Opinions

When I look back to the Fourth of July during my earliest years, it wasn’t a party. There were no computer-generated displays of fireworks. It would begin, instead, with a quiet picnic lunch underneath a cross. That may surprise you, but for those who knew my family well, it wasn’t a big surprise. We didn’t own a boat or a swimming pool. My father was tied to his desk on Commerce Street most days, but when a red, white and blue holiday came to pass, he took my mother and I to some church, on some hill, with some creek running by it, where the breezes were cool and the day was quiet. And nobody else would be there.

When I’m looking for a bottle of wine, I might as well be in the auto parts store looking for brake calipers. I spend so much time on the wine aisle that people think I drink a lot. I don’t drink a lot. I don’t even drink a little. I’m simply overwhelmed, confused and uncertain of which bottle to choose. The major difference between the grocery store and the auto parts store is that wine bottles are so pretty—beautiful shapes and lovely colors of glass, with labels that are stunning.

Nineteen million inhabitants call New York City their home, well-deserving of its The Big Apple tag. Currently No. 11 on the world’s largest list, the Melting Pot just had a tumultuous week. Just 24 years after Islamist extremist terrorists leveled the World Trade Center by intentionally using jet-liners to destroy the buildings, the city voted for a – grab your binoculars to see - a far-away leftist candidate in their current mayoral election. Uganda-born Zohran Mamdani, 33, dark-haired and handsome (but still a) Communist, defeated former Governor Andrew Cuomo, 67, in the Democratic primary, 44-to-36 percent. Mind you, Cuomo is a tainted man. He resigned in 2021 when Attorney General Letitia James commissioned investigators who charged him with sexually harassing eleven women from 2013-2020.

As I stood in line, outside a bathroom at a restaurant in a nearby coastal town, I was surrounded by the clamor of young girls, accompanied by two mothers.

It took place in 2006 and left me as sad as a wilted daffodil. Readers here are surely acquainted with the grief of this writer. A life-long truth was vacated by the heartless at the International Astronomical Union (IAU). That was the year the unfeeling organization reduced the number of planets from nine to eight. Once considered a member of our solar system, it was discovered in 1930. It was located in the Kuiper Belt, beyond Neptune’s orbit. Pluto is the largest of the icy bodies found in a donut-shaped region on the outskirts of the planets, where Earth is among them. The Kuiper has no planets since the lab-coats detached the wee wittle Pluto.

Everyone loves a good party. Bringing a dish and maybe a card for the host is about the cost for most. Of course, the grub and the beverages will be good, the atmosphere a big positive, plus, we can leave prior to the clean-up.

It was a thousand nautical miles ago when the daughter and I rode in circles in our little, family boat, just beyond the boat ramp at Dekle Beach.