I visited some friends who are putting their money where their mouth is, that is, they believe utterly in organic products: they avoid GMO products; they buy their remedies from the naturopath and health food stores. They are very healthy and look it. They are doing everything they can to stay healthy and live longer. Well, if cleanliness is next to godliness, is healthy living next to immortality? They spend about 1200 dollars a month on that assumption. I admire them for it, although I don't - can't - do what they do. I don't have the money, the time, or the car to shop as carefully. Still, I think I eat pretty well and wisely.

I keep reading nutritional advice that starts by telling you, eat these three things and you'll add three years to your life. Or, don't eat this and you'll live to be eighty. This is advice to the Boomers, the 40-to 60-year-olds who are being promised to Iive longer if they behave. So what? I mean, that's not an incentive to me because I'm already 83 and counting. I already have lived longer.

I've been saying no to so many things all my life that I no longer twitch at dessert, other than fruit. I do eat chocolate (dark). I gave up smoking 40 years ago. I still drink wine (plus an occasional dirty martini). I agree with St. Augustine who said, "We do not leave our sins; our sins leave us." That's kind of sad, really. My line is, if I live long enough, I'll be perfect.

But not immortal.

Home again home again jiggety jig. I wish I were jiggety. Tired again, still, always, again.

If I ever saw Man of La Mancha it was so long ago it's lost in the mists of my memory. I read Don Quixote about four years ago, in a new translation by Edith Grossman. I didn't enjoy it as much as i expected to. I was like someone coming too late to .Shakespeare's "cliches". Cervantes's highlights are so familiar that the best, immortalized parts came as no surprise. So the windmills at the back of the set of this musical production were overdone, especially when they started to move, and kept on moving. The set itself was versatile and busy, so busy I had trouble sometimes figuring out who was speaking as I looked for someone in that busy space.

The libretto is nicely structured, fitting together the bizarre, comic and touching parts of the novel, and the music, of course, is a pleasure. Several of the best-loved songs of 20th-century musical comedy resonate with me whether or not I remember the source. In short, I enjoyed the production.

I've said it before and will again, that we take in more stimuli, ideas, entertainment, information and just plain pastimes in a week than people used to enjoy (?) in a year. The trick is to sort it out, assimilate it and file it. Is it all grist for the mill? What kind of mill are you running?