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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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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