i sit on our patio. It is 3:33 p.m. in real time, 4:33 in political maneuvering, and 11:33 Greenwich Mean Time, the latter of which is all that matters. It occurs to me that at sea, the critical times are first light to shoot morning stars, twilight to shoot evening stars, noon to shoot the noon fix. The other important times was eight bells, that’s when the watch changed every four hours.

So instead of sun setting about an hour from now, it will set about two hours from now.

i am having a Martin (Thank you, Cyril Vaughn Fraser, Jr.) reflecting. The photo here is one i’ve posted before but it was earlier in the season. You see, the are subtle changes in the seasons of the Southwest corner, not noticed much untill you’ve lived here for about twenty or thity years.

The coral trees have lost their leaves and the corals are beginning to bloom, there are two or three buds on the coral tree in the photo. The lilac colored ice plant is finally beginning to bloom amidst the yellow and the orange. The Coronado (ground hugging kind) of bougainvillea is taking off.

i have had a good day. i fixed a couple of problems with an incredible mountain of technical support after listening to really annoying piano concertos for about 40 minutes. i picked up some Kona whole bean coffee and suffered a near heart attack when i found how much it cost, but what the hell, the aroma can knock you off your feet with goodness.

i chipped some golf balls and, as usual, thought i might have found a secret (Not). i found a photo that took me back to good times: Yosemite’s Command Master Chief, BMCM Weaver with the XO in Rota, Spain, 1983. He was as good as you could get for the liaison between officers and enlisted. Oh Lord, those days were just about perfect.

We’ve gone to the San Diego Air & Space Museum. We have lunched at Panama 66 in the Park among the Museum of Arts sculptures.

And all this leads up to where i am. There are naysayers out there who rant about how awful Californians are. i’m not going to lower myself to argue about that. i am sad that it would be financial disaster for my daughters and their families to move here. Home prices, rent, taxes makes moving here no sense whatsoever. But i was here before the insanity of inflated housing costs and have benefited greatly from it.

i can play golf all year. The Southwest corner has about thirty days a year when it rains. The temperature is a little warm, in the 80’s and low 90’s for a month or so. There are a couple of days of Santa Ana conditions when it can get to the high 90’s, even just around 100, and very dry. As i have noted on many occasions, i have seen a great deal of the world and nearly everywhere has more 10s out of 10 than here. That is because it is relative. There is no place on earth that has more 7s, 8s, and 9s.

As for all of its ills, i long have noted San Diegans denigrate Los Angeles but keep trying to be just like them. Places i love, Nashville, Austin, Seattle, Atlanta, seem to be doing the same, outgrowing their appeal, their uniqueness. Even my home of Lebanon, Tennessee appears to becoming a bedroom, suburb of Nashville.

Once again, i am a lucky man to be living here in a beautiful place with a wonderful wife…

and i’m not leaving.

i swear this is the last of any thing remotely related to politics i will ever publish. i have given it up because it has ceased to make sense and relies on hate and personal and party ambition, NOT on how to do what is right for a diverse country, financially, culturally and in oh so many other ways. i’m not watching news except for local, sports and weather. i will vote but it will be difficult to choose because there simply no good choices on any political race. Just thought i should warn you.

i am 80, a year plus younger than Joe Biden, about a year and half older than Donald Trump. i recognized my synapses and thought processes no longer worked as well as they used to as i moved on from a decade ago. My ideas about things have been formed over 80 years of living, much of that is no longer relevant. The world has changed. The two major candidates share those things with me. Even if i had the backing, financial and public support, i would have difficulty in deciding what was best for my country, as in a number of situations, there isn’t a right answer, there are only choices of what could be the better answer. i would not run and if elected, i would not accept.

Having noted that, i am supposed to choose between two doddering, old, self-centered politicians more focused on their personal success backed by two parties who have nothing closely related to promote what is best for the country, but only to get the advantage politically. i have tried to make decisions on the parties’ platforms, but those platforms are only marketing bullshit bashing of the other side.

i certainly don’t have the experience to navigate the mined waters of no-quarter politics, but quite frankly, i would make a better president than the two old narcissistic farts with oversized egos. Just don’t vote for me.

All i ask is for you to consider what is your best choice between these two horrible choices. Unfortunately, voting for an alternative is like throwing your vote away.

George Washington was right.

you sleep in the next room;
i, tired from weekend tasks,
start to bed but stop
to look at Lisi Tang’s painting
striking me as a “lonely” painting;
a beautiful tribute
to the loneliness of
the vast and omnipotent sea
yet
there are two gulls,
beautiful in their flight together,
graceful, in syncopation,
juxtaposed against the vastness of the sea;
i see us, the gulls,
flying into the mist of the morning sea
aware of its vastness, its cruelty, its beauty,
flying toward infinity together:
a significant moment:
the two of us
flying above the sea of time.

Dear Mister Warren,

i am reading you again,
more thoughtful reading perhaps
buffered by the passage of Time:
your time, my time,
perhaps because
we come from near the kindred borders
of Kentucky and Tennessee
with limestone, pockmarked hills
of cedar, pine, oak, poplar, dogwood
and, of course, hickory;

lives reared by the hills,
farm gardens, several dairy cows
in the pasture next to the barn,
hogs in the muddy slop of the sty,
all of which did not know Time,
your time, my time
until it was gone.

The mockingbird trills another song
as the stars mock Time
but not in golden California
or the snow blotted woods of Connecticut:
did i write of stars mocking Time
or did i repeat what you said?

Does it matter with Time?

i am more often now older than Time,
antique words past Time,
lost
far from those rolling, curving rivers
of Water and Time
in the hills and valleys of the Shawnee
when deer and bear roamed the woods;
even then, the mockingbird
trilled its borrowed music
in our ear.

Time is forever and never
as it was then,
as it is now;
we will have our time with us
for we are in Time,
always and forever.

i have you to thank
for my thoughts of Time;
at least, it makes me gracious,
conscious of how Time, us
fit together.

It is a drizzly, dour, Saturday morning. i feel blessed to be in the Southwest California for the rest of California is getting smacked in the face with snow and rain. This little section of the state, nay, the country is usually like there is some kind of invisible shield.

The shield was admittedly down back around my January birthday when the lower areas od San Diego were flooded. Most of the time, those big storms veer around the Southwest corner.

Still, today is not a good day for tromping around a golf course, or long walks, and, although this is the kind of weather i enjoy for walks on the beach, it is not an attractive activity except for old salts, crazy ones like me.

So i arose for dreary day work stuff. Then my day changed when i read a sports article on line and got…Hope.

For the last several months, really stretching into a year or two, my buddies and i have had a running discussion on the state of college athletics, especially the major sports, and especially Vanderbilt. Including is this group are two former Vanderbilt basketball stars from my era. Jerry Southwood and Kenny Gibbs played on the Vanderbilt teams that excelled (and would have been in the NCAA finals in 1964-65 except for a horrible call in the last two minutes against Michigan — but i’ve sang this song before).

Our discussions have centered around recruiting, the Name, Image, Likeness (NIL) rules (which in my mind, makes the college athlete a professional athlete), the transfer portal (which, in my mind, throws loyalty and team spirit out the window). Then a month ago, Vanderbilt’s Vice-Chancellor for Athletics, Candice Lee, asked supporters to encourage their congressmen to look into the current practices in the NCAA, especially the NIL.

i forwarded that request to my brothers and several others. It struck me as appropriate Jerry and Kenny were more skeptical because, as Jerry, said, that horse is out of the barn. We also have been discussing something a late brother, Joe Francis advocated years ago: Vanderbilt, Northwestern, Stanford, Rice, Tulane, Wake Forest, and other good academic schools form their own conference and have true college athletics.

i have been a strong supporter of Vanderbilt succeeding in the SEC, even against very strong odds. A good deal of that comes from my belief in the late David Williams who preceded Candice as head of Vandy athletics, and Candice herself pursuing college athletics the right way or as David Williams coined, “the Vandy way.”

i have been losing faith in the possibility of success in the SEC.

This morning, i read “The Athletic” story on Ray Davis by Zak Keefer entitled “Ray Davis grew up homeless, now he seeks to be a ‘name you’ll remember forever.

My hope is restored.

i can’t come up with numbers of success stories that would make others feel Vanderbilt doing it the right way is worth staying the course, but i think Vandy being part of Ray Davis’ story is worth it.

Unfortunately, i cannot embed the link in the post. i’m sure this is because one must have a subscription to read. i hope you can find it. It’s worth it.