ignore these limits
thrilling fact that night owls have
been vindicated

From the article, Forget the 5am starts! Night owls like me possess the real secret of success by Arwa Mahdawi in the article where Ms. Mahdawi writes:

Research led by academics at Imperial College London studied data on more than 26,000 people and found that “self-declared ‘night owls’ generally tend to have higher cognitive scores”. And we are talking quite a lot higher. “Evening types … scored about 13.5% higher than morning types in one group and 7.5% higher than morning types in another group”, according to a write-up of the study.

Experts have urged caution in interpreting the findings, saying, for instance, that there are “important limitations”. Still, I think we can ignore these limitations for now and focus on the thrilling fact that night owls have finally been vindicated.

I have never ever been a morning person.

I have never ever been called a morning person.

Sadly, most of my life has been designed to begin with an early morning start.

Larry McMurtry’s thoughts on Captain Woodrow Call and getting up in the morning in the book Lonesome Dove might describe me.

Mr. McMurtry writes: To Call’s regret he had never been able to come awake easily. His joints felt like they were filled with glue, and it was an irritation to see Augustus sitting on the black kettle looking as fresh as if he’d slept all night, when in fact he had probably played poker till one or two o’clock. Getting up early and feeling awake was the one skill he had never truly perfected — he got up, of course, but it never felt natural.

Now I can’t stay up.

I miss those dark hours for reading.

Late late at night when no one else was up or around.

That’s when it seemed like my brain really kicked in.

Growing up in a family with 10 brothers and sisters.

College with 4 guys sharing a 450 square feet of apartment.

Seven kids in my family.

Late late at night when no one else was up or around.

So there is research that shows us folks who liked being up at night have higher cognitive scores that those morning folks.

I didn’t need any research.

It was something I already knew.

If those morning folks had been smarter, they would have been up late at night.

curious, wanting
find the answers, bottle the
spirit of science

“My goal in this was to make science aspirational, to see cool young people passionate about science, curious and wanting to find the answers and trying to bottle the spirit of science.

“The average viewer thinks of scientists as guys in labs and white coats and they don’t think of themselves as earthy real people and I wanted to break through that and go on their journey. That was our jumping off point and, because of the pandemic, it took a long time to get going but, once we got out there, we some pretty amazing stuff.”

Moviemaker James Cameron in the interview, ‘It’s harder to write sci-fi because we’re living in a sci-fi world’ by David Smith in the Guardian today.

bring all of your dreams
wrap them in a blue cloud-cloth
away from the world

Bring me all of your dreams, 
You dreamers. 
Bring me all of your 
Heart melodies
That I may wrap them 
In a blue cloud-cloth
Away from the too rough fingers
Of the world. 

The Dreamkeeper From The Weary Blues (Alfred A. Knopf, 1926) by Langston Hughes.

The image is of the Whale Branch, a river that winds northeasterly from the Broad River to the Coosaw River. The Branch crosses under US 21 at Seabrook, which has a broad marsh and grass islands along both of its shores in South Carolina. (NPSN … no photoshop needed)

Then I look at you
And the world’s alright with me
Just one look at you

35 years ago we got married.

35 years and a few days, we went over to our Church to meet with our Pastor for pre-marital counseling AND to meet with the church organist to go over the music.

Our Pastor was a no show so our Organist went over the music and then offered us some pre-marital advice for free.

“Be nice to each other,” was all he said.

And never were more true words about being in a marriage ever spoken.

What he didn’t say was how hard that would be somedays.

Watching us from afar through facebook and social media, one may not realize that they are seeing the best of us, the stuff we wants folks to see about us.

But we have bad moments.

We have bad days.

We have bad weeks.

We have … well, you get the picture.

But we are still here.

When I started this essay I went searching for a quote that I wanted to use to illustrate our marriage.

It was a quote from the movie Apocalypse Now where Martin Sheen asks the Navy Chief if he wants to know where they are going and the Chief replies with something like, “One look at you and I know it’s going to be hot …”

My thought was to use that to point out that my wife had fair warning of what she was getting into by marrying me.

I searched, “One look at you” and The Google brought back the song Lovely Day by Bill Withers from back when I was in high school.

I read the lyrics and I said to myself that fits, that works, that is how I feel, in fact, that is how we feel.

We might not make it through the day feeling that way but we start out that way.

And that’s pretty good.

After 35 years, that’s not bad.

And tomorrow?

I can tell you, it is gonna be ….

Love you Leslie!.

Here are the Lyrics (BTW one on the comments on this song posted on You Tube says that “Rumour has it he’s up in heaven still holding that note!”

When I wake up in the morning, love
And the sunlight hurts my eyes
And something without warning, love
Bears heavy on my mind

Then I look at you
And the world’s alright with me
Just one look at you
And I know it’s gonna be

When the day that lies ahead of me
Seems impossible to face
When someone else instead of me
Always seems to know the way

When the day that lies ahead of me
Seems impossible to face
And when someone else instead of me
Always seems to know the way

The world’s alright with me
Just one look at you
And I know it’s gonna be
A lovely day