But first, tidbits about Juneteenth ( today is a national holiday, and tomorrow will be the first day of summer ) and the Israel-Iran War. Time  magazine agrees with my  Tuesday posting  that, Juneteenth or not,  the struggle for civil rights still continues . President Donald Trump has said his decision to join Israel on strikes against Iran will wait for two weeks. He  says Iran needs some time to decide for itself if it really wants to be decimated .  Fat chance that they will agree to stop trying to become a nuclear power.  And, by the way, there are now nine of them:  US, Russia, China, France, UK, Pakistan, India, Israel and North Korea. The Gerald Ford Task Force has not left Norfolk, Virginia yet, and will probably arrive in the Mediterranean in just about two weeks. Trump seems to be facing some MAGA backlash.  Important elements don't want to join a foreign war.  Yet, most probably would also like to see Iran drop their nuclear...

This is our our 33rd-day of our adventure.  We leave Vancouver in a few hours and will be back in Honolulu tonight.  Some thoughts about this very satisfying journey. My overriding concern was sleep.  Late last year during our two-month itinerary going east on the Norwegian Encore from Seattle to Southampton, followed by a Christmas River Cruise from Amsterdam to Budapest, I began to have difficulty sleeping during the final three weeks.  My worry was that this trip would result in the same because the Oceania cruise was to the east, where we had to make 8 one-hour time changes, shortening the day again. Well, my body remembered that ordeal, did not want a repeat, and kept me sleepy almost all the time.  Compared to not sleeping at all, this was fabulous. Episode 22 of the Kilauea eruption sequence in Halemaumau Crater resulted in 1000-foot fountains of lava.  However, that stopped after 10 hours, which is good, for a continuous eruption can bring volc...

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...