Naaa Na NaNa Enticement is more effective than recommendation, and I generally don’t recommend books anyway, but delanceyplace entices effectively with their daily extracts. Reading there about ancient Miletos last week, I ordered Europe Between the Oceans 9000 BC-AD 1000 by Cunliffe, which has arrived and just as I thought, “it’s that thick” so will be a while reading, but I finished chapter one, sort of an introduction, and it’s going to be a really good one.  A friend loves fiction and movies and hearing I’d recently watched the movie has given me The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald. Read (red) chapter one at bedtime last night, and also read some of the last page, which is life philosophical for anyone who wants to learn about self and life. Life and stories begin and end with a flashing green light. Never having read F. Scott Fitzgerald, I didn’t realize his writing is so colorful, eloquent. In chapter one, “What Gatsby?” hints up front that Daisy has heard. You can be ...

“You don’t hear the mushrooms?” We hear what the brain sorts out of the sounds that come through the ears. With the faulty hearing that comes with age, the brain sorts sounds into words even if they don’t combine to make an intelligible thought. I stuck my head outside and reported to Linda that it’s not windy anymore. “No,” she said, “I don’t hear the mushrooms.”  “You don’t hear the mushrooms?” “I don’t hear the windchimes . You need to put on your ears.” We hear what we will just as we see what we will. And we understand what we will. Sometimes earphones help. Hearing aids. Sometimes we need a commentary. But it’s likely to be a scholar we agree with, I’m not into literalist, fundamentalist writers or "scholars" who waltz around what is obvious and rationalize what they "know." I like some Americans. Some Canadian scholars. Some British. Most Germans, but not Goethe and not all of Luther. At LTSG I learned to like a couple of French commentators, ...

The older one gets and the more of life one sees and experiences -- what the hell, I’m talking about myself, not some impersonal “one” -- the longer I live and the more I see and live into, the more I come up against the problem of theodicy and the more and better I understand those who simply walk away in disgust and dismay. Theodicy is the issue of who and where and what is God, as Rabbi Harold Kushner put it, " When Bad Things Happen to Good People.” In parish ministry I always had extra copies of Kushner's book by that title, for grieving people who were struggling and wondering “why” and “where was God?” in their face of the worst that life can bring.  Yesterday I understood yet one more time again as I tried without success to choke back tears and the terrible hurting swelling in my throat when a friend told me about the deadly medical diagnosis of -- for privacy I’ll call him John, a sister’s boy. The child is eight years old and has been diagnosed with cancer for...

OMG, not CFB already, I can’t stand it, don't even think about it, out damned spot. Football or Shakespeare, choose. And football pro days are ridiculous, over the top. This has been the longest winter in memory, will CFB season never come, but not yet, I'm not thinking about it that the Gators’ first game is exactly five months from today, Saturday, August 30. I’m saying nothing CFB this early except TYG Johnny Manziel departed SEC for NFL, that’s it, that's all I'm saying, I was sick of his mouth in the SEC and I don't watch NFL ball.  Well, speaking of JM, can’t wait to hear all the screaming, shouting, cursing from the Lone Star state if O’Brien doesn’t pick QB Texan J. Football for Houston. Hopefully, he won’t. It would be perfect plus, in my warped mind, kharmic payback not only for JM's mouth but also for the 2012 Tide/Aggies game if O'Brien picked A.J. over JM and did you know McCarron and J. Coker both went to St. Paul’s, Mobile? But he wo...

“Volunteers in dark green hooded sweatshirts spread out across the National Mall on Thursday, planting 1,892 small American flags in the grass between the Washington Monument and the Capitol. Each flag represented a veteran who had committed suicide since Jan. 1, a figure that amounts to 22 deaths each day.” http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/28/us/using-flags-to-focus-on-veteran-suicides.html?nlid=67307615&src=recpb It’s not the children , it’s the whole dandelion population, the whole blasted lot of us, we all have ADD/ADHD, look at what goes on with every gardenia one of us, everybody looking at a screen and picking at keys and punching send . Yes, guilty. We jump from one thing to another uncaringly, lusting after who knows what, whatever, and never finding it, or finding it for the split second that it interests us. With the attention to flight 370 and to Crimea, Russia and Ukraine, who knows what’s going on in matters of our VNI, with our military people in Afgh...

While on television, Russell Crowe [ the late Admiral William Crowe 1925-2007 -- an adopted son of Oklahoma whom years ago I saw on TV exclaim "Oklahoma is not forty-nine on anybody's list" -- pronounced it cra-ow with a short a, not crow with a long o as Russell does -- whoever thought of a four-star from Oklahoma! I always admired him as something of an intellectual, unlike most of the retard admirals I knew, and he served as ambassador to the UK too ] talks about the film Noah (there's a lost antecedent for you)  and as Russell talks I visualize ancient times as the Bible sage awkwardly melds the “J” and “P” (or was it “J” and “E”) stories of the Great Flood, and my mind is on two books I just ordered about the human condition and ancient human origins.  My old Navy buddy (truthfully, I’m the old one, he’s not 75 yet though maybe close, but I remember when he was 32 and I was 36 and he was smarter than me then too, smarter than I ) is an intellectual and thin...

It was Patty's, Joe gave it to Linda. In the front window of our kitchen a tile with a quote attributed to Goethe proclaims “nothing is worth more than this day.” A grieving person might add, “except yesterday,” I suppose, an optimist “except tomorrow.” But no philosopher, I’ll stick with Goethe. Or maybe he never said any such thing, maybe the tile artist wrote Goethe on there to make it more credible, believable -- marketable. * We see that in more than one letter ascribed to Paul. And if, as part of his agenda, John quotes Jesus saying something, it has power even if it never crossed the lips of the historical Jesus. Thus the mind wanders, I was on Goethe. Goethe is also quoted having described chamber music as “four rational people conversing.” Supposedly he meant a string quartet. I like Richard Walthew better, the “music of friends,” but I never heard of Walthew, while starting with Goethe adds appeal, sophistication and class. Same as some second century writer as...

It’s pretty clear what happened. There being no jury, I hope it’s as clear to the judge as it is to me. An angry, violent, spoiled, self-centered man, Pistorius is a gun crazy fool, a liar who made up his story on the spot and is sticking to it. Intentional but not planned, Oscar shot Reeva in a fit of rage, and the instant he fired the shot that killed h er he was sorry. Is that premeditated murder one? And the guy who, enraged by texting in a movie theater, shot the man who was texting. And that other gun crazy fool, Michael Dunn, another liar, firing in a fit of rage because the music was too loud and then hiding behind a law, claiming he thought he saw a gun. Dunn is being prosecuted by someone less after justice than fame leading to higher political office: she won’t go in on my vote. I’m no lawyer but it was second degree murder in all cases. Guilty. The penalty, the punishment? I don't know. We are obsessed with punishing folks, I don’t know. New Georgia...

pages missing Seeing the blogpost is mine for me, why bother with what will people think , people can lump it, eh? Actually no. As said more than twice, it’s a meter of what’s happening inside, isn’t it. At what pace is one going downhill. Are pages missing?  I was a lay person at the time, a lector, it was my Sunday to read, and Mass was ending. In our Pennsylvania parish, it was the lector’s task, at the priest’s nod, to start the Postcommunion Prayer while priest and chalice-server finished clearing the Altar. End of the early service, Rite One, and he nodded to me. I had been looking for the page, couldn't find it. Not knowing the slightly changed prayer in the 1979 BCP and unable to find the right page, I said “Let us pray” anyway and began a reality nightmare of muddling through 1928 BCP words “... for that thou dost vouchsafe to feed us who have duly received ...” as the congregation paused and ground to a halt, curiously watching me stumble on, red faced and awkwa...

Car now and then, no noisy trucks. Fog settled at 4:30 when I glanced up and realized the bridge lights are gone. Lights and their reflection in the river are gone. So is the green flashing channel marker a quarter mile north, gone. No river traffic, though somebody has their air conditioner on that for a moment I mistook for a slow diesel. This has been a relaxing four days and three nights. Lovely, classy wedding, not my first one in an art museum, the last was in New Orleans, what? five years ago? That couple have a beautiful little son, they sent a valentine card with his picture. This one in a town that has been a favorite since I first visited here with my father in the nineteen-forties, after the war.  Two dozen steamed oysters Thursday evening, two dozen steamed again Saturday evening while Linda had fried mullet. She doesn’t eat the skin or gnaw the backbone, so I had mullet too. Mullet fried properly, the tail is crispy, you munch that first, then the bac...

Milwaukee of Florida's Forgotten Coast Fog. Light fog and 58F. A hundred yards off my balcony, the red channel marker light is two stacked lights. But it’s reflection, the river is totally smooth flat. Two lights, smooth flat, pitch black dark. Not a sound. What brings on an anxiety dream? Not a Navy situation, church again this time. Sunday morning, early service. Rector hasn’t arrived, hasn’t called. Where is he? Try to call him, no answer. Organist is playing the prelude. Hurry to the vesting room to vest, what will I preach about, it was the rector’s day to preach, think fast. My vestments are not in the closet. Think, think fast. Oh, that’s right, I took them home to be laundered. Well, I’ll wear white. My white vestment isn’t here, where is it? Prelude is finished, the organist is starting the opening hymn, why is he doing that when he can see that neither the rector nor I are ready yet? Think fast, think.  Somebody please bring me a bulletin so I can see what the R...

Two dozen steamed last night, harvested right here, or trucked in from Louisiana or Texas? I don’t keep up with the Apalachicola Bay economy anymore, but they were perfect. After my terminal diagnosis I shall again order three dozen raw oysters on the half-shell. Make it five dozen. I can wait, no hurry. There being no WiFi except outside at the benches on the little riverfront garden, my post will have to go up later, maybe after breakfast. At the moment the east is dark with only the slightest hint of light. Only clear light is the flashing red channel marker maybe a hundred yards from my balcony. Length of a football field, it doesn’t appear quite that far, but it doesn't look to be five miles across to Magnolia Bluff either. Porpoises surfacing and playing in the river at our feet last evening. This morning, cars and trucks crossing the bridge Mayor Jimmie J. Nichols and I blessed at its opening dedication ceremony, what, a quarter century ago? Whoever said it w...