Blog 3664 – 11.15.2025

Birthday Week

Today begins my Birthday Week. It is a trick I learned from my dear departed daughter Emily, this trick of extending our personal holiday from merely a day to a week and then a month. Fifteen days ago I began my birthday month with All Saints Day and next Saturday I will celebrate the actual day followed by an addition eight days of post birthday celebrations marking the seventy-fifth anniversary of my arrival in this particular adventure in space and time.

I never dreamed when I was a teen in the mid-nineteen sixties that I would have this long a run. Many of my classmates did not. I like to joke about the old saying, “Only the good die young” that I fully expect to be around a while.”

In one of my favorite movies, Grumpier Old Men, famed character actor Burgess Meredith reprises his role as Jack Lemmon’s aging and out-spoken father.  He has outlived all his friends and says he thinks that God has forgotten him. When Jack’s best buddy’s son informs him of his father’s passing he tells him, “God remembered your dad.”

We are, I believe each of us, as one of my favorite book’s titles goes “Strangers In A Strange Land.” The length and details of our mission here are revealed on a need to know basis at the last possible moment. Surprise, surprise, like that surprise birthday party.

I had a birthday party for my fifth birthday and I got a new bike and lots of gifts. That is the only actual birthday party held in my honor that I  recall, but don’t weep for me Argentina for I firmly believe with Muppets Band Leader, Doctor Tooth, that “There’s a party all the time for them that choose.”

That is more than enough cliches for today from the birthday boy.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David James White