7,777 | The Explorers' Club, № DXCVI

This is the seven thousand seven hundred seventy-seventh post published here at The Secret Base of the Rebel Black Dot Society, since 21 February 2002, three weeks shy of sixteen years ago. That very first post was inauspicious: Wayback Machine. Why commemorate the seven thousand seven hundred seventy-seventh post? Why not the seven thousandth or the eight thousandth? One, I missed the seven thousandth post, entirely failing to note whenever it occurred in 2017, & there is no guarantee that ye, I, or indeed any of us will be alive to see the eight thousandth post. (Do not take life for granted!) Two, where is it written that we ought only mark roundly numbered anniversaries & occasions? Three, seven is the number of perfection in sacred Scripture, which is what really captured my imagination about The Secret Base's seven thousand seven hundred seventy-seventh post.

Here's to a a great, fun, gratifying, disappointing, frustrating, & hopefully worthwhile first seven thousand seven hundred seventy-seven posts, & here's to the next seven thousand seven hundred seventy-seven! I'll see you at fifteen thousand five hundred fifty-four (15,554*).

Operation AXIOM: The World War
John McCrae, M.D. (1872-1918), the Canadian army surgeon & poet; an artilleryman, he had fought in the Second Boer War; taught for a decade as a professor at Vermont & McGill University; & co-authored a 1912 medical textbook; the iconic Great War poem "In Flanders Fields" was inspired by the 1915 death of a comrade-in-arms; he died of pneumonia with meningitis on 28 January 1918.

Lest we forget.

*Actually, I hope to see ye tomorrow at post № 7,778.