Today I have lived for 82 years (29,848 days plus however many leap year days there have been). So please indulge my reflections on that life. If you are really interested in more details, you can read my Autobiography being assembled by my friend Odell Huff on Kindle books (probably available in July). And or you can read any or all of my five travel books on my work in Afghanistan, Bosnia, FSU, Iraq, Kosovo, and Palestine, https://www.amazon.com/s?k=warren+coats&i=digital-text&crid=WKE7LWMI6LNS&sprefix=warren+coats%2Cdigital-text%2C74&ref=nb_sb_ss_fb_1_12
It was certainly action packed (from a year in Germany as an high school exchange student, a member of the UC Berkeley Free Speech Movement council in 1964, marriage to Louise Wilkinson while teaching at the U of Hawaii, a Ph.D. from U of Chicago under Milton Friedman, Assistant Prof at UVA, birth of my son and daughter, 26 years at the International Monetary Fund during which I divorced Louise and married Ito Briones and led technical assistance missions to the central banks of over 20 countries). The teacher in me prodded me to share my economic and political thoughts with you in hundreds of blogs https://wcoats.blog/
I genuinely cared about trying to make the world a better place. In some ways it is but in many it is not. America’s role in the world has peaked and is in decline. Others have tired of being pushed around by a bully who doesn’t pay that much attention to their interests. Sadly, most of the countries I worked in are no better off. On the other hand, the way God made me is now more widely accepted as OK and I have been able to married Ito. What concerns me most today is the lack of civil discourse and the mutual understanding discourse facilitates. Too often we consider those we disagree with bad rather than just wrong, which undermines rather than promotes understanding and cooperation.
But the real reason I, and people my age are generally happier than our younger friends, is, I think, because we have let go and stopped worrying about what we should do next. The fight for us is over (not that we don’t care anymore, but that we know we can no longer do anything about it). So, the political prospects for the next election, the attacks on free speech in the US, the shrinking of the free trade on which our prosperity has depended, the new holocaust in Gaza, while saddening events, wash over us without much personal pain.
What we have and can enjoy are wonderful and entertaining friends with whom we can visit, and dine and chat. Thank you all.
Warren's space 
A full life indeed. Congratulations on this milestone! A part that especially resonated was civil discourse. I’m reading this shortly after learning Alice Stewart, a conservative commentator I watched on occasion go at it with a liberal counterpart, just died. I didn’t realize she and I were the same age, nor did I realize that her liberal peers actually adored her, because of her civility and she “led with love.”