Not long ago, US News had a special, year-end issue with a section on 50 Ways to Improve Your Life. Actually there were a few really good ideas, but there were also some items that made me groan, We killed a tree for this? The Item that gets my award for being the most inane was (drum roll, please): Buy further inland—protection from predicted sea level changes due to global warming. That’s going to make my life better? I live 300 miles inland. How high do I need to get?

The editors must have shared my feelings, because this was by far the shortest—one paragraph. A home in the mountains is beginning to look better all the time. Why? Because of Global warming, the US EPA estimates a 1-foot rise in sea level along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts. When is this going to happen? By the year 2050. And there will be another foot in the next century. I’m sorry, but it is hard to think I need to move to the mountains before a 2-foot rise in sea levels after I am dead.

I was ready to save a tree, right there. But then there was a handful of good ideas that bear repeating. 1. Read more books, for example. Now there’s a really good use for a tree. 2. Go tech-free one day a week. Turn off all the electronic gadgets, cell phones, computers, and the like. Prove you can live without them. The guy advocating this was Jewish, so he kept the Sabbath one day a week. That even used to be important to Christians, but it got in the way of golf.

Those are a few good ideas out of the 50, but there is one more, and perhaps the most important of all, that I’d like to speak a bit more about today: 8. Divorce-proof your marriage. How? First, let’s take a closer look at the Why?…