How does life get its permanent shape? When do we become adults and take on adult responsibilities? Can we pinpoint that moment? In my case, I know exactly when it happened, and that event is what this story is about.

The Club by Leo Damrosch, biographies of the members of the most famous club of all time, in the late 1700s in London: Samuel Johnson, James Boswell, Edmund Burke, Edward Gibbon, Adam Smith, Joshua Reynolds, Oliver Goldsmith, David Garrick and others, all of them debating, drinking, eating. Reading Damrosch is a window into these illustrious characters.

Be an international spy. But not industrial. Too tame. Real stuff, like being a mole worming one’s way into the upper echelons of an enemy government. That’s something I haven’t done.

Cook, bake, read, solve puzzles, meet with friends (nowadays on Zoom, mostly).

When I worked on ships, 50+ years ago, I memorized hundreds of poems that I liked, mostly by W.B. Yeats, Wallace Stevens and William Blake. When shipmates asked me about this, I said it was my way of having good company when alone, like when doing lookout at night on the bow.

Also, once, when I was camping out in Bagby, west of Yosemite, I foraged wild wheat, managed to grind it with rocks, found clay, shaped a loaf of bread, wrapped it in clay, buried the loaf in a fire pit, and somehow ended up with “bread” which was nearly edible if soaked for a good while.