In  the year of 1876, America was celebrating 100 years of independence. 

  • August 1 – Colorado is admitted as the 38th U.S. state.

  • August 2 – Wild Bill Hickok is killed during a poker game in Deadwood, Dakota.

  • August 8 – Thomas Edison receives a patent for his mimeograph.

Whenever I see or hear of a mention of Edison, I think of my childhood in Florida and a tour of his summer home in Fort Myers. It was one of our first visits on “Tourist Thursday” when we moved here in retirement – nearly 60 years later. We’ll probably do something touristy today, as we try to do every Thursday. Tomorrow evening is a wine tasting event, while Saturday is a 5k race and a musical comedy called Land of the Greedy Mouse, produced by one of our neighbors. We seem to be on the go all the time!

I just finished the Beatle’s documentary, Get Back, and have moved on to season 2 of Tiger King. We also watched a couple of episodes of Lost in Space last night. A wild diversity of weirdness! “Keep Venice Weird” has yet to catch on, as was the motto in Austin and Portland where we previously lived. Tiger King is one of the most bizarre things I’ve ever watched, but it seems to draw me like a train wreck. Joe Exotic’s nemesis is Tampa based, Carole Baskin, who owns an animal sanctuary there, that is not on our list of tourist excursions. Their feud is the basis of the series where apparently season 2 is simply a regurgitation of the true crime story introduced in 2020 by Netflix. You have to see it to believe it!