BCP 815 and weirdness   long hours before dawn Sunday morning This low, wide Cafe’ Godiva cup with its saucer is best for this sitting spot. Stable, it won’t turn over here on the sofa next to me. If it does anyway, I'll turn the cushion over before Linda comes downstairs. Life Is Good, too good to miss, even downstairs alone in the wee hours. CFB is Better. http://ftw.usatoday.com/2014/08/20-reasons-why-college-football-is-better-than-the-nfl even when your teams lose, tho all mine didn’t - MGoBlue. Christmas Season is December. College Football Season is Labor Day through November, then when you mope that it’s all over, bowl games start. Let’s see you beat that with your bag of toys and one night stand, Santa Claus.  Church is Best when there’s a baptism, as this morning. Moses & the Burning Bush , water from the River Jordan, Mary Ellen & Stacey at bat, and the mice at play. This is a democracy: folks in Ferguson can change everything if th...

Wondering Saturday morning, not comfortable out here waiting for the newspaper, tolerable but temperature 79F, humidity 90%, wind 0 mph, not really comfortable. Back porch thermometer doesn’t say 79 its red line stands at 84, but I guarantee the humidity is at least 90, maybe higher right here on the Bay, and not a breath of air.  Here on the downstairs front porch the greenery shields them from this exact sitting spot, but on the south channel, other side of the Bay, are two green navigation lights that flash alternately. From here they appear to be twins, right next to each other, I’m wondering if they are. My chart isn’t on the computer desktop where I keep it, maybe I didn’t transfer it to this computer, I only look at it now and then, it must be on the white MacBook. Wondering about those twin lights, maybe I’ll check it out later and solve that fact. It’s a fact that's only a mystery from here, depends on how you look at things, doesn’t it. Like two stars that are al...

Say it with flowers The thing is, see, not I , never to begin a letter, email or blog post with I because it starts off already egocentric and boring even to oneself. But I’ll be switched if I’ll be hitched, no I’ll be dandelion if I expected that. First off was my own fault for failing to know what was going on with the SEC Network. Gardenia dandelion it to heliotrope. So I fiddled around searching, signed up for ESPN online, found that I had to access it via my internet provider which ComCast cooperates but Knology Now Known As WOW doesn’t, so I tried via Verizon and got mixed up forgetting names and passwords, changed passwords, got that settled, went to access the game, forgot the new password I’d just set, glanced up at the OleMiss game on the TV just as across the bottom scrolled the disaster from Columbia, so just went downstairs for two hotdogs and a Heineken and came back up hoping Boise State could overcome that 3 to 7. Except did you see that sickening interception in...

Glass of Wine on the Dock at Sunset Musing  When we were at the University of Michigan we lived in a “housing project” sort of place, long buildings divided into apartments such as were built here in PC during WW2 to house industrial workers and military families. Wainwright Housing was one, Annie B. Sale Housing another, and there may have been more, because our Panama City population exploded during the War. Tyndall Field, the shipyard, the Navy Base, and there was a Coast Guard Station on the Cove side of Tarpon Dock Bridge on Massalina Bayou. Probably the same WW2 origin to our home in Ann Arbor, but when we lived in that housing project it was mostly families of graduate students. The buildings were on the street and behind on the west side was a huge open grassy area for kids to play. The last month before summer 1963, because we had orders to Japan and would gone three years, Linda came home to PC with Malinda (just turning 5) and Joe (2 1/2) so the grandparents cou...

Blogging possibilities are illimitable for intriguing oneself or for fatiguing self and others. Unless there is a hurricane in the Gulf, for example, to comment constantly on the weather, which this morning seems nonexistent, just a Florida Gulf Coast muggy morning not nearly so delightful as yesterday. I guess it wasn’t autumn after all. Here on the downstairs front porch waiting for the carrier to toss the PCNH while the sprinklers shift to different zones hoping to get me: each lawn sprinkler system has its demon, each head its own pixie. It’s not PC to say the paper boy, anymore it’s the carrier. Same with the mail man. In the blackness there’s that long-legged bird doing its squawking sound, from where, can’t tell. Yesterday when I went down to the Bay it flew with a huge protest out of a pine tree, more often I see it wandering down front, fishing just off my beach. This is a brown bird, not the white one.  So what then? Yesterday’s primary? I haven’t looked agai...

Goodness, four:fifteen, late again today, not seven o’clock as yesterday, still later than my Usual. And a special Goodness for a repeat of yesterday’s temperature, pleasantly cool down by the Bay as I went down to get Linda’s PCNH, and pretty good up here on my upstairs front porch. Can’t see anything yet though, only darkness. The city’s street lamp is an extra half-moon. Off to the east and south, that green navigation light winking at me from across the Bay: what a tease. I'm not going there, cut it out. Good coffee, Italian roast. The Kona is almost gone, so I'm rationing it out. Who knows, maybe someone will bring me a can of that for my birthday in two weeks.  Tuesday, for my walk in the Cove with Robert, seven o’clock. Counting breakfast after it’ll be two hours. A stop to visit friends I still love and will always miss; well, not always , eh? Hey that’s a nice light breeze, an early autumn would be fair after the brutal summer, but the weather also is a tease....

Not to say the sleeping habits of the aged, more our nocturnal erraticisms innit. Maybe it’s actually making up for , IDK. Saturday evening my head was on the pillow by seven:thirty and awake at 12:19, downstairs drinking coffee before 12:30. Last night light out after watching Mike on the lawyers’ call-in program, I didn’t know Mike took a turn on the show but as always he was the neatest, coolest and sharpest but the sound was mute because Linda was asleep and I couldn’t follow the conversation via the subtitles however Mike is one of my heroes so I watched anyway; then this morning Linda sits on the edge of the bed watching to make sure the Bubba is still breathing (oh rats) then says what’s going on, it’s seven o’clock.  What has happened? Here am I, Lord, on an August morn, sleeping till seven o'clock and now sitting on my upstairs front screen porch looking out across St. Andrews Bay at Shell Island and in a light, comfortable, even cool, breeze. Maybe the Bubba is not...

Don't get yourself into a tizzy (this morning I won't be at HNEC as usual because I'm filling in for Father Chuck at St. Thomas by the Sea, Laguna Beach. Chuck is recuperating from injuries in a car crash last weekend.) Matthew 16:13-20 (KJV) Confession of Peter 13 When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am? 14 And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets. 15 He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?  16 And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. 17 And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. 18 And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. 19...

One of many joys of this electronic age and the internet is the seemingly infinite availability of free resources, things that have been written over the years and down through the ages of history. Walking on my treadmill, which I detest, I have read several Shakespeare plays (I’m not his fan but he beats staring at the clock) and novels of Charles Dickens: typically, one chapter is a decent workout for me. I’m not especially a Dickens fan either, though the romanticism of several is touching. And Mr. Pickwick’s exciting adventures all while dealing with the unwanted affections and eventual lawsuit of his landlady, who thought he was proposing that they marry and live and love together when all he was asking was permission to have a manservant in his apartments; and Pickwick lost in court and, as well as finding other rooms, was found guilty and had to pay the lady a substantial fine for leading her on . Well, Little Dorrit is pretty sappy with the time in debtors prison, and Dickens ...

Trivia notes that the predawn temperature has for weeks been 80F to 82F unchanging and threatening. Each day differs in discomfort. During yesterday’s walk the body was unbearably sticky sweaty even during breakfast in the cool breeze at Bayou Joe’s, returning home straight to the shower. Today's heat index: 115F. Discomfort? Trivia. People are dying. Hating. In a world of murderous hatred, my life is self-centered trivia.  But political correctness is a multifaceted brilliant cut diamonique. What is seen vice what is . On this side, from my facet I sympathize, believing I understand the seven decade history that brought Gaza, Hamas and the West Bank to this bitter morning: I am millennia shortsighted, TeeComeLately. Their warring and bitter hatred are from everlasting and even the Holocaust is but a chapter. Yes, stop the slaughter, but for Israel to negotiate truce with Hamas is to trim the claws of a madman whose declared sole purpose is eradication, there is no peac...

Life: Take with Food What’s happening on this end? Series of things, eh, each different, at this hour all forgettably zilch. Usual evening close of day is fruit for supper, never meat. Empty dehumidifier. Half hour to hour on computer upstairs, load Linda’s crossword puzzles, NYT, WP, USAToday, and one called Daily that its software messes up half the time and it won’t load, plus on Monday a weekly that comes “easy, medium, hard” print those out and deliver to the lady of the manor. Next, really super important stuff on which Time can’t be wasted predawn when the brain works. Study cars from favorite era 1920s and 30s up to early 40s (do you know why Buick alone of GM cars didn’t adopt Fisher Body’s “Turret Top” in 1935? well, I do, and there’s a trick question that goes along with that, and both questions will be on St. Peter’s exam at the pearly gate, probably an essay question too, not your multiple choice  stuff   so you’d better get with it if you want to be Saved, an...

OK, I’m standing up. Everybody who wonders uneasily if what’s going on in Ferguson, Missouri is --  other --  stand up. Like a dog emerging from a muddy bayou, from college years on and all my life I worked hard to shake it, and diligently to keep  shed of it -- my Old South upbringing and pov -- and I have succeeded, I have gardenia well succeeded: there is not a racist wart on me or racist bone within me. But I find myself wondering what the Fed is up to and my politically incorrect wondering is filling me with self-doubt and self-loathing: I am not on a side , why this dis-ease? IDK, possibly because . Possibly  because  are we developing a federal police state, in our system of powers reserved isn’t there local, county and state government and that will look objectively into what happened and deal with calm justice not in sop to angry mob fired by a phrase that the media love casting like sand into fighting dogs? Not on a side , neither am I ge...

Time in a Bottle Mornings after checking out the daily word, (fungible) I scroll down to the “thought for today.” Some are more profound than others, this one not so much, but proverbial. “There is only one way to achieve happiness on this terrestrial ball, and that is to have either a clear conscience or none at all.” -Ogden Nash, poet (1902-1971). Even if Nash is right, I don’t necessarily agree or find it so, but I’d certainly never admit that. These years, my best morning getting up time seems to be a quarter-hour either side of 3:30. Just so this morning. Linda must have been snoring again and not wanting to bother me, because she’s in what she calls her “snoring room”, the bedroom on the far opposite corner of the house, NW vice SE where I am. Not so pretty good, this nevertheless means I can make coffee upstairs, open the blind in the door by the bed and watch for the PCNH carrier as I sip coffee and type Nonsense. I stuck my head out to test the day only to be covered...

  When I was a boy is a common theme that should either have quotation marks around it or be in italics, but it’s my blog and it doesn’t. When I was a boy it was inconceivable that a local seafood restaurant would not have mullet on the menu, nowadays you have to search one out. Gene’s or Captain’s. Fish Net in Lynn Haven had delicious mullet for years but last time we were there none available and the time before that they were terrible, so like a cold day in hell. Well, maybe if we hear different. Catfish Pad in Tallahassee. Oyster Barn on Bayou Texar in Pensacola, I’m having the last of Linda’s mullet from there for breakfast -- with corn bread, dense delicious cornbread. I’m no longer a hushpuppies fan, you get rocks anymore. Mullet and cornbread. Why mullet for a blogpost? Should I write that a ridiculous indictment couldn’t happen to a nicer guy than Rick Perry? We are strange people, Americans, jerked around, led by the media like brainless cows with a rope through the...

How odd to wake at 4:42 feeling guilty about oversleeping. No matter as it’s not my morning to preach. Grandfather Nature reminds me of my age by insisting I not snuggle back down to make an even five o’clock of it, but rise this instant. Rise and hurry, if not shine.  Water dripping off the roof, and the street’s soaked, stepping out into still a slight drizzle, so pop the umbrella open for the walk down the concrete steps and path, dodging the sprinkler that knows me by name and crouches for me. Newspaper’s not there yet, the carrier evidently enjoying Sunday morning by starting a bit late, or maybe it takes longer to roll the larger paper and stuff it in the plastic wrap. No matter. A smallcraft speeds by in the near channel, headed east, visible by its red port light. Green channel marker beyond, but I’m good. Coffee. This morning my first cup of the cylinder of 100% Kona from WholeFoods our last trip to Tallahassee. It’s fine, though I’m no coffee connoisseur. 80F aga...

Favorite Child Somewhere far beyond these ages of ages, Being that in the Fourth Dimension is the Eternal Word at Will, reflects, or reflected, or will reflect -- {tense matters not, as tense, a concept of the human social construct of Time, cannot exist without height, depth and breadth which in that Somewhere are not} -- reflects on the human experiment that, conceived as homoioúsios, nearly made it in that one, favorite, beloved universe. They loved and were loved. They laughed and wept and stormed and raged and fought, were conceived, born, lived and died, but always loved with Us, whom they sometimes erroneously perceived as dispassionate. The humans will be completed, and our Creator, who in a flash of Time and a burst of flame said YHWH, “tell them Being sent you”, will grieve for us, all the conceived, the named, the unnamed, the lived, the died, the never born but eternally loved, the known but to God, the legion, speck on a speck. A dozen and some years ago, Time ...

Do you know the mullet man, the mullet man, the mullet man? Do you know the mullet man, who casts on St. A. Bay? Same tune, second verse, couldn't be better, could be worse -- how? Choices, every morning thoughts and choices about what to think on. Sometimes while the mind ruminates, the fingers dance along robbing the mind’s prerogative.  From my vocation, this should be a holy corner, but it isn’t, maybe later, eh? Maybe not. Thoughts returning, in the near channel just now, a large boat, not ship, passing offshore in the pitch black predawn darkness, its long row of lights along the side looking for all the world like cabin lights on Mark Twain's riverboat. Or the SS Tarpon: I snapped a pic but it didn’t take, maybe it wasn’t real, maybe --- naaah “15” the little square declares, looking closer, AUGUST 15 it says. Someone’s birthday, how old? IDK. Someone who remembers 9/11 but not Pearl Harbor? That would describe most everybody but me. yesterday morni...