It is almost 10 o’clock in the morning, the weather is good, and I really should take a walk. But I want to post something first before the day gets away from me. But what do I want to write about? After all, I have posted something every day since November 15, 2022. That means this is the 572nd straight post, and I don’t want to stop here. After all, Lou Gherig played 2130 consecutive games, and Cal Ripken played 2632. What am I? A wimp?

Now, I admit I know very little about those two records. And, they are both records. Gherig’s lasted 56 years, and Ripken’s ended in 1998 (you do the math).

So, you ask, what’s new? Let’s do it another way. What’s news? I don’t really know because I am tired of watching TV news, and that’s rare for me. I think the reason I am tired is that I got sick of watching the coverage of the Trump New York trial. As you know, New York doesn’t allow trials to be televised, but they allow reporters into the courtroom and into an overflow room (where the trial is in fact televised), so we had reporters running in and out of the courtroom, reporting to their TV hosts, everyday for weeks. And then, when the trials broke for the day, the reporters stood outside of the courthouse (rain or shine) and reported exactly what they had already reported, and then the networks got a bunch of reporters together to confer on whether they saw the same thing, and then the reporters disagreed about exactly how long Donald Trump had his eyes closed, and what the significance of that might be (in a perfect world). Then, after a short break where the reporters could get tuna on whole wheat, it started again, because then the reporters who had spent the day in the courthouse came to the studio, wearing fresh clothes and new makeup, and talked about what they had seen in court that day, how many steps they had taken that day running in and out of the courtroom, what they had said standing outside after the day’s trial ended and how the weather was, and then of course, the quality of the tuna fish and the whole wheat bread.

Now, they want to do the same regarding Hunter Biden’s trial, and to tell you the truth I have very little interest in Hunter Biden’s trial, and I agree with his wife (wife?) that she should have thrown out that gun, and I think everyone should throw out their guns. I just don’t like guns and don’t think they do anyone any good except for those individuals who make their money off guns, and I don’t care of those individuals make money or not.

And the border. And Biden’s new executive order (the details of which escape me at the moment) and how does it get to be enforced? As I understand it, we can stop letting in people on any day when the number of unauthorized migrants who come into the country is more than 2500. Okay, we have a 2000+ mile border, right? And people come in by swimming across a river, by hiding in trucks, by walking across a bridge, by climbing a wall or digging under it. All sorts of ways along a 2000+ mile border. Who is counting? Do our border agents start the day with a “let ’em in” notice and then at some point, they get an alert on their smart phones saying “keep ’em out”? It makes little sense to me.

Poor Joe Biden. First, he’s a week older than I am, and that’s old. Second, and I have been saying this for two years now, his border policies will cost him the election – and now, six months before the next election, he has changed his policy and looks like Donald Trump (minus the wall). This doesn’t please his supporters – some of whom want more people to be able to seek refuge here – nor his opponents. I give him a D on the border, and that’s because I am generous (to a fault).

But I will tell you this. Something that I have noticed. Except for my family and my closest group of friends, no one speaks English any more. I was at the post office on Veirs Mill Road in Rockville yesterday. There was a spirited conversation going on between one of the clerks and another customer about the proper way to send a certain package. The conversation was going on in Spanish. And what’s also true? That seemed very natural to me. In fact, as I go about my business (ha, my business?), I never hear English. I hear a lot of Spanish, I hear a large variety of Asian languages, and I hear people speaking totally unintelligible languages – which I always assume is Portuguese, because this is a language which I find totally unintelligible. And I do commemorate all those Brazilians and Portuguese folk who pretend they understand each other speaking this unintelligible language, and seem to get along in the world as well as anyone else.

That reminds me of something. When I used to spend summers working (ha, working?) for my father at 722 Chestnut Street, St. Louis (the building was mysteriously called the International Building – I never knew why since the only international event that ever happened in the building was that, if you went to a high floor and looked east, you could see over the border into Illinois, which by the way was something no one wanted to do or ever did), I often ate at the restaurant (think one step below a 1950s coffee shop) hidden away on the first floor, away from the street so that no one knew it was there. I’d sit at a formica table. The fellow who ran the restaurant would stand behind the counter (where you could sit on a stool, but I thought that too intimate) and every day at about 12:30, the mailman would come in.

Now the mailman was White and the restaurant owner was White, but they would talk in Korean, because they had both served in the Korean War and knew enough to say “Good morning. Hot outside? You feel OK? See you tomorrow?” That’s about all they could say, but they were sure to say it anyway everyday for the benefit of me and the one or two other customers eating their tuna on whole wheat. This, to me, was a miracle. These two men speaking a foreign language. Now, if I could turn the clock back and go back to that restaurant with my 2024 mind, and if I heard them speaking Korean or Tagalog or Urdu, I’d think nothing of it. But if they spoke English, I’d probably stare.

Well, time for a walk. It is now 10:20. I am not going to read this over to see what I wrote. No, siree. Or no, ma’amee.

Obrigado pela leitura. Ate Amanha.