If you've been following my blog, you know that Tuesdays are for nostalgia, and that I've been looking back at those postings featuring Pearl's Ashes.   Last week it was Africa .  Today, the island of Kauai, for a whole chapter of a possible upcoming book,  Pearl's Ashes , will occur on Kauai.  To quote: While she is from the Big Island, Kauai was where we mostly lived the first year of our marriage, and therefore might have been our most memorable stop.  At the Kilauea Sugar Company where I was a trainee, we were provided a cottage with the slippery slide location of the movie   South Pacific   (right, where Bloody Mary sang   Happy Talk   to Liat, played by France Nuyen--and, amazingly enough, Pearl looks just like her, and they were even born in the same year--and Lt. Cable) as our backyard. Below in 1963 with Pepper, a mostly german shepherd she raised from 6 weeks old.  He was so large that the only way I could wash him was to ...

Did you know that President Donald Trump once owned a professional football team? Here he is shaking the hand of one his New Jersey Generals USFL football team players, Herschel Walker, 41 years ago.  Now you know why Trump endorsed Walker on his Georgia Senate campaign, and just named him Ambassador to the Bahamas. In 1985 with Doug Flutie, Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback who signed with Trump. Like almost everything he owns, the United States Football League went bankrupt. Trump played football as a student at the New York Military Academy. He maybe showed up at the Super Bowl because Louisiana, Missouri and Pennsylvania voted for him in the recent presidential election. He played golf with Tiger Woods this morning and will fly into New Orleans to watch the Super Bowl today from the suite of New Orleans Saints owner Gayle Benson. House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana will be there. Had the first phase of my Super Bowl binge as a brunch.  Ingredients for my Bloody Mary....

On November 10, I posted on   how important sleep was for a longer and healthier life .  I Indicated I had a revelation which could well be the key to solving my sleep problem. This clue had to do with the fact that I had difficulty sleeping when my blood pressure was high.  So I searched the world-wide web and found numerous  studies linking poor sleep to high blood pressure .  Amazing, in that I've been taking these hypertension pills for decades and I never in the past connected high blood pressure with trouble sleeping.   From Harvard . Compared to women who slept seven to eight hours daily, those who slept six or five hours were 7% and 10% more likely to develop hypertension. Those women who had trouble falling or staying asleep were 14% to 28% more likely to have high blood pressure. Surely, can't be much different for males, too. But does lack of sleep cause high blood pressure, or vice versa?  From the  Mayo Clinic . Is it true that n...

Dinner on Day 21 was a choice of Beef Wellington in the Garden Cafe buffet, or whatever they have on the menu sit down restaurants.  We picked Manhattan, and had our third best meal of the trip.  Something about the waiter, his aides, food, talk, and length, plus a lot of Dewars White Label and Jack Daniels, plus Chardonnay, helped.  First a plate of Tostadas. I had a corn soup with Caesar Salad. The fried chicken was really good.  But the corn, mashed potatoes and biscuits added. My lowest walk day so far, only 1617 steps. Day 22.  We arrived in Miami. The city of Miami has a population of 6.14 million, but a core of 442,241, 70% Hispanic/Latin. 300 high rises, 61 exceeding 491 feet in height. The cruise port is the busiest in the world in both passenger traffic and cruise lines. Second most visited city/metropolitan area after New York City. Named after the Myaimi River. Only major U.S. city founded by a woman, Julia Tuttle, a wealthy local citrus grower from ...