I have made (and broken) some plans for the upcoming few weeks. It’s going to be a fun time. I have promised myself this!

 

I’ve decided not to drive to Cle Elum on the 4th. It doesn’t make sense to do that. The likelihood of selling enough of my books there to even pay for the gasoline that it would take me to get there and back is slim to nil. And I can’t spend the night to watch the stars because I would have to be back here to put the chickens to bed by sundown. (I half planned on spending the night there outside town so I could see all the visible stars again for the first time in decades.) So, yeah… I’m gonna pass on leaving town for the 4th…

 

But sometime after the 4th, two friends and I plan to drive to Ruby Beach on the Olympic Peninsula and spend the day there. It’s probably the prettiest beach in Washington State and I haven’t been there since I was just a few years old, so I don’t even remember being there. It’s long past time for me to reacquaint myself with it.

 

Dad and me La Push WA about 1954

(43 miles from Ruby Beach)

 

And I’ll attend at least one of the Tacoma PRIDE events in July, too.

 

That’s a pretty full dance card for me.

 

I don’t get out much but when I do, I make it count!

 

I’ve been bike riding twice in Orting in the past month, and I’ve been to Owen Beach, too.  Other than that, I’ve stayed home  except to go grocery shopping on occasion.

 

Want to Stay Happily Occupied This Summer

 

It’s important for me to keep busy in fun ways. When I don’t, I get depressed. Don’t know why that is. Probably because of the state of the world right now. Can’t really put my finger on it, but I’m sure that’s 98% of it (at least).

 

Mark Twain once wrote, “People call me a pessimist in my old age. I’m not. I am an optimist who did not arrive.”

 

That’s where I am right now. I expected us, as a society, to be doing BETTER by now, sixty plus years later. But we’re still fighting the same ignorance and bigotries, so we must keep fighting them, and I’m tired!  I’m just so sick of the sickness that is infecting about 40% of the population.  They’re in the minority but they hold the reins of power in so many places that the battle continues to rage.  Two steps forward, one step back. It just never seems to end.

 

I’m super glad to witness the younger generations taking up the fight.  We’re at an inflection point and with the demographcs changing, I expect the good to win out sometime shortly after I’m shoveled off this mortal coil.  I’d like to see it happen before then, but I’m not delusional. It won’t happen in my lifetime, but it can happen in the next fifty years. And if it doesn’t, the human species probably won’t survive much beyond that timeframe.

 

So, I hope it all works out.