One needn’t look far beyond the history of the common law to unfold the threat of mercenary devotion to stupidity and greed. It was after all the putative psyche of James II, a former king of England, Scotland and Ireland. And it survived into his exile to France where he received the support of Louis XIV, the equally offensive manifestation of the divine right of kings. Finally it heralded the atrocious reaction to Marie Antoinette in the ensuing French Revolution. Parenthetically it is of interest and note that among those who participated in the recovery of the English population from the Glorious Revolution headed by William of Orange (“King Billy“) and Mary II was Sir Isaac Newton “widely recognised as one of the greatest mathematicians and physicists of all time and among the most influential scientists“. Coincidentally t was also Newton’s Third Law of Motion that “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction“.

“But there could be no such hope for a child educated by a father who was the most stupid and obstinate of tyrants, in a foreign country, the seat of despotism and superstition; in a country where the last traces of liberty had disappeared; where the States General had ceased to meet; where parliaments had long registered without one remonstrance the most oppressive edicts of the sovereign; where valour, genius, learning, seemed to exist only for the purpose of aggrandising a single man; where adulation was the main business of the press, the pulpit, and the stage; and where one chief subject of adulation was the barbarous persecution of the Reformed Church. Was the boy likely to learn, under such tuition and in such a situation, respect for the institutions of his native land? Could it be doubted that he would be brought up to be the slave of the Jesuits and the Bourbons, and that he would be, if possible, more bitterly prejudiced than any preceding Stuart against the laws of England?

Excerpt From
The History of England, from the Accession of James II — Volume 2
Thomas Babington Macaulay Macaulay

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Noosa Heads is a coastal town and suburb of the Shire of Noosa on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia. It is located approximately 136 kilometres (85 mi) north of Brisbane, the state’s capital.

As my erstwhile physician continues his adventurous and unbroken trek about the globe I have the chance advantage of acquainting myself quite comfortably from my drawing room winter seat on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina with the objects of his travel albeit an exceptionally cursory glimpse alone.

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My erstwhile physician wrote me a short note yesterday or today from the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland, Australia where he is currently sojourning in the South Pacific Ocean or what I suppose is more accurately identified as the Coral Sea. His daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter live nearby (comparatively speaking) in Melbourne, Victoria closer to the Tasman Sea and the next proximate continent New Zealand.

The Great Barrier Reef is the world’s largest coral reef system composed of over 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands stretching for over 2,300 kilometres (1,400 mi) over an area of approximately 344,400 square kilometres (133,000 sq mi). The reef is located in the Coral Sea, off the coast of Queensland, Australia, separated from the coast by a channel 100 miles wide in places and over 200 feet deep. The Great Barrier Reef can be seen from outer space and is the world’s biggest single structure made by living organisms. This reef structure is composed of and built by billions of tiny organisms, known as coral polyps. It supports a wide diversity of life and was selected as a World Heritage Site in 1981.CNN labelled it one of the seven natural wonders of the world in 1997. Australian World Heritage places included it in its list in 2007. The Queensland National Trust named it a state icon of Queensland in 2006.

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Sea-Fever
BY
JOHN MASEFIELD

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking

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Last night was not a comfy night for me. For whatever reason my left knee and leg decided to cavort unremittingly into the middle of the night in spite of my constant twists and turns in an effort to overpower the jig. It was only the application of my Theragun (and the consumption of Tylenol) which at last subdued the activity and allowed me to sleep. It was late this morning before I abruptly awoke from what I recall was an uncommonly deep slumber and grabbed my iPhone on the bedside table to see what time of day it was. Already it was about 9:30 am, dangerously close to being within that zone of the first half of the day that vanishes all too swiftly. I immediately cornered and smothered myself in the shower, shaving cream and white bath towel. No time to waste! And breakfast would have to wait.  Just enough time perhaps to re-engineer the maniacal routine of a preliminary car wash! And hopefully thereafter to recover the preferred parking space into which I have lately devoted so much attention to employ and perceive the automatic camera alignments.

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Getting things right has always been an obsession of mine.  Whether it was telling my mother when I was five years old that I had lied to her about some now trifling detail; or, succumbing to an esoteric and singularly annoying Planning Act issue when practicing law; or, indeed, getting the air tire pressure right for my automobile as I attempted to do today. While the object is always to meet a standard of perfection – whether moral, professional or mechanical – the achievement of that goal can however suffer a degree of timeliness, interpretation and accommodation. Basically, nothing is perfect – not me, you or it!

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We ritually dressed for work at 6:00 am this morning, preparing for an early mission to the Publix Island Crossing grocery store at 11 Palmetto Bay Road just beyond the Greenwood Avenue entrance to Sea Pines. But first we determined to go to Watusi Café on nearby Pope Avenue for breakfast. They opened at 7:30 am.

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Nothing but blue sky and yellow sunshine!  We were in high gear before eight o’clock this morning, attending to the customary routines and duties, including laundry and a quick drive to the car wash! Having accomplished as well our daily breakfast régime, we were soon set to embark upon the trusty two-wheelers for destinations undetermined.  Because it is the first day of February I sent an email to my car dealership to reignite the yearly process of replacing the car with the latest model.  The dealership usually requires eight weeks to receive the new order which will coincide with our return to Canada mid-April next. Continue reading →

The not uncommon refrain, “Have a nice day!“, is I have learned as fraught with subtext and innuendo as the equally clichéd though often punishing retort, “Good for you!”  On the one hand each of the phrases captures a putative sincerity; but as often they chronicle an underlying lack of interest and even sometimes malice. Seldom is either of the idioms expressive of any compelling desire of the author of the rhetorically gratifying locution. On the other hand, the constructions amount to a standard societal punctuation of an anticipated favourability usually subsequent to a commercial transaction or relationship. But overall the utterances are as meaningless as air. At best they indicate a lack of linguistic novelty; at worse they are a subterfuge. They may further signify an entire disregard.

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The disadvantage of going to bed at nine o’clock in the evening is the tendency to awaken eight hours later – which is uncomfortably close to five o’clock the next morning. I say uncomfortably because there is not a great deal one can do at five o’clock in the morning other than read, not a bad thing clearly but not what I prefer to do first thing in the morning. When – as was foreseen last evening – the weather this morning was forecast to be clear, my design at the start of a new day is more inclined to getting into the fresh air. It is a laudable attribute I seldom tout but which I heartily embrace with the same gusto of a native athlete (which by the way I am not). In any event I didn’t invoke the five o’clock alarm but rather the six-thirty am alarm, or more accurately the instinctive provocation to get moving. There is only so much dithering in the lair that is tolerable. Though I rudely interrupted the laundry schedule remarkably already underway (my bath towel was in the dryer and would not be ready for another half hour), I persisted in my private propulsion and claimed a fresh towel instead, having acquiesced to abandon the necessity of both bath mat and face cloth which were with the other whites.  I reasoned the Dial bath soap and Suave 2-in-1 Shampoo & Conditioner, with rapid and slightly aggressive application, would bestow the requisite cleansing in this singular instance.

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