Happy Birthday to my HS friend Mike today! He joins the 70 club.

Some intriguing political news today. SC Senator Lindsay Graham died, making the possibility of a Dem SC Senator more likely. And KY Senator Mitch McConnell is still missing, presumably on a ventilator and effectively dead. Though both were/are enemies of everything I believe in, I won’t speak ill of them other than to say good riddance. Mid-term elections just got a whole lot more interesting.

And of course the Iran war-that-is-not-a-war just got much worse. There’s no longer any pretense of a cease fire, and Iran has announced that the Straits are now closed. Idiot Trump has truly created a monster with his dumbass attack on Iran, and I can only hope it’s his undoing. Energy prices are going to spike again, we’re going to kill more people on both sides, and we’re going to further destabilize the Middle East.

There’s a really good article in the NYTimes about the effects of US population decline. It’s a frightening future with lots of uncertainty. My grandsons’ generation is the one that will face it most squarely, circa 2050.

In better news, here’s my favorite moment from my septuagenarian celebration a couple of days ago. We had a great evening with family and friends.