2025 - 1936 =89 Today is/was Linda's 89th birthday. We had a quiet day doing a couple of errands and having lunch out. At supper we may cut the small NY style cheesecake I bought at the TAFB Commissary deli day before yesterday.  My next step is working forward to success for my weigh-in at my annual appointment with my PCP on 4 August. I keep getting within a pound of it, then Mothers Day or Fathers Day or a Birthday comes along with its feasting.   Years ago a colleague and friend who now lives far away had a sign by her desk, "Nothing tastes better than being thin feels!" and I believe it's True even though the last Time I was thin was when we returned to the US from Japan in July 1966. Fifty-nine years ago this month: I was thirty years old, six-foot-one, a newly promoted lieutenant commander weighing 146 pounds. Nearing ninety years of age, I am not thin, I have not been thin in decades, I am trying to stop letting being overweight torment me, and I know for a fa...

  A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: Anyone entrusted with power will abuse it if not also animated with the love of truth and virtue, no matter whether he be a prince, or one of the people. -Jean de la Fontaine, poet and fabulist (8 Jul 1621-1695) from Anu Garg's word-a-day. The thought strikes at the center of Truth as we have it in America these days.  +++++++ Up early after a vivid dream, hot & black outside on 7H porch, to the 94% waxing gibbous moon in the western sky. Along with my coffee, a couple slices American "cheese" and straining a bit to discern any taste in them. Read a faraway friend's latest blogpost and pressed the heart for like. Looked up to a huge cloud that wasn't in the south half an hour earlier, then came "heavy rain" though I didn't have my ears in and could not hear the rain at all. Silence and peace. No lightning or thunder.   It's sort of nice being hard of hearing, because I can choose peaceful quiet that better hearing peopl...

  Why would anyone blog on a gray-day like this, a colorless Monday morning after Fourth of July weekend?  Maybe because Life is a Gift and Life is Good. How might life is good be Life is Better? Maybe if we could see into the Present Future an hour ahead and change it to avoid slips and falls and car crashes, and so little girls could be evacuated from imminent flooding. Generations of civilization would have been different, there would have been no "Let's Remember Pearl Harbor," and most of us would never have been. There would have been no Wreck of the Annie & Jennie. The Present Future: just an hour's awareness of what the future would be if we didn't change it: would we change Creation if we could?  Nonsense and impossible with today's sciences, but Who knows and What if? The Present Future: a glimpse into the immediate future an hour before it happens and while it's still changeable.  Just an hour. +++++++ Anyway, here's our gospel reading fo...

Loving prayer today for those in Texas who are experiencing and suffering the worst that Life can bring, the death of a child. Psalm 116:15 (GNB), "How painful it is to Adonai when one of his people dies" as God grieves in agony with them.  Officiating the funeral of a child who had committed suicide years ago, I heard someone utter the ultimate blasphemy, "It was the will of God, we have to accept it. Everything that happens is the will of God." In our worst nightmare, the deaths of parents' little girls who drowned in the Texas flood cannot have been the will of our loving God. It is Evil in the Nature of Things, even if humans call it an Act of God, God did not do this. Baruch ata, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haOlam, shehecheyanu, Blessed are you, Adonai our God, who gives life. You do not harm the children of men. ++++++++++ A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: Most institutions demand unqualified faith; but the institution of science makes skepticism a virtue. -Robert King Mer...

  Good afternoon on this Fourth of July 2025. Here at 7H we have a gray, overcast day, warm and close outside. Not as many small boats on the Bay as I'd thought - - maybe everyone is waiting to turn out for this evening's fireworks display. I suppose it varies from year to year, but I remember one Fourth evening when the report was that there were over seven hundred small boats out there. I've been out there, and it was scary when, after the Grand Finale, every boat roared up its motor and set off top speed for home.  We don't need to go anywhere! Our outlook here from 7H is straight to the left, east, to where the fireworks barge is moored, or anchored, IDK how they secure it. ++++++++ Unable to change what the world around me is becoming, my thoughts today are wandering off to the lectionary propers for this Sunday, Proper 9, Year C. The Collect, or official prayer of the day, which is meant to gather the thoughts of everyone in the congregation to the worship liturgy...

Supper on 7H porch, about 6:15 to 8:30 pm as the day closed out, then late to bed, it was ten-thirty last night when we turned out the light. Supper: if it doesn't drip off your hand and ruin your pants you're not living. Tuesday the WOW technician came and corrected the television issue.  Hurricane Season is no Time for the TV to be out.  We placed the order for our new kitchen countertop and ratified the amended cabinet order. Changing from dark cabinets and black countertop to white. A nonagenarian cannot see anything on a black countertop, we should have done this ten years ago before moving in. Meantime the place is chaos, as we've emptied all kitchen cabinets and stuff is spread throughout the dining room and livxingroom, every flat surface covered. Thursday: haircut. Then, considering the quality of my tomato sandwiches, to Tanya's Garden to see if they had Slocomb, Alabama Tomatoes: luck! I bought ten or twelve, every one ready to cut, so I have to move fast wit...