Okay, so what happens? Well, yesterday morning before going to Chuck’s Cardio, I lie down, curl up for a short nap, and go back to sleep so totally and soundly that I slept through my cardio event. Did I make up for it later? Yes. I went to the house and worked my tail off continuing the work of cleaning up and clearing out. Two grungy windows in my upstairs office, facing north and over the back stairs, now open easily and are sparkling with their wavy old glass panes that Mom and Pop first looked through more than a century ago.  In those days, that back east room that last was my upstairs office was EG’s bedroom. Maybe EG and Ruth shared it, IDK. The front bedroom was Alfred’s. The other side upstairs was first one large room, a game room with a billiards table. During the WW2 housing shortage, that huge room was changed into a roomy apartment of two rooms and a bathroom, the front room being a living room and bedroom, the back room a kitchen with dining area. The large nor...

Wake at 1:15, up, back to sleep, wake at 4:15 same reason, sit up dopily, up to stay. Coffee in an old plastic mug, blue velvet chair by the window bayside, what? Same green light flashing as always and ever.  Much less inspiration, lacking inclination to write. Open spider solitaire and easily finish a game that last night was impossible. Think. Nope. Wordsmith concludes the week with scabrous. Jiminy Christmas, a week’s worth of words exactly tailored to fit my being: scurvy, apoplectic, jaundiced, metastasize, scabrous. Think. Nope. The window frames total soft blackness with just that one green light tormenting me from, what? two miles away and across eternity. Think. Still nope. Tap icon for favorite comic strip, not the favorite, just one of half a dozen favorites: Candorville. Lemont is talking with his nutty psychiatrist about his relationship with his son Lionel.  Not sleepy last night so opened and read three or four chapters of All The Light We Cannot See b...

At the moment the lectionary has us reading through 1st Corinthians Sunday by Sunday. This comes round every three years in the lectionary cycle, and this is the year.  Although scholars seem to prefer Romans as the most brilliant, mature and theological of Paul's writings, I like 1st Corinthians for sensible things, practical guidance that Paul tells us all through it. But sometimes, especially when read out of context, Paul can be confusing and even profoundly boring.  In the 1st Corinthians 8:1-13 reading for Sunday, Paul tells us that it may be a sin to do perfectly harmless things if you know that doing them will scandalize people who are not as sophisticated and modern as you consider yourself to be. The issue Paul uses is meat.  In the days of the Roman Empire, there was no Publix or Winn-Dixie to buy groceries: the meat that people bought in the marketplace to take home for supper had been brought to market from altars where the animal had been slaugh...

Darkness and, Unclean Wide news coverage, here we are seventy years on from liberation of Auschwitz, one of many concentration camps run by the Third Reich to exterminate entire segments of humanity. The Story and stories are well known, remembered by some of us, recorded by victims, written about -- I have written here about that period in my life. There was no television, no internet, wifi: we got our news in the daily paper but most vividly in the newsreels at the local movie theater. For us here in Panama City in that time, the Ritz Theatre. Where the Martin is now, why in its recovery and renovation the Ritz was misnamed Martin IDK, but OK, it's done. The other movie theater was the Panama a couple blocks south down Harrison, maybe where the parking lot is now at Oak and Harrison. I’ve written before that I was never allowed in the Panama Theater, my mother forbade it, something about dirty old men. We only were allowed the Ritz. In my earliest memory, admission was eleve...

Syllabus: 2015 Spring Session Tuesday Morning Bible Seminar, HNEC Mentor & Sponsor: Tom Weller twellerpc@gmail.com Place: Mary Stuart Poole Library. Use either door. The street door is probably more convenient for those who park on 3rd Street. When: Tuesday mornings 10:00 to 11:15. Please arrive between 9:30 and 10:00 for coffee, a slight snack, and to visit. Kindly be on time so as not to enter during our prayer or disrupt the class startup. We sit down at 10:00, convene with prayer at 10:05, and adjourn promptly at 11:15 so people can keep lunch plans.  Class Schedule: February 3, 10, 17, 24. March 3, 10, 17, 24. No class March 31 (Holy Week, priests are frantic). April 7, 14, 21, 28. May 5, 12, 19, 26. We have a child at college, so if I need to cancel a session to go to some college event I will let you know. Because people’s personal and family schedules vary and change, everyone misses some sessions. No one is expected to attend all sessions. Each session st...

Syllabus: 2015 Spring Session Tuesday Morning Bible Seminar, HNEC Mentor & Sponsor: Tom Weller. All are invited and welcome. If you are interested in attending, please email me at  twellerpc@gmail.com Place: Mary Stuart Poole Library across the street from the church office at 1011 W. 3rd Street, down the brick sidewalk from Battin Hall. Use either door. The street door is probably more convenient for those who park on 3rd Street. When: Tuesday mornings 10:00 to 11:15. Please arrive at your convenience between 9:30 and 10:00 for coffee, a slight snack, and to visit with each other. Kindly be on time so you as not to enter during our prayer or disrupt the class startup . We sit down at 10:00, convene with prayer at 10:05, and adjourn promptly at 11:15 so people can keep lunch plans.  Class Schedule: February 3, 10, 17, 24. March 3, 10, 17, 24. No class March 31 (Holy Week, priests are frantic). April 7, 14, 21, 28. May 5, 12, 19, 26. I have a child at college,...

Monday waking thoughts. Waking, eyes clenched shut against the clock's red glow. Warmly, comfortably, drowsily willing a drifting back to sleep in defiance of the ancient foe. Doze. Wake again realizing the Prince of Darkness grim is winning. The Creator should have consulted me in designing Ish: instead of a bladder, expanded application of the epidermis as evaporator.  More waking thoughts: two people I envy. No, covet, breaking a commandment. One reads Mark in Greek. Other has a blue 1958 Bonneville in the garage, drives it from time to time. My Hebrew attempt failed, but if more determined I could do Mark. The Pontiac? Dream on. Not tomorrow, but next Tuesday, 3 February opens the Spring Session of our midweek Bible Seminar. Ten o’clock sharp to eleven-fifteen, also sharp. All welcome. To register, email me twellerpc@gmail.com . Several already have done.   W        

Cool. No, damright chilly 38F but 82% is comfortably dry for us. And zero precip is good for the Sunday when we are having breakfast and our annual parish meeting. No adult Sunday School today, pick it back up next Sunday, February 1st.  Then on Tuesday, February 3rd start a new session of weekday Bible Seminar. More about that to come. Linda and I are loving our new digs, me especially the small size and the view from my blue velvet chair at windowside. The chair is facing east, a table with lamp to my left as is natural for a righthanded person, and to my right is St. Andrews Bay. Directly across, on a clear day I can see, from this seventh floor, over Shell Island at a low and thin wide spot with no trees, into the shining Gulf of Mexico. Also love being immersed in downtown St. Andrews instead of five or six blocks away, and seeing from the small bedroom not only the changing traffic lights at Beck Avenue and 11th and 15th but whatever is going on, and the marina a...

Sound of waves lapping the shore below. Looks to be grim weather. StABay looking southwest from my porch just now. I’m no photographer, but the views from here are so captivating that the iPhone camera stays busy. Grainy, but I’m not interested in moving up from bad to good, much less better, best. The pics are for me in the moment. Considering whether to add Saturday to my morning exercise “regimen” that’s no regimen at all but Monday - Friday hour sometimes half-hour, not to be beautiful but to maybe extend +Time. Article online this morning says for best effects exercise before breakfast, so I’m sitting here typing and starving while deciding whether to cook an omelet or go downstairs to the gym room. The important thing will not be the decision but how I feel later about what I actually did. My history and being is the omelet. But I wasn’t a heart patient looking at 80 then either. Officiating a wedding this afternoon. My sister’s birthday today. Fourth anniversa...

Heavy rainstorm on top of us. Lightning and thunder coming up from the Gulf, our first thunderstorm here. In the charming village design, a metal roof peak is next to us, and we can hear rain hitting the roof.  Excellent sleep last evening: to bed at 9:00, up momentarily at 1:23 and back to sleep until five o’clock. Eight hours. Something good is happening, why? IDK but I like it. Diecast Models email this morning. Even though it always says "dear valued customer" I scan, drool, and delete. Months ago they offered several Chevys from the twenties and thirties and I was tempted but did not sin. Because with this move I have four boxes of old cars, some I’ve had since the forties. Going from thirteen rooms to three there’s not space, but I cannot decide what to do with them. Same with boxes of old car brochures collected through my teen and college years. Joe gave me an old car trunk, one of those you see on pictures of old Model Ts and Buicks and Packards, but I’m not...

Watching TV is not my thing, news and weather I get online. I don’t do Facebook online though except once daily to post a link to my blog post, and generally not otherwise unless Ray Wishart’s photography catches my eye and I start scrolling down to marvel at his imagination and artistic genius. I like to read but have a psychological problem finishing a book that I like because if I’m enjoying it I don’t want it to end, which I’ve confessed here before. It took me weeks to read “Life Itself: A Memoir” because each essay was so fascinating, and moving, and several I found my own life in and had to keep going back to live in the memories.   But when I want to entertain myself without doing something useful I may pick up my iPad and play my game, which is Spider Solitaire. I reckon it’s “spider” because of the web you can tangle yourself up in, but they could have come up with a better name for it. Fifteen or so years ago I taught my mother how to use a computer, then we bought ...

Home by Another Way Once before I may have written two blog posts the same day, now this morning. We started our walk a minute or so before seven and finished a few minutes after eight, so for two octogenarians that was fair, I give us a C+. Starting on Linda Avenue behind Cove School as always, we decided to do it backwards, so walked north to 2nd Court, west to E. Beach Drive, across Tarpon Dock Bridge and past the building that used to be Alvin Cook’s fish house. Alvin was in business the same time as my father back in the nineteen forties and early fifties. In 1948 he and my father bought new Dodge sedans about the same time, ours green theirs Burgundy, and one Sunday morning that spring or early summer we all drove over to Mobile together in the two new cars to see Bellingrath Gardens. Arriving in time for church, we went to the eleven o’clock service at Christ Episcopal in Mobile. Alvin and Gracie Cook were Baptist and didn’t stand or kneel as we did, but sat through the who...

Deflategate, here we go again with the Patriots, more interesting than the nodding, bobbing, shaking heads who necropsy the State of the Union address. Better three or four political parties than two polarized in principle as their single platform. Don’t bring back the Dixiecrats, but something. Tea Party and the Socialists, except words are so charged. The Tories. Or, hey, the Patriots.   Red, Blue and -- what? Not Purple these days. Not Pink. Not Yellow. Not Black. White, nah. Green maybe. Nope, too Catholic, so not Orange either.   Imagine that: I don’t have to think about CFB again for six months. B1G may top SEC, but Ohio State is not the new Crimson Tide. Go, Seahawks. Who will win Super Bowl 2015? Probably Pepsi. Lexus, Mercedes, BMW and Toyota. GM, Ford or Chrysler? Why would an auto floormat manufacturer advertise in the SuperBowl? Time to walk. Up too early, way too early, read sports news but studiously avoided political garbage, wrote an incredibly stu...

 Epiphany, a season, for those who went to Sunday School as children, of good old Sunday School Bible stories. Specifically, “call stories,” God’s call on the lives of his people, calling them into his service. Last week it was Samuel, who did not know the Lord, as he lay down to go to sleep under the sanctuary lamp, which was still lit to signify the presence of God (as our sanctuary lamp at the aumbry, when lit, signifies the presence of Christ in the consecrated Sacrament), “Jahweh, we know you are here.” And then in John’s gospel, Jesus called Philip and they call Nathanael. That was last Sunday. The call stories continue this coming Sunday as we read from the story of Jonah. Called of God, as the expression goes, and finally being taught his lesson and surrendering to the divine will, Jonah goes to Nineveh and preaches a message of doom: God is about to destroy the wicked city. The residents hear and believe, repent in sackcloth and ashes, and God is satisfied. From...

Annual holiday today, MLK birthday and I remember when he was assassinated. Stationed in Washington, DC and living in a rented house on Wakefield Chapel Road just off Route 236 outside the Beltway, we had bought a small travel trailer and were at a campsite up in the BlueRidge. I can’t visualize that we would have had a TV up there, so must have been following the news on radio. Would it have been Walter Cronkite? I don’t remember.  My duty station was in the Navy Annex looking east over at the Pentagon and north across the Potomac to the District, and what I do remember in following days is a skyline of flames as enraged mobs torched parts of the city, and heavy smoke both rising into the sky and hovering over the city. It doesn’t “all come back to me now,” what it does is remind me of my Navy days from start to finish, mainly as always destroyer duty which was the best part of my twenty years, and the two shore duty tours in Washington, nearly ten years apart and leaving me wi...

As we continue our wonderful retirement adventure of moving from an enormous house to tiny new accommodation, I’m thinking of my mother telling about moving day at their house when she was a little girl a hundred years ago. It was the nineteen-teens, maybe even 1915. Mama had been born north of Pensacola just up the road a piece, south of Century, in a rural area called Bluff Springs. It's hardly even on the map. Mama was the second of eventually five children. My sister is the family genealogist and would know when, but at some point they moved into Pensacola, where mama's father Walter Henry Gentry was in business with his brothers Lee and Elbert, Gentry Bros, Loans and Pawns. I don’t remember Uncle Lee; but I do remember Uncle Eb, who died in the 1940s when I was twelve or fourteen. In fact, I found Uncle Eb's grave in St. John Cemetery as I drove through Pensacola on my way to one of my spiritual retreats the summer of 2013. Moving from Bluff Springs to Pensacola, ...

In her late years my aunt Evalyn (with an “a” not an “e”), my father’s oldest sister, took an Alaska cruise. After, she told me enthusiastically that rising early morning to view high snowy mountains at near distance across the sea, she had been moved to say the Venite . Traditional and sung to beloved Anglican Chant, it had been our opening canticle for Morning Prayer all our years of life, our praise song expressing our love and awe of God. One of my morning devotionals these recent years has been and continues RSF&PTL, but generally just a word or three of praise both as anamnesis and to center on who and what I am and have been. Having taken up predawn residence at this Bay window, though, I am moved every morning in the pitch darkness with the magnificence of what I see. This morning, the crescent moon, which in the time sitting here I’ve seen rise from hanging over downtown Panama City to a third of its way to its meridian. And the sparkling jewel of St. Andrews Bay bene...

Okay, I can’t help it: I love this car. Not only is it a Buick, it’s long, it’s low, it’s lithe. It’s a sedan. It’s rear wheel drive, it needs only to say Buick Eight on front, and that long hood could even take a modern old-fashioned, silky smooth Fireball straight eight engine. Dream on, codger. http://www.automobilemag.com/auto_shows/detroit/2015/1501-buick-shocks-detroit-with-rear-wheel-drive-avenir-concept/photo_25.html Avenir: Roadmaster Redivivus.  So what else is new, Harry Golden? Executions in Oklahoma and Florida. We tend to overlook that it wasn’t the victims who were executed: the victims lives were taken from them years and years ago, in most cases, horribly. But then I am not as civilized as I might be.  Horror of the New Age of terrorists killing people in the name of God. Outrage of people offending others in the name of Free Speech. Civilization upside down and collapsing on itself. Never mind the First Commandment, the Second is this: you shall...

When you get to this age it is reasonable to be certain of nothing, but it seems to me that when I was a boy there were people living in the Cove Hotel. Not just regular guests, but resident, a few people who lived there all the time. Thinking of them, the idea always intrigued me, of having simple living space in a beautiful location, a room with bathroom, a lovely view -- the Cove Hotel looked out on the lawn and the Bay -- and no kitchen, so going to the hotel dining room for all meals.  The Cove Hotel is long gone, but there is a row of townhouses there now, Bay Oaks, back from Cherry Street, hidden privately behind trees and greenery, fronting on the Bay. When we were looking, remembering the old Cove Hotel days, I thought for a moment that Bay Oaks might be the ideal location for us. But there were none listed at the time, and no community pool for the granddaughters, and the units are two story, which we decided to avoid once and for all. And though tucked away and char...

What’s for blogpost? “Retired Episcopal priest writing and ruminating and musing lightly for self and friends as a therapy for recuperation after successful open heart surgery at Cleveland Clinic on Monday, January 24, 2011” reads the Profile on my web log where I post some sort of nonsense every morning come hell or high water. Not counting this morning’s post, and I suppose not counting the one post I deleted for some reason I can’t remember but probably it was some wild-hair political rant that I was ashamed of the next day, there have been 1,473 posts. Who reads this nonsense? I certainly do not. Although if on later reflection something strikes me as having been incomplete, or as having missed an opportunity for theological reflection in some way, I may go back and change it, amend it. In fact, I did that this week with my post that took off on Anu Garg’s quotation from Haruki Murakami’s thought about our memories being the fuel we burn to stay alive, went back and fiddle...