I had the good fortune to spend three days last week with friends Jim and Lisa at the oceanfront condo at Cocoa Beach in Florida, talking politics and watching playoff basketball (tough, exciting wins by eventual losers Magic and Suns) and contemplating the vista presented here. Hot and humid all day; ocean breezes, such as they were, cooled nothing. It’s funny, you can watch CNBC and MSNBC from anywhere, but as soon as you get away from the epicenter, they seem like nothing but TV shows. On Wednesday morning, the space shuttle Atlantis, completing a 25 year career that saw it log 120 million miles in space, landed at Cape Canaveral, a stone’s throw away; I heard the characteristic BOOM BOOM of the sound barrier breaking as it descended. A nice visit, but as the Ramones put it, not my place.
