I started my first blog in 2005. I printed everything out then and put it all in a loose leaf folder. I was working and my office had a copy machine, so it was easy to do that. But that was then and this is now.

I have been reading through my 2005 blog. I think it was better than this one. So far. I did have an entry almost every day. Some were long, some were short. But they were clever.

There were differences in my life then. For one thing, I was 18 years younger (not young, but younger) – I think that makes a difference. And I got around more. I went to museums, for example and I wrote about that. And to see films. I wrote reviews of books that I read. A good mixture.

And then I wrote about trips that I had taken, and things that occurred throughout my life. I liked those entries, and I don’t want to reinvent the wheel, but maybe I should just copy them from time to time into this blog. I may try that. You would enjoy them, I think.

But today, let’s just stick with the New York Times. The front page.

1. First, “Idaho suspect wrote of a life of no emotion”, and that he could “do whatever I want with little remorse”. WHOA!! When word of the suspect first hit the news, I thought of Dostoevsky and “Crime and Punishment”. Remember Raskolnikov? The student who figured out how to commit the perfect crime, the murder of an old woman (an informal pawnbroker) in her apartment? And it turned out that it wasn’t so perfect, after all? But that, for most of the book, the investigation did not focus on Raskolnikov, and that even when Raskolnikov wanted to show the police that he, indeed, had committed this crime, and brought to them evidence that should have led right to him, they ignored him? Didn’t believe him? That’s who I thought of when I first read about Kohberger. But maybe that’s not the best example, for after all Raskolnikov eventually did show remorse as he was sent off to prison exile. Maybe a better choice would have been……..ta da…….Donald Trump. Does I can “do whatever I want with little remorse” sound like “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters”? Doesn’t Trump lead a life with no remorse? Hmmm.
2. Second, there was a front page article about a fellow named Larry Price, Jr., who staged his own kidnapping or mugging in order to hide the fact that he was trying to escape some folks who were involved with him in a number of illegal activities. I hadn’t heard about this case, and don’t know if I am really interested in it. But I am interested in the fact that it took place in Bluefield VA. Bluefield VA adjoins Bluefield WV, and I once spent a lonely a couple of days in Bluefield WV, probably about 30 years ago or more. I had a client who was engaged in a major conversion of an old downtown hotel into housing for seniors, and I flew into Bluefield for a short meeting, with the intent to fly back late that afternoon. But the beautiful 50+ degree day quickly changed, and by the time that I finished my lunch meeting, the temperature had fallen 20 degrees and it was snowing hard. I then learned that the small Bluefield airport had closed because of the weather. It was a Friday, and I soon learned that it was not only closed for the day, but it was not planning on opening before Monday. Big deal, I said to myself, I will rent a car and drive home. Snow never scared me. But the only auto rental company in Bluefield was Hertz and, guess what?, its office were located at the airport and they would be closed until Monday. I was stuck. There was a small motel with an available room, so I checked in. There was a modest restaurant next to the motel that served pancakes for three meals a day. Luckily, the winter Olympics were on TV, so I wasn’t completely bored. But I figured that I was OK, since the snow was so deep that everything was paralyzed and in that way I was caught like everyone else, not (in that sense) alone at all. But as I watched TV, it occurred to me that most of the world, including the local world was still operating. And, after thinking a bit, I decided to see if any close airport was open. I learned that I could fly home from Roanoke VA (about 100 miles away) and decided to see if I could get a taxi to take me there for a price less than the price of another day or two in the motel. I called a taxi company and they said they could come and drive me. So I said OK. The cab came Sunday morning, and I got in. Bluefield still had a few feet of snow on the ground and the roads were hard to navigate, but once we got on the Interstate, the roads were clear and the sailing was smooth. I realized that while Bluefield had been socked in, it was alone in being socked in and I could have gone to Roanoke on Friday to fly home. My vision had just been clouded by the clouds and snow.
3. Third, there’s an article titled “Even a Little Alcohol Can Harm Your Health, Research Shows”. There are so many studies saying that moderate alcohol is good, no, it’s bad, no, it’s OK, that you really don’t know what is right and what is wrong. But I was struck by the following advice “So people who are drinking five or six drinks a day, if they can cut back to three or four…….”. That’s when I realized that maybe this article wasn’t speaking to me. I actually have cut back over the past six months or so. I was never “a drinker”, but I might have a glass of something (rarely more than one) most evenings. Now, maybe I have a drink two or three times a week. Why did I cut back? I don’t know. But it happened after I recovered from Covid in June. Connection? Maybe, I guess.

That’s it for today. Back to my regularly scheduled activities.

(Oh, one more thing. Edie tells me that all my posts have typos. That is largely because they are all first drafts; I don’t read them over to proof or edit. The same was true in 2005. I had more typos then)