This may be brief. We all have good days and bad days. Yesterday. of course, was a high, with a lovely family celebration. We celebrated my 85 years by canvassing the group to cite a highlight in each of the decades they had so far lived. There were only six of us so it wasn’t too drawn-out but it was very interesting and I think we all learned something about each other even though we are all so closely related. And we were well lubricated by champagne, hence quite eloquent.

Now I’ve had a setback with my leg. The wound is not healing well and I have to go back to hospital for treatment, followed possibly by some home care. I guess the good news is that it will force me to sit still and get at my writing again (though it hurts to sit with the leg down instead of elevated. Have to think about that).

Win some, lose some. (but not the leg, I trust)

Have a nice day.

"The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" is a 1973 plotless, short, descriptive work of philosophical fiction, popularly classified as a short story, by Ursula K. Le Guin. With deliberately both vague and vivid descriptions, the narrator depicts a summer festival in the utopian city of Omelas, whose prosperity depends on the perpetual misery of a single child.[1]

"The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" was nominated for the Locus Award for Best Short Fiction in 1974[2] and won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 1974."

I forgot. I saved the provenance of my meditation (see above) and then I became quite eloquent in my exegesis and forgot to save any more until Safari reminded me painfully that it was all in vain.

I was saying that we are all blessed, so fortunate to be who we are and where we are, to enjoy life in freedom, to be safe, secure, fed, sheltered and cared for, even loved - some of us, not all. Not all. The good fortune of a few of us depends on the misery of countless others. Once in a while we feel slightly guilty and we make a charitable donation as a gift to the gods or whomever, to placate them. We are not placating them but ourselves, trying to ease the guilt and the heavy burden of gratitude. But very very few of us sell all that we have and give to the poor. And even if we did, we argue, how far would that go? So we continue to keep the child in the basement to ensure our own safety and happiness.

I am so blessed. I have this day entered the Country of Age, the as yet uncharted region beyond old age that some of us old-timers are beginning to explore in greater numbers than ever before. I still have my marbles, most of them, though I might get an argument for having been so stupid as to fall on a footstool and rip open my leg. I am healthy despite that leg. I’m still here.

With any luck I’ll keep on keeping on for a while longer.

Thank you.