While I’m rather comfortable with time, Acton, I believe more in the stages of life than I do in retirement. I once considered, should this profession taper and travel becomes impossible for me, that I may spend quiet nights somewhere with dramatic, shifting landscapes.
Although, as the best laid schemes of mice and men go often askew, I plan nothing for myself. I prefer my ‘retirement’ to benefit the maximum number of persons possible. I suppose some day, we may learn more.
While there is no one person that I wish had not joined the crew (and instead, led a different life), I will admit that there were some members that could not stay. I've taken these as lessons learned, of course.
I'm sure for the same reasons you'd want to keep Mikal. Who hasn't a penchant to hire a Middle Eastern 'specialist' with cultural understandings of the esoteric Druze, the Yehudim Yisraelim, and one who has roots in Hinduism?
((So... the folks called me upstairs to help figure out how to get their SSI paperwork to the new landlord... we were discussing it, when the landlord emailed that all three of us are denied... mostly the main thing was "poor rental history; insufficient income (they're on SSI); no credit file; if no judgment was rendered on them after they appealed the initial eviction notice, then they gave their 30 days notice, can they rescind that (this is Minnesota, ya shure, ya betcha) and stay?
Michelangelo wrote a poem about how much he hated painting the Sistine Chapel...One translation of the poem he sent to his friend begins: I’ve already grown a goiter from this torture, hunched up here like a cat in Lombardy(or anywhere else where the stagnant water’s poison).
Something just dawned on me. You know how we went from two digit years to four digit years because of the Y2K bug? In like 9K years we'll have to go to 5 digit years to combat the problem again