Arthur

Arthur grazed the Heights this morning, as you can see from the WunderMap below. See the little red “pin” just left of the yellow-green blob? That’s me. But the rain stayed away, and the only wind was gentle puffs of air that came through the open window beside my bed.

I must have awakened around 5 or 5:30. I didn’t look at the clock, but it was pre-dawn, and the daylight peeking through the Venetian blinds was gray. The air coming through the open window beside my bed was cool in a refreshing way. I don’t usually run the a/c during the night, and sometimes the house warms up a bit because the exterior walls are still warm from the day’s sunshine, and so the cool air coming through the window felt good. I lay on top of the sheets. The gray dawn lingered for a long time, it seemed, and the cool breezes though the window lingered, and it was very pleasant, and I didn’t want to get up. But I finally did – get up, that is – around 7:30.

By noon the air is 79° and the day is sunny. It’s the fourth of July, of course. I was studying the Declaration of Independence and noticed a bit of punctuation that everyone has apparently overlooked. It’s a period. In England, I believe it’s called a full stop. What I found was that this bit of punctuation – this period, lost until now – totally changes the meaning of the document. When he wrote the Declaration, Thomas Jefferson was trying to express his admiration for England’s King George III and how nice it was to be a British subject. You see, Jefferson was quite the Loyalist. But unfortunately, due to that lost bit of punctuation, the colonists thought he was calling for a War of Revolution. Before Jefferson knew what was happening, events had unfolded way out of control and, well, the rest is history. America became an independent nation because of that lost period. (You may not believe me but remember, you’re reading it on the Internet so it has to be true. I couldn’t write it if it wasn’t so.)

Happy Fourth of July!