Pardon my adding a preface to an already long piece, but I need to let the handful of people who have been faithfully supporting this blog know that, for now, this is my last update.

Not to be a downer, but… I’m exhausted. Overall. In life. A few months shy of my 60th birthday, I’m looking back on decades of frantic activity, or a consistent drive to always be accomplishing things, and I’m asking, “What the hell was THAT?”

In the word of Basil Fawlty: “That was your life, mate.” “That was qui...