High Summer

Today would have been my late father's birthday-he would have been 90. We miss him, with all his faults.

The small child in the baby dress was him as a young child. The other folks are some of my favorite people.

He rarely talked about his childhood or his growing up years in south Florida, and he was always a very private person-to the extent that sometimes I think I never really knew him very well.

What he believed in was character and endurance and taking responsibility for your actions. All of which are good values to live your life by, even if you come by them by a process of trial and error as I did.

Parenthetically, his declining years demonstrated that living under someone's sufferance is a harsh regime indeed, and one which we will not forget and do not forgive.