Otis Redding’s famous ballad was written in a boat (not on the dock) just before he died and was published posthumously. I have no intention of croaking any time soon, and what I’m writing here On Zeee Beeech in S-W France, will be published prehumously. I could not, however, resist the comparison. I once lived in a modest house in Sydney, a maid’s tiny flat when I was Down and Out in Paris, in beautiful, mortgaged homes in two of the United States, and, for ten years, in a luxuriously restored French Château, when I was a Director of a multinational’s corporate University. But my favorite place is here, on the deck of my beach-house overlooking the Atlantic and the Bay of Biscay. Hard to beat.
Here I have time to think, time to remember, time to be grateful to my family and many others for making my life, careers and comfortable retirement so enjoyable. Time, above all, to write, usually serious stuff, sometimes frivolous froth like this. Thanks for bothering to read it and the other 575 thought-bubbles already posted.
VIVA LA VITA !
Blind Faith: Blind Folly 
My favorite post yet, Frank. Lucky are those who realize where true happiness lies.
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Indeed Amy. I have just finished reading a short extract which describes how Bill Hayes, the . author of Insomniac City from which the extract was taken, met Oliver Sacks. The article documents briefly the friendship that developed between them and which eventually transformed into a unique type of happiness – contentment and fulfilment really – which one might hope could be achieved by all of us.
Frank seems to have got there.
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Just to be clear : I do not sit on the deck with my legs crossed, hands in air and indexes touching thumbs. I think; therefore I am sunburned. I have more admiration for Hedy Lamarr than for the Dalaï Lama.
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Cogito ego sum – as a would be philosopher of doubtful intelligence might have said.
Of course you’re not just sitting pretty. We know you’re practically occupied almost all day every day enlightening the masses including Amy and me – that’s Aimee to you.
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Hedy Lamarr ? Yessir ! The expertise of the busty actress in Spread Spectrum Technology is not sufficiently recognized. An article about her on the Web says : “The international beauty icon, along with co-inventor George Anthiel, developed a ‘Secret Communications System’ to help combat the Nazis in World War 2. By manipulating radio frequencies at irregular intervals between transmission and reception, the invention formed an unbreakable code to prevent classified messages from being intercepted by enemy personnel.” That’s all true. The fake news is that Trump is thinking of buying a working model of Hedy’s invention to stop the White House from leaking.
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And the film “Hidden Figures” tells us about three African-American women (Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson and Katherine Johnson) who played crucial roles in the early U.S. space exploration program.
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And we like to think we have made major contributions to the world at large and to the people lucky enough to have been alive at the same time as us ! Our most recent contribution has been together immortalizing Lamarr, Vaughan, Jackson and Johnson by mentioning them on our Blog. They are now on the map.
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