Good morning. ⏰🥱☕

10 December 2025

"Every time I think that I'm the only one who's lonely Someone calls on me And every now and then I spend my time in rhyme and verse And curse those faults in me

And ... as the punch …" — Tandyn Almer

This morning, Along Comes Mary has been bouncing around in my head. It’s a song from the ’60s that some of you might recall, performed by The Association. Not the usual earworm, though—the rapid-fire tumble of lyrics is hard to wrap your head around, yet it flows with a rhythm that feels almost proto-rap. The sound is good, insistent, and somehow it lodged itself in my memory.

I didn’t help matters by looking it up online and stumbling across a clip from the Smothers Brothers show—another relic of the ’60s. I hadn’t thought of the song in decades, and then suddenly, boom, there it was. Why now?

Perhaps it’s because I read a brief news note about today’s Catholic observance—the Memorial of Our Lady of Loreto, commemorating the house in Italy where tradition holds that the Virgin Mary lived at the time of the Annunciation.

Of course, the song isn’t about that Mary. Maybe it’s just name association—by The Association.

“Music is the shorthand of emotion.” — Leo Tolstoy

“One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.” — Bob Marley

#photo #photography #photographer #photographylovers #nature #morning #music #lyrics #earworm

Good afternoon. 🌴🌴🌴

9 December 2025

If I toss my old Visual C++ book, I could free up space for two or three more novels in the bookcase. After all, it’s not like I plan to do any more programming. That chapter has closed. It’s time to let those things go—completely.

I know the impulse to hang on “just in case.” But when we don’t release the unused, it accumulates. Slowly, quietly, until we’re buried in stuff. And then we become… hoarders.

That’s where I am now—or at least, that’s how it feels. We have a lot of things. Over the years, I built storage into our life to bring order to the chaos. But storage is a trickster: if you build it, you fill it. I told my wife I wanted to rent a dumpster and just start tossing things in. I didn’t get a concurrence.

There are boxes we never unpacked after moving here—over twenty years ago. They sit like sealed time capsules in the back of my little work garage. Once, I resolved to do something about it. I grabbed a box, determined to haul it off to Goodwill. But when I opened it, I found my Calvin and Hobbes collection—and just like that, the wind left my sails.

Tossing technical manuals is one thing. But Calvin and Hobbes? That’s sacred. Honestly, those books should be classified as academic texts—philosophy in comic form.

And even now, as I type this meditation on letting go, I glance toward Ben’s bed, still sitting where it has for over sixteen years. Those who follow my blog know what that means.

“Clutter is nothing more than postponed decisions.” — Barbara Hemphill

“The question of what you want to own is actually the question of how you want to live your life.” — Marie Kondo

#photo #photography #photographer #photographylovers #nature #morning #clutter #hoarding #palmtree #abstract

Good morning. ☀️☀️☀️

8 December 2025

My coffee is cooling, and I probably ought to get up to top off the cup. It’s still drinkable, though, and with my feet propped on the edge of the desk, it may be a few minutes before I muster the motivation to walk the thirty feet into the kitchen.

Speaking of coffee, I went online yesterday to buy the same gourmet beans I picked up last month, only to find the price had climbed yet again. My first reaction was a startled oh wow, followed quickly by the decision to wait it out and settle for a less expensive brand.

Still, I can’t help but wonder how much of that price is tied to tariffs. The administration may have lifted the coffee duties, but surely there are lingering adjustments baked into the market. After all, tariffs had spiked to nearly 50% just weeks ago. Add in Brazil’s droughts and Vietnam’s floods, and supply is bound to tighten. Shipping across South America only complicates matters—though the danger seems to fall more on small boats than on large vessels.

Gunboat diplomacy appears to be the order of the day in those waters, with the navy striking and sinking small craft. It’s hard to make sense of. If traffickers are losing boats, surely, they’ve already found other routes. Assuming they’re clever enough to adapt, what exactly are these destroyed boats carrying? It can’t be that the navy is blasting away indiscriminately, Yosemite Sam–style… can it? I hope not. Still, some of the targeting feels questionable, and I know one thing for certain: I wouldn’t want to be fishing in that region right now.

Meanwhile, the price of beans continues to rise.

“What protectionism teaches us, is to do to ourselves in time of peace what enemies seek to do to us in time of war.” – Henry George

“Gunboat diplomacy is the old way of saying: we will use force to get our way, without calling it war.” – Paul Pillar

#photo #photography #photographer #photographylovers #morning #sun #coffee #trade #tariffs #gunboat_diplomacy