From whence the readers? And why must they be that way?

Over the weekend, I read a regular blog by one of my favorite writers, Claire Berlinski, who wrote that she saw an unusually large, sudden increase in her readers. She wondered why, so she did some checking.

It turns out they came from an unusual and unexpected source.

Former Speaker Newt Gingrich has been a regular reader of her work for years and mentioned her blog, “Claire’s Invariably Interesting Thoughts,” on Fox News. She now has many readers from that dark side of the spectrum. Well done, Claire. May they stay long enough to read at least one of your blogs, interesting and thought-provoking as they are. I have my doubts, but one never knows.

However, in keeping with the head-in-the-sand approach to the novel coronavirus and its deadly disease, COVID-19, taken by many on the right, plus Speaker Gingrich's and the new readers from Fox News's "lack of concern," she also wrote this telling bit:

"The novel coronavirus is now the leading cause of death in the United States. If you fear that you or one of your loved ones will die from this virus, it is not irrational at all.

"In April, more Americans died from Covid-19 than from accidents, chronic lower respiratory disease, cancer, or heart disease. Particularly if you live in New York State or New York City, you would be insane to be unconcerned..."

How hundreds of thousands of infections and almost 80,000 deaths in the USA alone fails to raise concern in even the most isolated, jaundiced individual is beyond me.

If you want to read some of Claire's musings that attracted a former Speaker of the House, point your web browser to: https://claireberlinski.substack.com/

Regrets. We all have them.

These days of quarantine, I find myself being drawn more and more to British shows that star older people for some reason.

This one is called 'Edie.' Edie is an 80-something woman whose husband had dies and who rediscovers a long-forgotten goal she had as a much-younger woman - climbing a Scottish peak. Her adult daughter is frustrated by much of what happens in her life, so she sells the family flat and stashes her mom in a 'retirement home,' where she spends her time making flower arrangements and listening to a bad singer sing songs she hates, badly at that.

She lasts less than one week.

Then she finds that postcard with the peak. She calls her daughter, leaves a message, and takes the train to Scotland.

Of course, this is a movie about aging, a film about last chances and opportunities pondered and taken. The last chance to do something longed for, to visit a place dreamt of, to make that one final climb up a peak from long ago. For some reason, that is what attracts me. Well, that and British police dramas.

But as I sit here in my empty house with a full fridge, fancy knives, and high-quality pans, I do not think about food or eating. I tend to think of those things I never did.

Or at least things I imagine I never did.

There is probably some word for that, one kind of like reminiscing about things not done. [Can one truly 'reminisce,' which is defined as "to think about past experiences or events," about things not done, yet dreamt about?]

So. what "things" do I imagine I wanted to do and never did? As a Traveler, with a capital "T" and defined as one who has traveling blood in his veins, as opposed to one who travels (small "t") for work or a living -- like a truck driver -- I can look at a photo of someplace and want to see it in person. A lake in Scotland, a river in Thailand, a mountain in Nepal, a valley in Alaska. Bahá'í Houses of Worship on all continents and local Houses in various countries.

Much of it, of course, is romanticized, like the desire to fly an airplane without a radio across the country I had 40 or more years ago.

Long ago, I read a book by Richard Bach, the author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, called Biplane, written in 1966 that described his mostly-accurate flight much earlier in his life in a time when he could make such a flight in mostly uncontrolled airspace from North Carolina to California after he bought an old World War I trainer biplane. He bypassed airports with operating air traffic control towers, landed in farmers' fields to spend the night, dealt with storms and cold and rain and birds ... and unhappy farmers. He ran out of fuel just short of the runway at his destination, crashed, survived, and wrote a book about it. I do not know how much of it is true and how much is fiction and I do not care. I still have that well-worn book and read it from time to time.

The 80-something protagonist in this movie, Edie makes that one trip that she has wanted to make for her entire life. She braves the loss of an oar in a rowboat, a steep climb that her knees really do not want to make, loss of her protective tent...and she makes the last few steps to the top alone and unaided, to cast her glance over the far distance she has longed to see. And she plants her 'flag' at the top, a pebble she picked up along her journey.

As a 70-something, I ponder all those things. The trips not taken, sights not seen, flights not made. Pilgrimage not made. And I reminisce. Or whatever the word is for thinking about a dream not realized.

Longing, perhaps. Not regret.