the flight home Wednesday.

The weather has settled into what this place is famous for this time of year, glorious sunshine and hi's around 80. My fellow tourists have responded, and the major sites down in the Venetian Harbor are quite busy, along with the shops purveying all manner of chotchkis to the gentry. At the end of my trip, I am indebted to the owner of the first place I contracted to stay in for selling the property and returning my money, as I was able to rent a far better place just out of the hubbub but within quick striking distance of it. The proximity of the stadio, the little store, the coffee shop across from the stadio--and the quiet--all served to make this place a far better nest. There is a barky little lapdog across the street who objects to pedestrians violating his/her visual territory, but other than that, quiet has reigned. Come to think of it, I'm not sure I've heard a siren once while here.

Today's program is--as you will already have guessed--pretty standard. At some point, I will emerge from my pod bedecked for the track, do my old man exercises and running, return and refresh, then head off to the magic hands of Despina for a massage before my final great walk of the town. I will return to the little restaurant with blue chairs by the sea for my final dinner, then pack for the journey home.

The little restaurant by the sea has been a favorite, both for the simple, tasty, fare and the solicitous young waitresses. There are two, and I think they might be sisters or cousins. They know my habits, they are attentive when needed but otherwise leave me alone, which is as I like it. I am no friend to banter with waitstaff in my home country, preferring to keep to the business at hand. There is likely an inverse relationship between tipping and personality among servers in my world, probably another sign of my unfitness for polite society.

My morning perusal of finances reveals that I have been careful with spending while here, which I can attribute to 1) modest discipline including eating a meal a day in the apartment and 2) having received clear instruction from The Kitten to not come home with touristy souvenirs. I picked up little paintings for the girls (I can say this because while one is aware of the existence of this substack, neither has any interest in it) and a little something for the Kitten that I THINK she will like, but this is the month of all three of their births, so there will be tribute in other forms.

As I address you, I am enjoying my second cup of coffee of the day. The third will polish of my supply of milk, and I am too cheap to buy more for tonight and tomorrow, so I will suffer the self-imposed penalty of a bit of bitterness in subsequent cups. My grocery buying/consuming has been pretty good, as it appears that the only uneaten item remaining when I leave will be a little ham steak. Maybe I'll toss it at the barking dog. My dinners/meals on the economy have been generally modest/economical, although some cost imposition occurred as a result of overordering to achieve a critical mass of protein. I think when all is said and done, I will have done well here all around, although four trips to Despina and her magic were clearly not budgeted.

I had a lovely video chat with the Kitten on Mother's Day yesterday, and as we talked, she moved about showing me peonies (cut and yet to be cut) and the rose bush that I had sent to her. As she moved about within our house, I saw little details that I've always appreciated, but never moreso than after deprived myself of them for a month. When I showed up nineteen years ago, I remember seeing trimwork painted out in a very light green colonial hue. It was a detail that I was to that point, unfamiliar with, but as I have been exposed to a number of similarly styled homes on the Eastern Shore since, I realized was not uncommon. Seeing it behind her as she talked gave me both a momentary pang of homesickness and the great joy of knowing I would soon be back home to enjoy it.

Flying West

I've been thinking a little about my flight Wednesday from Athens to DC. Longstanding and attentive readers (H/T Jack) may remember that I burned a ton of United points to upgrade to “Polaris" class for the flight here. I did the same for the flight home, and the great bulk of my banked points are now gone. Such is life. But I've been thinking about the timing involved, and the train wreck of jet lag that looks to be on the horizon. The flight leaves at 1145 Athens time, which means I will have been awake for all of about five hours. Ten and a half hours and several time zones later, it arrives at Dulles at 3:45PM. I am then to Metro myself down to Alexandria and then onto Beth and Robert's place where the Kitten will be poised, then onto dinner with her and Robert (Beth is otherwise engaged).

Essentially, when I arrive at Dulles, my body will be on the “I should be sleeping" clock I just flew from, but there will be quite a few hours ahead of me before I can bed down. So the question, perhaps answerable in the comments by seasoned travelers, is how I should use the luxurious trappings of my Polaris seat. Should I avail myself of five movies and or reading on my Kindle? If I do this, I will be right tired when I arrive and have to power through, not to mention 10.5 hours takes a long time. Should I movie/Kindle for a bit and then take a nice two hour nap? That would “shorten" the flight, but does it make me awake later when I want to sleep? The Kitten and I have a bunk at Robert and Beth's for the night if we'd like (after dinner), but if I am not a basket case, we might drive home (1 hour 40 mins). The only thing I'm sure of is that I need to avoid caffeine after my morning dose so that the decision isn't made for me.

I think this will about do it for dispatches from Crete. I will store up any interesting vignettes from what remains of the trip and add them to my next US-based offering. This will include an excursion into how the theory and reality of this trip compared, and whatever learning I accumulated. This choice will invariably raise the hackles of my friend Captain Todd who will accuse me of “leaving me (him) hanging”, but for the rest of you, I imagine it is high time I returned to scribbling about the mudanities of Eastern Shore life.

Thank you for traveling with me.

This morning's trip to the lovely digital scale provided here in my “Penthouse" (as it is advertised) revealed an 8.5lb weight loss since my arrival date measurement, so the exercise and diet approach seems to be having the desired effect. Pretty much every meal here comes with fried potatoes (otherwise known as French Fries), and while I sneer at them at the meal's start, I will invariably eat a few before getting up. I am weak. I have though, not consumed more than half of what was provided me at any sitting, so I remain generally on track with the no sugar/low carb/hi fat/hi protein diet.

I don't have any real plans today, save to write here, maybe a bit on my book, a Hallmark movie, a nap, and a walk to dinner. One of the great joys in retirement of the start of a new month is the process of financial reconciliation I go through to analyze my budgeting, so the arrival of monthly interest and dividends, savings draw-downs, and fixed expense allocations will be another pursuit, but because of the seven hour time difference and the varying itervals at which my accounts report their status, this will likely be something I come back to often during the day.

If you had told 30 year-old Bryan that in 30 years, he would be utterly micromanaging his finances, he would have laughed at you. If I had money in my checking account then, I was ok. Four months into things, I am spending less than I planned, but I have determined to let things run for a full year before I decide to mess with the drawdowns. One choice I made that I think is working out is funding all travel from its own account, an account created by the money I inherited from my parents. Travel is the only purpose to which that inheritance will be applied, unless the wheels fall off everything else. In addition to it being just one more wonderful thing my parents have enabled in my life, each transaction from the account provides an opportunity to be grateful to them.

I had an interesting conversation last night with a special friend who grew up as a State Department kid, a life that included two separate tours in Greece. When I recounted to her my surprise at the limited friendliness (at least as measured by the admittedly superficial tendency to lead or follow in “good morning) of the people here, she opined that she would never travel to Greece again and that she was not a fan of the Greek people. I can't go that far, but she seemed to understand some of the things I was kvetching about. She told me that during the second tour when she was in college, whenever a friend came to visit, they took the train to Turkey. How about that?

I am pondering this trip as it plays out, and I am coming to conclude that a good bit of my situation stems from inadequately knowing myself before I left. This may sound strange for readers of this substack and its annoyingly self-centered focus, but I've made errors both strategic and tactical that I SHOULD have seen coming.

First, while things are lovely here, I removed myself from a life that provides me with the highest satisfaction and contentedness of any previous period. Things would have had to be pretty fantastic here for me NOT to have experienced some drop-off. Had this trip come a year ago while I was still very busy with work, maybe things would differ. But since I issued my final invoices on 30 November, my satisfaction with what was already a pretty fair existence has skyrocketed.

Second, my monomaniacal desire not to live out of a suitcase did not mean I had to choose a place that was relatively cut off from other places. This lovely little city is one of many lovely little places much like it along the coast of this island, with the interior being spiny and mountainous. Catherine's “so we can make day trips" discussion a year ago--the one that led to this choice--thunders in my ears right now as I think about how nice it would be to hop on a lux Eurotrain and pop into some other great European city. The “all or nothing" (burrowing in vs. moving every two or three days) approach I took in bedding down in one place for 29 nights seems unwise, especially one place that is not easily connected to other places.

What I'm slowly arriving at is a sense that while Catherine's approach had merit, some version of a hybrid would be preferable. What I mean is that when I do cut loose for an extended travel period again, I will not only do it absolutely in company with my inamorata, but it will be planned for two or three months, so that we can attempt something of a burrowing in at the same time we are able to have little adventures elsewhere.

I have floated a trial balloon with Catherine about spending much of 2028 out of the country, thereby providing us with both the wonderful opportunity for extensive world travel and also to absent ourselves from the country during the presidential election, as we have both so thoroughly soured on our nation's politics. She is considering it.

Sunday Evening

I have eaten wondrous meals here. Goat, lamb, rabbit, chicken, and pork all have graced my plate, but until this evening, I have had no beef. One of my go-to's has a “Beef Stifado" on its menu, and I looked into the dish online and figured it would be a good choice tonight (and I sent myself a video of it being made so I can have a hack at it at home). Well, it was not on the menu tonight, but I had gotten myself excited for beef and so I ordered a steak. I'm pretty picky about steak. I buy really good steaks at home, and ordering one out in the States is something I reserve for high end steakhouses. But with none such about me here, I decided to have a go at it. Turned out to be a good decision, as it was tasty and acceptable.

It rained a bunch today, but I did get a run in. The weather for the remainder of my visit looks pretty darn good, and I have a few visits to make this week to a local art gallery, a folk life museum, and the house of a famous Greek politician who apparently survived some interesting assassination attempst. Oh, and one more massage. I will keep up the two-a-days and mindful eating, as I had a goal to leave here 10 or more pounds lighter and I am squarely on track for that.

The Beard

Well, based on the poll in the previous post from this series, my suspicions about the impact of this beard are confirmed. Dudes seem to think I ought to keep it and the ladies (though precious few of their voices were heard) think I shouldn't. There was never a question as to whether I'd keep it, as there is a consituency of one on this subject, and I already know that answer.

My parents once bought a little cabin in the woods in Bucks County PA. They did not seek my input or permission, and it was never a big object of interest for me. I think they owned it around the time my father was about the age I am now. I'll never forget…he obtained permission to go and hang out by himself there for a couple of weeks, and he came back with a beard that looked a lot like the thing I'm carrying around. I'll never forget him walking in the door--I though he looked AWESOME, almost Hemingway-esque. My mother's words to him, and I quote. “I hate it. I told you I would hate it, and I hate it.” It disappeared soon thereafter. I wish I'd gotten a photo of it.

Spring/Summer

Before making the acquaintance of the Widow Murphy, I was a fall/winter guy. More to the point, I really disliked spring and barely acknowledged summer. But when she rescued me from the middle-aged pound for unmarried men, I was introduced to the world of wonder that she presides over at our place. She has so craftily seen to the placement of shrubs, bushes, and trees that there seems to always be something blooming almost year round. Before her, I knew not what a “peony" was, except to snicker like an adolescent every time I heard the word. Here are a few she cut today. There will literally be scores, if not hundreds of these during the season, sorta right up until the magnolia trees flower. I'm looking forward to spring and summer in the magic land of the Eastern Shore. Every year I say I'm going to paddle board, and then I don't. I need to fix that.

As luck and my eagle eye would have it, I was able yesterday to see a break in the rain coming, so I donned my (loose-fitting) athletic gear and got a run in. I think it would have been hard on the spirit if I hadn't, as I was pretty immobile the previous day. I returned for dinner to the plac I went my first two nights here, and the waiter remembered my persnickity dietary preferences (no potatoes, no free dessert, no free Raki). I wolfed down a delicious lamb shank and then headed over to mass.

The little church in the monestary I have attended raises some questions for this sunshine Catholic. Very few people took the communion in their hands, and when some sought to, the priest seemed a bit put off by it. Is this not common worldwide? Also, probably a third of the people, just before getting to the position for communion receipt, took a knee, and then rose again. I've never seen this. One fellow got down on both knees to receive. I thought the thing about Catholicism-- or at least my thing about Catholicism--was that it was the Holiday Inn of religions. No matter where you go, you get the same experience. Maybe not so? Or have things changed in the 42 years since I regularly attended mass?

Today dawned bright and sunny, and I spent a few Sunday morning hours surveying the shitshow of a world we live in, including the violence at the White House Correspondent's Dinner last night. It sounds like no one was hurt, which is a wonderful thing. We are a sick, wounded civilization, in great need of spiritual revival.

Then I got my calesthenics, a three mile run, and a five mile walk in. I've begun in some ways to frame this trip like I imagine NFL training camp to be. Nice weather, lots of physical activity, pretty good food.

It's All Greek To Me

I have never felt more of an alien than I did in Japan and Korea, due mostly to the language barrier, more specifically, the WRITTEN language barrier, in that whatever it is those two languages are using, they aren't the 26 letters with which I am most familiar.

Greece falls into a similar category, and although I am a proud fraternity man (Sigma Chi) who learned his Greek letters years ago, I have not only forgotten a good many of them, but I only learned their capital versions, not the small. Interestingly enough, Greek people use…the Greek alphabet. Oh sure, some of them do the courtesy of spelling it out phonetically using our letters, but most don't. And while I've spent a good bit of time learning a lot of basic Greek vocalizing (I've been told my “good morning" sounds native!), I get really confused when I try and figure something out from only words in Greek letters.

At the Library

It is now late Monday morning, and I find myself at the ergonomically sublime Chania Municipal Library where I will spend some time writing before they close for the afternoon. From 2pm to 6pm the library takes a break, and then opens again at 6pm. I will leave at 2 and meander about fifteen minutes from here where I'll get a pre-massage latte, with the massage following at 3. After that lovely experience, I'll slather up with some sunscreen and head off on a 60-90 minute walk before dinner.

I walk quite a bit here mostly for exercise but then again also because I have no other means of transport. Any of the activities I've needed a ride for, the provider was responsible, so I am out and about with the local citizenry quite a bit. And you know what? While I have found the locals to be mostly friendly, I have never been beaten to a “good morning" or “good afternoon" walking along and passing another solo walker. To put it another way, no one else has initiated. I wonder if that isn't a thing here?

This morning was laundry time, not because I’m in any kind of a clothes bind, but because this is the tempo I laid out for myself. The apartment comes with one of the serviceable little front loading washing machines and a drying rack for patio use. At some point, I would like to think our European friends and allies will come to adopt electromechanical clothes drying, but this is not that day.

The library I am in kinda feels like the Mount Laurel Middle School library I used ca. 1977-79, except for a lot of computers that no one is using. Random English words are painted on the walls, inspiring me to be “creative". Free city Wi-Fi surges through my tablet at a perfectly respectable 20 megabits/second, creating for me the irresistible urge to pop over to Twitter for a bit.

My attempts to wean from social media are sagging while I'm here, as my self-imposed solitude creates periods of inactivity that I fill without thinking on my phone or this tablet. The degree to which the solitude causes the social media use or vice versa is worth considering, but either way, an annoying little feature on my phone informed me this morning of my greater use of it over the previous week. I shall enter the fight once again when back in Easton.

Another activity that will enter the rotation when I return is golf. At least once a week, I want to actually play golf holes, not just go to the range and hit balls. I have new clubs (The Kitten, Christmas) that I need to get used to, and my friend Captain Todd is anxious for me to return to my 1980 Lenape High School JV Golf Team form.

Here Comes the Rain

I have awakened from a brief nap on Thursday, 30 April and decided to move this edition to completion.

It appears that for the third straight weekend, rain will be the order of the day. The weather here has been on the whole, wonderful. That is, if you don't count the weekends. When I discussed this with my inamorata, she quite rightly asked what rain on a weekend has to do with anything on this particular trip, and after a bit of thought, I had no good response. Rain in general kinda sucks while traveling, and several rainy days in a row really sucks, but which days they occur on doesn't seem to matter much. Though walking in the rain to church each of the last three Saturdays has been a bit of a drag.

I am struck at how ubiquitous the color black in clothing is among the young people of this island. Such a sunny place (most of the time), you'd think bright colors would predominate. But no. Most of the colorful clothing I see is on the backs of sweaty northern Europeans. I run into these people mostly when I head down into the belly of the touristy beast down by the Venetian Port, a place that grows more crowded with holiday-makers with each passing day. I cannot IMAGINE what this scene will be in June!

My friend Russell Smith has a substack that I refer to on my entry page here, and it is called “Solvitur Ambulando", which in Latin means “it is solved by walking". Russell is a big walker/rucker, and a very thoughtful person. Walking has been a big part of my life while here, for both basic transport and for exercise. My “two a days" generally consist of 2.5-3 miles of running on the track, and then a (for me) very big walk of 90-120 minutes at a brisk pace. I listen to “The Rest is History” Podcast as I walk (mostly because I am two years behind and am up to date on Jack's “The History of the Americans") and I pick a different route each day, trying to minimize ground already covered without being ridiculous about it. It occurs to me that the walking is far better than the running, but for some odd reason I cling to this sense that running is good for me. I think that hold is declining. I may begin phasing out the running in the near future, as the literature and the lived experience suggest that it is not that great on my joints. We have a “rail to trail" back in old Easton, and there are very walkable neighborhoods near where I exercise with the ladies at the Y thrice weekly. Maybe instead of jumping up on the treadmill and pounding my knees and hips for thirty minutes, I'll head out into the world for a stroll. I think walking with my sweetie might also be a good idea. We trudge around quite a bit at a local nature conservancy for exercise, but my concern over ankle twists and tripping on roots keeps the conversation down. Maybe power walking around town would be better?

I think that'll be all for now. Two-thirds of the journey have passed, and I have begun to think deeply about how to consume some of the food I have in my refrigerator. Be well, friends.

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This one is a little long, as I have excerpted a bit of something else I am writing.

It is 0844 on Friday, April 24, and I have been awake for about two hours. This is day two of a total of three predicted to be gloomy, rainy, and cool all day. I was able to slip out yesterday for two workouts without being rained on, and I only got a few raindrops on my head on the walk back from dinner. Lots of rain overnight, though.

I'm not sure how today will go. I just polished off two ground veal patties and a few eggs, so no need to graze for a good while. I'm feeling a little lethargic, and so the draw of physical activity is not great right now. I'll probably get the urge when the next few lines of squalls blow through.

I have a lot of writing to do. First, there is this passion project, which I fear has become frighteningly mundane, to the point where I wonder whether I need to write less often, you know, and store things up.

Second is Dash 2's Storyworth project, where I am invited to opine on my favorite movies.

Love and Death at Cavalier Cove

Third, and perhaps of interest to some readers who can’t seem to get enough of this drivel, I have hestitatingly picked up my novel again. Twenty-one years ago, I was engaged in a romance with a seriously literate woman who wrote wonderful short stories (one was about a boy who was able to levitate about the ceiling in his fourth grade class. Great stuff). One Saturday morning, I sat down and began to write, and by Sunday evening, I had 11,000 words and an idea for a novel. Twenty-one years later, the project sits at 16,000 words, put aside for myriad reasons, not the least of which is the great fear I have of not being able to finish it. Funny, that.

It FEELS like a good story, but the problem is that the story is not well-developed. Sitting down and spewing out 11,000 words in a weekend gave me the false sense of confidence that the rest would go like that. It didn't. It hasn't. And that's because I haven't done the hard work of really thinking about the structure and flow of the story, I haven't done little character studies to frame up the people who will make up the tale.

I have spent my adult life writing 1200 word opinion pieces. I NEVER outline them (and it likely shows). That approach is not sufficient for a task like this, so my first job will be to complete a bit of up front writing; character studies, a summary, and an outline. If I get those things done while I’m here, I think I’ll be in a good place.

The working title is “Love and Death at Cavalier Cove". It is a story about male friendship, and it is a story about love. Care for a taste? This is how it opens--keep in mind, the writing is 21 years old, and if I ever do anything with it, I'll have to adjust the timeline:

There is no telling how this conversation will go, Clay Diggs thought to himself as he dialed the familiar numbers to his parents’ home. Well, that’s not entirely true either. He and Daisy had spent a good deal of time talking through all the possible directions the chat would take, and in each case, the result was the same. Dad was going to drive across country by himself, and he wouldn’t be talked out of it.

“Hey John Porter,” Clay said after hearing his father’s voice. John Porter was how Clay and his sister referred to their father ever since watching Gregory Peck in “To Kill a Mockingbird” as children. The thought of calling your father by his given name (and in John Porter Diggs’ case, that meant adding the middle name) had struck Clay as particularly wicked then, but John Porter never seemed to mind. It was how everyone else had spoken to him.

“Morning, Clay,” answered John Porter, forgetting as usual the three hour time delay between his home on Coronado and his son’s place in the suburbs of Philadelphia. “How’s Daisy?”

“She’s great, thanks. We’ve been trying to get things together for our trip to the Jersey Shore later in the summer. You know how she is-lists and things. Much more organized than I am.”

“She’s a good woman, Clay. You know how to pick ‘em!” said John Porter, suppressing the desire to add that thus far, his son had shown no idea how to “keep ‘em.”

“Thanks. It was a really busy semester, and with Mom’s death and all, we’ve been looking forward to this two weeks more so than in past years.”

John Porter had always been proud of his son’s professional life. Clay took to school like a fish to water and essentially never left. The fact that he had spent a good deal of his time in the Anthropology Department bedding the flower of Main Line womanhood was not lost on his father, nor on his ex-wife and two sons. Daisy had been a particularly enthusiastic anthropology major in the early ‘90’s, and her earnestness did not go unnoticed by her faculty advisor. What had previously been only suspicions of infidelity on Clay’s part were confirmed when Clay told Marla he wanted a divorce. She was devastated, as were John Porter and Catherine. But families eventually heal, and Daisy was now very much part of the family.

“You both deserve it Clay. I’m looking at the drive across country as my own opportunity to decompress. I’ll probably spend a few days in Atlanta, indulge my Civil War interests. It will be hot, but your mother and I only went that way once before, and it was the trip I enjoyed the most.”

Hearing John Porter refer to his mother in such a matter-of-fact manner took Clay by surprise. She had only been dead a month, but her death had been devastating to everyone around her-especially Clay and John Porter. “That’s kind of why I’m calling, John Porter. I-we-Daisy and I-we really don’t want you making that trip by yourself, so soon after Mom and all.” Clay wasn’t entirely sure that his father wouldn’t take the opportunity to hasten his reunion with Catherine by driving directly into the Grand Canyon. Suicide was on the rise among seniors, one of Clay’s colleagues had reminded him, in a startling moment of insensitivity in the faculty dining room after Daisy’s cell phone call had brought the news of his mom’s death.

“I’m not sure what you mean, Clay.

“John Porter, you’re no spring chicken, and you’re not at the top of your emotional game.”

“What in the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Clay knew he had hit a nerve. Catherine had long ago seen to it that John Porter’s swearing had ceased, not that he was particularly ribald to begin with. “Well, I just don’t think it is smart for you to be driving across country by yourself at your age in your state. I’m more than willing to fly out and drive with you. It could be a lot of fun.” The dead air indicated both men at work processing the fun of a cross-country drive. It was just that they hadn’t spent more than a day or two together since Clay went off to college.

“Have you ever considered the possibility that I might want to be by myself for a while? Just because your mother is gone doesn’t mean I want to replace her with you. I love you, Clay, but I just want to be by myself. I want to do this. I need to do this.”

“Why do you need to do this, John Porter? What’s the point?”

“I’m moving back east after the death of the only woman I’ve ever kissed, let alone loved. I’ve got a lot to deal with, a lot to think about. I’m moving into this old folks dorm in Virginia you set me up in. Do you have any idea how different that is going to be for me? I haven’t made a friend on my own in fifty years! Your mom was responsible for all that stuff. Everyone I’ve gotten close to has been through her. I’m afraid making friends might not be like riding a bike. What do people talk about these days? The only things I’ve ever talked about in public were the things your mother was talking about. I’ve got to figure this out or I’m going to be even more miserable. I’ve got to think about how I’m going to live the rest of my life, no matter how long that life may wind up being. And I have got to do this thinking by myself.”

“It’s not a dorm, John Porter. Cavalier Cove is an Active Seniors Community.” I’m losing this one, thought Clay. “But if solitude is what you need, you’ve had that in spades for the last month.”

“Solitude? Are you kidding me? I can’t sit down to do the crossword puzzle without some well-meaning busybody lady friend of your mother’s coming by “just to check in on me”. Do they think they’ll find me with a shotgun in my mouth?”

“I’ve heard that suicide is on the rise among American seniors,” fumbled Clay.

“Well, you won’t have to worry about that from me, Clay. I’m too much of a coward. And I’d probably screw it up.”

“But John Porter, you’re talking about a long, long trip. Are you physically up to it?”

“Well, I don’t mean to drive it straight through, if that’s what you mean.”

“C’mon John Porter, you know what I mean.”

“What if I promise to drive no more than three hundred miles a day? Would that satisfy you?”

“Two-fifty.”

“Ok, two-fifty.”

“And only during daylight hours.”

“I can handle that.”

“And you’ll stay in the right hand lane?”

“Except to pass.”

“Passing? Why are you in such a hurry?”

“Clay, I haven’t even left yet.”

“And you’ll call us before you leave in the morning and when you stop in the afternoon.”

“Clay, I think this conversation has gone far enough.”

“Ok, how about when you stop each day?”

“Ok.”

Clay was actually pleased with the deal struck; none of the preparation with Daisy had gone this well. “When will you start out?”

“I don’t know; I suppose two or three days from now. I close on the house tomorrow. God, I love this place. One more thing, Clay.”

“What’s that, John Porter?”

“Thanks for setting me up in this old folks dorm. It will be nice to be closer to you and your sister. By the way, did you know she and I already had this conversation?”

“Bye, John Porter.”

“Bye, Clay.”

Another impediment to writing this is the degree to which it involves writing dialogue, and I hate writing dialogue.

For 21 years, a little idea lay deep within my mind, and that idea was that maybe someday, I would be able to go off by myself for a while and really make a dent in this. Honestly, the leading contender for this scenario would have been renting a house on the Outer Banks for the month of January, or at least that's how I always saw it playing out. The sound of crashing waves outside, chilly walks on the beach when I needed inspiration. That sort of thing.

Instead, it looks like Crete will be the place. A couple of cold, rainy days shouldn't hurt. The biggest problem I have though, is ergonomic. This apartment has plenty of places to sit, but the one sorta standard desk height chair/desk height flat top is on the patio, and it is a little nippy and wet out there. Also, the patio is west facing, so I get a ton of afternoon sun when there is sun. I'm tapping away at the little bar right now, perched atop a bar stool, on my table. None of this is ideal, but what the heck.

Rain, Rain, Go Away

It is 0940 hrs on Saturday, 25 April, and I am abed, caffeinated and raring to go. I have spent the last two hours surveying the world through the jaundiced eye of the internet, and it is time to begin my day's labors. Which will start with this Substack.

Yesterday was pretty miserable. It rained all day, and every hour or so I would check the weather radar to see if there would be a break in the action to that I could hop over to the track for a run, or take a long walk, even in a drizzle. But it was not to be, and so I slouched around my (really pretty small) apartment doing a little writing, taking a nap, doing a little more writing, watching a little Hallmark, etc.

The lack of a good writing position (see above) led to my checking on where the closest public library was, and it turns out it is only about 15 minutes away. The forecast has the rain passing way soon, and so I will take myself and my trusty tablet (writing Substacks on my lap in bed is different than attempting character studies and plot outlines) up there for a bit, before coming home and trying to get my day's movement in. Then to dinner and Mass.

Epiphany

I am thirteen days into this thirty day trip and I have reached a conclusion. I have had a lovely time, and I have done a number of fun things, and while I have lived a profoundly selfish existence while here, there hasn't been a single day that would not have been improved with Catherine in it. Don't get me wrong--a second person in this apartment might be a bit much, but the degree to which my life revolves around my love for her is enormous. Things are different without her, and they are not better.

Well, duh.

Why am I here by myself, you may ask? An experiment, mostly. Longstanding and attentive readers (H/T Jack) will remember the genesis of this trip. Catherine and I have been traveling together for nearly nineteen years, and she has been the prime mover in those journeys. I have seen things and stayed in places that I never would have without her expert planning and keen eye. But--these trips always seemed to require me to schlep a suitcase around, staying in no one place long enoough to empty it. Sometimes, in order to stay in a place she wanted to stay, we'd move within a single location to have that experience. I desperately wanted to “burrow in", and we discussed this at great length. I determined that after I retired, I wanted us to take such a trip, where we'd go somewhere and stay there for a month, really get to know the town, get some favorite restaurants, and most importantly, put our suitcases away.

During onc such discussion, she asked me if the town I was looking at had a train station. I asked why that was important. “So we can take day trips". she said. It was at this moment that I realized we had different visions for that this trip might be. “Would you be happier going by yourself?” she asked. I immediately said yes. That's how I got here.

And the truth is, I AM happy here. I am pretty much happy wherever I am. But what I thought would be a good and positive thing--solitude--has proven far less important to me than I thought it would be.

This should not have surprised me. For the last eleven years of my working life, I spent about a five days a month in San Diego with a client. The actual travel to and from was an absolute grind, but in the last few years, I came to really dread the approach of each trip because I knew I would miss her. Because I am a man of habits, rituals, and practices, their absence hurts. We have full and independent lives, but there are several times each day where we tend--out of habit--to come together. Most of the time, I bring her coffee in the morning. When we renovated the house fourteen or so years ago, she created a little nook in the kitchen where there are two comfy chairs. Two or three times a day, we occupy them, sometimes with a coffee, sometimes without. No matter what our very different dietary choices may be, we have dinner together, most every night. I have a number of really interesting and intelligent friends with whom I interact on a regular basis, but sitting and talking with her is different.

Because she is wiser than I, she knows all this already and probably could have predicted how this would all play out.

I have traveled to Europe by myself twice before--once to Spain and once to Italy. The difference in both of those trips was that there was no one special in my life at the time, and so there was no habit, ritual, or practice to miss.

I guess what I'm saying is that I waited sixty years to test the theory of what setting out on my own for a month would be like, and I imagine that when this trip is over, at least sixty more will go by before I do it again.

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I begin this edition one hour before the previous edition will post. East Coasters snoozing in their beds will be greeted by Part the Second at 0500 hrs local Monday 20 April.

It is 1100 hrs local here on my patio on a sparkling, cloudless morning. My perch here is higher than most on my street, and I am treated now to the company of an older gentleman sitting across the street on his patio enjoying the sun, with his great belly exposed by his rolled up T-shirt. I am gazing out at the blue ocean with a gentle, almost cool, breeze blowing in from the West.

In two hours, I will head over to Despina's massage joint for a soothing, therapeutic massage. So as not to upset the finely tuned machine that is my travel budget, the cost will come out of my monthly massage line, not the travel line. I am cracking along swimmimgly within the guidelines I set for myself, enabled by cooking here in my crib once a day and eating the other meal on the economy.

I passed a notable milestone on the journey today, at least notable for a gentleman of a certain age. Before leaving, I found four pill hoppers, each of a week's duration, to store my various vitamins and supplements to last for the month. One of the four is now empty.

At the Track

I am no prude, and I have a finely honed appreciation for the female form. What I have no time for however, are women who choose to adorn themselves in what can only charitably be termed “revealing” clothing, who then are aghast at being looked at while in that clothing. Modern media is replete with complaints from such women, mostly captured at gyms where they have set up a tripod for their cellphone to capture themselves “working out". Modern female workout rigs cannot even be considerd “lingerie-like", as these bits of lycra spelunking the achievable extent of the wearer’s corpus do not perform the delicate obscuring function of lingerie.

I am just back from the track/stadium in my neighborhood, and the morning scenery was quite an eyeful. I remember a few years ago, there being a little outcry about the “uniforms" worn by female beach volleyball players, but it seems now that track and field athletes have stolen a march.

Thursday, 23 April

It is 72 hours after I last sat down at this tablet (remember, that's why there are typos!), though I am in the same general pose--just returned from the track where I hastened off this morning in order to beat the (predicted, at least) next 48 hours of rain. The first third of this Odyssey is past, and I am thoroughly invested in a series of daily practices, pretty much like the way I pass time back on the Eastern Shore.

I was greeted this morning with the news that the (inexperienced, unqualified) Secretary of the Navy had been fired by the (inexperienced, unqualified) Secretary of Defense. I cry no tears for Mr. Phelan--lie down with dogs, etc.--but I think if I were China watching us piss away our PGM stocks on a war with no plan, even as the Pentagon flops about with court intrigue and mismanagement, I would like my odds in displacing the US at the top of the heap.

One of the great things about spending time here in Crete is that I haven’t run into anyone worried about being at the top of the heap. A lot of folks here enjoying themselves and/or hustling to get by. I like the energy.

My absence from this typing position over the past couple of days is explicable--I was busy. On Tuesday, I rose and headed to a local rendezvous position supplied by the proprietors of the Cretan Cooking Class that I was attending. I was whisked away in a grey van with four other people to join up at this lovely little spot outside of town for our class. I believe our class was 19 strong, and I was the only solo. All the others were couples, a variety of ages. All American, with one Aussie couple thrown in to keep us honest.

Our hostess (Veera) was a wonderul woman in her mid-fifties who ran the whole outfit. And by outfit, I mean it--the locale was a specially constructed “authentic" Cretan kitchen built by her brother “Kostas" with what passes for an assembly line of places for people to tackle the business of preparing a Cretan meal. We did the whole schlemiel--appetizers, main course (lamb, delish), veggies, dessert. It was a ton of fun, and the weather for our mostly outdoor experience was perfect.

This course and the gluttonous repast that was its spawn knocked me off the “two-a-day" train, as when I got home at 3PM, I decided only to go and get a run in (after a nap!) I then headed down about a quarter mile from my apartment to a little restaurant on the strand that had caught my eye and had a simple grilled calamari that was perfect.

Yesterday was yet another day-long activity--likely my last of the visit--which was billed as a tour of the Botanical Garden up in the mountains south of us here. I was picked up in front of my apartment at 0900 by Robert, another English expat whose parents whisked him from the inconveniences of Thatcherite England (his story) to the sunny climes of Crete when he was three. He looked like a professional rugby player, and spoke with a confused Greco/Anglo accent that was charming.

When our day was over, I had a little chat with Robert, privately. “Hey Robert. I have a problem. I am going to write a review of this awesome, wonderful, really great day, but the bottom line is that it sorta wasn't a thing like was portrayed in your marketing. I am a reasonably fit 60 year old man, and while the walking/hiking involved was invigorating, my sense is that your average 65 year old pensioner from Birmingham (I said it with a Brit accent) I see waddling along the waterfont is not going to be able to pull it off.” We hiked on a lot of loose rock during the course of 1) the botanical garden visit 2) a visit to a cave that revolutionaires had once operated out of and 3) a visit to the former location of a government built site that was supposed to highlight the local ecology, but that was abandoned because too few people visited (maybe because of the hiking on loose rocks?). The bottom line was that what he provided was a lot more and a lot more involved than what they advertised. I loved it, don't get me wrong. But man, I was feeling for some codger who paid his euro and then had a miserable day.

There are a few muesums/art galleries that remain on my list of must visits, and I will likely get at least two more massages while here. The first--Monday--was awesome. I find that massage therapists tend to not only know the human body pretty well, but that they can't help but formulate general theories as to the overall health of their clients. Whenever I am with a new one, I ask “well, what is my body telling you?” I did this about halfway through (when asked to flip), and she said “when I finish" in her lovely accented English. When finished, she made her pronouncement. “You are healthy. You are strong. You need to lose five kilos.” Can't say I disagree. I'm working on it.

I am wrestling with the basic point of this trip, or at least, I am wrestling with communicating the point of it. Yesterday (more on this later), I went on a walking tour of Chania, and I was a few minutes early for the meetup. Garry (the tour leader) and I chatted for a bit, and he was really fired up that an American (he was born in Scotland but emigrated to Greece with his mother when he was three) would pack up and squat here for a month. Partly out of enthusiasm, and partly out of solid capitalistic impulse, he began to lay out myriad ideas of “things I could do” while I was here. The whole time, I was staring at him and thinking “I don't want to DO anything. I want to be. I simply want to be here.” In the run up to the trip explaining to friends whose heads didn't explode that I was permitted to have a solo one-month residence, I would try to capture this idea, as there was always this sense that there was something I needed to DO once I packed up and left Easton. I assure you. I am not here to DO anything. Or at least anything in particular.

I am here to continue the splendidly blessed life I lead in Maryland provided by the world's most patient woman and the lovely spot she chose to live her life. To her credit, Catherine often identifies in me one of the traits for which I am most proud--and that is gratitude. I have had a wonderful life, and that life continues to be more than I deserve. My impulse as I imagined this trip, was simply to be really grateful somewhere else. I thought about Spain, Italy, France, Argentina, New Zealand, England, Ireland, Scotland, and the Baltics as places I might go, and settled on a place I had poked around when I was 25. I chose Chania, not because of all the things that I would do once I got there, but because it seemed a pleasant place to do the things I always do for a while. It is a lovely place, full of history but modern and convenient. To call this trip “travel" is perhap to categorize it poorly. Yes, I traveled here, but I traveled here only to unpack all my clothes and accessories and put them in their appointed places. I am simply temporarily uprooted by choice.

As I write, I stare down at a street upon which there is a little market that I have visited daily, and will likely visit daily while here. On my port quarter are the lights that flood the stadium in which I run and exercise, hopefully daily. On my port beam is a remnant of the wall the Venetians built to encircle the city already walled by the Byzantines. Centuries of people have lived their daily lives here and I join them in that pursuit.

Today will be no different. There is a weather system moving from North Africa bringing with it wind and rain and red sand, and it may force me indoors for the day. I am prepared for this, with a full cupboard. I don't know yet if I will eat dinner out, but I do know that if I decide not to, there are two whole chicken legs thawing in the fridge that I can fire up. I will get to them before they spoil, no doubt.

I was going to write about my little city tour, but I think I'll put that off for a bit. I may be able to sneak a run and an extended walk in before the heavy stuff comes.

Chania Backstreets

Garry--of whom I wrote earlier--was waiting in the little square (yesterday/Thursday 16 April) in front of the bank as his communication indicated he would be. I was ten minutes early--which is on time--and he informed me that he was expecting a couple to join us. They did, a few minutes later.

Garry and his mother emigrated here about a month before I visited September 1990. I told him of my trip here then, and he asked if I remembered anything. The honest truth was that I didn't, and I said so. He told me it didn't matter, as the place had changed dramatically in that time.

I will not bore you with the details of our walk, save to say that Garry was the perfect guide, and he took us up and down the little alleys, purposefully avoiding the main touristy areas. He introduced us to the proprietor of a knife store on a street littered with knife stores, and we got the story of how knives in the Cretan culture were family heirlooms passed down the male line, and that blades had inscriptions on them peculiar to that family.

He also was very good about recommending restaurants, and he was highly complimentary of my first night choice. When I told him I was going back that night (last night), he clucked that I needed to go somewhere else. I reminded him that I would be here a while.

We finished our tour with a coffee by the sea, and I said goodbye to my fellow travelers who could be leaving Saturday morning. I assured Garry that should I decide to “do something", I would give him a shout and he could plan something for me. We walked for a good two hours, which generally speaking would be enough for the day, but I have committed to the old high school football “two-a-day" routine, which means a workout with my calesthenics and a run, followed by a long walk. Since the walk was over, I headed home, changed, and went over to the stadium for workout #2.

Today (Friday 17 April--Happy Birthday Bill O'Keefe!) was supposed to be a stay inside and cook day, as the weather forecasts were dire with high winds, rain, and Saharan dust storms. None of this panned out, so I was able to get a run in with a little drizzle, then later went for an hour walk about town in a bit more rain but suited up with a solid rain hat and coat. The rain ended and the sun came out just as I was sitting down to a meal of Greek meatballs and a plate of goat.

Cosmopolitan readers are probably aghast at the fact that I would eat dinner in Greece while the sun shines, as the custom here is late night eating and socializing. I--on the other hand--am instituting a long walk before dinner that ends promply at 6, followed by dinner and some more walking. The only people eating at that time seem to be other members of the Anglosphere, with the folks across from me and a subsequent group of seven representing Canada and the UK. I am the ugly American.

Speaking of the ugly American…the couple (young) that joined in the tour yesterday seemed very uncomfortable with their citizenship. He worked for a non-profit (natch) and she in state government, and to the extent that we covered these sorts of things in our conversations, they made it very clear that they were somewhat embarrassed to be Americans in that way that people have when they just assume everyone else is just like they are. I was uncharacteristically quiet, and offered few opinions.

Our guide made it very clear that the young people in Greece…and Crete in particular…are unhappy. Everywhere you look there is graffiti critical of Israel, the US, and NATO. I was impressed that the graffitists (is this a word?) seem to avoid archeological and historical sites, but they avoid little else. Garry says that 2/3 of the jobs on this island are tied to tourism, and most of the rest is agricultural. Not much for these ne’er-do-wells to do, I suppose.

Tomorrow is shaping up to be a great day, as after a morning workout, I will be ambling over to the Archeological Museum of Chania, normally a 15 Euro admission fee but because tomorrow is “International Day for Monuments and Sites" (no joke, that's what the website says), it is free!

Quite a Day

Where were we? Oh yes, when last we were together, I was where I am right now, on my little veranda as the sun was going down. It is 2020hrs here seven hours ahead of the Eastern US, and I'll soon head off to bed to read yet another book on the American Revolution. I seem to have nipped that wake up wide awake and hang out for two hours in the middle of the night thing,

In the intervening 24 hours, I have walked nearly 24,000 steps (workout and surveying) visited the Archeological Museum (FREE!), had a splendid lunch of roasted mushrooms with a light butter sauce, and attended Mass. It was a good day.

There is a Franciscan monestery down in the old part of town with a small church appended thereunto. Having done my homework, I knew the Saturday night service was given in English, so (man of rituals and practices that I am), my month includes four Saturday masses. As some of you know, my hearing is not great, and heavily accented English is particularly difficult to understand (including English English). The priest was from the Philippines, and while he clearly knew his stuff, the accent caused me to miss a great deal of his sermon. That's ok though, because as all Catholics know, the sermon is just a side show. Fact is, the priests at Our Lady of Good Counsel used to skip the sermon on hot summer Sundays, which always earned the approval of the McGrath children. The rest of the Mass came to me like riding a bike, and I chanted along with everyone else (small church, packed). I haven't attended Catholic Mass religiously (or physically) for most of my life, choosing not to when I went off to college and now attending Episcopal services with Catherine. But when I'm on the road, I will always duck in for a little of the One True Church. Thousands of miles and years from the church of my youth, and three of the songs we sang I could do from memory!

One thing though--there are a number of subtle changes to the Mass since August of 1983 when my every Sunday tempo ended, but I'm stuck standing there with what I remember when I was 18. That's how I roll. Don't tell anyone, but when I attend Episcopal services with Catherine, I do the Catholic versions of things. Did you know Catholics say “glory and honor" and Episcopalians say “honor and glory"?

I think I will need to take it easy tomorrow, you know, day of rest and all that. The Crete Marathon starts and finishes in the stadium I've been working out in, so I imagine they won't allow some old dude to shuffle around doing 12 minute miles while the young and fleet fly past. There must be a ceremony of some sort going on over there right now, as the theme from Chariots of Fire is playing overtheir loudspeaker. Maybe a dry run for tomorrow.

One more thing before I wrap up for the night. I realize that I am in NO POSITION to criticize the hairstyle choices of other men. That said, as I reported on my last trip to Europe, the Alpaca haircut is alive and well here. Wandering around after church tonight, there were packs of young men who all seemed to have the same coiff.

Wrap-up

It is 2020 hrs and I am sitting at the bar/counter in my little pad having had a delightful Sunday. I woke to the cacaphony that was the stadium hosting the marathon (and 10K and 5K) and lounged about for a few hours. Then it was time to get active, so after doing my calesthenics, I took off on what would eventually turn out to be a one hour and fifty-five minute walk. I went east, away from the touristy part of town and ambled down mostly residential streets.

Upon returning home from a mostly grafitti free stroll, I focused on this bit right there on the facade of my building:

I pondered the significance of this statement. My guess is that some young, Greek male created this, a citizen of one of the most stunningly nationalist places on earth. My three hour tour around Chania the other day was punctuated not only with (authentic, wholesome) patriotism, but also significant chatter about the evils perpetrated on this place by the Turks across the centuries. One is forced to wonder if whether the Turks had continued over the decades to harass, bomb, and target Greeks, the artist would have the same discomfort with Jewish state nationalsim. One never knows.

I will close this now, as it has meandered. It will greet you in your Monday morning inbox so at least there is a little consistency there. Here are a couple of more photos from my walk today.

But first, there is news this morning of our regrettable President spouting off about the Pope. I am delighted. This is EXACTLY why I was so delighted with the election of an American Pope. Go ahead, MAGA. Take sides in this. Please.

A Near Disaster

As careful readers know, it was my plan to take a #3 barber clipper to my head prior to leaving on this journey, and the venue was chosen to be the kitchen of Robert and Beth last night in Alexandria. Beth volunteered to do the bidding, as Catherine sat close-by clucking and generally disdaining my decision.

Just prior to the event, I removed the #3 attachment from the clipper and applied some oil JUST LIKE THE DIRECTIONS SAID. I then handed Beth the clippers and she began her labor. Unfortunately, the directions did not say MAKE SURE YOU PUT YOUR ATTACHMENT BACK ON, clearly not aware of the degree of my cognitive decline.

Beth took to the job with relish, but seconds later, Robert stopped her in amazement, telling her “that is not a #3…that's is a zero". We stopped, after she had taken a bit of the back right side of my head down to bare metal. Thats when the horror arose in my chest…I had not put the #3 clipper back on.

Once affixed, she completed the job with expert precision, but the work involved in limiting the initial damage required a bit of the 1.5 attachment. I do look like someone in some stage of post-operative brain surgery care, but overall, I am thrilled with the result.

This is a view of the (entirely my fault) impact crater.

Catherine was a good sport about it all, but she is glad she won't have to look at me for a while. “I forgot about your hair" were her first words to me when I went to wake her.

Newark, Polaris Lounge

As I indicated elsewhere, I cashed in some miles and am flying to and from Athens in United's “Polaris" class. Originally, I was flying Dulles to Athens round trip, then that outbound flight got canceled by United and I was put on this one out of Newark with a hop from Dulles. The time between landing and takeoff at Newark under that plan was too tight for me, so I got United to fly me out of National earlier, creating this 4.5 hour layover in the Newark Polaris Lounge.

I don't mind layovers. I certainly like them more than airport sprints, and quite a bit more than missed flights. And when I can enjoy them in comfort, all the better. Polaris is a big step up from United's regular lounges, which are lovely, and today's experience is no exception. I had thought that I would grab a steak for lunch at this steakhouse in Terminal C I'd hit before, but then as I was flying in from National, I thought “you are going to Chania to live a bit of a Spartan existence, lots of exercise, eating very healthily, and living within your budget. Why overspend for an average steak when you can hit the free buffet in the Polaris lounge?” So, it was decided. Yes, I get that the “free” buffet is very costly, but that was what the points were for!

The buffet was in the crossover period between breakfast and lunch, so I cadged a few chicken sausages and a scrambled egg to tide me over until lunch appeared. Lunch included some sort of delightful Moroccan chicken dish and a wonderful shrimp and peppers number. It was lovely. I'm now talking/typing with you beside a nice latte with about 2.5 hours until boarding. This is wonderful.

I Blame It On COVID

The flight here to Newark presented some challenges. The fellow behind me decided to listen to his phone up against his ear, for the whole time we sat by the gate and on the taxiway. Just prior to takeoff, I pointed out that he needed headphones, and he shut down the noise. Keep in mind, folks, I'm pretty deaf.

He then hacked, geezed, and expectorated for our entire forty minute flight. I am convinced I never noticed this kind of thing before COVID, but all those animated graphics we saw six years ago with clouds of disease passing back and forth cannot be forgotten.

Also, my inamorata has a pretty solid record of coming off most flights with some sort of consumptive ague, and we seem fated always to sitting adjacent to some Typhoid Mary/Maury. Alone this time, I thought of her.

Anonymity

I just returned from a trip to the loo, and I am starkly aware of something. I am, in normal times, a solid “7” in the 60 year old man looks department. Better than average, but not much. I'm short, I'm fifteen pounds overweight, etc. But until last night, there was always the comfort of “I have a nice flowing head of hair" to fall back on. Looking in the bathroom mirror at this oddly formed fellow looking back, I realize that while all 60 year old men are anonymous in crowds (I know guys, the truth hurts), I am now more anonymous than ever. C'est la vie.

Jet Lag

It is now Wednesday, April 15, and the time is 0205 hrs. I have been awake for a bit over an hour now, having awakened after MAYBE three hours of sleep to a realization that I was simply not going to fall gently back into slumber. Such are the ravages of jet lag, and given that my sleep cycle was shot in the ass the day before (I only go two or three hours on the plane), I am creating a right fine sleep deficit. Sleeping is one of my few talents--I fall asleep quickly and usually knock out nearly seven hours a night. These past two have been challenging, though. I did manage to wake today and read a few articles from the Journal of the American Revolution, a worthy online publications I subscribed to whilst attending my little conference last month.

When last we chatted, I was ensconsed in the Polaris Lounge at Newark Airport, a thoroughly enjoyable experience. Since then, I flew to Athens in a comfy but uneventful flight, and then spent much of the day Tuesday sitting in an airport lounge in Athens awaiting the 35 minute flight to Chania--which was also uneventful. I landed last night at around seven PM and was met at the airport by one half of my Air BnB host couple--Nikos. Nikos speaks English well, and has been great in geting information to me in preparation for this visit. It was a pleasant drive from the airport, and my apartment is lovely. I'll probably post a short video if I can figure out how to, but suffice it to say that it is exactly as the Air BnB pictures portrayed, and it is superbly well-equipped.

My plan today--and when “today" starts seems closely connected to whether I go back to sleep or not--is to go and stock up on some food, then walk down to the gym I'm looking to join for the month, have a look around, and then maybe join up. I'll take a nice run and then hit one of the restaurants on my list for some serious protein.

Day One Close-out

It is a little after 8PM at the end of my first full day, and I have a sneaky suspicion that when all is said and done, I will have considered this trip/choice to have been a good one.

Shortly after my last entry--you remember, the one in the middle of the night--I decided to give sleep another try, so I fired up the CPAP, put in my earplugs and gave it a go. When I woke again--utterly disoriented--it was 1145. Right. Felt great.

I had a coffee or two from the lovely grind provided, took a shower (note to self: remember you need to push that little hot water heater button 20 minutes before the shower) and went off with my shopping list for victuals. I started with the little mini-mart thirty yards away, where I bought some eggs and a latte. I introduced myself to the proprietress and suggested she might be seeing a lot of me. My approach is to prepare for each conversation with an opening line or two of Greek in memory, then it seems they all want to switch to English. Google translate is wonderful, and I did relatively well all day (although when I landed last night, I said “Good Morning" to Nikos instead of “Good Evening.”)

Then I headed on a fifteen minute walk to a proper grocer who had a few of the things I needed, but I told myself I need to get to another, bigger one about the same distance from my crib. There are few things as disorienting as shopping in a food store in a foreign country, but then again, Google translate allows me to use my camera to translate labels and such, and I was able to make steady progress. The most important buy was the distilled water for the CPAP, which if I continued to use the tap water would likely accumulate a crystalized water reservoir heater.

One of the things Nikos told me yesterday was that the “Stadium" across the street--essentially an outdoor gym with a 400 meter track--was open and free all day. That just saved me 50 Euro gym membership. So when I got home, I suited up and headed across the way for fifteen minutes of calesthenics followed by a half hour around the track. Keen readers may remember that I claimed to want to exercise twice each day, so this was round one.

Upon returning to my apartment, I scanned the news and such, chatted with my inamorata via Whatsapp video (gold, pure gold), and then headed out again at 4:30PM for a ninety minute walk around town that concluded at a restaurant at which I had a six o'clock ressie. A bottle of sparkling water, five local Cretan sausages, and some grilled rabbit later, I had finished a fine, singular meal for the day (won't be a habit, but when you wake near noon, why not?)

After this pleasant repast, I headed off to the BIG supermarket to pick up a few things I missed earlier (this country has something against salted butter. Very hard to find) and headed home to this tablet and you.

I'll close for now and be back with you in a few days. I pray you forgive the numerous mistakes here, but remember substack does not have a spellcheck feature and you get this for free.

Be well.

I watched Michigan play a game in the Big Ten tourney, and I tweeted that they were for real—only for them to lose the next game there. I wouldn’t have picked them to win anyway, as I am treaty-obligated to pick UVA, and if I weren’t I would have picked Arizona.

Speaking of UVA, lotta top 10 buzz for next year based on the guys coming back. I wish I could go into a deep sleep and wake up in early November.

Groundhogs, Trash Pandas, and Country Life

We live on the Miles River in Talbot County, and border between the river and our house includes a wooden bulkhead that needs replacing. Behind it, some of the shore is eroding, just the kind of wonderful place for groundhog(s) to take up residence.

I am reliably informed by my resident River Nymph that groundhogs are not desirable partners on this shoreline. It seems the presence of dogs for much of my time here accounts for their previous absences, but the sad deaths of Baloo and Zuzu have left us undefended. I’ve seen the groundhog out there munching in the early spring greenery. He/She is a fat creature, slow-moving. I consider it a “he” for some reason and Catherine considers it a “she” (more on this to follow).

Apparently, the presence of this rodent (I believe it is a rodent, anyhow) required action on someone’s part in the house, and since I would soon be heading off for a month, I supposed quite naturally that the job would fall to my inamorata. She did not see things the same way, and so I took up the challenge.

I believed there were three approaches. Approach 1 would be me shooting said rodent and tossing it in the river. It never occurred to me that this would not be the obvious choice, but when I suggested it, I was quickly overruled on humanitarian grounds. “She’s probably pregnant”, was the retort. She? I’d assumed all along it was a he. I mean, he looks like a feral George Costanza, it must be a he.

Option 2 was to turn the job over to our handyman, the guy who cuts the grass, tends the plant bets, trims the trees, etc. I imagined that conversation going something like “Leo (his name), we have a groundhog issue in the backyard. Please make it go away”. Leo would almost certainly answer “No problem”. When this was suggested, it was also rejected. “I would like the groundhog to be moved in a humane manner.” Ok, time to spend a little (more) cash.

I called such a place and spoke to Clint. Clint sounded like a wonderful man. He drove out that afternoon (a few days ago) and briefed us on his approach to humanely trapping and then transporting said groundhog to a new environment. Sounds great. Hands shook, card swiped.

In the last few days, we have seen the groundhog feasting in the vicinity of the traps, but as of yet, we’ve not bagged one of the beasts. On the other hand, we’ve caught three raccoons also known as “trash pandas”.

Clint is on the job. He was just out and took the two raccoons away. I checked them out this morning, and they were not pleasant with me, emitting a little scream/growl and baring their little sharp teeth. I would like to hope that we capture the groundhog today or tomorrow, so that I can put this one in the win column before I leave for Crete. Onto that story.

The Odyssey Begins

By the time most of you read this, I will have begun my Cretan Odyssey. On Sunday evening, Catherine and I will drive to Alexandria, Virginia and bunk with our friends for the evening. I am bringing along my barber clippers and Beth is going to give me a #3 crewcut. Catherine had originally been offered this great honor, but as time went on, it seems that she found the prospect unpalatable. Beth is enthusiastic about it. I will embark on my travel with a fresh crewcut like I had one summer when I was about 8 years old, but not since. I am also not shaving—or at least not planning to shave—while away, so the combination of a crewcut and a scraggly beard ought to throw anyone thinking I am a well-respected man about town off the trail.

I fly from Reagan to Newark to Athens to Chania, roughly a day of travel. The good folks renting me my Air BnB are picking me up at the airport, and I’ve already begun to lay out my plans.

It appears that I get a cloudy day followed by three rainy days to start my residency, but I have waterproof shoes and an umbrella, so I will not let a little rain keep me from my wandering. I’ve scoped out a proper grocery for the first morning stock-up, a proper gym that offers weekly memberships, and proper restaurant for my first real dinner in country. My intention is to hit the high protein/high fat low/no sugar diet hard for the whole time, with two-a-day exercise periods daily. I project returning home ten pounds less than I leave. I’ll keep you posted.

I do not intend to keep to a weekly schedule of writing this Substack, so you’ll probably a new post every few days or so. Catherine (scamp that she is) says that means “what you had for breakfast, what you had for dinner” updates, but I promise to keep a sharper eye out for interesting things and people to write about.