(Looking and feeling my best on a Sunday morning).

I sent along one of Arrias’s fine ruminations this morning about what happened after the American Civil War. It was an affirmation of how the wounds of a nation could be bound up, and let the healing begin. It was particularly poignant, considering the current hysteria about something that happened 152 years ago, and of which no living American has any actual memory. And some other matters I will get to presently.

As Hurricane Harvey dumps rain on Texas, I am starting to reconsider the plan for retirement and seafront living. We enjoyed a record-setting interval between big storms making landfall in the Continental United States, but all good times come to an end, and three feet of rain after 130-an-hour winds could really interrupt a carefree weekend.

The difference between the hype about the disaster from the Weather Channel and the Chattering Class and the response by grown-ups is remarkable, since I confess to being a weather junkie like everyone else when something is going on. By contrast, I saw Texas Gov. Abbott speak on the news yesterday and was impressed by the calm, yet determined, demeanor he displayed as things were starting to go down. Unlike the Katrina debacle in New Orleans, this seems to be under control, though not without price. According to reports this morning, five people have been killed, more TBD. The deceased mostly drove into floods from which they could not escape.

RIP. Stay inside and have another drink. See if the liquor store delivers.

There is a personal angle in this storm as well. My late Cousin was a long-time resident of Galveston, and experienced major storm damage to her house before. She was an example of a Texas transplant who was totally engaged, and was elected mayor for a couple terms. So there was skin in the game from here, once removed.

Which brings me to the skin removed from my often broken but unbowed nose.

Swimming may be done for the season. My last pair of glasses weakened the skin on my nose under the left support pad which often detached and left the prong of stainless to dig into the frail flesh. I have also been warned to keep up the exfoliation regimen, and which with a good scrub in the shower would sometimes produce, in turn, a shower of Crimson and an embarrassing BandAid over my nose to appear at work.

As a Wolverine whose team’s season has not yet brought me anguish, it is mortifying.

I like to think of it as the same look that Jack Nicholson sported in the film “Chinatown,” but I may be flattering myself.

I think this may have been brought about by the sun exposure this summer with the hour of daily swimming that weakened the skin further and produced an astonishing couple episodes of hemorrhage. Actually kind of spectacular, considering the amount of cleaning up I had to do.

I probably should not have got that deep mahogany tan in the Indian Ocean all those years ago. How do I talk to that impetuous young man and tell him not to do it?

This getting old crap is not for sissies, is it?

Copyright 2017 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com