Dawn Patrol
Current Wx: Temp: 77.07°F Pressure: 1006hPa Humidity: 90% Wind: 5.75mphWords: 410
I've been walking at 0500 every morning for the past week, and biking right after that. I get 5K in on the walk, and 10K on the bike and I'm home by about 0630, and I'm pretty much assured of closing my Move ring without doing another "workout." That's important because we're entering the hot part of the year with the heat index often exceeding 100°F.
Shot the image above with the iPhone this morning. It was 76° and humid this morning, so I'm disinclined to press just for a better time. So pausing for a moment to see if the phone could render a nice image was fine.
Turned out pretty well, I think. This is SOOC, other than being converted to jpeg.
I'm reading Eight Days in May: The Final Collapse of the Third Reich, by Vulker Ulrich, translated by Jefferson Chase. This is a close look at the days between Hitler's suicide and the final surrender agreement. It moves quickly. If you haven't read anything about Germany in the immediate aftermath of the war, it may be troubling.
One thing I found interesting was the fear the German people had of the millions of "foreign workers" (slave laborers) living in Germany. It was resonant with the fear the Confederate states had of enslaved people, mentioned often in Erik Larson's The Demon of Unrest.
You'd think that fear or anxiety might have been a clue.
Netflix has a new series on Nazi Germany, Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial. I've watched the first two episodes. It's pretty well done, with some actual audio from the Nuremberg trials. It's also written pretty on the nose with regard to current events. There's historical footage mixed with reenactments. Six episodes. I'm looking forward to the rest of it.
I'm afraid of what might happen in November. My "best case scenario" is a resounding electoral defeat of Trump, and the repudiation of Trumpism. Ideally, Republicans would then clean house and we'd see the last of the likes of Lindsey Graham and Rick Scott and all the other sycophantic toadies who groveled and licked the boots the failed gameshow host who somehow managed to hoodwink his way into the presidency.
But that's the "best case," and I'm not very optimistic we'll see it. I'm afraid of a low turnout election.
History doesn't repeat, "but it often rhymes."
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06:04 Saturday, 7 June 2025
Current Wx: Temp: 76.86°F Pressure: 1015hPa Humidity: 92% Wind: 1.99mph
Words: 816
The whole clan showed up for dinner last night. Japanese hibachi at the place my daughter and son-in-law worked at for six years, a couple of decades ago. It was a good choice, as we'd had many family dinners there over the years.
My grandson Jackson is turning five in a couple of weeks, and he'd never been to a restaurant like this. The flames (and heat) frightened him at first, but afterward he was highly entertained. The chef was remarkably skilled, flipping a whole, unbroken egg up from the grill and catching it on the edge of his spatula, which cracked it of course, and then writing Jackson's name on the grill with the egg white dripping from the shell.
Even I had never seen that before!
We shared the vision of Winterfell as something that will remain in their lives after we're gone. None of us is quite certain what that looks like right now, and I suppose there are any number of ways it might go sideways, but they understand the vision. This isn't us just leaving Florida. It's leaving Florida to build something we might leave behind.
A very modest something, but more than just an asset to be sold and disbursed.
We sold Mitzi's iMac yesterday. I felt bad because I think the bluetooth keyboard battery is dead. She's been using a third-party keyboard since we bought the iMac back in 2020, and I think the original was stored with the power switch on. Leaving the keyboard plugged into the Mac overnight didn't charge it. It works wired up, but I think the battery is expired. 16GB 21" 2019 iMac for $220, seems like a fair deal.
Mitzi had been using the third-party mouse that came with the keyboard she had, but that died recently, so she started using the Magic Mouse and she's fallen in love with it. She was disappointed to have to let it go with the iMac, so she looked to see if she could buy a new one. $70! ($50 on the auction site.) So, by some measure anyway, the iMac was a pretty good deal.
We had two 13" MacBook Pros, one an intel quad-core i5, and the other was an original M1. I wiped both of those and we gave one each to my son and daughter to give to their kids, or do as they wished. As these things go, each of their oldest children needed new laptops. The intel model has poor battery life compared to the M1, but both are in good shape and are probably adequate for their use in high school.
I gave away some uniform items and plaques from my navy career. Remarkably, these seemed welcome. Caitie didn't want the plaque I offered her, but she has to fly back to LA (I offered to ship it) and lives in an apartment with really no place to hang it. But Melissa and Chris seemed to welcome theirs. I welcome not shlepping them around anymore!
Somehow the one from my days as XO of JOHN HANCOCK went missing. But I've still got the one from my first ship, and I've got a nice Lone Sailer plaque from the chiefs' mess at Fleet Training Center, Mayport from my retirement. They kind of bookend my career. I'll keep those and hang them somewhere in the new place, with perhaps my shadow box in between.
Tonight is Caitie's art event. She's exhibiting some photography, but is also one of the coordinators. It was actually her idea, but she pitched it to a guy who works locally with the venue, and so he got top billing on the program. Oh well... It's a number of local artists who've moved away from the Jacksonville Beaches (Jacksonville Beach, Neptune Beach and Atlantic Beach), returning home to exhibit their work. Looking forward to seeing what they've accomplished.
Sunday and Monday are just more packing and organizing. We lowered the price on the house by $5K, which has had exactly zero effect. We'll hold here for the time being. It's not that the place is overpriced, it's just that it's got so many features it'll take a buyer looking for those features in one package. That may be a rare bird. I think the solar+battery may be intimidating to many buyers. We're going to need someone who is fairly tech-savvy and who welcomes a measure of energy independence.
The AirTags seem to be working. All three boxes were reported at the Jacksonville USPS Distribution Center, though Box 2 hasn't been reported in over 3 hours. Box 1 and 3 are reporting regularly. This troubles me, because it suggests they're separated. We shall see. Perhaps it's better not to know what's going on minute-to-minute.
Anyway, the beat that can be counted is not the beat, nevertheless, it goes on...
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Current Wx: Temp: 61.16°F Pressure: 1019hPa Humidity: 86% Wind: 5.91mphWords: 584
Bit of a long day today. Drove out to Minoa, 84 miles from here, and spoke to a couple of prospective plebes. Spoke extemporaneously this time. Not sure I did a great job, but everyone was polite about it.
After I got home, YouTube's algorithm offered this in my feed. Pretty inspiring, and it felt pretty serendipitous after my day trip.
Then Mitzi started watching a three part documentary on U.S. Grant on Netflix. I got sucked into it. I was modestly familiar with much of Grant's story, but the documentary covered a great deal that was new to me. It's a remarkable story about a profoundly great American leader, and if you're a Netflix subscriber, I heartily commend it to your attention.
Finally, scanning my feeds before noticing the sky and taking this photo before bed, I came across this post at The Marginalian.
That meaning is not something we find but something we make, that it is intimate as love and subjective as the reasons for it, may be the great gift and the great onus of being alive.
And again I felt that sense of serendipity. That I was "in the groove," on the right frequency.
I spoke to the prospective midshipman about the fact that our culture is fixated on achievements and milestones. We work hard and sacrifice to earn them, and we're lauded and celebrated for them.
But we don't talk about something else, which is perhaps more important, and that is the reason why.
Why are we here?
I told them we are here to make meaning. And that one of the best ways to do that is through service to others. I told them that service is action, informed by our values. I tied that in with the Navy's core values, honor, courage and commitment. I told them that honor is a quality of one's character that accrues from keeping faith with our shared values. That honor and meaning aren't the same things, but they are adjacent. That one is earned, while the other is made.
I pointed out that there are so-called leaders all around us who are squandering the opportunity to make meaning in their lives, in service of something other than our shared values. I did not say that there was no honor in that; but I hope the inference was clear.
Perhaps not.
I asked them to be continue to strive for their achievements, to celebrate their milestones; but to be alert to the opportunities to make meaning in their lives, for there will be many. And that fifty years from now, as they look back on their lives, it will be the meaning that they treasure, not so much the achievements.
I got kind of gooey a couple of times, talking about shipmates and classmates lost in violence. Or things I learned while in service. I think I did a better job in this synopsis than I did when I was speaking. On my drive home, I kept kind of replaying it in my mind and wishing maybe I'd simply memorized the same pitch I made last year, and wondering if all that driving, and all that talking mattered at all.
And the universe delivered a few suggestions that it was perhaps all exactly the way it was supposed to be.
So goodnight.
Oh, that's Venus and Jupiter up there, getting closer together each night. This might be the closest, I"m not sure. Pretty captivating when you see them.
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