no other town under heaven

There she sits under infrared light (that does not bother her because it is undetectable to Osprey) at 201804270309 EDT, don't see him, and checking in several times a day I've not yet seen one bring fish to the other. A day or so ago I did watch as he brought a large bowed stick and tucked it at the right side of the nest's top rim, but it's not there now. A fine nest stick, I wonder what they did with it, or maybe the wind took it away, IDK.

Here for the Saturday afternoon funeral of a dear longtime Apalachicola friend, we are in our favorite motel, Water Street Hotel & Marina, right on Scipio Creek. Life is Good at 7H, but also here, not only because it's returning home of sorts to life as it was for us from July 1984 through September 1998, but seemingly also because here anymore, any lid is lifted off any pressure-cooker sense of the Life that is Good. In my life I have found that whoever said it is wrong, you can go home again, given that you realize that not only life and you, but home itself also grows and changes. For example,

that's a new fence around the rectory of Trinity Church, in the front yard the magnolia grandiflora that I had planted there for Linda a quarter century ago is larger and spreading. The rector is retiring, the rectory is being painted inside. On selling our house, Linda and I could have bought and settled here but that I can hardly stand to be out of sight of StAndrewsBay. In recent conversation, my sister recalled years ago when our parents considered relocating to Apalachicola, which I also remember, coming over to look at houses that were for sale, shopping for a new home. Why that didn't happen, I don't know. It would have been after WW2 but before my Bay High years, late 1940s maybe? Do I wish we had done that? It's not to wish for but to ring in Robert Frost's poem again about the road not taken, a distinctly memorable two roads in the yellow wood and how different life would have been. 

Upon arriving yesterday we had lunch at Up the Creek Raw Bar, oysters for me and a smoked mullet to tear apart with fingers; Linda had their crab cakes that nearly equal those served on the shores of Chesapeake Bay. Our customary tour of the town that seems never to change but actually does. Five o'clock to Apalachicola Chocolate and Coffee Company for one scoop of ice cream,

back to the hotel to enjoy the screen porch. In bed asleep at 8:30 but then later up to offer several sacrifices to Father Nature due to late afternoon FuroForty, finally realizing it was time to get up for the day, no clock in the room, to kitchen, turn on coffee pot, check time on the cell phone and discover it's 1:58 EDT. OWTH, pop the bagel into the toaster and begin Friday. A morning nap will surely come to pass.

Finally, admitting to myself, for all my love of Panama City, the Cove and StAndrews, my feelings about Apalachicola, to paraphrase last Sunday's reading from Acts 4:12 - -
... there is such joy no where else, for there is no other town under heaven given among men by which we can know peace. 

DThos+

TGBC for today, Friday, April 27, oh my word, what a story. But one can visualize, can't one. Meantime the early church continues to coalesce, with Paul, Barnabas and John Mark coming to the forefront.


Acts 12:20-25

 Now Herod was angry with the people of Tyre and Sidon. So they came to him in a body; and after winning over Blastus, the king’s chamberlain, they asked for a reconciliation, because their country depended on the king’s country for food. On an appointed day Herod put on his royal robes, took his seat on the platform, and delivered a public address to them. The people kept shouting, ‘The voice of a god, and not of a mortal!’ And immediately, because he had not given the glory to God, an angel of the Lord struck him down, and he was eaten by worms and died.

 But the word of God continued to advance and gain adherents. Then after completing their mission Barnabas and Saul returned to Jerusalem and brought with them John, whose other name was Mark.