Well, that didn’t take long. I lasted three nights. I was on my second when I wrote on Wednesday, but have gone to four glasses tonight: a Botanist; a martini; and two of Buffalo Trace. What can I say. I am weak.
Of Buffalo Trace, I am presently reading THE CONFESSION OF NAT TURNER which uses the word ‘trace’.
Drinking can expand your vocabulary.
Drinking can expand your vocabulary.
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Some have expressed surprise after viewing the acceptance speech video that I, who have by choice spent so many years completely alone, am a good public speaker.
That is not by chance.
As in everything, I plan. I prepare. I have empathy, learned as a young animal in a hostile environment who knew instinctively that he had to understand the adults on whom he was dependent.
I can move crowds. A few of you have heard me speak and know that.
Generally I choose not to.
I will give you another seeming contradiction: a much married monk.
And another: a young man who left three beautiful women to listen to Bach in Force Twelve off Cape Horn.
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This really deserves a heading to itself, but is given now.
I have written of the greatest truth I have found in a lifetime of reading: Ecclesiastes 9:11: I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happen to them all.
So I give you my belief of the greatest strength: to absorb the evil done to you and not pass it on.
A Christian virtue not often historically practiced by Christians.
It took me a half century to achieve it, if I ever have.
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Even though the greatest truth I have found and the greatest strength I have learned have come from the BIBLE, I am not a Christian. I do not believe in the virgin birth, the resurrection, and I never understood the Holy Ghost,
I am not alone in the last.
In Russia under either Catherine or Peter, both called ‘Great’, millions were killed and persecuted because they made the sign of the cross with two fingers instead of three. Two because they denied the ‘Holy Ghost’.
Only a few weeks ago I realized something that I should have long ago.
There are five thousand stars visible with the normal naked eye from Earth. Only half of them from any one location.
All of our major religions were formed when that was the extent of our knowledge of the universe.
Now we know more. Far, far, far, far, far more.
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I like our place on Hilton Head Island.
There is unexpected beauty and serenity there.
But I have not forgotten New Zealand.
Whangaroa to Whangamumu.
Here a thousand miles from any ocean and eight or nine thousand miles from there, I can see and hold every headland and island in my heart and always will.
