The last lovely days of summer are upon us when I sit on the porch of a little white house across the river from a marina

and I'm grateful that it's not my house and I don't own a boat. I'm a free man.

Someone else gets to clean the gutters and I'm under no obligation to rev up the outboard

and take people out for a ride up the river and back.

I've been on several boat rides in my long life and several is enough.

I sailed across the Atlantic on the Queen Mary too once, five days in a Hilton that vibrates, hanging out with light-headed people in spangly clothes.

The freedom to not do what you don't like is basic in a free society.

I resist hiking, boating, golfing, climbing.

I prefer porching. Summer goes against my nature,

except when a good thunderstorm comes crashing and flashing in

and I observe divine wrath hurled down upon the wicked. It satisfies the Puritan in me. I appear to be a liberal,

but down deep I'm a man in a tall black hat with a buckle on it. And now that the party of Lincoln

that was formed to set black people free from slavery has become the party of yellow golf pants,

there isn't enough lightning to reform it.

This all began when I was a kid.

Our house had scripture verses on the walls, which made us odd.

And I wanted to keep this a secret. For example, thou shalt not bear false witness.

I enjoyed bearing false witness. I was good at it. I loved books in which

writers made up stuff. But when the yellow golf pants runs for president on the basis of fictions

and falsehoods, such as that fact checkers have checked into Episcopal

rest homes, then Puritanism starts to look good.

Sitting here on the porch, I look at the woman sitting 10 feet away whom I love dearly, and

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