Good morning or good evening wherever you may be, across the nation and across the world. It is just passing 8:00 a.m. in "The City", where the current temperature is 31°, although it feels like 23° with a slight wind out of the southeast @ eight mph. Today's high temperature forecast calls for 53°, with an overnight low temperature of 45°.

The sunrise this morning occurred @ 7:43 a.m. with sunset to follow this evening @ 6:14 a.m.

Once again, the NWS has issued a couple of warnings and advisories that will be going into effect this morning and tomorrow.

First, there is another Small Craft Advisory set to go into effect @ 10:00 a.m. today, from St. Joseph to Manistee, until 7:00 p.m. tonight, with the usual admonitions directed towards operators of small craft.

Next up, there will be a Gale Warning going into effect when that Small Craft Advisory expires @ 7:00 p.m. tonight until 4:00 p.m. tomorrow, also from St. Joseph to Manistee. Winds can be expected to be steady from 20 to 30 knots, with gusts possible up to 40 knots, causing waves up to nine feet in height. 

Given that forecast for Gale Force winds tomorrow and a high temperature of 46°, it looks like the surfers will be out on the third coast. 

Finally, there will also be a Wind Advisory for Central, South-Central, Southwest, and West-Central Michigan in effect from 1:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m. tomorrow, with strong winds of 25 to 30 mph and possible gusts up to 50 mph, causing damage to tree limbs and power lines. 

After all of that, it is hard to focus on what is important today, but here goes.

This is St. Valentine's Day, a lover's and greeting card holiday, but it also marks the fifth anniversary of the mass carnage @ Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, in which 17 people lost the rest of their lives and devastated the lives of 17 families forever. What should have been a day for lovers and friends to enjoy each other's company, became a day to be remembered as one of devastation, permanent injury, either physical or psychological, and in 17 cases, death.

Last night and into the early-morning hours today on the campus of Michigan State University in East Lansing, MI, a lone gunman, since deceased from a self-inflicted gunshot wound prior to capture, took the lives of three people and wounded five more, some with life-threatening injuries. 

It will take a great deal of investigation to determine his motivation, information that may have died with him. One thing is for certain, the Founding Fathers. and I doubt that any of their significant others had any input, never predicted that type of carnage when they added the infamous "Second Amendment" to the US Constitution in the late 1700s.

Michigan Governor, Gretchen Whitmer, opined that this is "A uniquely American problem," and added, "We should not, and cannot, accept living like this." However, it looks like this is the current and future state of affairs in this country. Must we accept this as the price of living in a free society? I don't know about any of my readers, but I don't feel very free today.

Otherwise, I am at a loss about additional things to say. 

Mary and I are still ear-reading Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? by Dr, Martin Luther King Jr. and the words he wrote in the mid to late 1960s are still as apropos today as they were over 50 years ago. 

I am still reading that novel by Nelson Demille, entitled Nightfall, in which fictional retired NYPD detective, John Corey, and his wife, current FBI agent, Kate Mayfield, explore what happened to TWA flight 800 which crashed shortly after takeoff enroute to Paris, France in 1996. In many ways it is eerie, as that crash took place after the first attempted destruction of the World Trade Centers in NYC, but before that tragic day, 9/11/2001, when those buildings were toppled by terrorists using large jet aircraft. Many of the same characters we learned about after that infamous date, were featured in this novel. 

Mary continues her solo ear-reading and cross-stitching between indoor chores, grocery runs, and TV news watching. 

Happy Valentine's Day to Mary.

To borrow from Forrest Gump, "That's all I have to say about that." Ciao.