Today was no exception to our private custom of not observing public holidays or whatever Valentine’s Day is considered to be.

Valentine’s Day, also called Saint Valentine’s Day or the Feast of Saint Valentine, is celebrated annually on February 14. It originated as a Christian feast day honoring one or two early Christian martyrs named Saint Valentine and, through later folk traditions, has become a significant cultural, religious, and commercial celebration of romance and love in many regions of the world.

There are a number of martyrdom stories associated with various Valentines connected to February 14, including an account of the imprisonment of Saint Valentine of Rome for ministering to Christians persecuted under the Roman Empire in the third century. According to an early tradition, Saint Valentine restored sight to the blind daughter of his jailer. Numerous later additions to the legend have better related it to the theme of love: an 18th-century embellishment to the legend claims he wrote the jailer’s daughter a letter signed “Your Valentine” as a farewell before his execution; another tradition posits that Saint Valentine performed weddings for Christian soldiers who were forbidden to marry.

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Later this afternoon millions will be staring at their huge television screens to watch the National Football League Super Bowl. The little I know of the event is that it occurs early in the New Year and is renowned for its commercial television advertisements which have the celebrity of a Hollywood performance.  When I bicycled earlier today along the beach from Coligny Beach Park to Sea Pines Beach Club there was a noticeable dearth of people though for some reason there was a proliferation of dogs gambolling about the shore and back and forth in and out of the sea. The parking lot at the golf club was similarly void of its usual collection of Mercedes, Porches, Audis and glistening trucks with huge tires. And the bike paths were limited to people my age who betrayed a lack of interest in public sport by their devotion to courtesy and friendliness.

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Last Saturday while out for a walk, I had a run-in with some protesters who were marching along Dupont St which is not far from where we live in the Annex, after their Freedom rally at Queen’s Park. Paul and I both put our masks on when we saw them coming towards us, figuring they probably weren’t vaccinated and there also wasn’t any room to get out of their way.  As they walked past, one of them mocked us for being masked.

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Except during imminent or current illness I cannot recall the last time I glued myself indoors throughout an entire day. As mundane as my daily routine may be it normally involves a bicycle ride, grocery shopping or a drive about the countryside.  In truth I did in fact venture abroad earlier this morning to the car wash but I returned within minutes because the place was “closed for maintenance“.  Whatever that means. I have yet to see any activity when the sign is displayed. The weather was cool and cloudy today so I spent my time – until now (my accustomed coffee hour) – reading  British history and replying to email concerning the trucker convoys to the parliaments of Canada and New Zealand.

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On balance I prefer having breakfast of my own making and on my own time. The imperturbability is one of those incalculable privileges of retirement and old age. The preparation naturally has to do with my select ingredients; the timing reflects the changeable stirrings of my hunger say between 8:00 am and noon depending on what I ate the night before and when I got out of bed next morning. There is also some tenor to maintenance of routine.  Overdoing it at breakfast; that is, too much or too late can ruin the evening meal by killing one’s appetite thus disrupting the otherwise thoroughly predictable soirée of the evening news and rewinds of late night talk shows. Not to mention the equally probable jolt to one’s cautious metabolism. Then you find yourself repeating those annoying words, “I knew I shouldn’t have“. Nonetheless on occasion the ceremony of going out for breakfast is a stimulating and rewarding entertainment. I recall for example our matutinal outings in Key West were accompanied by picturesque, balmy venues overlooking a placid green sea.

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Subject: bora bora

Wednesday Feb 7th

Hello,

28 years ago I went on a sailing cruise in la Polenisie Francaise , an archipelo located in the South Pacific. Its main and largest island is Tahiti and the capital is Papeete. I visited many islands and also spent 4 days on the island of Tahiti. In that cruise I also spent one day in Bora Bora the most popular island and when there I had promised myself that I would come back to Bora Bora.

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The sea ever-changes. Though the predominance of the planet earth is its bowl and continents as big as Africa, as small as New Zealand and as asymmetric as Asia are its buckled lip, the sea seldom acquiesces to anything other than a changeable gossamer-like shoreline. The lunar variances of breadth are complicated and ornamented by the prevailing winds, the sunshine and the hour of the day.

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It is beguiling to contemplate a subtropical vacation resort approaching the radius of the South Pacific Ocean denominated by such undeniably agreeable and captivating credentials as Noosa Heads, a coastal town in the Shire of Noosa, Queensland, Australia on the Sunshine Coast bordering the Coral Sea. It was this idyllic image that first greeted me as I awoke to the world this morning, having seated myself to void my bladder, examining my iPhone for the latest email communication. My correspondent lapsed into an unaccustomed vernacular when relating his own blossoming experience there. His description “very upscale” was the Gentile version of the Yiddish colloquial “very excellent“, what I jokingly consider the pluperfect subjunctive of approbation. His addition of the earthy observation about “gorgeous bodies” was however less a shift.

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“At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness,” Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in his 1841 essay, “Self-Reliance.” “I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.”

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The latest taradiddle to immobilize the American public is the GOP assertion that the storming of the Capitol building on January 6th, 2021 was “legitimate political discourse“.  It is a patent re-writing of history for the venal purposes of members of the Republican party. Once again thinking Americans are set back upon their heels in the face of this rubbish which miraculously continues to insinuate the so-called mind of the country’s second most popular political party. The heinous nature of the proclamation puts the GOP far beyond passive deferral to its putative party leader Trump. Adopting this deceitful interpretation of an insurrection prompted by Trump is clearly manifestation of a mania poisoning more than the vulgar masses; it signals the indiscriminate alliance of so-called governing officials with a paid cock fight. Its only advantage is that it hammers yet another nail in the coffin of the GOP. There is no mistake that this subterfuge is intolerable from beginning to end; and that the GOP is doomed to dissolution as dramatically as its entertainment value erupted upon Trump’s initial entry upon the public stage.  Just as so many GOP members like Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham methodically switched from A to B, they and their immoral leader will crumble as the American public awakens to the reality of this mendacity.

On January 6, 2021, a mob of 2,000-2,500 supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump attacked the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. They sought to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election by disrupting the joint session of Congress assembled to count electoral votes that would formalize President-elect Joe Biden’s victory. The Capitol Complex was locked down and lawmakers and staff were evacuated as rioters assaulted law enforcement officers, vandalized property, and occupied the building for several hours. Five people died either shortly before, during, or following the event: one was shot by Capitol Police, another died of a drug overdose, and three died of natural causes. Many people were injured, including 138 police officers. Four officers who responded to the attack died by suicide within seven months.

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