comeuppance

If we arrive at a point in life where “everything is about me” we are much to be pitied and of little worth to either self or others. But I keep seeing that split second movie frame of brick sidewalk coming up at me as I try to outrun the stumble, seeing it like a football play rerun though I know that that single frame is not what my game is about. Time to focus elsewhere without being glib, cute or trite.

Maybe a smattering of elsewheres.

Ouch, don’t say “smattering” please.

Michelle sent me a link to yankodesign’s E-TOMB, a concept for gathering memories and data about a dead loved one that folks might like to hold on to and share with each other. I’ve not explored to know fully what E-TOMB is about and how it works, but it looks like a product or service that must be purchased. It’s to be loaded with memories, blogs that a deceased one used to write, anecdotes, pictures, videos, the most loved pet, the trip to Alaska, high school grad night, the first deer, maybe that morning after eating too much mullet red roe, first day at college, any sort of memories to share about someone who has died. Some have said the idea is creepy, but I don’t agree. However, while the idea might be good, it seems to me that such could simply be loaded onto a cloud site or other internet capability and who needs to buy something special for it.

I don’t know about anyone else, but falling is now a major irritant that I want to avoid and quit recalling to active duty. At 79 on the outside I’m still 35 on the inside, actually either 17 or 42 is good, but I’m thinking 35 and walking along the San Francisco waterfront with other wardroom officers that evening while TRIPOLI is in Hunters Point Naval Shipyard for repairs before returning to Vietnam. Well, 23 and heading down to the yacht basin at Guantanamo Bay with Don Senese to check out a sailboat for all day Saturday with a tub of iced Heineken.

The Osama bin Laden shooter doesn’t need to make himself larger than life.

Quick reading this morning, delanceyplace.com on the battle of Stalingrad, a greatest horror of all wars. Not so horrible as what all else the Nazis did to humankind, but soldiers are just young men under orders, they don’t make policy, strategy, devise tactics, or decide. But soldiers, not the generals, are the brave ones, the heroes on any side.

Refrigerator door sign in our kitchen for many years, “You don’t quit playing because you grow old. You grow old because you quit playing.”

HNES Veterans Day chapel this morning, my sadness: having to miss it. Next year “and Jesus don’t tarry” as my holiness minister friend in Apalachicola used to say, next year, and Jesus don't tarry, next year in Jerusalem. I preached at his church one Sunday evening twenty-five or thirty years ago. There were lots of high school kids there. After the worship service one girl, who was in my daughter’s class at Apalachicola High School, came up to me and said, “Brother Weller, I like your preaching.”

“Why thank you,” says I, my head swelling up even bigger than it already was, bigger still than it is this morning, “what did you like about it?”

“It was short.”