3.5.2026 – caffeine does its best

caffeine does its best
the first hit in the morning
when you’re at your worst

In the health column, We Ask the Experts …, in the New York Times, writer Simar Bajaj took on the question, “Can Coffee Really Boost Your Mood?”

Mr. Bajaj writes:

“Caffeine does its best mood boosting when you’re in some sort of deficit,” said Laura Juliano, the chair of psychology at American University, whether that’s being sleep deprived, pushing through a tough work project or running behind your usual cup of coffee. “The first hit in the morning is probably the most reinforcing because that’s when you’re at your worst,” she added.

But experts say that the brain adapts to regular caffeine consumption, making you less responsive to its effects over time. So, among regular coffee drinkers, the mood lift might just be relief from withdrawal symptoms, like fatigue and headaches, Dr. Juliano said. Your daily coffee might just bring you back to normal, but moving out of a slump still feels satisfying, she added.

However, getting a bona fide mood boost is probably limited to occasional coffee drinkers, Dr. Juliano said, since they likely haven’t built up the same tolerance to caffeine.

I dislike getting up in the morning and readers of this blog know that.

I like my coffee in the morning.

I get it ready the night before.

Fill the coffee maker with water.

Spoon on the coffee.

I have to be careful as I will do this just before I go to bed and the smell of the ground coffee can be a pick-me-up just when I want a calm-me-down.

I set the alarm and the next morning wake up before the alarm goes off.

I stare at the red numbers of the clock and here the clug clug clug of the coffee maker kicking in.

It’s new day and all that means and I am at my worst.

I don’t want to get up.

I want the oblivion of sleep.

To sleep perchance to dream.

But the clock doesn’t stop moving into the day and on the days I need to drive onto the Island to work, I got to get going or be stuck in traffic on a bridge the United States Corps of Engineers refuses to certify as ‘safe to use’ (and I am not making that up).

Showered up and first cup of coffee in hand, I take that first sip.

Experts say that the brain adapts to regular caffeine consumption, making you less responsive to its effects over time. So, among regular coffee drinkers, the mood lift might just be relief from withdrawal symptoms, like fatigue and headaches.

I might not be an expert on nothing but I am a regular coffee drinker and if all I get is the mood lift that might just be relief from withdrawal symptoms, like fatigue and headaches, well SIGN ME UP.

A mood lift from the relief from fatigue and headache is no small thing.

I can heartily endorse that my daily coffee might just might bring me back to normal, and that moving out of a slump still feels satisfying.

And let me say, there are those days where the path back to normal is long and treacherous.

If I can get there through a cup of coffee, well slip me a slug from that wonderful jug

Waiter, waiter percolator, that bridge is waiting for me.

3.4.2026 – trivial effort

trivial effort
man can lie, does he believe
oh, probably not

If we would learn what the human race really is, at bottom, we need only observe it in election times.

A Hartford clergyman met me in the street, and spoke of a new nominee – denounced the nomination, in strong, earnest words – words that were refreshing for their independence, their manliness.

He said, “I ought to be proud, perhaps, for this nominee is a relative of mine; on the contrary I am humiliated and disgusted; for I know him intimately – familiarly – and I know that he is an unscrupulous scoundrel, and always has been.”

You should have seen this clergyman preside at a political meeting forty days later; and urge, and plead, and gush – and you should have heard him paint the character of this same nominee.

You would have supposed he was describing the Cid, and Great-heart, and Sir Galahad, and Bayard the Spotless all rolled into one.

Was he sincere?

Yes – by that time; and therein lies the pathos of it all, the hopelessness of it all.

It shows at what trivial cost of effort a man can teach himself a lie, and learn to believe it, when he perceives, by the general drift, that that is the popular thing to do.

Does he believe his lie yet?

Oh, probably not;

From The Character of Man in The Autobiography of Mark Twain by Mark Twain (Berkeley : University of California Press, 2010).

3.3.2026 – live thy life young old

live thy life young old
summer rich then autumn changed
trunk bough naked strength

The Oak
Live thy Life,
Young and old,
Like yon oak,
Bright in spring,
Living gold;

Summer-rich
Then; and then
Autumn-changed
Soberer-hued
Gold again.

All his leaves
Fall’n at length,
Look, he stands,
Trunk and bough
Naked strength.

The Oak as published in Demeter and other poems by Alfred Tennyson (Macmillan: London, 1889).

I have never seen the redwoods or sequoias of California but I have fallen for the live oaks of the southern coast lands.

According to Wikipedia, Its native range begins in southeast Virginia, and then continues south in a narrow band through North Carolina along the coast to the interior South Carolina coast, where its range begins to expand farther inland. The range of live oak continues to expand inland as it moves south, growing across southern Georgia and covering all of Florida south to the northernmost Florida Keys.

We have found a trail through a grove of live oaks where the trees line the path and reach up in a grander church than any I have ever been in.

They are old, silent and somehow, ooze strength and power.

Here before we got here and they will be here after we have left.

3.2.2026 – fog coverage and

fog coverage and
density remain greatest
near mainstem rivers

Fog on the May River from the Calhoun Street Dock, Bluffton, SC 2-28-2026

Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office Dense Fog Advisory: Patchy dense fog across southeast Georgia and the SC Lowcountry will gradually dissipate through 11 AM this morning. The fog coverage and density should remain the greatest near mainstem rivers, especially the Altamaha, Ogeechee, and Savannah Rivers. The fog may remain locally dense, reducing visibilities on area roadways.

Instructions: If driving, slow down and leave extra distance ahead of you in case a sudden stop is needed.

In the essay The Decay of Lying by Oscar Wilde (New York, Lamb publishing Co. 1909), Mr. Wilde wrote about fog:

Where, if not from the impressionists, do we get those wonderful brown fogs that come creeping down our streets, blurring the gas lamps and changing the houses into monstrous shadows?

To whom, if not to them and their master, do we owe the lovely silver mists that brood over our river, and turn to faint forms of fading grace curved bridge and swaying barge.

The extraordinary change that has taken place in the climate of London during the last ten years is entirely due to a particular school of Art.

At present people see fogs, not because they are fogs, but because poets and painters have taught them the mysterious loveliness of such effects.

There may have been fogs for centuries in London.

I dare say there were. But no one saw them, and so we know nothing about them.

They did not exist until Art had invented them.

Now, it must be admitted, fogs are carried to excess.

3.1.2026 – frame Constitution

frame Constitution
no man hold power bring this
oppression on us

Adapted from a passage in a letter from Abraham Lincoln to William Herndon, dated Feb. 15, 1848, where Mr. Lincoln writes:

Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object.

This, our convention understood to be the most oppressive of all kingly oppressions and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us.

Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. Volume 1 [1824-Aug. 28, 1848]. In the digital collection Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/lincoln1. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed March 1, 2026.