LAST GAME

• My sister Laura drove over from Orlando yesterday to meet with me and cousins Bob and Kathy at the ballpark. (She took this photo but none of us are in it.) Tonight will be the 4th game I've seen since I got here and I return home tomorrow. It has been very hot in Florida. At the start of each game they announce the temp (85 degrees yesterday) and they also give the temp of the opponents home city. Yesterday it was 47 in Boston. Everyone smugly cheered about the heat in Sarasota. I groaned. I'll take the 47 any day. After 10 years in Maine I am clearly not adjusted to this hot box.
  
• My talk the other night at the Unitarian Church in Bradenton was well received by most. There were a couple Democratic Party loyalists who didn't take kindly to my critiques of their president and their party. Let's just say it got a bit energetic and interesting during the Q & A. I told my hosts that if George W. Bush was still president the "critics" would have all loved my talk and cheered my attacks on him. But with Obama in power the liberals just can't cotton to such bi-partisan accountability. One of the women at the talk just called and asked me to come back next year - she said if I would agree she'd get started working on it now. That's planning ahead!