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I’ve been dimly aware that my 51st wedding anniversary was creeping up on me for a while. This time it slipped past me until the seven of us entered Universal Studios in Orlando on our first day and someone was handing out buttons for visitors with special occasions. My daughter piped up “yes its their 51st anniversary.”
I did wake up in the morning and read the news but until the end of the day I was consumed by revisiting attractions of the past and my family’s day in the parks. We got to all four of Universal’s in Orlando but only 1 hour of that was in their waterpark. It was about enough time for me to do the volcano’s free fall. It was nothing compared to one of the roller coasters on the last day visiting the newest park, Epic. Stardust Racers clocks a top speed of 62.6 mph and I was OK for the first 80 percent of it and began suffering in the final moments feeling every bit my 74 years. The other five who zoomed along with me were fine. Claudia watched because her heart mechanics can’t be trusted under such duress. She weathered all the lesser rides we took on.
This trip cleared my mind of blogging which is a pain to attempt by phone and other than morning news consumption Donald Trump. The many foreign accents we heard proved that everyone likes to visit America and Trump may have put a crimp in this but there are limits even to his larcenies which continue to pile up as we all hold our breath for the predictions of economists to be fulfilled or for Trump to safely skate on thin ice.
I’m rooting for California voters to shelve their laudable redistricting policies to challenge Texas lawlessness. I hope the Texans and other Red states so dilute their safe districts that any economic pain results in a wave of non Trump congress majority in 2026. The latest South Park episodes offer a taste of the ignominy the Trump grifters are busy trying to set up electoral roadblocks to prevent.
In the meantime our Congressman has abandoned any attempt to communicate his own thoughts to constituents by passing on drivel like this….yes I get GOP and Democrat emails.

And no. It wasn’t in my “spam” folder. It was just another cheap way to make Trumpers paranoid. Poor Trumpers. Elon Musk’s Grok AI is telling inquiring Republicans that most of what Trump claims is in fact false although it also tells them that the best spokesmen for white men is Adolph Hitler. Musk still has some work to do.
Another task that kept Trump out of my mind was finishing the short novella by John Steinbeck. I bought it from one of several French librairies (bookstores) in my 2018 trip. They call their libraries, bibliotheques (with an accented e). I nibbled at a few pages for years but only got past page 13 this spring. Even pages are in English odd pages are in French. They both start and stop with the same word when possible. Usually French translations require more verbiage so the odd pages are usually several lines longer. I really got moving on the flight to Florida reading about 35 pages in English and the same in French. I finished it on the flight and bus ride back to Duluth. I’d never read it before but I recall seeing the movie forty years ago. Some of the French escaped me but golly I felt good. Today I had Claudia order The Great Gatsby and The Old Man and the Sea in bilingual editions. Literature is a challenge compared to the straightforward translations I find in Quora.com. There is an entire tense for words that is strictly literary.
While I was in Florida Professor Tim Westcott, the Director of the George S. Robb Centre for the study of the Great War, called me to let me know that he had been invited to the French Embassy in DC to honor the Americans of the first world war like my grandfather Robb for whom the Centre was named. I told him I was jealous because I’d been hoping to get elected to Congress and practice my French at the embassy. He also told me that Speaker Johnson had invited him to DC for some memorials. I told him I wasn’t a fan of the Speaker of the House.
Maybe after 2026 I’ll get another crack at it.
Some Vay Cay pics absent most of my family to spare them any association with me:

The old married couple sharing heat in a cold room

Dr. Seuss Carousel at night

Tot admiring the Homer Simpson panoply of characters

The new Epic Park’s iconography and architecture

The wildly popular section devoted to Mario Brothers that overwhelms the senses

My fit bit telling me I’ve been inactive over an hour after standing in line for Mario Brothers

An impressive dragon on stage in the Viking dragon taming story
Between brutally hot humid weather and freezing AC in the attractions it wasn’t hard to remain reasonably comfortable until the younger people’s supercharged fortitude kicked in.
