I remember when CNN debuted. I thought it would never work. Most news is boring. Boy was I wrong. It worked, because in addition to covering the news, they talked about it.

Milton made landfall as a category three hurricane yesterday, the second to hit Florida in about two weeks. Luckily, Milton continued on out to sea and will give the east coast a break. Meanwhile, I had a nice talk with a friend about climate change.

It was 1970 or maybe 71. Fresh out of the Navy, newly married, I was attending the University of Houston on the GI Bill. I was majoring in literature for no other reason than I’d always wanted to go to college and study it. Literature. Books.

Talk about changes. The other day I watched the season finale of a series I like on Netflix, The Umbrella Academy. The only person I know with whom I can talk about it is my daughter.

The gullible, the malicious, the uninformed have always been with us. Like viruses or bacteria, they lived among us.

Here we are. The first day of another era in the history of my blog I write each day in the morning light, or dark depending on the time of the year. I should probably give it more thought, take more time, but this is what I’ve done for the last ten years.

Unsettled. That’s the best way to describe my recent feelings. About life, about writing, about everything. I’m unsure when it started. Maybe it was when I looked at my readership analytics and saw the size of my audience. Small. Tiny even.

I’ve been having fun with spreadsheets. Actually, it’s only one spreadsheet. I decided a while back I needed to be in better touch with my finances.

It’s warm and humid this morning with fog sitting on the far hills drifting down to touch the trees in the back pasture. No bird sounds to speak of, and the highway hum is low.

I did some wash yesterday and discovered two more pennies. So, here’s another two cents worth of my thoughts and questions on a subject that interests me…

I love technology and I love that I lived and experienced the introduction of computers and their brothers and sisters. That experience paid off twice in the last two days.

In the early days of video cameras, when they weighed 20 pounds and occupied a large spot on your shoulder, I refused to participate.

While we’re on the subject of Vietnam, which is where I was yesterday. Here’s my favorite book on the subject, and not a favorite because it lays out some great theoretical story about why and how we got there, but a favorite because it’s full of great writing and tells stories about the little guys, because most histories are about the officers, and this one is about the grunts.

I found myself in close proximity to a bookstore the other day. Went in and browsed around. Found a copy of Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. Bought it. Brought it home. Read it. I’m glad I did.

There are books that are fun to read and that’s that. There are books that make you think, and that’s that. But then there are books the make you think and suddenly that’s no longer that, but something entirely different

In addition, to reading, I like to cook, and this book is my bible and guide and reference point.

I like J.D. Salinger but not for the book that made him famous, Catcher in the Rye. I just didn’t get it. But Franny and Zooey, well, that was a different story.

I’ve loved McPhee’s work ever since I ran across his writing in the New Yorker back in the early 70s. He writes in elegant prose and he’s right up there with E. B. White another New Yorker author I love.

I remember as a young boy going to the battlefield in Yorktown. Looking at the redoubts. Walking the ground. It was exhilarating. It was made more so, because I’d read a book called We Were There at the Battle of Yorktown, from a popular young adult series back in the fifties.