A beautiful day in Honolulu, and life is wonderful.  My view as I compose this posting. If you have been with me recently, I'm into a series called MY LIFE, now in Part 3, my retirement years.  Coincidentally, I'm in the middle of Pearl's Ashes, ceremonies I performed at the Taj Mahal ( to be 3G ), Machu Picchu and other global sites. Why this specific topic today is that I was looking at these now blooming African Blood Lilies , and thought back to this day, July 19, which also happened to fall on Sunday...Pearl's final day. She was perfectly healthy until around mid-June of 2019, when she appeared somewhat exhausted.  Her doctor recommended that she go to Kuakini Hospital to get a small series of tests.  For some reason, they gave her an anti-biotic injection, and that led to her body overreacting.  So she was told to stay overnight for observation. This led to her in a few days being sent into intensive care, and placed on sedation, using propofol.  I re...

This is Sunday, so it's only appropriate for me to focus on how  religion was largely responsible for the beginning of alcoholic refreshments .  Why monastic origins? They owned vast tracts of land to plant grapes, barley, etc. There is a long institutional memory. Teamwork was part of their daily task. Alcohol for much of history promoted health to kill pathogens.  Roman soldiers were given a daily allowance of wine, more to purify water than to get drunk.  Whiskey, herbal liquers and bitters were invented for medicinal reasons. Water was dangerous to drink in Europe, so beer was the only safe thirst-quenching drink. Then, of course, the  Eucharist . Some history: Of course, alcoholic abuse can be a serious problem, but it is not sinful to drink and make merry, responsibly.  Wine was invented 6000 years before the birth of Christ, probably in Babylonia, but Benedictine and Jesuit monks preserved viniculture in Europe.  The motivation had to do with Eu...