So you might conclude that my goal of serious sailing got off to a rocky—or rather, wet—start. What do you do in a situation like this? Owning a sailboat was my dream come true. My father had always wanted a sailboat and talked to me many times about buying one and sailing on Old Hickory Lake near Nashville. But it never happened. At last, I was living out my father’s dream. This was a calling for me. A sacred mission. Throw in the towel and give up the dream, wimp out? Never.

I did not have that much time to think about these profound implications because approximately 24 hours later I had 104 degree temperature and felt like I was dying. All I could think about was the price I paid for trying to keep my head above water in some of the most polluted waters in the country for almost four hours, at least one hour in front of the notorious Blue Plains Sewerage Treatment Plant. After the second day I got enough strength back to call my doctor. I explained my horrible situation to him and waited for a response. There was a pause before he answered.

“Really, a 505? I am a J-boat racer myself and have always admired the 505s. They are the greatest, but I also sail my boat on the Potomac. This could have happened to me! I think I am going to move my boat to Annapolis.

“Not a bad idea, but what about me?

“Well,” he replied,” I hope you can get the boat fixed. Have you thought about taking it to ‘In Harm’s Way’? They specialize in fixing small sailboats.”

“No” I replied, “I am talking about my health! What about my health?”

“Gee, four hours floating near the Blue Plains Sewer Treatment Plant? Could be anything. Drink a lot of liquids, take some aspirin and call me back in a few days.”

“If I am still alive.” I muttered.

“Yeah, you never know about these things. Hours swimming in Blue Plains effluent? Oh my God…”

And that was the end of that. A couple of days later the fever subsided, and I started to feel better. Dodged a bullet, as they say. But what about the 505? The last time I saw the boat was the day of the accident. I had no idea of what had happened to the boat.

The next day I was feeling almost back to normal. I decided to go back to the marina where the boat had ended up and found the hull of the 505 lying on the ground, next to an Oak tree with a big sign that read “Fire hazard, must be moved immediately.” The sail, mast and boom were propped up on the tree.

As I was trying to figure out what to do, I felt a tap on my shoulder and a big burly guy with tattoos and a gruff voice growled, “This pile of junk yours?”

I sheepishly nodded yes and then shook my head in dismay.

“You got 24 hours to get it outta here or I am calling the cops. It’s been here almost a week. You are gonna be fined big time, maybe arrested.”

I could not get the idea out of my head that maybe the boat could be saved. I returned home and immediately called the number given to me by my doctor to contact the sailing store, “In Harm’s Way.” I desperately told the person answering about my situation. He answered, “Wow, a 505! You own a 505? I have always wanted to work on a 505, the world’s fastest racing dinghy. Fabulous, bring her in! There is no sailboat I can’t get back on her feet.”

Euphoria! Hope at last. A tiny fire started to burn in my brain. Other people might have caved, given up, thrown in the towel. Not me. Hope at the end of the tunnel. I would prevail after all.

The next day I got the boat’s trailer from the marina where the ordeal began, drove it to the marina where the boat rested, and with help from the big burly guy managed to push and pull the pitiful boat onto it, stuffing the sails, mast and boom into the bottom of the boat’s hull. I then drove the boat to the sailing store in Alexandria. Smiling with anticipation, I walked into a small, empty store, introduced myself to the person behind the counter whom I presumed was the person I had talked to on the phone, and then the two of us walked out to the parking lot behind the store where my car carrying the trailer and boat were. I could tell he was excited to be working on a 505. As we got closer to the boat, I noticed that his smile began to disappear. He did not say a word as a frown began to emerge and we circled the boat two or three times.

Still silent we walked back into the store. Without saying a word, he went behind the counter, then pulled out an ice pick and some scotch tape. He reached into his back pocket, pulled out his wallet and placed a $1 bill on the counter. He then looked me straight in the eye and in a soft but definitive tone said with a slight grin, “Take this scotch tape and ice pick. Then tape this dollar bill to the hull of the boat and put as many holes as you can in the boat’s bottom and deep six this piece of shit.”

I was stunned, blurting out, “But I thought you said you could fix anything and that you loved the 505s. I don’t understand….”

“Just do as I say and deep six it. It is beyond saving.”

“That’s it? You mean the situation is hopeless?”

“You got it.”

I left the store dejected, kept the scotch tape and dollar bill but left the ice pick. I had no idea about why he gave me the tape and the dollar bill or where he expected me to sink the boat but was too stunned to ask any more questions. I returned home to give Embry the news, then called my friend and co-owner, Scott, to fill him in.

Scott responded, “Well, Joe, I am sorry this happened, especially since I have sailed the boat only twice, but I guess you will have to sell it. Maybe we could get our money back that way. Hopefully we will get what we paid for it. Anyway, don’t go below the $800 we paid for it. Plus, $100 for the trailer.”

That afternoon I posted the following classified ad in the Washington Post to appear in the Sunday edition: “For Sale, 505, world’s fastest sailing dinghy, your ticket to freedom. Needs work, $800 or best offer.” Clever wording, I thought. That should capture attention.

At 8:30 the phone rang. The speaker was exuberant, “Wow, a 505! Fabulous! Great price. Where is the boat located?”

I gave him detailed instructions and warned that it was not in the best of shape. He hung up and said “I’m on my way right now. Don’t sell it to anyone until you hear from me. I am taking my checkbook with me.”

Five minutes later the phone rang again, and the speaker was even more enthusiastic. Then again. In fact, I stopped counting the calls and telephoned Scott to let him know there was a lot of interest. At around 10:30 that morning the phone mysteriously stopped ringing, then around two in the afternoon, telephone calls and voicemail messages started up again in earnest, with the callers all expressing outrage and threatening to sue me for false advertising and ruining their Sunday day off. I apologized when I could and tried to explain that this was my first boat, and I was doing the best I could. By five that afternoon the irate calls had stopped and the phone was mercifully silent. I called Scott to give him the bad news. Then he reminded me that in a couple of months we would have to pay $250 rent to the marina. His last words were “Your problem now. I quit. Do what you want to with the boat but do not ever, ever ask me to buy a boat with you again!”

What to do next? I just wanted to forget that the entire ordeal had happened. I did not notify the marina or pay them $250 rent. In fact, I did not venture back to the marina. They could do what they wanted to with the boat and the trailer. I pretended the entire episode had never happened and assumed that owning a sailboat and living out my father’s dreams was not in the cards. Good try but hopeless.

One week passed. Then another. Then I got a call from a guy asking if the 505 had been sold. I almost broke down into tears, explaining the whole ordeal and how everyone who had seen the boat was upset that I had wasted their time. I told him not to bother to look at it.

“Well,” he said, “I am pretty good with fiberglass and would like at least to take a look.”

“Ok, I will give you the address if you promise not to get mad at me. You are forewarned.”

Later that afternoon the phone rang again. I could tell from the voice that it was the prospective buyer and burst out with an apology.

“I warned you, I told you so. You can’t get mad at me.”

He answered, “Fifty dollars.”

“What do you mean fifty dollars?”

“I will buy the boat and trailer for fifty dollars.”

“Miracle from heaven,” I muttered.

And the deal was done. He stopped by our house with a check that afternoon. At last, I could put it behind me and move on. We did not exactly get our $800 back but at least the boat was going to be someone else’s problem.

Happy ending.

That should be the end of the story, but there is more….

A year passed. Then another year. Then in the winter of 1976, almost two years after the unfortunate incident, I was in an ice skating store watching my six year old son, Andrew, get fitted with a pair of ice skates. The young man fitting him kept giving me funny looks and suddenly stopped fitting Andrew, pointed his finger directly at me and exclaimed, “It is you! I know you. You are the one. You are the guy who sold me that beat up old 505 two years ago.”

“Oh,” I exclaimed, “I apologize. I warned you and I am really, really sorry….”

“Sorry?” he replied smiling, “I fixed that boat up, redid the fiberglass and sold her the next spring for $1,200. I should be the one thanking you!”

And of course, this incident did not deter me from pursuing my dream. Only a few weeks after the 505 experience finally ended, I got another call, this time from another friend who had a sailboat he wanted to sell.

Stay tuned for the Saturday post.

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Dear readers,

I started posting blogs on my josephhowellphotography.com website over 15 years ago, around 2010, and according to the stats on the photography website, the number of blogs posted so far totals over 700. Glancing over the posts I would estimate that about 20 percent have been about travel (including the fabulous 2014 trip with Embry around the world without flying), about 30 percent about politics, about 20 percent about spirituality and the meaning of life, about 20 percent about my life story including several posts which I called “Gullible’s Travels,” documenting that, yes, I am an idiot, and the final 10 percent about miscellaneous topics of whatever I was interested in at the time. I added Substack about a year ago as an alternative venue, but the same stories appear there as are posted on the photo website.

Good heavens! Why on Earth have I been doing this for so long? Am I nuts? Don’t I have a better way to spend my time?

The sad fact is that for me writing is a form of recreation and has become an obsession. I confess that I love the process though it is not always easy, and I admit not always good writing. But, hey, it is what it is, and I intend to keep at it as long as I can though at age of 84, I am surely running my last lap.

The post today is part of a series I am calling “The Sailing Life.”

The Sailing Life 1: “505”

Those who know me know that sailing for me has been a bit of an obsession. Embry and I have owned six sailboats over a 50-year period starting in 1972 and ending sadly a few years ago when we sold our last boat, Second Wind. The first boat was a Sunfish, which we sailed on Lake Norman near Davidson NC where her parents had a lake house when we were both graduate students in Chapel Hill. We never gave that boat a name other than “the green Sunfish” but loved the boat, which we sailed on summer weekends and vacations for decades. That was followed by a 505, which I purchased with a coworker in 1974, also never named, and which is the first subject of the Sailing Life series. Then came Mother Courage,a Wayfarer, a 16-foot daysailer, which we owned from 1975-1990, followed by Amazing Grace, an Alberg 30, which I bought in 1990 from a good friend and sold in the early 2000s to be replaced by a genuine racing boat, a J-30, which I named Carolina Blue because of its bright, sky blue hull and raced her seriously for over a decade, and, last but not least, Second Wind, a Jeanneau 39, formerly part of the Sunsail charter fleet, which I paid two Brits to sail up to the Chesapeake from the British Virgin Islands in 2016. We sold that boat in 2020.

The 505

In the early 1970s when I and another friend purchased the boat from a mutual friend for around $800, the 505 was considered the world’s fastest racing dinghy. Someone told me it lost out to the Flying Dutchman from being accepted for the 1968 Summer Olympics only because it was considered too difficult to keep from capsizing. The boat was sleek, light and elegant, about 18 feet long, and had a trapeze to allow the crew to hang out over the water to keep the boat from capsizing, but my friend, the seller, had warned us that this particular 505 with no name, needed some work. That was an understatement. The boat was a dismal wreck. But what do you expect for $800? And besides I was so anxious to begin serious sailing that my friend, Scott, and I decided to take our chances and bought the boat.

The boats demise happened about three months later on the Fourth of July. The Fourth of July 1974 was a beautiful day, low humidity, sunny skies, temperatures in the mid 80s and a perfect 10-15 knot breeze from the south. Embry and I and Naomi, a good friend, had a fabulous time hanging out over the side of the boat using the trapeze, speeding past other boats and experiencing the euphoria that happens when a sailboat planes and doubles its speed. We assumed all the other sailboats that we passed on that day were looking at us with awe and envy—and there were lot of other sailboats that beautiful July Fourth on the Potomac. And for the first time sailing the 505 there had been no problems. That is, not until we brought her back in so that we could meet other friends and see the fireworks. The sail got stuck coming down causing us to end up about 50 feet downwind from where we needed to be to get into the marina. Hey, no problem. Naomi scampered up a piling, walked the several hundred yards to the marina and thirty minutes later returned riding aboard a huge 2-story houseboat with rock music blaring over a loudspeaker and filled with middle aged couples with big bellies and skinny legs, chugging beer and throwing the empty cans over the side.

“This was the best I could do!” Naomi shouted over the roar of the motor.

All eyes of the 20 or 30 people were on us. The captain threw us a line and then returned to the wheel. “Let me know when you got it secured!” he hollered.

I nodded that everything was secure and heard him yell over the loud motor. “Let her rip, Charlie!”

The boat’s motor roared. The houseboat lurched forward as if it were trying to pull water-skiers out of the water. The 505 was yanked out of the water for a moment, then turned sideways and capsized with contents of our cooler and everything in the boat going into the drink. Embry and I had on life jackets so we were not fearful of drowning but were dumbfounded that the boat owner would use full throttle to tow us.

“Was that too fast for you?” The captain shouted. “I ain’t never rescued no boat before.”

“Well, yes.” I shouted back. “Very, very slow next time.”

I can’t remember how many next times he tried, but each one ended the way the first attempt did and by this time our cooler and everything we had in it and on the boat had drifted away.

Then the captain yelled, “Is that woman pregnant? Your friend says she is five or six months pregnant and the Potomac is filthy! If she is pregnant, she is in danger!”

“Yes!” I shouted back. “She is pregnant!”

“Save the pregnant woman! Save the pregnant woman!” he yelled to his crew as Embry, who was about five months pregnant, started to swim to the enormous boat. The partying continued with people throwing beer cans off the boat, loud rock music blaring, and staring at us with amusement and disbelief. Someone on board offered Embry a hand. She boarded and the boat charged off leaving me alone in the water as motorboats whizzed by without offering any help.

This all happened between 4:00 and 4:30 PM. Over four hours later at 8:45 PM, about a half hour before the fireworks were to begin, I was still in the water with the mostly submerged 505, having drifted several miles up stream due to a rising tide and strong tailwinds. Attempts to rescue me and the 505 had been made by the DC Marine Police, The Maryland Marine Police, The Virginia Marine Police and the U.S. Coast Guard. All had failed. As soon as they started to tow the boat forward, it would capsize due to the hull being almost completely submerged. By this time 505 was directly in front of the Blue Plains Sewage Treatment Plant, noted for being out of date, inadequate, and the major polluter of the Potomac River.

At 8:45 just as it was starting to get dark, the DC Marine police suddenly roared in (for the second or third time) and paused in front of me. “You still here, owner? The fireworks are about to start. We are gonna take you in and your goddamn piece of shit boat and drag you in. They ordered me to unattach the sails, boom and mast so that they would fall to the bottom, freeing the boat from capsizing because with the mast up, the boat could not stay upright. Two or three times when the sail got caught in the prop of the outboard motor, the two furious cops yelled obscenities at me. Finally, totally exhausted I got everything unclipped and watched as the sails, mast and boom ingloriously sank below the surface. I muttered something like “good riddance.” I had suffered enough. Maybe sailing was not going to be my thing after all.

“Okay, owner, you can hop aboard.”

As I climbed up the boarding later, one asked, “Owner, you drink?” and when I nodded yes, he muttered “thank God,” and offered me the last can of what had started off as close to a full case of beer with the empty can holders scattered about. I was amazed that they were able to do as well as they did, since I concluded that they must have consumed at least a couple of six packs each. We all downed our beer, poked the empty cans with ice picks and threw them overboard. The captain’s assistant sheepishly smiled and said, “Hey owner, happy Fourth of July!”

The sun had set and it was starting to get dark but at last I could relax, thankful that finally, finally after four hours of torture and exhaustion I had been rescued. I did not realize that the ultimate humiliation was yet to come.

The fireworks were about to start, and the police pulled the partially submerged boat into the marina where hundreds of people–mainly families with children running helter-skelter–were anxiously waiting for them to begin, bored and looking for amusement. I was to be their amusement.

When I saw people pointing at us and laughing, I was determined to avoid eye contact and to escape from the ridicule so I hopped off the boat when it reached the marina and quickly moved to the back of the crowd of what must have been several hundred people, mainly families with kids. All around me people were gawking and uttering things like “idiot,” “pitiful boat,” “piece of shit,” “didn’t know what he was doing.” Pretending to be just another one of the restless crowed, I found myself uttering the same things, hoping no one would recognize me, until I heard the bellowing voice of the police captain shout, “owner, owner come here now!”

Miraculously as the boat was being hoisted out of the water, one shroud (wire) was still attached and at the end of the shroud came the mast, the boom and the sail. The crowd, which by this time had doubled in size—roared as if a touchdown had just happened. The mast and sails were all saved! A miracle! Maybe I did not have to give up my sailing dream after all. I pushed my way through the anxious crowd watching people stare at me with open mouths and wide eyes, then did a swan dive into the water and rescued the sails and mast.

I headed grimly toward the picnic where Embry and several friends were gathered just as the fireworks were to begin, answered their anxious questions and silently watched the fireworks wondering if my sailing days had ended abruptly.

But that was not the end of the story. What happened next will be the subject of the next post—on Tuesday.

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First, thank you. I know who some of you are but not very many and there are now around 500 viewers on average for most of my posts. The one on old age got over 1,000 clicks. I am both honored and amazed. I love posting these and find blogging to be a kind of therapy. Cheaper than seeing a shrink in these stressful times, to be sure.

I also realize that I have been overdoing it a bit; and taking Embry’s suggestion to heart to give my readers a break, I have decided to keep future posts down to two per week. I will try to post every Tuesday and every Saturday so as not to bombard you with too much. I hope you will stay tuned and stick with me and remain grateful for your interest and perseverance in reading about what is on my mind. And feel free to weigh in. Your comments are always welcomed!

Thank you again and look for my next post on Saturday.

Joe

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Back to Politics.

The first question for today is this: what has Donald J Trump done to destroy our nation during the first year and a half of his second term?

Let me count the ways:

1. He has eviscerated foreign assistance to struggling countries. He has eliminated the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and drastically cut back on foreign aid including PEPFAR, the successful Bush 2 initiative that saved the lives of over 25 million people with AIDS, mainly in developing nations. Public health tracking models and independent research estimate that between 600,000 and 760,000 people have died globally due to the abrupt shutdown and deep funding cuts to USAID with roughly two-thirds of those victims being children.

2. He has ripped apart the social safety net in the U.S., including cutting SNAP (food stamps) to needy families and has imposed stiff work requirements for food stamp recipients. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities as of April 2026 4.5 million people had lost their food stamps due to Trump’s orders and the number is increasing every day.

3. He has initiated U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) patrols, which have arrested thousands of undocumented immigrants, many living here on expired visas. ICE assaults have resulted in deaths of three U.S. citizens. ICE arrests totaled some 400,000 before July 2026 and have averaged almost 1,700 a day since then. In July of this year 51,000 immigrants were arrested with the vast majority ending up in so called detention centers. At least 52 people died in ICE custody during the first 500 days of Trump’s presidency. This marks a sharp surge in fatalities, resulting in the highest annual mortality rate recorded in immigration detention in 20 years.

4. He has initiated the funding and construction of massive concentration camps run by private prison companies to house thousands of immigrants with hundreds more to follow and is trying to eliminate birthright citizenship. Currently there at least 225 detention centers with many more in the pipeline. Daily capacity is now about 70,000 detainees per day projected to increase to over 90,000 by the end of the year.

5. He has allowed the subsidies of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) to expire, which will cause millions of lower income Americans to lose their health care—estimated by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities to affect 15 million people, mainly lower income Americans.

6. He has ended effective strategies for addressing homelessness that pair rental assistance with supportive services. I serve on a board of a nonprofit group that provides these services and our budget has been slashed, our staff reduced by almost half and the case load for our social workers expanded. Clients have lost their housing vouchers and do not receive the supportive services they need.

7. He has tried by executive order to eliminate the Department of Education. Most experts see this as hurting low income people. Student aid and Pell grants are being reduced.

8. He has given huge tax cuts to the wealthiest households and weakened the estate tax. Donald Trump’s tax cuts—originating from the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and extended or expanded through subsequent legislation like the reconciliation acts of this year—provide a disproportionate share of their financial benefits to high-earning individuals, wealthy families, and large corporations. Nonpartisan analyses indicate that the top 1% of earners will receive the largest monetary reductions, while lower- and middle-income households see only modest gains, if any.

9. He has reduced the federal work force eliminating over 200,000 jobs with more massive cuts to follow, mostly to people who know what they are doing. Sycophants are replacing dedicated public servants.

10. He has enacted broad, disruptive across-the-board tariffs that have fueled inflation, strained supply chains, and created economic hardships. President Trump’s sweeping tariffs have increased consumer costs, averaging a tax increase of roughly $900 to $1,000 per U.S. household per year, kept inflation going, and shifted global supply chains as legal battles continue.

11. He has issued pardons to all involved in the January 6 takeover of the Capitol and has attempted to provide reparations to them.

12. He has used federal agencies to investigate political rivals and critical media organizations. Objects of his wrath include James Comey, Letitia James, John Bolton, Adam Schiff, Jerome Powell, Lisa Cook, and Elissa Slotkin, most of whom have had to hire expensive lawyers to defend themselves.

13. He has appointed inept rogues to head up federal agencies and other leadership roles like Pete Hegthseth, Robert F Kennedy Jr, Pam Bondi, Todd Blanche and others and has surrounded himself with sycophants. The guardrails that were present in his first term have disappeared.

14. He has championed the coal industry, embraced fossil fuels and attacked efforts to expand wind farms and solar energy operations and remains a diehard climate change denier, taking the U.S. out of the Paris Accords.

15. He has continued his relationships with buddy-buddy authoritarian leaders like Erdoğan and Kim Jong Un, waivered on his support for Ukraine and supported Netanyahu and other rogues.

16. His net worth has more than doubled during his second term, surging from an estimated $2.3 billion in early 2024 to approximately $6.5 billion in 2026. This represents an increase of roughly $4 billion in less than 18 months. This does not include the vast increases to the fortunes of his sons and son in law. He has been described by many as the most corrupt president in U.S. history with no one else coming close.

17. He has trashed the nation’s capital. Several thousand armed national guard troops patrol the streets every day, intimidating residents and giving Washington the feeling of a police state. He has spent a fortune tearing down the East Wing of the White House to be replaced by a massive banquet hall that dwarfs the White House, and which will cost over $600 million, half of which will be on the US taxpayer. The $300 million raised from “private donors” comes with strings attached and favors granted. (These efforts have been temporarily halted by a judge’s ruling, but a very large, ugly hole remains.) Trump has closed the Kennedy Center and is in an ongoing dispute regarding its name change to the Trump Kennedy Center. The National Symphony Orchestra is on the verge of bankruptcy. The Reflecting Pool fiasco has already cost more than $16 million, all on the taxpayers, and the algae problem is still not fixed. Trump is persisting in his effort to build the world’s largest arch dwarfing the Arc de Triumph in Paris and is estimated to cost more than $100 million, all on the taxpayers, of course. Homeless encampments have mostly disappeared, but no one knows what has happened to the homeless “campers.”

In summary, Trump’s Washington is a complete mess.

18. And finally, Trump has gotten the U.S. into what dangerously looks like another unnecessary “forever war,” this time against Iran. Trump’s reckless thoughtlessness regarding the War with Iran has already cost the U.S. over $37 billion, depleted a substantial portion of our rocket, missile, and drone arsenals, lost lives including over a hundred innocent Iranian children and 18 U.S. soldiers, and it is a war which the U.S. is not likely to win. The closing of the Straight of Hormuz has disrupted world trade, increased the cost of fuel, and created an international crisis, and there is no telling how this movie—this horror show—will end.

Isn’t this enough for the American people to say enough is enough, to impeach this man, who clearly is showing increasing signs of dementia, and move on? Any one of these atrocities would be enough to get a normal president impeached but not Trump. To his base he is feared and worshipped.

Trump should be impeached, even though it would mean we would get Vance, who may not be much better.

And the second question of the day is what will it take to get a Republican senator or congressman to oppose Trump on any of his outrageous initiatives that I have just listed. What is wrong with these people? Don’t they have any courage to oppose Trump on policies that they must know are wrong and hurt people who are suffering? Don’t they know that most of his ideas make no sense? Don’t they realize that Trump’s actions could bring down the country?

Critical times, these times, and the stakes are so high. Pray that we come through it.

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So the question for today is why do we humans treat each other so badly. Philosophers and theologians have struggled with this question for as long as we Homo sapiens have been able to ask this question. Psychologists, historians and scientists of all types have weighed in, and if you think about it, just about every human being at one time or another has thought about it since it is part of our human nature to try to figure things out.

However, the answer is not all that hard. We humans are animals and all animals struggle for survival. When we feel threatened, we fight back, just like the lowly fly or annoying bumble bee. Darwin got it right—“survival of the fittest.” Not only are we humans animals, we are herd animals, who instinctively follow our leader, even if that leader happens to be named Adolph, Mao, Atilla or Donald. You are right if you protest, “Not everybody follows a bad leader,” but enough do so that a bad leader can and often does do great harm. Conversely, an enlightened and kind leader can make a huge positive difference. But none of us humans get a free ride. We all have hurt others and have been hurt. And part of what causes us to act the way we do is how we were brought up and the difficulties we faced. In other words it is not necessarily all our fault. That is just the way it is on the planet Earth.

I would also argue that the question of why humans treat one another the way we do is at the heart of all the great religions of the world. It is certainly the heart of the Christian faith, which proclaims that one person was all good. That person, of course, was Jesus of Nazareth, who Christians believe was the one and only exception to flawed human nature and for that reason was declared in the creeds to be fully human and fully divine. That message resonated over the centuries and today almost a quarter of the humans living on the planet Earth—some two billion people–answer on Pew surveys that they are Christians. That does not mean that Christianity has got it all right and that the rest of the world has got it all wrong, but it does mean, I think, that Christianity is on to something and that the answer to taming our flawed human instincts is love, not romantic love, but selfless love or agape, as the Greeks called it.

But this still leaves many unanswered questions. I spent three years studying at Union Theological Seminary in New York City in an effort to figure out the mystery behind Christianity, religious faith, and the meaning of life. Like many of my classmates, I graduated with more questions than answers. That was in 1968, a turbulent time when a majority of us seminarians headed for other careers. I headed to Chapel Hill where I got a masters in city planning. Others went to law school, medical school, business school or to get PhDs to pursue academic careers.

Unlike some of my Union classmates, however, I did not throw in the towel on Christianity and have remained a loyal Episcopalian. Embry deserves much of the credit for this (even though she was brought up as a Presbyterian) in part because she loves singing in the choir. But I confess that I continue to have as many questions as answers. Episcopalians tend have more wiggle room than other denominations with regard to what you believe even though we maintain the ancient liturgy and creeds. And for me our involvement in our neighborhood church for decades is also due to the benefits that come from being part of a loving community.

Yes, we humans are part of the animal kingdom, and, yes, like all living creatures, we are programmed to survive, and, yes, this causes us to hurt others knowingly and unknowingly, and, yes, selfless love—treating others the way you want to be treated—is or at least should be—a guiding principle, but what happens beyond life remains a mystery and beyond my pay grade to fully understand. That is where faith comes in and where I confess that I struggle. But that does not keep me from celebrating and giving thanks for all the blessings that I have received—and I have received many, starting with a strong marriage to an extraordinary partner, wonderful children and grandchildren, good friends, and a fulfilling career– and for the gift of my relatively long life on the planet Earth.

You can’t ask for more.

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A few days ago, I got in the mail a large envelope from the Maryland Department of Transportation. With bated breath I nervously ripped open the envelop. Yes, yes! Just what I had hoped for with great anticipation—a handicapped parking placard that you hang on your rearview mirror! At last!

A few years ago, I had begged my doctors at Kaiser to sign a form saying I needed a handicapped sticker. I failed twice. One commented that anyone who could walk three or four miles a day, which I shamefully admit that I exaggerated –did not need handicapped parking. I should have kept my mouth shut. The other doctor shrugged and reluctantly said he would sign something but never got back to me with the form. That was then. What I would give to be able to walk three miles now without using a “prosthetic device,” but that is no longer the case; and when I made my desperate pitch this time, the third doctor shrugged his shoulders, agreed and signed the form. A couple of days later when I mistakenly left the form sitting on a table on our patio, it got soaked in the rain so that you could hardly read it. I painfully tried to make the form readable, marked up the doctor’s smudged signature so you could read it, and mailed it in, figuring it would probably get rejected because it was borderline unreadable. I was resigned to having to go through it all again. But no! They accepted it and I have my sticker!

I think they checked my age and concluded that that explained everything.

Do you realize what this means? This means I no longer will have to worry about finding a parking space close to where I want to go. Well, maybe not always, but I have been noticing that handicapped reserved parking is usually available in shopping centers and on the street in commercial areas. In fact, I have parked in these coveted spaces, placard-less, illegally a couple of times myself—one as recently as two days ago—but now I am free at last, free at last to park in a convenient handicapped parking spot. I could probably sell the placard for a fortune, but no, besides being illegal, it would be stupid. I am so excited about it that I now refuse to park in any unmarked space.

So yes, there are some advantages to being old. People will take pity on you at least some of the time, and most of the time–well, maybe not all that much– you are treated with respect, even in the United States. On several occasions starting a few years ago, on several of my so called “power walks” –when I was about five years younger but still hardly a spring chick–I was greeted by a middle aged man—African American in my case every time—who would grin and exclaim, “How you doing young fella? Way to go! Keep it up!” I don’t know why but I found these gestures sincere, genuine, and rather touching. It was a great way to show respect for old age.

And, of course, now on the few times I use a crowded Metro car, a younger person will usually pop up immediately. I used to shrug and say something like “Thanks, but I do not mind standing.” Not anymore. In fact, I realize now I should have gratefully accepted the other initiatives to encourage such gestures.
Which raises the basic question: are we human beings fundamentally good creatures or fundamentally bad? I think you could make a strong case either way. Think of the terrible things that we have done and continue to do to our fellow humans. Every society on Earth has its share of violent crimes, domestic violence, sexual and psychological abuse, and plain old nastiness to other people. And how do you explain atrocities that happened in places like Nazi Germany, the gulags, slavery in the U.S., and the Chinese Cultural Revolution? Or for that matter, Donald J Trump and many of his MAGA or tech bro billionaire supporters? At the same time, there are all kinds of examples of courageous humans opposing terrible actions and making sacrifices every day all over the world. These happen even when it means danger to themselves or self-sacrifice. Most religious have embraced the better side of human nature and promoted kindness as in “love your neighbor as yourself.”

The answer, of course, is that we humans have both sides, the good and the bad, but more on why that is in another post. For me, I am off right now to find my first legal handicapped parking space somewhere even though I do not intend to get out of the car….

 

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Ok, I admit, growing old is not easy. Try as hard as you can, you have got to fess up to the fact that there are many, many things you just can’t do anymore when you reach your seventies and beyond. Until I reached eighty, sailing was a passion. Then when it became apparent that getting on and off our last boat, Second Wind, was a disaster waiting in the wings to happen, Embry and I sold the boat to a young family who moved her to another marina on the Chesapeake Bay farther south. As sad as it was to say goodbye to Second Wind, it was the right choice, and we felt good about it. Last fall when given the opportunity to join a racing team (as an observer) on the Chesapeake Bay near Annapolis, I realized that I did not enjoy the experience anymore.

Then there were the power walks that I did five or six days a week for over a decade, if you can call a pace of 15 or 16 minutes a mile a “power walk.” I started serious long distance running when turning 30 and kept it up or a good 30 plus years before a bad knee caused me to switch to walking in my sixties. Now when I walk, I inch along using a hiking stick and occasionally a rollator and move very, very slowly, terrified of falling. I have only had two falls but one put me in the hospital for week. And I had to give up tennis altogether though I never was much good in that anyway. Nor have I been able to resume my serious lap swimming since my last fall about six months ago. Vigorous exercise was for me as much of an emotional, even a spiritual activity for me as it was a physical one. Those days are now pretty much over and I miss them.

Then there are the other challenges. I have had a serious hearing disability since my fifties, which has only gotten worse the older I get. But thank heaven for hearing aids, which have gotten much better over the years. However, ambient noise in restaurants and other crowded locations makes it almost impossible to hear, and I fake it a lot by nodding and saying something like “very interesting” or “really?” until I see a horrified look on someone’s face and respond with “sorry, I think I misunderstood, could you repeat that?” And hooray for subtitles that are now available for most television programs and for some movies. Without them I would understand zilch. Remembering names of new friends and acquaintances is also a challenge. Even worse is not being able to recall the name of an old friend even though you know exactly what that person looks like—or at least used to look like. We now live in a continuing care retirement community where we all wear name tags or at least are supposed to. That way makes it easier for me to remember names– including my own–though still it often is not all that easy.

And unlike in some cultures where elders are revered and honored, in the U.S. we are often cast aside as being “over the hill” and “out of touch.” Sadly, for some experiencing memory loss or other disabilities there is some truth to this. And I do have to wonder why given all the experiences we have had we are not wiser, but we are still hanging in there and doing the best we can, and this should be enough for us old codgers to cherish and to celebrate.

I won’t go into complaining about the usual aches and pains of old age, the visits to doctors, “organ recitals”, urgent care centers, and not being able to do a lot of, ahem, other things which we used to be able to do–and which I will not go into! That is the price we humans pay for the privilege of living long lives—a lot longer than we used to. The average life expectancy for someone born in the United States today is 79 years (81 for women and 76.5 for men). But it was not that long ago when it was much lower. In 19th-century America, average life expectancy at birth hovered between 40 to 43 years though this low number was skewed by high infant and child mortality rates, since 30% to 40% of children died before the age of five. Those who survived childhood frequently lived into their 60s or early 70s but not a whole lot longer. And if you go back to the time when, say, the New Testament of the Bible was written, the life expectancy was only 25 to 35—at least according to my friend, AI. It was not all that unusual for a man to die in his early 30s as Jesus did.

My goodness, we have come a long way, baby!

But there is also much to praise about old age and to be thankful for. Maybe we aren’t as sharp as we used to be but most of us are wiser. We have been there, done that, and have seen and experienced a lot. We do not have to worry so much about what we wear, what we look like or what we say. There is no need to try to impress anyone. At our advanced age we are what we are. Humility does not always accompany old age but for many it does. We all have made our share of mistakes and done dumb things. And most of us have to face up to the fact that we did not accomplish all our dreams. The question is not whether we made a lot of money, were powerful, rich, or famous, but whether we were good people, did the best we could, “loved our neighbor,” and whether we gave life our best shot.

And if you are still breathing and kicking at any age, give thanks for that. You are a survivor.

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I read with great interest The New York Times front page story yesterday (August 2) about the Paul Weiss law firm’s Faustian bargain with Trump to back off from all things “woke” and contribute millions of dollars of pro bona work to his various causes. This is a sad time for a firm that used to be the crown jewel of public interest legal work.

But what really caught my attention was the reference to how much money the partners of this “formerly prestigious” law firm make. Before the surrender happened, according to the Times, partners at Paul Weiss were making about $2 million a year on average, which itself seems on the high side to me, but I understand that prestigious law firms pay the partners a lot. But what caught my eye was that following the Trump sellout, the top partners according to the Times are now making about $20 million each with all other partners making on average about $8 million each. What I am trying to figure out is how they get away with this and who pays them all this money. According to “Glass Door,” the organization that tracks legal compensation, legislative assistants make about $ 63,000 a year at Paul Weiss and associates start at about $275,000 a year and top out about $400,000. How do you get from those numbers to $20 million or even a meager $8 million? And how typical is this among so called prestigious law firms?

The only way that you can get to these high numbers is that if these firms somehow get a piece of the action (or a fee based on a percentage of the deal) in lucrative mergers and acquisitions or similar work. They will tell you that this does not happen because lawyers must remain independent and objective and compensation is based exclusively on hourly billing rates. So, what would the hourly billing rates have to be to support an income of $20 million a year? Assuming the Big Hitter partners work seven days a week, 15 hours a day and never take vacations or holidays, to generate an income of $20 million would require a billing rate of about $3,600/hour. For $8 million it would require a rate of about $1,500/hour and that also assumes a work week of 15 hours a day, seven days a week, no vacations, holidays or time off and no pro bona work.

This reminds me of the story about a lawyer from a prestigious firm meeting St Peter at the Pearly Gates when the saint exclaimed, “Oh my goodness, you died so young. I have reviewed your billings at your firm and calculated that you had to be at least 150 years old!”

And of course, these people do not put in 100-hour work weeks routinely. They also take fancy vacations and eat at expensive restaurants. If they worked a “normal” 40-hour week, the required billing rate for a partner making $20 million would be $7,150/hour or about $120/minute. For someone being paid $8 million, the hourly rate would be mere $4,000, a real bargain.

And who would pay those kinds of fees to lawyers anyway? A lawyer friend told me that quoted hourly rates are much lower than what you would think because the partners make all that money by “leveraging” the work of the associates.

Okay, as one who started and ran a consulting firm for almost 20 years and certainly did not make anything remotely close $20 million a year—or for that matter, even a very tiny fraction of that– but worked just as hard as these high paid lawyers, I have got to say something is very wrong with this picture and that the excessive income and wealth of a very small percentage of the work force in the United States today is a big reason for the discontent in our society. And of course it is not just elite lawyers who are guilty. CEOs of major corporations are just as bad or even worse. We know about the excessive wealth of the tech bros caused by the boom in AI, but the disparity between management and workers in major corporations is also a huge problem and it is ubiquitous. Before the deregulation beginning in the 1980s the difference between the income of the CEO of a Fortune 500 Company and an average worker was about 30 to 1. Today it is almost 300 to 1.

And, of course, we know the problem is wide because a very high percentage of the population is struggling just to pay rent or the mortgage, put food on the table, and pay for health care. Some recent surveys in 2026 indicate that 81 percent of adults view the rising cost of living as a major barrier to financial stability, with nearly half of families reporting they fall short of what is needed to comfortably cover all living essentials.

Friends, we are living in the Second Gilded Age where the rich get richer and the average family is struggling. Unless we can figure out a way to get out of the mess we are in and create a fairer and more just society, we will be in deep trouble and our time as the “leader of the free world” will come to an end just as it has for all the great countries and empires that have preceded ours.

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Fortunately, I did not tune into the public hearing in the Senate Wednesday where Republicans grilled Doctor Fauci for almost three hours. That afternoon when doing errands off campus (of the retirement community where Embry and I now live), I overheard a conversation between two people whom I assumed were MAGAs that went something like this, “Well, you know that Fauci is guilty as hell because he wouldn’t answer any questions. He just kept saying ‘Fifth Amendment.’”

“Absolutely, totally guilty and he should spend the rest of his life behind bars!” his friend responded. “This proves he is a crook and a liar.”

With fear and trembling that afternoon I opened both The New York Times and The Washington Post to read the condescending, mean remarks toward Fauci by Rand Paul, Josh Hawley and other Republican senators. Paul, demanding that Fauci be jailed for contempt of court, insists the Fauci is responsible for the covid outbreak because his agency provided some funding to the lab in Wuhan, China, where Paul without proof claims the virus originated. Hawley’s comments, calling Fauci “a megalomaniac and a liar,” were mainly about the mask mandates and closing schools. But what really stuck me was the vicious tone that was used by both senators and other Republican senators who jumped on the pile insisting Fauci deserved jail time, even though Fauci had been preemptively pardoned by Biden before he left office.

I know that politics has been described as a contact sport in the United States and that the weak and timid need not apply. But good heavens, has it come to this? Fauci is 85 years old, spent most of his life in public service, played a major role in addressing the AIDS crisis and in other public health emergencies, and for a long time was one of the most admired and respected public figures in the country. And now this? What is going on and what do the Republicans hope to achieve? Fauci is now retired and is entitled to a peaceful and fulfilling retirement. I am only a few months younger than he is. I can’t imagine what it would be like going through an ordeal like this at any age but at the age of 85? It is not fair and it is not right. Hawley and Paul and the others should be ashamed of themselves.

Yet that is the world we find ourselves in today. I hold Trump responsible for creating an atmosphere of hate and contempt that brings out the worst instincts of our human nature. As I have said many times, we are essentially herd animals and a flawed species. We do terrible things to one another. And leaders make all the difference for setting the tone and establishing the boundaries for acceptable behavior. Bad leaders of the 20^th Century like Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Pol Pot and others have done their share to make the world a cruel and tragic place. And now we have the likes of Putin, Kim Jong Un, Bashar al Assad, and Erdogan. Some would also warn that Donald J Trump is coming dangerously close to joining this rogue’s gallery. He is responsible for creating the atmosphere where people like Hawley and Paul can abuse good people like Fauci and get away with it. Shame on him and shame on them!

Friends, we are at a critical time in our country. If Trump continues to encourage this kind of outrageous behavior, interferes with the midterm elections or continues to move toward authoritarianism, we are all in trouble. It has happened in other great countries, and it could happen here. We are getting dangerously close.

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When our daughter, Jessica, invited us to accompany her family to what she described as a “terrific bluegrass festival” not far from her home in Portland, Maine, I admit that I had second thoughts. I had grown up in Nashville where I been exposed to a lot of music including bluegrass, old timey and, of course, country music, but had not been a big fan. My favorite music was what then was called rhythm and blues—Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, the Drifters and the like. And Embry and I had attended several bluegrass and old timey music festivals when we were living in Chapel Hill in the early 1970s. I found that with bluegrass a little goes a long way since there is not a whole lot of wiggle room if you are aiming for the authentic sound of Bill Monroe or Flatt and Scruggs. Three days of this might be a little much. Plus, there was the issue of camping since the festival was about an hour’s drive northwest of Portland, Maine, and most attendees camped. Sadly, for most people in our mid 80s or older, sleeping on the ground in a tent is above our paygrade.

Jes persuaded us when she volunteered to reserve an RV for us to rent. And besides, the main attraction for us was spending the long weekend with her family and our son Andrew’s family, driving up from a New Jersey suburb of New York City, which included their spouses and all four grandchildren, all except one now in college. How could we say no?

So off we went on a Thursday afternoon, driving through an extraordinarily beautiful countryside under Carolina-blue skies, temperatures in the low 80s, low humidity and no billboards. Hey, if Maine does not allow billboards on country roads, why can’t all states do it too? The hour-long ride up to the festival was almost worth all the effort in flying up to Maine, having our first flight canceled earlier in the week and eventually arriving around midnight on a later flight.

As we turned into the main entrance to the festival located on the site of the Ossipee County Fairgrounds, we were behind a couple of RVs and soon greeted warmly by a welcoming committee where we got wrist bands and headed to the site that Peter and Jessica had claimed for our group of fourteen campers a few days before. Since all tent sites were first-come-first served, the only way to be sure to get a good one required getting there very early and staking out your campsite– as in several days ahead of the event. They chose a spot across from the reserved site for our RV. Plus, they wanted to be near the site of close friends from Portland. Someone had alerted us that arriving early to witness “The Great Hippie Land Grab” was half the fun. The massive RV that Jessica had reserved for us arrived almost at the same time—along with what seemed like an endless train of RVs of all shapes and sizes.

Let the fun begin! But what to expect? Would we be subjected to three monotonous days of Bill Monroe’s traditional bluegrass? Would the good weather hold? Would the camping work out?

In a word, I was blown away. The festival was not at all what I had expected. First, there was very little if any traditional bluegrass music. I attended around ten music sessions scattered over two and a half days and did not hear anything that sounded like traditional bluegrass music. An entire fresh music genre has emerged that is based onbluegrass–sometimes called “newgrass” — but much more versatile. Most of the tunes and songs were original, composed and written by the performers. What all the groups had in common in the sessions that I attended was that the same musical instruments used for traditional bluegrass were used here—one or two guitars, a standup base, a fiddle, banjo and mandolin. But that was about it. I could not begin to describe it accurately, but from my perspective the music was all good, all enjoyable and some of it spectacular.

The program that we received when we entered listed about 50 performing groups doing 45-minute sessions that happened over the two and a half days in four venues including the mainstage where the afternoon and evening sessions happened and which could accommodate over 2,000 people, all of whom brought their own chairs and some of whom stood in front of the stage dancing and jumping to the music, not so great for people like us sitting on the second row but indeed a spectacle. My favorite group were the Brothers Comatose but there were others with names like “the Traveling Wildfires,” “Slap Dragon,” “Red Skies,” “Tricky Britches,” and “The Faux Paws.” And they came from all over, several from San Francisco and New England, various parts of Appalachia, some from the South but also from Sweden, Norway, The Czech Republic and Mexico. And the performers were mostly young, 25-40 somethings, engaging, energetic and excellent musicians with almost as many women as men performing.

And what is about the Millennials generation that encourages so many men to have beards and women to have tattoos?

But as great as the music was, that was just the backdrop for what to an outsider like me seemed like a love feast. Old friends were embracing, small children riding on the backs of their parents, older kids riding bikes, teenagers chilling out in small groups, old folks sitting in rocking chairs around campfires. And the music was not confined to the formal venues. Jam sessions were happening everywhere. Maybe two or three people would pull out guitars and a fiddle at their campsite, and within minutes the group would begin to expand to include someone with a banjo or mandolin or even a standup base. I was told that there is an etiquette that before entering a jam session, someone wandering in with an instrument needed a nod of approval before playing. I was also told that about  a quarter of the 2,000 or so campers never attended any of the formal music of Ossipee spending all their time in jam sessions.

And if music was not your thing, there was always the Ossipee River where you could drift downstream in your large innertube where at the end you would be met by, yet another band comprised of friends of Jes and Peter. Throughout the week there was an endless march of people dragging enormous innertubes headed to the river or coming back.

And perhaps best of all there was no talk about politics, no Trump or MAGA bumper stickers, no political signs of any type. What a relief from our lives outside of Ossipee where we are bombarded by politics and the sad state of our democracy! At one point it occurred to me that if there is a heaven or an afterlife, this is what I would want it to be like– moving from one jam session to another, listening to terrific music, hanging out with close friends and family, embracing loved ones, sitting around campfires and surrounded by music which is hopeful, upbeat and affirming.

If only. If only….

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