Ehlana and Ethan:
Congratulations, Chloe and Vic Miklov – You’re Married!
Happy 26th Birthday, Eric Bradley!
We don’t have any news from the wedding yet, but we do want to mention that Cassie is one of Chloe’s bridesmaids while Michael is not in the bridal party too; and the friends’ guest list for the wedding is fairly-small and doesn’t include very many of Cassie’s closest college friends except for the group of friends that Chloe made during Cassie’s first summer semester. The weather is great for the wedding, if a bit on the hot side for things like outdoor photo shoots, but we really don’t have news yet; so we’ll save those stories for when we get them from Cassie and Michael sometime tomorrow after they get home again.
Here at home, we’ve had a fairly-quiet day with some more chores at multiple homes this morning and a lazy play afternoon where we mostly relaxed and cooled off when needed with river swims and frozen treats. We watched the first couple of innings of Zack’s ball game mid-afternoon, but it is a bit hot for sitting on bleachers for hours; so we didn’t stay for the entire game. Right now, Ethan and I are packing overnight bags for our respective sleepovers at Naomi’s or Aiden’s homes. We’re going to have dinner with their families too and will get together for the boys’ baseball game tonight, but Mom and Dad are getting a kid-free night ahead of Dad’s week in Crystal Springs; and we’re happy to spend some quality time with our future in-laws too! That’s all we have for today so far; so let’s wrap this up with a quick world news update.
In the Middle East, two stories that are getting attention for the wrong reasons are about President Trump’s claims that he will soon declare the Strait of Hormuz as a territory of the United States and stories from and about our aircraft carriers related to record-setting deployments that are apparently having a devastating effect on the crews as moral crumbles and conditions on the ships deteriorates and President Trump and other American leaders insist that all is well and ‘our’ ships can handle far-longer missions and deployments without breaks or shore leaves and port calls. Both of those stories are great little examples of how detached from reality our leaders have become; so we’ll simply suggest that the President should move to the aircraft carrier being deployed now to replace the carrier group setting that current deployment record and we’ll see how long he can last without a break – including living in a standard crew bunk and eating in the regular crew mess halls – not in the officer’s mess! A bit of perspective would do our world a lot of good!
For the Ukraine war, the top stories in the west are about Turkey getting the green light from our leaders to send weapons to Ukraine – including ATACMS missiles; and reports of a missile strike on one of Russia’s space centers that may have been targeting a facility related to Russia’s version of Starlink. Both the arms deal and that attack are not going to end well for Ukraine – or Turkey; so we will wait to see how Russia will respond. We can also report that the Russian attacks into Ukraine are expanding again as they work to destroy not only Ukraine’s Black Sea ports and any ships that attempt to unload or load there – they are now targeting rail hubs and the train locomotives to shut down as much of the transportation grid as possible. Since they’ve also been targeting gas stations and that makes it challenging to fuel transport trucks throughout the country; Ukraine’s economy is slowly grinding to a halt and that will be devastating for the people and businesses. That will be especially-true for farmers and related businesses heading into harvests that they may not be able to get from the fields without fuel for equipment or ability to sell those crops to companies that can’t export anything in turn or store the inventory when storage facilities are already full to capacity. For the memory-challenged, last winter was terrible in Ukraine where even the Mayor of Kiev warned citizens that they should flee the city for anywhere else, but this coming winter could be deadly with no heat, electricity, or food – and that will be far-worse for the Ukrainian soldiers – if the front lines can even hold until winter; since their situation will get a lot worse when the fall rains hit and the fields turn into quagmires.
Ethan and I need to get going soon; so let’s wrap up there. We really wish the rest of the world could enjoy the kind of happiness we get to have here in our little town, so while we can’t make that happen everywhere else quite yet; we can at least lead by example; so we’ll go and do that now with some of our favorite people; and we’ll have those stories for you sometime tomorrow!
Until next time, live with love, fellow Magi of the Light!
