gee The word arrives in Verdana, but seeing that Verdana was designed for Microsoft and this is a MacBook and using Pages, let’s look elsewhere. This morning perhaps American Typewriter by Joel Kaden simply because I like the old fashioned looking lower case g, and even though American Typewriter has no italics setting. Maybe a project for Lent will be to search for a respectable but free sans serif with g in that style, one that isn't bizarre and that has italics available. Maybe not. Anyway -- BTW, why do idiots making comments online say “anyways”, which is not a word (not yet, but unfortunately soon will be)? Like “online”, which no longer requires a hyphen -- anyway, today’s word is archetype, which as said, arrived in Verdana. Archetype probably is not very useful. Maybe I can work it into my next sermon. Wednesday’s “hagiarchy” (rule by holy persons) was excellent and would have been especially so for Thursday, it being Pope Benedict’s last day and all. Later today...

Walt sent me a picture of a car like the 1948 Dodge sedan our parents bought new in May 1948.  This stirred happy memories. The Dodge was mama’s present for her 36th birthday. We waited eagerly for weeks, and one day a phone call came from W&W Motors saying two new Dodge sedans had arrived and were on the boxcar down at the train station.  The pic Walt sent is a black 1946 Dodge sedan. Linda’s grandmother Lucile Noble Mustin had that exact car when we were dating in the middle 1950s. The 1946 was identical to our 1948 Dodge except the ’46 dashboard and steering wheel were cedar red.   In the 1947 and ’48 Dodge the steering wheel was a soft beige color and the dashboard was woodgrain. Very pretty. In those days cars were shipped from the factory in boxcars, not transport trucks, and in Panama City they came down the back side of the depot, where there was a short unloading ramp. When the phone call came, Mama and I went down to look. The s...

So what’s for Tuesday then? Nature’s Call at two-fifty, back to bed, turn off the heat on the underblanket, snuggle in. A few minutes attempting to resume sleep, get up, peep out the blind, yep, the paper’s there. This early to rise habit hasn’t made me healthy, wealthy or wise, but it’s all good. It started October, November, December 2010, January 2011, when I was given two to five months to live and ran beyond my allotted time while waiting for my Cleveland Clinic OR appointment. Every morning, waking to go to the bathroom, I’d think this is not unlikely to be my last day, I’ll stay up and enjoy it. Got to be a habit, didn’t it, and still thoroughly enjoying. The day’s amazing already, a damp, drizzly world, the Bay roaring in the blackness, waves rolling in, deafening surf. Reminds me of the place we owned at Alligator Point for a few years in the mid-1980s, too noisy to think. Actually, I was forty-eight then, too young to think anyway, thinking can wait till seventy...

We’ve already had our spring, haven’t we, the azaleas bloomed beautifully, now they’re finished and wilting and falling off. First time in my memory azaleas overlapped camellias so vigorously. And the orchids and so many other flowering plants in Linda’s gardens. Dogwood buds are opening too, and the citrus.  Got up to thunder and lightning just now, these must be April showers, eh? Global warming is very pleasant. The torrential white rain thunderstorms didn’t even ruin diocesan convention, which was all inside, church, meetings, sleeping, banquets and all. Only mystery was the absence of covered walkway between the parking garage and the convention center, an architectural goof. No matter; it was all good. I mean really, really good, excellent. No, in Navy terms excellent is a “B” and convention gets an Outstanding. Which, for anyone who’s been involved with Holy Nativity Episcopal Church these past seven or eight years, has come to be par for the course.   As ...

Deprecare  This is blog posting 762, or 894 if you count from the first post on CaringBridge. Someone asked how I think up all this stuff to write, but if you read it you realize thinking wasn't involved. Current stats for my +Time blog record twenty-eight hundred to three thousand hits a month, the Blog counter totaling 66,661 hits up to the moment. Like me, it goes up and down. A few hits are from the Middle East, Far East and eastern Europe, no doubt spammers scanning everything on line for a scam opportunity. One such hit a year or so ago alarmed more than annoyed and almost made me drop it. But why should I. A couple of friends check it out sometimes if they think of it, which they don’t. Neither do I. My equivalent of Linda's daily crossword puzzle, it’s worth writing anyway if anyone is annoyed. The ones about cars and earlier days of Panama City are the only ones I read, and I certainly don't read the religious ones. Several people use my daily nonse...

Friends who took gulf-front rooms at the Majestic for the diocesan convention weekend will see for themselves this morning; but from here I gather that yesterday’s stormy weather left the Gulf of Mexico quite rough. Because, walking down into the lower part of the front yard to get the PCNH newspaper for Linda, what one hears is the roaring of surf from the Gulf, across the Bay and the other side of Shell Island some four miles away. We’ll have a look later when we go back for the closing Eucharist. Ah, those rickety steps again!  Truthfully, that’s not what’s on my mind though. In fact, it takes focus to dip one thing out of churning mental chaos and journal comprehensibly. OK, I’ll try this. In “CNN Opinion” on Wednesday, December 26, 2012, appeared a special article by Lawrence M. Krauss, entitled “Why must the nation grieve with God?” It’s  saved on my iPad desktop in case at some point I should want to respond somehow. Actually, I don’t yet, but it comes...

Not being some religious nut, everything here doesn’t have to be about religion. Don't give a hoot about NFL, not even watching, except the superbowl; and CFB season isn’t even warming up yet even though Bleacher Report shows up in my In Box two or three times a day. The preseason news: all about players beating up somebody and being suspended, or arrested for DUI. Well maybe. Sort of, here's something: Massive 4-Star DT Picks Georgia . Georgia? Georgia? Oh, I see: he visited Mississippi State, Oklahoma, Georgia and Auburn. Rated #3 JUCO defensive tackle, 6’5” and 310 pounds. That's a big dawg. Las Vegas heats up gangster style. Exchange of gunfire between Land Rover and Maserati causes crash that kills three including two innocents in a taxi. Police are looking for the Land Rover, which sped away. A Land Rover with a dealer's ad in place of a license plate, blackened windows and custom rims. Doubtless, they keep spinning when stopped at traffic lights. What happe...

Second Sunday in Lent O God, whose glory it is always to have mercy: Be gracious to all who have gone astray from thy ways, and bring us again with penitent hearts and steadfast faith to embrace and hold fast the unchangeable truth of thy Word, Jesus Christ your Son; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. OK, so there we go is the collect for next Sunday, February 24, 2013. it’s a good one, eh? I think so. Hatchett says that, though new to our prayer book collects for Sunday, it was a Good Friday collect in the 7th, 8th and 9th century Missalae Gallicanum vetus, Gelasian and Gregorian sacramentaries, where it prayed for schismatics and heretics. Today, we are praying for those of us who have fallen into sin and away from the practice of the Christian faith. Which makes it especially apt for a Sunday in Lent.  For my own use, I correct the word them to us because practicing the Christian faith means not only loving God and...

Sequitur & Non Pistorius murders Steenkamp in a fit of anger South Africa reportedly enjoys the world’s highest incidence of gun violence homicides, every home armed to the teeth and shooting to kill, statistically family members and loved ones. The Blade Runner case and cause celebre. Had Pistorius been a student of Marcus Aurelius he’d still be loving Reeva. But quarrel, fury, murder and frantic CYA of lies.  Christopher Dorner stalked potential targets Dorner chose seething rage over life, and mindless vengeance over joy. Half dozen essays of Marcus could have cleared his path to fullness. Instead, senseless murders and a bullet to his own head to evade conflagration.  Two stories metaphorical for the world at large and wasted lives. Most useful reading for anyone jousting with everyday life, self-importance, tiffs and worries of the world: Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, emperor of Rome from 161 to 180 AD and Stoic philosopher. http://ancienthist...

It was like a windy, cold night at sea. Never had that in TRIPOLI because we were always in and out of San Diego, Subic Bay, Okinawa, Yankee Station and Saigon. Maybe the month in the shipyard at San Francisco had cold nights, and windy. But homeported in Norfolk, Virginia, USS CORRY had cold, windy nights. Enroute to Guantanamo Bay, January 1959, in a snowstorm at sea. It wasn’t that cold here at 2308 last night, walking by St. Andrews Bay, but it was cold. And windy. Unpleasant. The light sweater and L.L.Bean “hurricane shirt” weren’t enough. Next time, a scarf and knit cap. And reminisce about being at sea. Not on a cruise ship, that’s not at sea .  In Thornton Wilder’s play Our Town, right after Emily Webb Gibbs dies she is granted the privilege of returning to see one day of life. Those around her recommend against it, but she insists. They say she should pick an ordinary day, nothing special. So Emily picks, as I recall, her twelfth birthday. It turned out to be...

... the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, “Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.” 2 But Abram said, “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” 3 And Abram said, “You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir.” 4 But the word of the Lord came to him, “This man shall not be your heir; no one but your very own issue shall be your heir.” 5 He brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your descendants be.” 6 And he believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness. 7 Then he said to him, “I am the Lord who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess.” 8 But he said, “O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?” 9 He said to him, “Bring me a heifer three...

Good late morning. Got so interested and wrapped up in my Sunday School lesson for this morning that I forgot about my +Time blog posting. What reminded me? Linda saying, “Good morning.” To which my response is always, “Good morning. I’ll get the paper for you.” Why do I get the paper instead of letting Linda get it? It has naught to do with chivalry. It's because not having served in Navy ships, nor with Admiral Chet Heffner in Columbus, Ohio forty years ago, she is not as mindful of safety and accident avoidance as I am. Consequently, she is not as careful as I am going down and up the eight concrete steps down into the lower part of the front yard to the lower sidewalk where the paper always is thrown by our new newspaper carrier (paper boy). If Linda fell it would be disaster for both of us. If I fell (which is most unlikely because I hold on to the rail my grandfather put there a hundred years ago) Linda could book a nice singles cruise. Perhaps on the Carnival Trium...

Some remember the days when Detroit (there was nobody else) had an annual style changeover, with new models introduced in showrooms every fall. Not unlike birds migrating south by instinct, I would know when to start walking out into the front yard early evenings to look for spotlights in the night sky. Knowing where each car dealer was here in Panama City, it was often possible to tell which dealership was announcing by where the spotlight was. Rowell Nash, Nelson Chevrolet, Cook Ford, W&W Dodge Plymouth or Sala Desoto Plymouth, Lloyd Pontiac Cadillac. &c. The Hudson showroom down on West Sixth Street nearly as far out as the BayLine depot. The Kaiser Frazer dealership was way out W. Hwy 98 in Little Dothan (just a block west of where Buddy Gandy’s Seafood is now) and their spotlight would be dimmer, I’d have to walk down across the street by Massalina Bayou to see it. Butterflies would fill my stomach until I could get to the showroom to walk around and sit in and sa...