The Written Word

The joy of writing…

Pilgrim on a Long, Long Journey

The written word, how valuable it is. Mesopotamia developed the first written words,

“The cuneiform script, created in Mesopotamia, present-day Iraq, ca. 3200 BC, was first. It is also the only writing system which can be traced to its earliest prehistoricorigin. This antecedent of the cuneiform script was a system of counting and recording goods with clay tokens.” This quotation is from the abstract of a University of Texas online article by Denise Schmandt-Besserat. (See: https://sites.utexas.edu/dsb/tokens/the-evolution-of-writing/)

It was of course central to establishing civilizations, i.e. records had to be kept. Reproducible written literature then became doable.

I love what started those thousands of years ago. I am having a mind to mind connection with you. Likely, after we are both gone, I will still be having mind to mind connections with others. It may simply be my grandchildren and great grandchildren etc. reading my memoirs and perhaps my…

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Sea and Hill

“Wood, sea, and hill were the intimacies of my childhood, and they have never lost their spell for me.” John Buchan, a Scottish novelist.

The hills of Dayton, Ohio, were a part of my childhood. Then, at ten years of age, the family moved to the flattest place I have ever lived, Miami, FL. It was so flat it had (has) a street system with numbers and letters that made MapQuest unnecessary. But oh how I missed those hills as a child, the views from them and towards them.

I suppose that is why I was enamored of California from the first time I saw the Rose Bowl, where the magnificent mountains covered the horizon. It is one of several reasons my wife and I have lived in Southern California these past 43 years.

However, Biscayne Bay and the Atlantic Ocean became my go-to places of serenity as a teen in Miami, now replaced in adulthood by the pacific Pacific. The majesty of those bodies of water, the variety of blues and greens across those waters, and the rare dead calm unstirred my soul.