During our lovely stay at Miramar Beach, Florida…I witnessed many hours of enjoyable card playing by MJ and Ira Kaye and Ron. I am one of those poor deprived souls that never learned an adult card game. At one time I played Old Maid…and enjoyed it very much… MJ…on the other hand…loves card games. Upon our return to Little Egypt…I determined that I would learn her favorite card game…Golf. I was a bit amazed at how simple it was to learn and have subsequently played it with her and Aaron and Jonathon for several marathon sessions. Indeed we have played so many hands…that we have ordered an automatic card shuffler from Amazon. I have even succeeded in being the winner…once or twice.

My childhood was filled with swimming at Pounds Hollow Lake and daily bicycle riding and movies at the Orpheum Theatre and Pool Playing. I also very much enjoyed playing and role-playing… with my Action Figure collection….when I was a child. I think that there are card-playing families. Mine was not but MJ and Ron’s was. I found the idea fascinating that couples would visit each other’s homes…especially in the 1950s and the 1960s to play Bridge or Pinochle. Poker continues to be an interesting card game to me. I see that there are televised programs where people play in tournaments for a lot of money. I have a professor friend who appears to do quite well in card-playing tournaments.

Challenges and Opportunities could best describe our lives. Or as many of my friends said in my formative years, ‘One day chicken and the next day feathers.’ Each day of peace and good health and happiness…is a gift. So much of success in life is learning to take it a day at a time. Yesterday had passed and tomorrow is not promised. The beautiful photo of today…is where we live…

I have both watched the HBO/Max movie, Station Eleven, and read the book by Emily St. John Mandel. It is an apocalyptic story about a Pandemic. Yes, this is something that you might think is not appropriate for our times…but it is strangely comforting. So many of the petty and trivial and mundane things that we obsess about in our lives…melt away in the face of life-changing events. I was having a bit of political discussion the other day with friends. I noted that I do not get too enraptured by human beings in leadership positions. In a life-changing event…we might ponder why we are Christians…because of fealty to a man or woman…or to follow the mystical teachings of Christ.