Linda's breathlessly busy and full, not quite to say frantic, birthday week ended  this morning as Joe drove away into a predawn thunderstorm heading home to Louisville.  Family present and accounted for included Linda, me, Kristen, Joe, Lauren, Ashlee, Hendrix, Tass, Jeremy, Caroline and Charlotte.  The nonagenarians having stepped down and back from cooking big family meals here in 7H, there was lots of dining out, various groups as folks came and went! Wednesday supper for four of us at Alice's on Bayview; Thursday, Joe and three went to Bayou Joe's; Friday, seven at  Captain's Table; Saturday table for eleven upstairs at Hunt's Oyster Bar, followed by icebox lemon pie and whipped cream back here in 7H; Sunday four of us at Los Antijitos. Monday in 7H, three for breakfast as lightning flashed and rain poured, then noon dinner of salad for two. Some photos of the celebration           

  “Robert, come home!” was a memory & story from when Robert was a little boy, and the family lived over by Johnson Bayou, Robert running around in the marsh grass while his mother was calling him in for supper, and Robert pretending not to hear her!  You do not know me: I am Thomas Carroll Weller, Jr. People call me Tom, or Fr. Tom (I’m a retired priest of the Episcopal Church). But Robert and our Cove School classmates called me Carroll, my middle name.  Robert started Cove School with us when we were in second grade, and we attended each others’ 7-years-old birthday parties in 1942. Friends in later life, we enjoyed long walks around The Cove, and having breakfast at local restaurants. Robert was elected President for Life of our Cove School Class of 1949 alumni group, which he gathered together, and for whom he hosted several class reunions, held on our old Cove School campus in later years.  Star basketball player at Cove School and Bay High, Robert was...

  Looking at the online news about the young man who murdered Charlie Kirk, he's so young, 22 years old, could be anybody's beloved grandson. I feel so sad for him, the destiny he has set for himself; and I wonder if he ever asks himself, "How could I have been so stupid!"  In my Time, I've seen now, I guess, four political assassinations that come to mind, two Kennedy brothers, MLK, and Charlie Kirk. I don't want to live in a society where mad shooters take from the people the opportunity to make our own political choices. This opening digression because I saw the young man's face again as soon as I opened my computer to contemplate a blogpost. And news coverage of NATO leaders meeting and frantic to cover what the US is pulling from NATO involvement, as I think again and always of ants fighting and killing the next ant bed as though we were so important on this Earth in a galaxy of trillions. We will kill the Earth in our determination to save it from th...

  At Beck Avenue and 12th Street, this is how the downtown area of St Andrews now known as Smith's Yacht Basin was when I was a boy, the sheltered little "harbor" opened into St Andrews Bay; far across the way you can see the Magnolia Beach shoreline. In the photo's background, the pine trees made good shade for getting cool, but cars and trucks parked under them got pine resin dripped on them, difficult to get off and quickly dried to solid lumps ruining any vehicle's paint. There are four pine trees in the photo, but in my Time the little one was gone, and there was that wonderful line of three large  pine trees, as I say, cool shade on these hot July days. The two-masted schooners are fishing smacks like the Annie & Jennie that took my father's brother Alfred to his death when she broke up in a storm while transiting the Old Pass the night of January 8, 1918.  To the right of the schooners, the smaller white boat was owned by an old Norwegian fisherman ...

It used to be a custom, taken from the Church of England, that the first Episcopal parish in an area was named Christ Church. Just so, Christ Church, St. Andrews, Florida; but later, probably in 1926 when St Andrews and Millville were merged into Panama City, the name was changed from Christ Church, St Andrews to St Andrew's  Episcopal Church, Panama City.  Similarly but for different reasons, originally chartered as Christ Church, Apalachicola the name was early changed to Trinity Episcopal Church. Our custom has gone by the way, but it was not unlike naming First Baptist, First Methodist, First Presbyterian. And there came to be something prestigious in being "First Church" or "Christ Church."  It's sad I am that in my Time, the gender, sex, marriage issues have divided Christian denominations, and so fiercely and in concrete certainty. I have my certainties also, trying to keep myself mindful that there are just as many on the other side who are just as c...

Early always: hot & black in my magic mug. Later, Wednesday breakfast: heart pills with ice water, then pickled herring with second mug of hot & black. To ward off ppht, no bread, crackers or other carbs.  Nap came on anyway, and carried me to half past twelve noon. Early again: hot & black in my magic mug. Later then, about seven AM, Thursday breakfast: heart pills plus furoforty with ice water, then soft-scrambled cheese-eggs with ice water. Hopefully, no nap today. POD includes one o'clock at Pruitt Health with M, then lunch/noon dinner/lunch somewhere with K. Last week, Chili's to try the ribs (excellent), today who knows then. ++++++ Reading, on my computer screen, "How Green Was My Valley" by the Welshman. With that as my sole commitment, all day yesterday, how would you like to be so totally retired that you can afford to enjoy a full day early morning until nine o'clock PM with your nose in a book? I can speed-read, but this one is to read, sto...