"Amazing tradition. They throw a great party for you on the one day they know you can't come."

I'm supposed to be on island time today.  Didn't work out that way, everything changed last night.  Nothing terrible, but the entire weekend - including today - was completely rearranged.  The older I get, the more disruptive that is.  I'm good with it though, after my nap.

Thank you everyone.  Overnight R&A crossed the 2000 hit mark.  That's amazing to me and I really

appreciate your loyalty.

Today's is a very short piece, inspired by a conversation I had with #3 and 4 in the truck this afternoon picking up #1 from camp.  #2, of course, is out shopping...

Half Full
By Jonathan Stark
July, 2013

Nobody noticed, but today was very special.  Statistics tell us that someone, somewhere in the world, has died in the time it took to tell you this.  The "official", kind of old statistic on the internet, is actually 1.8 people per second.  In the heart beat you stopped to let that sink in, 4 people died.  We don't know most of them so for us, the only statistic that matters is how often someone we care about dies.  That's why today doesn't seem special to anyone.

Statistics are an average, to arrive at the 1.8 number, "they" calculated the total number of deaths during the year and then divided it out for a monthly rate, daily rate, hourly rate, minute, and the morbid 2 per second.  But in any given second there may not be 1.8 people dying.  Nor 105 in any given minute.  Nobody notices though, if it's 5 in a second or none - we only care about the death of those close to us.  That's why today has gone unnoticed.

I'm happy for today, a day when the statistics were beaten and nobody died.  It should be a national holiday.  Of course, statistically speaking, tomorrow's going to be a bear.  A lot of people who didn't notice today will be painfully aware of tomorrow.  The friends and family of 151,650 people, to be precise.  But I won't worry about that today.  I'm not a half-empty kind of person.