"Nobody believes the official spokesman... but everybody trusts an unidentified source." - Ron Nesen

They did a segment on The Today Show this morning about buying sunglasses. In order to look your best you're supposed to pick a pair based on the shape of your face.
Who knew? (not me)
Who cares? (not me)
There's a real freedom that comes with advancing years. Which is why men here wear plaid shorts and over-the-calf black socks.
I don't have that much freedom.

Hmmm. U.S. Open Tennis Tourney or RNC??
Sports or Speeches?

Did I get a sore in my mouth because I bit my lip at lunch or did I bite my lip at lunch because I was developing a sore?
Ouch!

I'm currently reading "The Mark Inside" by Amy Reading. It's non-fiction, about a Texas rancher who got played in a sophisticated con back in the 1920's and then went on a consuming mission to track down and bring to justice the gang that swindled him. It runs just over 300 pages in hardcover, but I'm reading it on my Kindle, so I only know I'm about 55% of the way through. It's interesting, but certainly not summer reading. It reminds me of Moby Dick, which has whole, loooong chapters about the anatomy and habits of whales. This book has chapters, not quite that long, about how cons work, the history of cons in the U.S. from colonial days through the early 20th century, some of the biggest cons during that period, what cons have in common with stock market speculation....
and the list goes on.
Some of it has been pretty interesting, like the section on money before our country had a single currency. Each state had its own, which made interstate state (or earlier, inter-colony) commerce tricky. And counterfeit currency was more common than the real thing. So, how did you know what to accept?
A: it didn't really matter. If you were convinced it was real and had value, it did. Then you had to convince the next person it was real and had value.
Q: Is that substantively different from our paper money system which isn't backed by anything except a vague agreement that it has value, even if that value changes from day to day?
The part about the guy who got conned and his response is good. And because archival info exists to amplify his own account - newspaper articles, police and court records, others' memoirs - it's also a glimpse into life in the west at a unique time in our country's history. Railroads opening the territories, the wealthy driving cars while many were still using horses, govt. officials who could be bought off...
OK, not everything has changed.

We have the AC set at 81. The location of the thermostat means that the back of the house, where the two bedrooms are, is significantly cooler than the front, with probably a two or three degree difference. But even at 83 or so it's livable because we have a ceiling fan over the area where our recliners and TV are located. They say the air from a fan moving over skin makes it feel like the room is 3-8 degrees cooler, and we have our fan on the highest setting. Think helicopter blades.

But that's one of the things I don't like about the ceiling fan - the noise of that moving air. In counseling centers they put little fans outside the doors of each room because they provide enough white noise to provide cover for the conversations going on in the rooms. Take the noise of the ceiling fan and add to it the noise of the AC when it kicks on (way too often this time of year) and we have to crank the TV volume way up to hear. Even then we miss some dialog and the details of news stories.

Each region of the country has its downside. After 17 years of brutal Michigan winters...
Yeah, I'll turn up the volume.