Someone posted a clip of Larry King asking Ted Turner if he thought about death. Turner said he did, but not too much. He added that to keep from fearing death he told himself that life is like a B-grade movie: You don’t want to walk out of it but you wouldn’t want to sit through it again.
The time it takes, while listening to the radio or watching TV, to hear an example of bad grammar is still longer than the time it takes, when behind the wheel, to witness an example of bad driving.
Tomorrow morning I’m heading down to Miami Beach for Seatrade (the cruise industry’s largest annual gathering) and Wednesday morning we’re leaving for five days in the Keys, so this morning I’m putting a few days’ worth of posts in one.
Watching the splashdown of Artemis II on Friday, I thought of the evening in Perpignan, in 1975, when, walking with some French people, I was asked if I felt proud when I looked at the moon. The question caught me by surprise. I didn’t respond, though I should have, that Neil Armstrong had called it a “giant leap for mankind” – not a giant leap for America. Yet, watching the TV on Friday, I did feel some national pride, probably because Trump incites the opposite feeling.
Saturday we went to GableStage for its production of A Prayer for the French Republic. Gaul again. But the play is as much about global antisemitism as it is about the French version. It is an excellent if unnecessarily long play (at three and a half hours), yet because it’s in English, and the actors are all American, speaking with American accents, it was hard to think of the characters as French. Perhaps that’s the point.
And yesterday, showing some friends around Miami (a two-Miami weekend), we heard that in Hungary, Viktor Orban had lost to Peter Magyar (Peter Hungary). And like that, the pariah of the EU (except in the eyes of American conservatives) became its darling.
I'll be back here in a week.
I watched the Artemis II rocket launch on TV yesterday and, even though I’m not quite sure of the purpose of the mission, I found it thrilling. For stories, I’ve gone tarpon fishing in the Keys and done a slog to a cypress dome in the Everglades – two quintessential Florida experiences. To add to them, I want to watch a space launch at Cape Canaveral. And attend a University of Florida football game in The Swamp.
Five years ago today I had surgery to remove a tumor at the back of my tongue. Cancer is always harrowing, and it was especially so during Covid; I spent five days in the hospital without any visitors. My release, I seem to recall, came on Good Friday.
Tuesday morning I took Hania for her cataract surgery and yesterday morning we returned for her follow-up. (Hence my absence here.) Everyone says it’s a breeze but, as has been noted before, no medical procedure is minor when it involves you or someone you love. The preparation and post-op instructions – involving a seeming multitude of drops – are quite extensive. The shield one wears at night easily loosens and falls from the eye. Masking tape? Really? The fuzziness persists, apparently for a while. Can’t wait till it’s my turn.