See, there's this compulsion to write, to sit here and type. What? GOK, as even I myself almost never know ahead of Time, but coming here to sit by the window as the morning light comes in to the left of me. There's that burned out wreck of a shrimp boat, and Shell Island, the Pass, Courtney Point. Orange channel marker, and someone's fishing in the Pass. I mean, this is my Life and Time and, our Southern expression again, it don't git no better'n'nishere, rat here, that sez it all, nomesane? My place of the heart. My place of the heart. At The Old Place I had MLP down front, My Laughing Place under the cedar tree by the Bay, where I went to buckle up when beloveds died and  I needed to confer. All that's gone, both intellectually and physically gone; but here I have my place of the heart, looking out across StAndrewsBay, and at Davis Point, the Annie & Jennie and all, it's all still there. Here, still here. Okay, I finally tried it. Oat milk. Oat ...

  Honestly, I seldom or never know how to start these things, just as I seldom or never have anything in mind to write about when I sit down and log on. It is not that some inspiration comes to me - - that practically never happens, it's simply that writing, the brain exercise that goes into it, is part of my formula for keeping the mind alive. As I keep saying, when you get here, as I pray you do, you'll understand.  It's mental exercise. Linda does crossword puzzles, which I cannot. I write, read - - another book arrived yesterday, "Galileo's Daughter", play solitaire card games on computer screen, do a sudoku if I have the time and focus it takes, they're totally a puzzle of elimination: "can't be, can't be, can't be, can't be, has to be". Still do some things as retired helper priest at church. No driving out of town any longer, nor driving after dark. 'Life catching up to', so to put it. What then? Look at the news an...

  Did dinosaurs have fleas? It never occurred to me to worry over that, but a question in a science article I was reading online in a Haaretz newspaper column just before turning out the light last night and actually sleeping until six o'clock this morning. Well, one wakeup call, but straight back to sleep. Fleas and rats, to be the sole survivors through the next mass extinction event, abiding as natural selection evolves to provide abundantly for them again.  "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and BMW took them both" with identical appearing gasoline and electric cars, reads an editorial comment I liked! Above, the 2023 BMW 7 Series sedan, "i" for the electric versions. Me, I've got my car and intend not to be in the market again, otherwise I was hoping Cramer's proposed new dealership at PCB would offer BMWs, but pandemic-related supply chain issues have pretty much sidelined the automobile industry as a bulwark of the American economy anyway....

  Electricity went off just as I turned on the air fryer mode of the toaster oven to experiment air-frying some Gorton’s frozen crispy fish filets bought at Publix last week on twofer. I like them. “We have no power” flashes across the Harbour Village Forum website on the cell phone. This is why safety commends having a landline telephone even if it's seldom or never used: the cell-phones keep going for a while, but in due course they yield to the electric charger. Looking out my office/study/den window, I see that all the traffic lights along Beck Avenue have shifted to flashing, so it’s the entire local area. Then a text: “FPL Power is out at 3001 W 10th St. There are 1558 customers affected. We expect power back on at 8:45 AM CST”. A minor inconvenience. To see “a problem” watch live what’s being done to Ukraine. Or whoever’s in the path of the wildfire in Arizona. Or wait until June and start watching The Weather Channel. Or, hell, just stay alive and keep your eyes o...

OMG, a magnificent, clear spring morning, 57° 63%, not a cloud to see. No socks or Uggs, so my feet are cold, but sipping second mug of hot & black and nibbling a morsel of dark chocolate. It's Xmas Chocolate because, see, I ration it, I only get a square and you don't get any -  makes it last twice as long. Others have, I've not caught him arriving with a fish for her, but the male osprey seems to have brought a piece of black cloth or something, that she keeps tearing at. As far as I can tell this morning, they still have just the one egg, both of them attentive to warming it. Always ducks in the background, sometimes geese, and with the audio on the wildlife noise is excellent! The other osprey cam I watch intermittently is about, as I recall, a hundred miles or so away, to the west and far side of the mountain range, above someone's home, overlooking a large lake. No eggs in that nest yet as of yesterday and this morning. Maybe he doesn't know why she's ...

  Nap after Sunday dinner, physically unable not to, several hours, which is not uncommon for my high priestly nap after Church on Sundays. Well, for my any nap, truth be told. I'm not into the sleep "experts" so-called, who counsel a ten minute nap and arise refreshed and invigorated. Of course beloved family were long gone when I awoke. The long nap could have kept me from falling asleep at bedtime, which at our house is either eight o'clock, or nine, depending. "Depending on What?" you ask: depending on whatever, don't press me with questions. Just as Mary Poppins, I never explain anything. So at eleven o'clock I got up, opened the computer, played four different kinds of solitaire, and by the time I finished the last one was so sleepy I couldn't keep my eyes open. Voila! Black coffee this morning, perking one of the tasty Xmas Coffee Club brews. Have found favorites among them. When they make the final shipment, the Club no doubt will invite ...

  "Xpistos anesti!" is the greeting for this morning, "Christ (is) risen!" "alethos anesti!" the response, "truly risen!" Linda's specialty in younger and middle years was flowers, flowers and imagination, she's a floral artist, studied and practiced in workshops summers when we lived in Pennsylvania and Apalachicola, and brought the exquisite art into her life, our life, to do magnificent and subtle and moving and fun floral arrangements at home and at church, churches we served. She says it's the last Time, quite exhausting at this age, but she did the flower arrangement on the outside wooden cross at church yesterday, people will see it this morning. With rain warnings for today, we brought the cross inside, but it can go back out. Can and may.  She also made a whimsical arrangement for a spot at church, but it was already "taken" so we're happily keeping the Easter bunnies on the dining room table here at 7H. Kristen...