Only this morning when saying goodbye to a couple leaving Buttonwood Bay for the season I was reminded of a quip I heard years ago in a Monty Python movie called the Something or Other in which the Laird of the Manor was seen at his desk, shouting “Who are those people I really hate?” Behind him (and unknown to him) approached Her Ladyship (in whose company was a handsome young priest recently admitted to the household). In the next scene, His Lordship (still seated at his desk) is overheard once again shouting, “How do you spell disembowelled?” When Her Ladyship approached (once again), she asked what he was doing, to which His Lordship replied, “I’m writing a letter to The Times!”

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Abeyance (from the Old French abeance meaning “gaping”) is a state of expectancy in respect of property, titles or office, when the right to them is not vested in any one person, but awaits the appearance or determination of the true owner. In law, the term abeyance can be applied only to such future estates as have not yet vested or possibly may not vest. For example, an estate is granted to A for life, with remainder to the heir of B. Following A’s death, if B is still alive, the remainder is in abeyance, for B has no heirs until B’s death.

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The phrase pathetic fallacy is a literary term for the attribution of human emotion and conduct to things found in nature that are not human. It is a kind of personification that occurs in poetic descriptions, when, for example, clouds seem sullen, when leaves dance, or when rocks seem indifferent. The British cultural critic John Ruskin coined the term in the third volume of his work Modern Painters (1856).

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As uncanny as it is most of us are destined to complete a cycle of adventure in our lifetime. The revolution (that is, the completion of the circle) is more accurately defined as an evolution (capturing for example the ecological definition; viz., the movement of a simple substance through the soil, rocks, water, atmosphere and living organisms of the earth). It reputedly has something mystical to do with leaving where you are so that you may know whence you came, a sort of spiritual enterprise akin to the more fundamental retail observation that you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.

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The septuagenarian crowd overtook the island pool today. I switched from our neighbourhood pool to the island pool because while tricycling past the neighbourhood pool it was patently already consumed by others. So I checked out the island pool and it was comparatively sparse (a feature that changes day to day).

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Yesterday I joined Team Reach, an App for Buttonwood Bay Snowbirds containing running comments by residents, a list of upcoming events, random photos contributed by residents, a list of members (176) and a message capacity to some or all members. What’s odd about my admission to this fold is that when we arrived here last November, I declined to Join because I knew I had no intention to participate in the social gatherings of the members of Buttonwood Bay. It wasn’t because I don’t enjoy the people here (I adore chatting by the pool or along the laneway when tricycling or in the occasional private confabs we’ve enjoyed). My reluctance was primarily motivated by the experiences we have had at other resorts (most recently Longboat Key and before that Hilton Head Island) where the gatherings were predictably noisy, involving alcohol and food I didn’t care for and most importantly people with whom I had no immediate or foreseeable currency. This I know sounds decidedly curmudgeonly but the frank reason is I have by design abandoned venues which are predominantly of a persuasion contrary to my own. Certainly I know that by the application of some effort I can acquaint myself with anyone but I am unconvinced of the utility of the effort at this late stage of my life.

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This afternoon as I languished upon a chaise longue by the serene pool a wind gust suddenly blew over me. The welcome zephyr instantaneously dried the burning solar heat, replenishing my commitment to Buttonwood Bay and its assuaging mixture of azure sky and subtropical climate. Only moments before in the shade of the pergola I had concluded an evocative and unusually prolonged conversation with Mrs C in which, among other things, we reaffirmed my latest proposition regarding the similar heritage of Americans and Canadians.  Her husband’s mother (St. Pierre) was of French Canadian stock (as is my mother) and her own family is of Polish ancestry (as are my brother-in-law and his immediate family). As a child she also attended a Catholic school governed by nuns as did my own mother (though pointedly Mrs C remembers the nuns more magnanimously than did my mother who frequently reported of their strict control and ofttimes corporal punishment).

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In mathematics, a cusp, sometimes called spinode in old texts, is a point on a curve where a moving point must reverse direction. A typical example is given in the figure. A cusp is thus a type of singular point of a curve.

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There is no denying the singular character of Americans.  Yet it is arguably no more unique a distinction than that allowed the populace of France, Greece, China, Thailand or New Zealand for example.  Basically they’re all different.  What however makes the American way particularly unique in my mind is its obvious differences from that of immediately adjoining Canada, a country where one might be excused for imagining there to be a great similarity. But there isn’t. At least apart from the weather and much of the topography.

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The weather on Key Largo is inexpressibly fine. It is as undiminished as it is fine. Day after day  the perfection of blue sky and yellow sunshine. From the outset of one’s ritual morning exercise it is impossible to resist the allure of the radiant sunshine whether unobstructed or amid the fleeting cumulonimbi in the azure sky. The temperature (always a minimum warm and often approaching hot at the earliest hour of the day) instantly corresponds to one’s linen costume. Cotton is far too strenuous for the local climate.

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