Happy Indigenous People Day – it just rolls off your tongue. Or captured in this famous rhyme: In Fourteen Hundred and Ninety Two Indigenous People sailed the ocean blue. We celebrated the occasion here in Portland by breaking windows at the Oregon Historical Society and other related destruction, including the statutory rape of Abraham Lincoln and other monumental treasures. It was just another night of “peaceful” demonstrations that have become the painful norm in our city. It’s not the reason we’re moving to Florida, but certainly a deterrent in living here. 

I have a flat tire to get fixed today and baseball to watch. Last night, it was a sportsman’s dream with the Lakers winning the NBA title, Rays over Astros in game one of the MLB playoffs, the Portland Timbers earning their fifth straight match, and the Seahawks’ thrilling last minute victory over the Vikings. Four major sporting events competing against each other on the same night for television viewership. Unprecedented scheduling! I also managed to get in another episode of Fargo Season Four. 

Television, with the exception of newscasts, takes my mind off the riots, ugly politics, rainy weather, and thoughts of mortality. My dad died six years ago, just weeks after my mother passed away. I think of them often, almost like they are just living miles apart, as was the case most of my adult life. Yesterday, I also saw a Facebook post listing 163 names of my high school classmates that have left the face of the earth. None were really surprising, it was just disturbing to see them all grouped together. The total is more than my wife had in her entire graduating class, but only about 16% of mine. There’s also the genealogy research work that I do and commonly seeing the hyphen between birth and death dates. As they say, it’s what you do with the dash that defines your legacy. It still makes me wonder why I’m still around, or why they had to go? Death is the greatest mystery of life. May they all rest in peace.

I’m fortunate to be alive, healthy, and intact. I watched Alex Smith triumphantly return to the NFL yesterday after a life-threating broken leg two years ago, and then saw Dak Prescott carted off the field with a gruesome season-ending ankle injury.  Life is full of twists and turns – comedy and tragedy. I’d like to see nothing but rainbows, but my pessimistic mind doesn’t work that way. I’m surrounded by a pandemic threat or worse. It’s best to keep my mind on silly sporting events, mindless television viewing, collecting baseball cards or relatives, writing this blog, and running every day.