I'd like to start off with a story from "A Treasury of Jewish Folklore."

An Author's Life After Forty

A young Talmudic scholar who had just completed a learned work came to Rabbi Elijah, the Gaon of Vilna, and begged him for a testimonial. Rabbi Elijah regarded his visitor with gentle compassion. "My son," he said to him,"you must face the stern realities. If you wish to be a writer of learned books you must be resigned to peddle your work from house to house like a vendor of pots and pans and suffer hunger until you're forty."
"And what will happen after I'm forty?" asked the young writer, hopefully.
Rabbi Elijah smiled encouragingly, "By the time you're forty you'll be quite used to it!"

And now, for something completely different: I went to Cooperstown, NY, on Wednesday. Papa and I drove around town looking at the lovely Victorian and Georgian architecture, walked around the Fenimore Art Gallery, and visited the Farmer's museum, where I learned all about growing hops, which is useless to me as I don't like beer. I also bought a set of dominoes, a game at which Papa always soundly trounced me when I was little, and apparently always will, based on the results of that evening's game. I also bought some postcards depicting the Baseball Hall of Fame, just so I could tell my baseball-fan friends that I went to Cooperstown and didn't go to the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Don't get me started on why I'm so bitter in regard to organized sports. I shall say this: I'm a musician who always had the misfortune to attend schools with winning teams. If you don't understand that comment, I'm not going to waste my time on you.

Happy 4th of July! Please note that this is the only date on the calendar for which we Americans use th European order of dates--day, month, year. It's a sensible system that I use year-round, except that I don't like the options for that order that Blogger offers in its collection of date formats.

Date formats. Doesn't that sound like something that an internet dating agency would offer you choices of? Not that I'd know anything about internet dating, of course. Wink, wink, sweetheart. Care to share what date format you're interested in?