Notes From A Bear's Journey

     My original title for this post was Believe Just A Bit (Coin) , but the truth was that I knew very little --er, make that nothing-- about digital currency (digital currencies differ from crypto currencies such as Bitcoin...what??)  If you're in a similar state, wondering what the difference is between Dogecoin and Shiba Inu, much less Tether and Bit Coin (now recognized as currency in El Salvador), perhaps even China's RMB, then welcome to my corner.  Which is not to say that people aren't diving into accepting this new method of "currency ."  One restaurant owner in San Francisco, who used to accept payment in Bitcoin when it was valued at just a few hundred dollars, recently made so much money selling his early Bitcoins that he retired much earlier than planned.  Still not sure how digital and crypto currencies are traded, or taxed, or how many such currencies there might be?  An article in Time noted: According to some estimates, a fifth of the global po

    The clouds of late fall are always a changing spectacle as storms come and go and the sun drops lower and lower in the sky (actually, it's not the sun dropping at all but rather our planet's orbit "tilting" its angle to the sun).  It's all a reminder, along with the slurry of leaves that continue to tax my mulching mower, that one had better ready oneself for the next season, that cold is coming and that shortages or changing tastes may be on the horizon...inflation comes in many forms.  Just a quick peek outside shows nature's workers already nestled in well ahead of time as squirrels and bees, ants and hummingbirds, all no longer seem to make an appearance.  It would seem that the only ones oblivious to what may be waiting ahead for us might be ourselves, the bevvy of new cars populating the roads and the homes that continue to sell well above their asking prices, blurring our vision temporarily (we hope).  Retailers appear to sense the restless mood up

     My tooth was rotting, as in causing my root-canaled, crowned molar to simply drop off onto the car seat as I talked.  Yuck.  That's gotta go, my dentist told me; talking about the tooth; "you won't miss it."  But it was a part of me, I thought, the first body part (other than my wisdom teeth back when I was about to become a teen) to actually be removed from my body, never to be seen again.  No big deal, my friends told me; and indeed it was out and gone in about 10 minutes, sawed into 3 pieces and pulled our root by root (I was numbed up so there was nothing but a few bits of tugging and such to feel; the back molars have 3 roots which I didn't realize).  And as I ventured home, my tongue now exploring the space with a feeling of what-happened?, I couldn't help but think of 1) how much the world of such "operations" have changed; and 2) that having my tooth taken out was nothing when compared to being told that your leg or your breast had to be