Sometimes there is no other way, but to begin writing a paragraph, or even a sentence, with the word “I” should be avoided when possible. Being a mental drone, I have to keep this in whatever is left of mind.  Though likely unconscious, when done repeatedly, starting with "I" is a self-diminishing practice and unfortunate style that turns on a light shading what one says as egocentric drivel. It marks one as childish and ignorant, not unlike indiscriminately sprinkling commas. Which reminds me that when my mother died I handed the undertaker an obituary to transmit to the newspaper. When it showed up on the newsstand and I discovered that it had been edited by an ignorant and uneducated Commacrazy, I resubmitted it with orders that it be reprinted and not one dot, jot, tittle or iota be touched, nor one comma added. Interesting things open in daily email. NYT and Washington Post are never favorites, never. Necessary but not favored. Two favorites are a daily essay from ...

This old house absurdly has so many bedrooms I have to stop and count. The type is “American Foursquare” popular for forty years from late 19th century into early 20th century. On the internet are pictures, floor plans and advertisements. From Sears Roebuck you could order the whole thing, finished, under $2,500,  and actually I’m looking at one right now for $966 finished. Don’t know if Pop did that or just bought lumber and had his fishermen start building. It was started in 1912 and finished in 1913 when my father was two years old. Classic design was a square floor plan, two story, four rooms upstairs and four rooms down, hip roof with short overhang, and a front dormer. Except for two additions that Linda and I added in 1997 and 2002, all interior walls and ceilings are solid tongue-in-groove, no drywall, such that every room is practically soundproof. Thus, if I have my glass of red wine at suppertime and later snore, Linda can get up and steam off into ...

Gomenasai . A sometime necessity is revisit my blog postings after they’ve been online an hour or three. Typically, as now, they are written before sunup, with a mind that coffee has not yet unclouded. Yesterday’s blog post had to be revamped. Viva! Watching the Pope on his South America trip. A true Jesuit, ever since he was first vested in white and, instead of getting in the pontifical limo to be chauffeured imperially to dinner, got on the bus and took his old seat with the other cardinals, he has been my man. He lives in a simple room, shunning the papal palace, and he picks up babies. If Popes had been like Jorge Mario Bergoglio over the past two thousand years, there would be no need for both Roman and Anglican and I could be as Catholic as the Pope.   Stupidity . Arizona has a  Stupid Driver Law . When authorities put up danger barriers warning drivers not to drive through floodwaters and drivers are so stupid as to drive through anyway and get swept away and ...

Browsing both the internet at large and even Facetime in particular can be depressing, discouraging. As with everything irrationally indiscriminate, shotgun blast slamming of the President for every breath he takes smacks of mindlessness, smells racist , and robs the slammer of the last iota of credibility such that there’s no point in reading what they say when you know it’ll be more worthless spewed hatred. When the White House changes from Red to Blue or Blue to Red, nothing changes but the “hunter-spewers,” though the most rabid fringe element do seem to come only in certain colors and a bigot is a bigot. Three years ago someone suggested my +Time musings be posted on Facebook instead of an obscure blog. I don’t do that, partly because the musings were then and are now for myself, a struggle against the ravages of aging, especially mental deterioration -- which of course may be evident in the writing itself, which undoubtedly is why some people check me every morning and post...

Obliviate The Ilfracombe Incident occurred in 1932 when a rogue Common Welsh Green dragon attacked a group of sunbathers at Ilfracombe in Devon, England.  The attack was thwarted by a vacationing wizard family who then proceeded to cast the largest group of Memory Charms seen in the twentieth century. Despite their mass charming of the muggles who had witnessed the attack, some escaped from their Memory Charms, including a certain “Dodge Dirk” who maintains to this day, much to the confusion of muggles, that a "dirty great flying lizard" punctured his inflatable rubber beach mattress. Pressing Unsend Friends who exchange emails with me know my bad habit of starting to type, going with a stream of consciousness, and pressing Send . Too often, the next morning upon reading what was sent, it is obvious that instead of Send, I should have pressed Draft and then Delete . Same with conversation, what we say can never be unsaid. We can apologize or try to rep...

Hosea 1:2-10 (NRSV)  Hosea's Family 2 When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, “Go, take for yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord.” 3 So he went and took Gomer daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son. 4 And the Lord said to him, “Name him Jezreel; for in a little while I will punish the house of Jehu for the blood of Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel. 5 On that day I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel.” 6 She conceived again and bore a daughter. Then the Lord said to him, “Name her Lo-ruhamah, for I will no longer have pity on the house of Israel or forgive them. 7 But I will have pity on the house of Judah, and I will save them by the Lord their God; I will not save them by bow, or by sword, or by war, or by horses, or by horsemen.” 8 When she had weaned Lo...

Colossians 2:6-19 (NRSV)  Fullness of Life in Christ 6 As you ... have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him, 7 rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. 8 See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ. 9 For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, 10 and you have come to fullness in him, who is the head of every ruler and authority. 11 In him also you were circumcised with a spiritual circumcision, by putting off the body of the flesh in the circumcision of Christ; 12 when you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. 13 And when you were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God ma...

Caught my eye on Google news this morning, the 1940 Ford coupe that finished last month’s 2013 Peking to Paris Race. It’s a 1940 Ford Standard that the owner drivers found on the internet for sale in Michigan,  and shipped to the UK where they tore the car completely down and built it up for the grueling race. They named the car “Shiner” to honor the classic ’40 Ford V8 coupe, fast and with a huge trunk that was perfect for transporting moonshine. Run every three years, the Peking to Paris Rally is the longest and most difficult in the world, over 7,000 miles.  Reading about it brought to mind the front cover of a 1952, ’53, ’54 Motor Trend magazine that’s likely in my treasure chest, showing a Lincoln Capri leaning into a turn at high speed in La Carrera PanAmericana. It was a day and age when Lincoln was big on racing and got great publicity from their fast and beautifully designed cars.  W...

HRH Prince John George Paul Ringo of Cambridge has a nice ring, eh? America needs a king instead of a president. King and parliament: any idea how much easier it is to change prime ministers than it is for us to change presidents? Basically there’s a vote in parliament and you tell the now ex-PM to go sit down. If we had a king it could be Elvis, because a king is ceremonial and doesn’t have to be seen any more than the government has to show you twenty dollars worth of silver for a Jackson.  Elvis’ picture would be on all currency, and to ensure public confidence in the dollar, his grave would be moved to Fort Knox. Upon waking this morning I thought to blog about Colossians. Another day. TW-

One of the best things about Sunday afternoon is waking from my nap and looking out across to the other side of St. Andrews Bay. Unfortunately, a pine tree, and the cedar tree that’s My Laughing Place, have inched up ‘til they’ve now hidden Shell Island from my view. The Old Pass is filled in now, so it’s no longer an island, but a pencil-thin peninsula stretching to the jetties of the new pass.  My father started out in this house, a picture around here shows him sitting in the leaning-double-trunk cedar tree down front, dressed in a little boy suit. He was five years old, which would have been 1916, a couple of years before the January 1918 night when his brother Alfred drowned in the wreck of the twin-masted fishing schooner Annie & Jennie . When I was a little boy, my grandmother Mom used to tell me about Alfred, whose story has always been a powerful part of my own life. One day some two years after his death, Mom and Pop packed up and drove away with their famil...

Last week, “Amos, what do you see?” “A plumb line.” This morning, “What do you see, Amos?” “A basket of summer fruit.” From the Old Testament this summer we are reading the graphic prophecy of Amos. One of the four so-called “eighth century prophets of doom,” with Hosea, Isaiah and Micah, Amos is a southerner, a Judean who has gone north to prophesy against Israel, the northern kingdom. Like his brethren in prophesy he is a bother, a nuisance, a pest, unwelcome, and the authorities have ordered him to return to his own country. Ordered him to return to his own country? Sounds vaguely familiar, eh? Current events from nearly three thousand years ago? After David and Solomon the united kingdom split back into the natural and historic tribal identities of Israel and Judah. It is a terrible time for both nations in the eyes of God. The ruling classes and the wealthy are despotically oppressing the common people. And people have fallen away from worshiping The Lord. On both counts...

Tuna With Good Taste Zimmerman demonstrations will happen because they will happen, and they will happen until there’s worse news to report or until people realize they’re going to be late for work, whichever comes first. Opinions on all sides are valid to whoever is expressing them. The Castle Laws seem right to me, we may be wrong but within ethical bounds I agree with whoever said “If you enter my house unbidden, don’t expect to walk out: you’re going to be carried out under a sheet.” An extension, Stand Your Ground also seems right although you should not be able legally to shoot if you picked the fight in the first place, and juries should be able and led to explore that.  We are headed for parts known. It will be deja vu all over again, back to the Old West and the big decision for church vestries will be whether you must leave your firearm in the narthex. Which unfortunately will encourage people to come early and get a back pew, already a problem in the Episcopal ...

Sometimes on a Journey  You Don’t Go Straight  To Your Starting Out Destination Yesterday on Facebook I could not with certainty ID a branch and nut as chinquapin because it has been too many years. I had forgotten the leaf design but recognized the nut. It all comes back. The Massalina Drive house that our parents built in 1937 and that we moved into in January 1938 just before Gina was born, was tucked into the woods. That soon changed as houses were built behind us on Linda Avenue and Allen Avenue, destroying the deep, thick forest between us and the western bend of Massalina Bayou that moves round to Tarpon Dock Bridge.  After our new house was finished, our front yard was plain until the day I stood on the front porch with my mother and watched as my father and a black man called “Ol’ Dave” carefully planted a little three-branch magnolia grandiflora down in the middle. We haven’t lived there in half a century this year, but the magnolia lived and n...

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” Matthew 10:34, NRSV. In my hearing at a large social gathering some fifty but less than sixty years ago, a young man whom I had grown up with as neighbor and playmate from earliest childhood criticized our rector for, as he said, “preaching politics instead of the word of God.” By marriage he had changed from Baptist to Episcopalian and was not used to our ways of thinking and believing. I might have taken issue or at least engaged him, but having long contemned him as a fool and known him as a person of zilch integrity anyway, I simply turned away.  Many years later he died after a long and terrible illness and my parents asked me to go with them to his funeral. More long years later and far too late, I deeply regret declining to accompany my parents to his funeral. But I do not regret turning away from challenging his remark of then forty years earlier, because in e...