EUREKA! More Insights--

1. Running in snowy, windy, 25 degree weather isn't as much fun as I remembered it being.

2. My rugged manliness isn't as much of either as I imagine it to be.

3. T. S. Eliot had it right when he said, "The years between 50 and 70 are the hardest. You are asked to do things and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down." (And by "things" I'm sure Eliot was meaning "running in snowy, windy, 25 degree weather".)

4. T. S. Eliot even had it more right when he said, "Teach us to care and not to care-- Teach us to sit still."

5. "I shed my blood at Antietam." How many Americans alive today, besides me, can say that? Maybe Shirley MacLaine was right, and I had a prior life as a Civil War soldier. Heaven knows, there's not a smidgeon of "flake" in Shirley MacLaine.

6. Did you know that "you gotta be cruel to be kind" didn't originate with Nick Lowe? I discovered this week that it is said, in a slightly less elegant way, by Hamlet to his mother, "I must be cruel only to be kind." Which raises the metaphysical question of whether it was a flash of brilliance or a criminal insult to the source to have "Cruel to Be Kind" on the soundtrack for "Clueless." Feel free to weigh in on this topic. Inquiring minds want to know.

7. "Among twenty snowy mountains, the only thing moving was the eye of the blackbird."