Caught a ride with a friend en route to spend the long July 4 weekend at CoolFont, the resort hotel in Berkeley Springs, W Va., where my son works. My friend's dog came with us, as CoolFont is pet-friendly. We ate lunch in the hotel dining room the next day with my son.

My son’s home in the woods is some 1 ½ to 2 miles from the hotel along a dirt path, so it’s blessedly quiet out there. No TV, radio, phone, or internet. The view from my bedroom window includes an abandoned structure, built in the resort’s heyday. The resort was once a huge sprawling enterprise but was abandoned years ago and is now being resurrected by the new owner.

While my son was away at work, I spent considerable time outdoors, but always close by the house, as my balance is not good on irregular terrain. Oak forests stretched out as far as the eye could see, butterflies flickered among the wildflowers, and I saw flocks of deer passing by and a turtle just plodding along. I also read back issues of the New Yorker that my friend had passed on to me, destined to go next to the local library.

An article that impressed me was Jianyang Fan’s story about her relationship with her mother who died of ALS at age 69 after an 8-year illness. The author addressed herself as ”you” and mother and daughter almost seem to merge into one person in that account. Personal History, A Mother’s Exchange for Her Daughter’s Future, Two lives bound into one story by immigration and illness, New Yorker, June 5, 2023.

Back once again in DC, I arrived in time for the fireworks on July 4, viewing and hearing them from my home, not so very far away.

Outdoor summer movies have started nearby.

AP, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter mark 77th wedding anniversary at home in Plains, Georgia Already on this blog and in my books, I’ve chronicled my friendship with former President Carter and his wife, so won’t repeat that here. They are both genuine, down-to-earth folks. I’m pretty sure they would remember me. Mr. Carter, at 98, is still hanging in there after announcing a few months ago that he was foregoing any further medical treatment.

A local lady has just celebrated her 107^th birthday.

A local man climbed up high atop an overpass.

Local artist Jacob Folger posted 2 new paintings.

Wash. Post, Tuesday was Earth’s hottest day in possibly 125,000 years

Wash. Post, Earth entering ‘uncharted territory’ as heat records quickly shatter

It certainly has felt like record heat!! (I’m sitting at the computer right now in my underwear.)

A message from Amnesty International: Hundreds of Cubans remain imprisoned for participating in island-wide protests on 11 July 2021. The Cuban judiciary, which is not independent of the government, routinely rubberstamps politically motivated accusations without regard for fair trial guarantees. Among those unjustly convicted are Black activists, and leaders of the Yoruba religion, Loreto Hernández García and Donaida Pérez Paseiro, who are prisoners of conscience detained only because of their political beliefs, and who should be immediately and unconditionally released.

Smithsonian Folklife Festival

June 29–July 4 & July 6–9, 2023

National Mall, Washington, D.C.

I don‘t even want to know details of all the murders that took place over the July 4 weekend while I was away in W Va. Yahoo News, July 4 gun violence: 14 dead and scores wounded in U.S. mass shootings From Fort Worth to Philadelphia, another holiday ends in a hail of bullets.

Abortion pills require less staff than medical abortions, so fewer folks now have abortion jobs, which often just require someone sending out pills. Might those unemployed abortion practitioners now consider moving over to pregnancy and delivery?

The Hill, Texas abortion ban led to almost 10,000 additional live births That doesn’t seem like such an unfortunate net outcome for those additional 10,000 kids or for the state of Texas.

NBC News, Adoption, not abortion?' How the Dobbs decision is affecting adoption in the U.S.

There has been a small uptick in babies being relinquished for adoption in states where abortions have become harder to get. Women who follow through with an unwanted and unexpected pregnancy usually end up keeping the baby, not relinquishing the child. But this article follows a young single woman, already with a small son, who places her 2^nd child with a couple willing to enter into an open adoption, allowing her to keep updated on how he is doing. Might the US birthrate rise once again? What goes around comes around, though that might not be the right metaphor.

What is considered socially permissible oscillates and sometimes reverts to an earlier form. That was what I meant to say. United Methodists are no longer united on LGBTQIA issues. Something like that may be happening now with abortion bans and also with a slowdown on trans reversals. Going back to mainly natural processes would remove some complications from the lives of transpeople, such as the often-frustrating effort of a male-to-female trans individual trying unsuccessfully to breastfeed an infant not produced by that person’s own body. A return to the simple basics of human existence and to behavior patterns already in play for millennia would remove some complications from lives already complicated enough by just the challenges of daily living. Do people today in developed countries now have perhaps too much “choice”?

Sending asylum seekers entering Britain to Rwanda as a “safe country,” presumably under some sort of financial arrangement with Rwanda, would be a rather convoluted way to offload the asylum issue as well as to deter future migrants. As a former board member of a Rwanda-oriented charity and in light of documented human rights abuses in that country, that plan strikes me as pretty wacky. So far, fortunately, it hasn’t gone anywhere

Wash. Post, Belarus leader says Wagner’s Prigozhin is in Russia; four killed in Lviv attack I’m having some trouble following all of this. Vladimir Putin’s image has certainly suffered a blow as he no longer seems invincible, but he has wisely downplayed events involving the Wagner group and its leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, who may or may not be in Belarus, or may actually be in Russia. Putin is carrying on with business as usual, acting unconcerned. He did not come out very well, but he avoided more publicity and escalation. Putin is a mortal man, only as strong as other people think he is, but he momentarily revealed himself to be vulnerable. If he should be gone, there is no guarantee that his successor would be any better; in fact, maybe even be worse, so let’s be careful what to wish for.

Let’s not forget lost local pets. Some may have been featured before, but have gone missing again. Others have been found by Humane Rescue.