SICKO

If you notice that my entries are not as current or as frequent as they have been, it's because I've been recovering from shingles. It's a very debilitating sort of disease, you know—a recurrence of chicken pox, and this old body doesn't bounce back like it did when it carried the consciousness of a ten year old around inside of it. This illness is another reason why this entry is so short.

ON BEING AN ATHEIST

Being an atheist is, if you can picture this, like breaking through the thin layer of an egg shell and crawling out to stand on a pristine, white surface. Here and there, one spots a courageous lad or lassie who has crawled out there with him. Beneath one’s feet, so to speak, trapped within the thinnest of shells, remain the poor, sad lot of his fellows, still trapped in and coated with chicken-yellow goo. The atheist looks up into a black, infinite void and, filled with the most tender sensation of awe, he crows like a rooster to have attained such unlimited freedom.

ON BEING BEN FRANKLIN

“The rapid progress true science now makes, occasions my regretting sometimes that I was born so soon.”—Ben Franklin

If Ben Franklin can say that, imagine how we ought to feel?

DESPOTIC GOVERNMENT AHEAD?

“I agree to this Constitution, with all its faults—if they are such; because I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of government but what may be a blessing to the people, if well administered; and I believe, farther, that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other.”—Ben Franklin

If Ben Franklin can say that, imagine how we ought to feel under the boot heels of GWB?

SHINGLES

Yes, I've had shingles now for the last three weeks, but I managed to make a short dash North to visit friends and family up through Poulsbo and onto Whidbey Island. Then, the next weekend, Mertie and I headed West over to the Washington Coast, Long Beach, to spend two nights, a full day and parts of two days there. All the while I was sick and could not enjoy anything as much as I would have liked to. This shingles stuff is for the birds. I'm hoping I don't get the complication which lasts for months afterwards, where the hurts continue and the tenderness or deadness of the skin remains. The entire left side of my face and my mouth has been affected. Lesions on my face, my gums, and inside my mouth and also the lips. Even the skin on the top of my left shoulder feels extremely tender to the touch. It's a rebirth of the chicken pox in old people.

Anyhow, here's a couple of photos from the Long Beach trip:

Looking sort of North.
The boardwalk West of Long Beach, the longest beach in the whole world?

One of many friends to visit us on a Saturday morning trip
to the Northern tip of the peninsula
upon which Long Beach rests.
To Ledbetter Point State Park.

A sort of primeval creature found on the beach of Stackpole Harbor.

Two more creatures found on our journey the next day at Bruceport Park.

Looking West across the great Pacific waters on Saturday evening.