Out of Tune, Touch & Phase

Out of Tune
Out of Touch
Out of Phase

Now about a quarter, the moon is still high enough in the eastern sky to lighten the concrete steps for my predawn stroll down to get the newspaper. Moonlight, along with the sound, helps me avoid the sweeping stream of the sprinkler. By next week we’ll have dark and I’ll have to make my way more carefully.

There’s also the threat, new to me, maybe it wasn’t new to Pop and Alfred, about bears: of late, more than one in the neighborhood. Speculation was they swam across the Bay from Tyndall just opposite. Just opposite is Shell Island, but slightly to the east is TAFB. If the bears are overpopulated there, my friends along the BCR shore are even closer, have they had bears in The Cove? Are there enough bears for an open season? Are the animals big enough for bear rugs, or just the size to make Halloween costumes for kiddiewinks? IDK. ARA, arise and smite. Two or three bears within a block or so of my house gets my attention, suffices to make me leery of being outside in the dark of the moon.

Reminds me. My first business trip to Australia, winter 1978 in Pennsylvania, summer 1978 in New South Wales, the Australian Department of Defence flew me down for five-weeks to conduct seminars for DoD and defence industry executives, on how to do business with the U.S. Department of Defense and the American defense industry. My first morning in Brisbane, Queensland, my coordinator there told me that he and his wife had recently cancelled their vacation trip to America for fear of the bears. “The bears?” I asked. “Yes, the grizzly bears.” Their news media had reported the fatal mauling of a woman in a campground by a grizzly, dashing their lifelong plans to vacation across America.

Email not opened yet, but Google News: nada on flight 370, has the Administration pronounced it no longer missing? If the WH declares it not found but no longer missing, we will finally have the truth. Or maybe Fox, CNN et al wrung all they could out of it. This morning on Google News, ISIS factions in Iraq were battling each other and significant casualties. Holy smoke. The president’s idea of political solution to religious war seems naive to me, just as the promise of no USA boots on the ground followed by dispatching 300 military advisors to Baghdad reminds me of our origins in Vietnam. I remember it well. We need a constitutional amendment that in order to qualify for president you had to sing along with Maurice Chevalier.

Shell Island Sunday tomorrow: we need Pat Robertson to pray away any thunderstorm. Would Pat do that for an Episcopal parish? Not if he knows there'll be beer.