Wednesday

Yesterday morning we arrived here in Tallahassee with a couple errands to do after Tass went to hospital. One being a visit to Fresh Market, where we bought two honey crisp apples, huge red creatures that chilled in the car all day. We cut one as a bedtime treat upon arriving here at Staybridge Inn, and as named, sweet and crisp. Never heard of honey crisp apples until Ann Y mentioned them one day when I picked up Kristen at Mosley and she was there for Allison, and we waved and spoke. Eight years ago I guess, and a favored apple ever since.

The innkeeper checked us into a first floor room as I’d asked. And I’d booked a simple room, but as the inn is not full, at no extra cost they gave us a two-room suite. If Linda snores, I can come out here to the sofa; or if up extra early I can come out here without waking her. Rooms are nice, inn is new, kitchen in each room. Decent breakfast, basic buffet. Weekday evenings they offer a simple, light supper, free wine, beer on tap, serve yourself. Rates are low compared to Marriott and Hampton where we used to stay. This time I priced-shopped. Here $125 v. Marriott over $200. Brings to mind that when we were in the Navy and traveling to and from Panama City on leave, we liked Motel Six for $6 a night and shuddered when we had to stay at Holiday Inn for $20 a night. This inn is four miles east out I-10 from the Thomasville Road Exit, and we come and go after dark, harrowing with eighteen-wheelers speeding by, but the location is quiet, on a large pond sometimes hosting Canadian geese, in an office complex, is next door to Jeremy’s office building. 

How is Tass? Tass is fine, all went perfectly, prayers and encouragement of friends appreciated, and she is well, expect Jeremy to bring her home this afternoon. Still and nevertheless, anyone who wants to ask about her, ask Linda. Whether she likes it or not, Tass is daddy’s baby and I can’t help being right at the edge, so ask Linda not me. 

Motel's at the same I-10 exit as Tallahassee's antique automobile museum. Been in there, posted pictures in a blogpost a couple years ago, excellent collection, old favorites, many cars from my growing up years and from my father’s childhood. 

Against the news, we live in an increasingly unkind world in which man (ἄνθρωπον, male and female he made them) deserts God’s dream for us, growing farther and farther from Genesis 1:27, the receding lights Lewis’ narrator of The Great Divorce saw in the distance, where abide the shadows of Self. We are those who get back on the bus to the grim city where we have our rights. 

If it ever did, our system of government no longer works for the good, for goodness. At the moment, were I the Executive, I would remember, where to remember is to put back together, the 1980s TV miniseries Amerika scene inside the capitol in which the new executive decisively settled issues with legislative, ho anaginowskown noeito and the bite is worse than the bark. With sorrow and shame, the America from which I will get on the bus is a grim and gray city where a perverted sense of rights is non-negotiably more precious to men than the lives of innocents. Christ has died. Christ is risen. God forbid that Christ should come again and see where we have gone, what we have become.

Thos+