According to my blogging schedule, every second Monday in the month supposed to be a miscellany of some sort or a miscellaneous post. Today, I’m feeling rather pointless. Not useless but pointless. I gave blood today, so there’s that at least. Afterward, a nap. No writing, little reading, no teaching. (I finished my Summer I grading and turned in final grades for the session yesterday.)

I finally decided to look through some very old blog for July, one of which turned out to be Tuesday, July 14, 2009. That’s, what, sixteen years ago? I was Leesa and I were approaching our 20th wedding anniversary. Lane was about to turn 33 years old, and Raleigh was closing in on 18. I was an Associate Professor at ETSU and Director of the University and Midway Honors Scholars Programs. We had escaped the difficult and embarrassing years of the George W. Bush presidency and were basking in the glow of the new Obama presidency. We were yet seven years from the horrors of Trump’s first presidency, during which we would learn to look back on the Bush years with longing.

Anyway, I guess I was feeling similar 2009 to how I’m feeling today, because that blog post also led me further into the past, to diary entries for 1978 and 1979. On July 14, 1978, I was 19 years old and a music major at Mars Hill College. On July 14, 1979, I was 20 and touring Europe via an AESU student tour.

Here’s the diary entry from 1978 (via my Captain’s Log):

The Walnut Youth Group never recorded an album. I have no memory of Pam Club. The rolling car I stopped and prevented from crashing into something or somebody in the heart of Asheville included one old woman (old to 19-year-old me), who sat in the passenger seat screaming for help.

Here’s the July 14 diary entry from my 1979 summer abroad in Europe:

Skinny dipping Londoners on a boat anchored among the Greek isles.

Forty-six years ago today.