Well, waddaya know – I turn 71 today.

There are days I feel every bit of that, but there are also days when I get up feeling 17.

Which makes me wonder…am I elderly and dyslexic, too?

Aah, what the hell. I’m enjoying my geezerhood, and I hope my graying brothers and sisters out there are, too.

90 COMMENTS

  1. Thanks for everything you’ve done, and continue to do for us all, Mas. Happy Birthday and many more to come. We still ( perhaps now, more than ever) need your wisdom!

  2. Happy Birthday Mas, hope the day was great for you. I have liked your posts over the years an have learned a lot from them. Be safe and careful. Jim

  3. Happy Birthday, Mas! You are nine days older than I am. I understand completely about being a lysdexic senior teen!

  4. From your Australian mate from Las Vegas – happy birthday and many many more to come. Being ‘left handed, dyslexic, illiterate and Australian I sympathize with you ;). Thanks for all you have done for the good fight.

    All the best Grant

  5. Attitude is everything. If you think that you’re old, you’ll be old. If you think that you’re young, you’ll be young.

    I know 80 year old people who are active, vibrant, and great fun to be around. I also know 30 year olds who seem to be ready for the nursing home.

    Keep doing what brings you joy and satisfaction, and never give in to old age.

  9. Happy Birthday Mas…I’ve got you by two years, turned 73 this past week. I might be a crab but certainly not a grump! Mas stay safe and most of all healthy…your knowledge and training has done more than you know…Carl M LFI I Aug. 1984 Goffstown, N.H.

  12. Happy belated uncle Mas, you old fossil! I recently had a bday as well, and what did I do? Well, of course, I went both shooting and fishing with my eldest and Mommy Beagle (EP’s counterpart in the West) plus of course a few cool Coors Banquets after the action. Hang around for many more years, I do hope to get to one of your classes some day!

  13. Most Happy & Healthy belated Birthday wishes, with many more to come! May you & yours enjoy every sunrise & sunset for years to come.

  14. Happy Birthday Darlin !! Hope you had a wonderful day.

    Ah aging… When I wake up in the morning and something wasn’t hurting I would think I was dead.

    You wear “geezerhood” well and I expect you will continue to do so.

    Here’s to many more birthdays…..

  17. Happy birthday, Mas. You might follow the example of Irish astronomer Patrick Moore. The first thing he did every day was to read the obituaries. If he didn’t find his name there, he continued with his usual routine.

  19. Well, Happy Birthday, Mas but, but you’re still a youngster ! Yet

    Hope you surpass my my 83+ Birthdays
    also!!

    Paul

  20. 71 years old on July 20th, which means you turned 21 and became old enough to drink alcoholic beverages on the day that American astronauts first landed on the moon 50 years ago. Wow, that’s old! Did you have to dodge dinosaurs while walking to school?

  21. Sorry to “Go Off this Happy Topic,but will be “UP To US, and Our Like Minded Voting Friends, come 2020 Elections, To Save The America That WE have Known, Loved, and Defended, or it Will BECOME A SOCIALIST,TOTALITARIAN COUNTRY THAT WHICH I KNOW I, AND NONE OF MAS’ BLOGGERS WOULD WANT TO SURVIVE IN?

    Read THIS:
    Christopher Key June 13 Please take time to read this excellent view of America by a 26 yr. old young lady from a Facebook post. Well written thoughts. “I’m sitting in a small coffee shop near Nokomis trying to think of what to write about. I scroll through my newsfeed on my phone looking at the latest headlines of Democratic candidates calling for policies to “fix” the so-called injustices of capitalism.
    I put my phone down and continue to look around. I see people talking freely, working on their MacBook’s, ordering food they get in an instant, seeing cars go by outside, and it dawned on me. We live in the most privileged time in the most prosperous nation and we’ve become completely blind to it.
    Vehicles, food, technology, freedom to associate with whom we choose. These things are so ingrained in our American way of life we don’t give them a second thought.
    We are so well off here in the United States that our poverty line begins 31 times above the global average. Thirty. One. Times.

    Virtually no one in the United States is considered poor by global standards. Yet, in a time where we can order a product off Amazon with one click and have it at our doorstep the next day, we are unappreciative, unsatisfied, and ungrateful. Our unappreciation is evident as the popularity of socialist policies among my generation continues to grow. Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently said to Newsweek talking about the millennial generation,
    “An entire generation, which is now becoming one of the largest electorates in America, came of age and never saw American prosperity.” Never saw American prosperity.
    Let that sink in. When I first read that statement, I thought to myself, that was quite literally the most entitled and factually illiterate thing I’ve ever heard in my 26 years on this earth. Now, I’m not attributing Miss Ocasio-Cortez’s words to outright dishonesty.
    I do think she whole-heartedly believes the words she said to be true. Many young people agree with her, which is entirely misguided.
    My generation is being indoctrinated by a mainstream narrative to actually believe we have never seen prosperity. I know this first hand,
    I went to college, let’s just say I didn’t have the popular opinion, but I digress. Let me lay down some universal truths really quick.

    The United States of America has lifted more people out of abject poverty, spread more freedom and democracy, and has created more innovation in technology and medicine than any other nation in human history.
    Not only that but our citizenry continually breaks world records with charitable donations, the rags to riches story is not only possible in America but not uncommon, we have the strongest purchasing power on earth, and we encompass 25% of the world’s GDP.
    The list goes on. However, these universal truths don’t matter. We are told that income inequality is an existential crisis (even though this is not an indicator of prosperity, some of the poorest countries in the world have low-income inequality), we are told that we are oppressed by capitalism (even though it’s brought about more freedom and wealth to the most people than any other system in world history), we are told that the only way we will acquire the benefits of true prosperity is through socialism and centralization of federal power (even though history has proven time and again this only brings tyranny and suffering).

    Why then, with all of the overwhelming evidence around us, evidence that I can even see sitting at a coffee shop, do we not view this as prosperity? We have people who are dying to get into our country. People around the world destitute and truly impoverished. Yet, we have a young generation convinced they’ve never seen prosperity, and as a result, elect politicians dead set on taking steps towards abolishing capitalism.
    Why? The answer is this, my generation has ONLY seen prosperity. We have no contrast.
    We didn’t live in the great depression, or live through two world wars, or see the rise and fall of socialism and communism. We don’t know what it’s like not to live without the internet, without cars, without smartphones. We don’t have a lack of prosperity problem. We have an entitlement problem, an ungratefulness problem, and it’s spreading like a plague.
    With the current political climate giving rise to the misguided idea of a socialist utopia, will we see the light? Or will we have to lose it all to realize that what we have now is true prosperity?

    Destroying the free market will undo what millions of people have died to achieve.
    My generation is becoming the largest voting bloc in the country. We have an opportunity to continue to propel us forward with the gifts capitalism and democracy has given us.
    The other option is that we can fall into the trap of entitlement and relapse into restrictive socialist destitution.

    The choice doesn’t seem too hard, does it?” Alyssa Ahlgren 4 You, Ken Harrison, Stephanie Overstreet and 1 other

    Paul

    • Paul Edwards,

      Well said! You sound like Ben Shapiro, one of the smartest men in America.

      You correctly point out that America is the land of super-abundance, yet some people are blind to it. They choose to focus on other things, little things, because they are capable of imagining perfection, but we can’t reach perfection.

      Here’s the problem in a nutshell; no matter how much progress science helps us make, this earth is still cursed. See Genesis 3:17.

  22. Happy Birthday young man. When my youngest was about five most of her friends parents were younger than me and my wife. I asked the daughter if she thought I was an old guy. She looked puzzled and then informed me that all dads are “old guys”

  23. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MAS!!!!!
    Congratulations on completing your 71st trip around the Sun.
    I hope you will continue orbiting for many more years to come & that you get as much enjoyment out of your time on Earth as you have given us.

  26. Hey, how’s your shooting after the cataract surgery? Any improvement in picking up the sights and target?

    • TRX, shooting is the one thing the eye surgery didn’t help, but vision is so much better for everything else that I’m not complaining.

      • That’s exactly the feeling I had after lasik – had to start using reading glasses immediately, which I had avoided before that time, but the distance vision was so great, I wasn’t complaining!

        Oh yeah, belated Happy Birthday – and have a safe trip to NH if you aren’t there already!

  27. Mas – Happy 71 and many more. Having turned 70 this year, it’s that first half-hour in the morning that is most revealing – knuckles dragging across the floor …

    Keep up the good work! It’ll keep you “young” – in this case, a figure of speech!

  29. Happy Birthday rabbi!

    And, you’ll know you’re old when the junk mail changes from insurance scams and ‘male’ product offers to brochures from the Neptune Society.

    Gaffer

  31. Happy late birthday. I just hit 66 on the 24th of July and am still loving life. keep up the good work and enjoy your geezerhood, I’m enjoying mine.

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