It occurred to me yesterday that my life in retirement is actually returning to a sort of “normal.” I’m not sure what I mean by that except as I continue to relax and ponder I seem to be returning to a mindset that I haven’t had for many years. This way of thinking feels right and very different from having to do church music.

I still have lots of respect for the arts and history of Christianity. But I feel like I have returned to a previous orientation towards them that is more informed (since I have learned a lot since I last felt this regular.

It was a beautiful day yesterday. A cool fall day. I sat outside and read for awhile. But it was a little too cool so I finally came in. Eileen made blueberry jam so we had it on fresh bread. It was worth every calorie.

I am continuing to slowly lose weight. This encourages me that it’s real weight loss. I am back to abstaining from real gin and not snacking after a light supper. I’m hoping that will continue to let my body shed unneeded pounds.

I have fixed up the guest bedroom as a sort of study. I set it up this way when Mark and Leigh visited so they could stay in this room. I am finding it very helpful to have a desk and a place to sit and work on my computer. I also want to clear out an upstairs room and make it into a music room. I want to move my harpsichord and marimba there. Right now all my guitars and my banjo are there.

I think the mornings are a very productive time for me. I have spent them in recent years stretching my brain a little bit, learning a smidgeon of Ancient Greek and reading poetry both contemporary and more classical. This is when I read my Shakespeare. But this week, after exercising and making coffee, I have sat in my computer room and thought about stuff. I also have been doing some prose sketches. This morning instead of sketching I made a list of ideas that have been rattling around in my head as possible pieces of prose, fiction or nonfiction.

Being systematic is important to me. I have found that when I do something systematically (like read a portion of book on a daily basis or even practice) the eventual accrual is pretty astonishing to me.

I am slowly figuring out to work my new WordPress software I use to create and edit these blogs. I don’t know, dear reader(s), if you have noticed, but there is a tad less clutter on my initial web page. The excessive amount of links have been making me crazy so one of the first things I changed was limiting the links there.

Speaking of links. I have learned how to insert them. So here’s some for today.

Americans Still Oppose Overturning Roe v. Wade

Most Americans favor legal abortion. The reason we are in the current situation is that the right has chosen to seize power in undemocratic ways like voter suppression and more importantly stacking the Supreme Court with right wing judges.

What a revoltin’ development.

Fragments of medieval Merlin manuscript found in Bristol library

New info on Merlin and King Arthur.

The Wonders That Live at the Very Bottom of the Sea – NYT

I link this article for the first paragraph. I didn’t receive my Sunday NYT for a couple of Sundays. This didn’t bother me too much. I basically subscribe to it for the apps and the “replica edition,” the second of which is not available without subscribing to at least the Sunday paper. Consequently, I missed reading the NYTBR (New York Times Book Review) which comes as a section in the Sunday paper.

In this past Sunday’s NYTBR, Lowell Edmunds wrote in the letters column that the first paragraph of the above linked article it was the “best first paragraph in memory.”

Here it is.

“In the deep sea, it is always night and it is always snowing. A shower of so-called marine snow — made up of pale flecks of dead flesh, plants, sand, soot, dust and excreta — sifts down from the world above. When it strikes the seafloor, or when it is disturbed, it will sometimes light up, a phenomenon known, wonderfully, as “snow shine.” Vampire squids, umbrella-shaped beings with skin the color of persimmons, float around collecting this luminous substance into tiny snowballs, which they calmly eat. They are not alone in this habit. Most deep-sea creatures eat snow, or they eat the snow eaters.”

Not bad.

“The Monkey Who Speaks,” by Han Ong | The New Yorker

Speaking of good writing, this short story in the September in the September 13 issue is exceptional. I listened to the podcast. But instead of falling asleep, as sometimes happen my mind started buzzing as the story unfolds. I recommend it!

I interlibrary loaned Ong’s novel The Disinherited.

Ong was born in 1968 in the Philippines of “ethnic Chinese parents.”

He and his family came to the US in the 80s. He is another recipient of the MacArthur Genius grant. I look forward to reading his works.

Bread is in the oven. I have exercised, fed the cat twice, put out the flag, brought in the paper for Eileen (I use the app but don’t usually look at the hard copy), and written about 400 words, experimenting with doing some non-blog prose writing in the morning.

I didn’t figure out how to do a word count in my updated WordPress but I did find it in my Google docs.

WordPress provides videos to help users learn. They are a bit tedious. I started one yesterday after blogging and will probably continue to try to learn more about this new update.

I just took the bread out of the oven. It smells great of course. It’s a nice, cool fall day today. So a good day to heat up the oven without making the kitchen miserable. The bread making is a small task for me. I have learned not to belabor the whole thing. I mix up what is called a sponge which is simply warm water, flour, yeast, and salt. Set the time for 30 minutes. Then, after the sponge has done some rising, I add the salt and the rest of the flour. I mix it in with a kneading motion and by the time it is mixed in, I stop kneading and shape it into loaves. Then a 30 minute rise and pop it into the oven. Easy peasy.

The wind was crazy at the beach yesterday. There was a red flag warning which means no swimming. However, we did see the huge kites in the sky that people use to kitesurf with. We also saw someone walking toward the beach in a wet suit carrying a surf board so maybe that activity is not prohibited.

Eileen and sat out in the wind for a while. We both enjoyed that. It’s pretty exhilarating to sit and let the wind blow over you. It usually reminds me of getting stranded on Cape Hatteras with my family when I was a child. Childhood memories are so tricky. Especially growing up with photos being taken. My Dad was a big photo slide nut. So we ahve hundreds of old slides of family and my parents trips to Europe.

Hatteras was actually an island at the time. Now you can drive along the coast of North Carolina and there is a bridge that lets you get on and off the Cape.

We were traveling with my Grandfather, Pop Ben. Pop Ben is what we called him. He and Grandmother were with myself, Mom and Dad. This was pre-Mark, my brother. I don’t remember too much even with the help of color slides. I know we must have gotten on to the island with a ferry. We were traveling in cars and had camping equipment with us. We may have even planned to stay the night on the island but the family story I remember is that we missed the ferry and got stranded.

We slept in tents and wind howled. I have a memory of fishing right off the Atlantic shore on a cold windy beach. I associate it with this time on Hatteras. I was sitting in a folding lawn chair, holding my rod, when suddenly I was being pulled into the water. I had a bite! Someone rescued me. I don’t remember if the fish was reeled in or not.

Anyway, the memories are all mixed up but that’s sort of how I remember it.

Yesterday the strong winds and sand in my hair and eyes reminded me of this. Eileen and I decided to move to the car to have our picnic lunch because of the wind and sand. We stayed in the car for our daily boggle game but went back outside to continue reading.

Today is the local Farmers Market and I need to stop blogging and go buy some tomatoes.