evening and morning

It has been and continues a great week to be alive. Contemplating, I’m sad that Pop and Alfred missed it, sitting here looking out over the Bay into crystal clear blackness. Moon in the east last evening,

now in the west watching and waiting for dawn.

Monday, hour long walk around Massalina Bayou. Tuesday cardio and Bible seminar. Wednesday, walk, then coffee, eggs and a biscuit on Johnson Bayou, the back deck looking over the marsh. They serve Community Coffee, hot, black, strong. Wednesday evening our Taize service, gentle music, peaceful silence and song. Nothing more serene as I let myself disappear into wherever dreams, memories and God might take me. Thursday oysters and the agonizing wait for Kristen. Now looking across black velvet at my flashing emerald and missing the fog not at all. More exciting adventures of life on calendar for today, tonight, tomorrow and Sunday morning and evening. Life is good says my mug of Kona, as I skirt round the elephant.

There's the moon, finishing up its night

Musashi wreckage found. With Yamato, the two largest and most heavily armed battleships in history. Battleships are my favorite, bringing to mind our Iowa class and Missouri, New Jersey, Wisconsin with 16 inch guns. When I last saw my friend Jack Dennis in Washington, 1966, he was a commander or lieutenant commander in charge of a segment of outfitting New Jersey for Vietnam War service. One of Linda’s uncles, either James Mustin or Noble Mustin, was a sailor or naval officer on board Missouri in Tokyo Bay for the 1945 surrender ceremony. Mightier and more formidable than our four greatest, the two Japanese battleships had 18 inch guns, I read this morning that the gun barrels were 60 feet long. Instead of playing the holy man this morning, I disappeared into history with Yamato and Musashi and their construction and service and admirals and sinkings. Admiral Kurita, who, leading the Imperial Japanese Navy taskforce, had commanded the largest naval force ever assembled, was visited less than a year later by a junior U.S. Navy officer, who found him a stooped, unassuming old man cutting potatoes in his garden. Reportedly, after the war, the admiral worked variously as a scribe and as a masseuse. With their equally sad end, battleships are, were, the most lithe, slinky, beautiful warships ever.

Still skirting the elephant, not a political blog, not especially a McCain fan, Joshua ben-Nun and Curtis LeMay are dead, couldn’t care less what David & Paula did or discussed, just want someone who knows how to conduct a war before it comes to the local mall.

And there was evening and morning, another day.