aka HAPPY NEW YEAR! How old are you? Me? I’m 60. Convert your age into months. Me? 723 months. The average lifespan of the adult male in the US is 74.8 years, for women it is 76.3. That’s 897 months and 912 months respectively. The average human lifespan is less than 1,000 months. And that’s assuming we make it that long. There Are NO Guarantees. To Seat this Fact: Make a quick mental list of all you know who haven’t made that 74.8- and 76.3-year likely expiration date—be it accident, disease, luck of the draw. I repeat: There Are NO Guarantees. If you are a male and are 38 years old or older, you have already used up over half of your average lifespan reserve. Halfway done if you are a female 39 or older. Subtract your current lived months from your average lifespan months to get your lifespan reserve. Me? That’s 174 months remaining. That is a concerning number that diminishes each day. You have slept for an approximate 1/3 rd of your life. You wi...
What follows is from Augustus Baldwin Longstreet’s 1835 volume, “ Georgia scenes, Characters, Incidents.” This volume of reminiscences from Longstreet, who would go on to become a lawyer, state superior court judge, Methodist minister and president of the colleges of Emory, Centenary, the University of Mississippi and the University of South Carolina tells of a common scene in the early days of the Southern US of A [and I can vouch for the spirit holding true though my own Southern youth.] No less a personage than fellow Southerner Edgar Allan Poe remarked of this account of a Fight “ Although involving some horrible and disgusting details of southern barbarity it is a sketch unsurpassed in dramatic vigor, and in the vivid truth to nature.” [Longstreet sets the scene.] “ In the younger days of the Republic there lived in the county of---- two men, who were admitted on all hands to be the very best men and the county; which, in the Georgia vocabulary, means they could flog...