Ahh the beach slake. The morning dolphins in the hazy sun, a timpani of waves. Walked dogs in beach at 9 and by 10:30 landed with kindle, coffee and chairs. Feels like it’s been awhile and indeed over 8 months which is decently long for me. My aspiration is ever a handyman for my parents who does Cancun quarterly.
I used a plant identifier app to check out the lush “Gilligan’s Island” collection of plants along an ocean path. A Japanese privet separates two adjoining properties at northernmost point. Along the way: Yaupon hollies, water oaks, Earleaf Greenbrier ivy (also known as Wild Bamboo), Southern Live Oaks (can live for over a thousand years), muscadine grape vines, Chinese tallow (invasive), and Oleander. It looks like a rain forest.
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So the weather today was better than pre-reported by the astrologists. Good all afternoon and into the (super long) evening. The good thing about a June vacation is there are 18 hours of sunlight so you’re bound to find a decent stretch of pleasant valley.
Afternoon thunderstorms were heavily predicted but the timing on weather apps was anything from 11:30am till 5pm. Which is sort of like saying the Reds this season will win between 55 and 90 games. True enough but not particularly useful. Reminds me of how our dog DNA test had a predicted adult weight range between 55 and 90 lbs.
We listened to a John Piper book, ‘Christ and the Coronavirus” written in March 2020 on the drive here. Better than politics. Later did listen to presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, whom I increasingly like. Cincy native, was valedictorian at St X high school. Yale grad but I won’t hold that against him...hopefully he’s a traitor to his class like Trump?
His message certainly resonates with me seeing how he’s obviously thought about how, logistically, to get rid of the government gangsters and he’s also thoughtful about China. He promises a pardon of Trump which seems the politically smart thing to do given that presumably a lot of people might vote for Trump simply to get him off the hook. (A legal scholar says Trump can pardon himself if he wins office.)
Vivek mentioned former Attorney Gen’l Bill Barr who said that while there is unfairness between how Hillary was treated and how Trump is being treated, the time to fix the rule of law is now by enforcing it against Trump. He must think we’re stupid. Every time there’s a Republican being wrecked by unequal enforcement the argument is, “well we need to do what’s right with what’s right in front of us now.”
If Barr was serious he’d call for Biden (not Hillary) to go under the knife (of the law). The deal has always been: you give us Joe Biden (not Hunter) and we’ll give you Trump. Instead they give Hunter a slap on the wrist and think that’s a good deal for us. Which is exactly why we Trump supporters have no one else to go to, although I could see going Vivek if circumstances change.
Of course this is all decorating the house before the hurricane, or arranging floral arrangements after the wedding reception. From a biography of Cdl George: “Cardinal George always spoke about the family as the basic building block of civilization, and he feared the government was no longer protecting the family. The consequences that would come from that, he knew, would be profound.”
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Can’t keep the Irish out of me I guess. A book I’m reading says “Irish peasants of the 1800s had a love for big and sonorous words..”
I using the word “fierce” in a fourth grade poem shows it might be innate...”Fierce sometimes is the rain”. I don’t think Mom caught that gene given her plainspoken but bracing lyrics, “a bird poo-poo’d on my car”.
The author of the book says, “I preached to him perpetually the doctrine of simplicity. It was not easy to persuade him that it was better to say a thing was ‘red’ than it was ‘of ruby dye,’ but little by little he learned.”
Oh I like that "of ruby dye".
The book is from the early 1900s and called “A Cluster of Nuts: Being Sketches Among My Own People” by Katharine Tynan.
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I was reading a Saul Bellow novel, winner of the Nobel Prize for literature when that meant something, and he has a character inherit $3 million and thus be considered wealthy beyond measure. Obviously this doesn’t work in today’s dollars. I checked and the book was written in 1958, so I looked at the inflation-adjusted numbers and it’s $30 million today -- which makes much more sense. $30 million is rich by today’s standards.
Found online: “According to Schwab’s 2023 Modern Wealth Survey, Americans said it takes an average net worth of $2.2 million to qualify a person as being wealthy.”
The average net worth by age in 2019, according to a Federal Reserve survey:
55-64: $1,175,900
65-74: $1,217,700
75 or older: $977,600
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