Sean of the South has a really good essay this morning. Starting out about being at Lincoln's birthplace, it's about Sean himself as a storyteller; but it's really about being American and about himself as an American. I won't go there myself as I think this morning, because it'd ruin my day, and likely reduce me to tears. However, I'm hoping without the confidence that is faith, that the upcoming mid-term elections may tell a truth about Americans that is not evident at this moment: that we are not the welcoming, loving people I grew up knowing and believing in, but a merciless, pitiless serpent willing to prey even on little children whom we regard as detestable immigrants.  If it's not so - - that is to say, if we are really what I see as I look around in shame - - then I'm just as glad to be ninety-one instead of seventeen, because America is not what I always saw in my mind's eye when I sang "She's a grand old flag, she's a high-f...

Friday the Second dawns with lightning in low clouds over the Gulf, too far south of us to hear any rumbles of thunder. Nice, another beautiful day.  Maybe turn out to be stormy, but if you're alive, folks, Every Day is a Beautiful Day. That was a favorite end of life observation and saying of one of my life's heroes, and in fact, it's inscribed in his gravestone. Which, come to think of it, I've not stopped by lately to visit him. Not that he's there, he's nowhere any longer, but good memories come closer when I stop by.  I'll wave to Norman Hair while I'm there. And maybe Bill Guy. Bill lived next door when we were growing up, and I used to be invited over for dinner now and then. It would be Bill, Mr Guy, Mrs Guy, Mrs Burgin (Bill's grandmother), and me. There were always fresh, piping hot biscuits, and there was always molasses on the dinner table (we are Southerners, mind, dinner was at noon and Mr and Mrs Guy would have come home from work for ...

Is it tomorrow yet, or is it still yesterday? So the last of our American troops are out of Iraq after what is a lifeTime for many and death for tens of thousands. Judgment on whether we should have been there or not is moot, we're out, and the Iraqi people should be relieved because once America gets in and a foothold, it's not easy to get shed of us. I've wondered how Germans really feel, even with the Russian threat, about American soldiers still being there, now eighty-one years after our World War Two victory and occupation.  And Japan, the Japanese. Living in Japan in the mid-1960s, I watched as hordes of Japanese demonstrators danced and chanted and moved against the main gate of the U.S. Naval Base, Yokosuka (a major Imperial Japanese Navy base during WW2, but ever since then the homeport of the US 7th Fleet), the weight of the immense crowds bowing the gate and fence inward while I stood and watched as the evening duty officer. I was a US Navy lieutenant, there was...

Magic mug of hot & black outside on 7H porch at three o'clock for an enjoyable half hour in the quiet predawn darkness of just me, Creation, and life itself. +++++++ Ages ago when I started +Time weblog, I tried various fonts, looking for one I liked, preferably sanserif with several strange lower case letters. Maybe the one I liked best was/is Wunderlich, which I still use except for blogposts. For blogposts, though, I settled on Arial Black because, even though not lovely, it prints out clear and easy to read, at least for me. And it seems to run consistent, which proved not the case for fonts not already predesignated for Blogger. So, it's bold and black like my morning mug of coffee.  +++++++ Up too early again, and outside on 7H porch in the 73°F Wednesday morning. Fall, autumn seems to be coming on with more pleasant hours for being outside, especially in the pitch black dark with a clear view southward looking toward the Florida Strait and on beyond to South America,...

Two of my favorite characters,  Aslan the Lion, who in Narnia represents the Emperor-over-the-Sea.  Dewey Duck, sibling of Donald's triplet nephews Huey, Dewey, Louie, who enjoys a ubiquitous presence here in 7H.  Aslan and Dewey lie down together but do not eat hay. +++++++++ This is an interesting Time of life when one realizes the late aging experience of good days and bad days. Bad days are not mood or pain, but a certain tiredness, a groggy, drowsy exhaustion, disinterest in old joys: haven't had a tray of ice cold salty oysters on the half-shell in three weeks and did not enjoy the last one.  Sitting with legs propped up and dozing off with head tilted sideways and mouth open; observers judge mentally dull. The days of total retirement I've shrunk into lack aspiration: what does one do, think, or say to earn the air one breathes? From "The King and I," is a puzzlement. A puzzlement, a struggle with oneself. No suggestions needed, there's nobody living in...

Doing a nice thing for myself, having a second magic mug of my club hot & black after breakfast. No reason, just because. Looking at our lectionary for this morning, Jesus in the Temple, I realize that I did comment earlier in the week, though not on the gospel reading, so I'll give it a shot.  Jesus in the Temple is a key thing for Luke; it's so for the other evangelists as well, but a lesser key to his identity than in Luke. In any synoptic, though, a scene with Jesus in the Temple confronting his adversaries clues us that the tension is building and Jesus' end is near. Matthew gets his 21:23-32 temple confrontation scene from Mark 11. The parable of the two sons that follows, which Matthew inserts between the temple confrontation and the parable of the leased vineyard, is Matthew's own. We don't know what Matthew intended, but maybe I'll come back to that.  First, the confrontation, which seems to end in a standoff, neither Jesus nor the priests answer th...