A good morning.

Good things today. At 8, before the holiday crowds, a brisk 2 mile walk on the beach aware all the time that my new shoes were comfortable and that I was in no pain worth speaking of and in a very beautiful place that changed with every step. Then, shaking the little jar of kibble and calling to the blue jays and having one, then two, appear from nowhere, and feed from my right palm: that was good, although it is getting hard to open a door without being bombarded. Then finding a letter from Spain in 1851 written by a Pruitt cousin to a brother back in Alabama. And why was a boy from a south central Alabama county doing in Spain? Well, the Cubans had sent him and his fellows to Spain to be executed for their bungled liberation of Cuba, the Lopez Expedition. It took me a while to determine that we really are cousins, so he goes in ORNERY PEOPLE, and I learn something, again, about American history. Now, my Bell cousin wrote a whole book about the Mier Expedition, notorious for the black bean killings during the long captivity. A couple of weeks ago, the discovery of the Sparks cousin whose head was crushed open by Confederates at Limestone Cove in 1863. Today, the Alabama boy who was going to liberate an island. Then a breakfast of several different kinds of fruit and berries with a rye roll each, taken out of the freezer at dawn so it could be sliced without microwaving it, and toasted. We eat amazingly well. My rye bread really is exceptionally good. The search for rye flour last month paid off.