Moment of Silence

Thanksgiving Tuesday every year we come to Tallahassee to Grandpeoples Day at Holy Comforter Episcopal School, first for Caroline, now for Charlotte. While here we go to Trader Joe’s for a few things we enjoy. One is 100% Kona coffee beans, another the box of Australian shiraz. They have good frozen green beans for a third the price at Publix. A small but interesting selection of Indian frozen dinners: a lamb dish I saw last time and bought yesterday. For lunch, Linda and I will share it and the go-box of spaghetti from my chicken florentine and her eggplant florentine at Village Pizza that Charlotte chose for supper last evening.

Interesting inflation at TJ: a key attraction of the shiraz was it’s decent wine at $2.50 a bottle, but instead of exactly $10 as I’ve paid recently, a new price, $12.95. Maybe supply responding to demand, shipping costs have gone up not that much. I bought two boxes but may not again, don’t like a sense of being caught. But it’s still cheap.

First time we went, TJs had two brands of duck liver pate’ but no longer, maybe duck lovers shamed TJ into taking it off the shelf. Delicious and reminded me of friends’ recent reports of dining in France, probably as heart unhealthy an item as I love, though I don’t eat it once in five years.

Yesterday the ten minute drive from Tassy’s house to Trader Joe’s took ninety minutes, an hour and a half, traffic was that jammed and unmoving. Hundreds of police cars, sheriffs’ cars, ambulances, fire trucks, tow trucks streaming through, all traffic stopped for them and traffic backed up for miles in every direction on I-10 as well as north and south thoroughfares. What’s this: a flag at half-mast. At Trader Joe’s the cashier told us they were honoring the funeral of the Leon County deputy sheriff shot in an ambush. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/11/23/florida-deputy-ambush-killed-identified/19446091/. It added further perspective to the Ferguson case and my contumely for the Episcopal priest comparing herself to Jesus who was arrested among other demonstrators there chanting “Killer cops have got to go” before the grand jury reported out. Politically correct, a self-righteous certitude attaches that smells foul of arrogance, prejudice and ignorance, and makes me ashamed of fellow clergy. Hatred is not a feeling, it’s how a lynch mob treats people. One wonders whether she’s heard the gospel stories of Jesus arrested, prejudged, tried and executed by the self-righteous and certain of his day. As in heard but not understood. I find no crime in this man. Crucify him, crucify him.

A calling equal to national defense, and fully as honorable, law enforcement is a vocation to the public good. An officer killed in the line of duty is reason for a traffic jam, a flag at half-mast and silence.

Patience. Facts. Evidence. Be quick to love, slow to judge, last to condemn, and make haste to be kind.

Who has ears, hear.

Our annual Wednesday Thanksgiving Week tradition closes with breakfast at Village Inn, hugs and kisses, and driving home to Panama City. I may have blueberry pancakes.