For sunset, supper, and sunrise this is the place, high up looking and loving St. Andrews Bay from one end, across, and to the other, east to south to west, papermill to Davis Point to Shell Island to the Pass to the highrise condos lining Thomas Drive, this is the place. Sunset 20151030 Sunrise 20151031 Where when weather permits we eat breakfast, lunch, and supper. Supper last night. Steamed shrimp and a cheap french red by candlelight. Behind the candle, my father's barometer. Or maybe it was Pop's. Scanning the menu of a new Texas cafe at PCB I spotted “country fried steak.” If it's real it will be chicken fried steak. Salivating, going on line to find the best chicken fried steak in Texas, comes up Frank's Grill in Houston. Looks like the breakfast place to sample. After reading all the reviews, here's my favorite: “If you're el cheapo like me, this is a good place to have a lot of food for close to nothing. They open ...

Last Friday in October, and the cool, pleasant Northwest Florida autumn weather is still mild enough to walk in short pants and a short sleeve shirt. Wearing my “USN Retired” with 05/06 scrambled eggs cap. Some weeks ago I dropped off a car at CramerGM for servicing, and seeing my Navy cap the attendant asked, “Are you a retired admiral?” One of these days maybe I’ll see a baseball cap with the bill for a flag officer and promote myself. Maybe not. Maybe. After the walk, breakfast at Bayou Joe’s, eggs over medium and dry wheat toast. Dry not as a health enthusiast but because dry toast soaks up egg yolk better than buttered toast. Black coffee.  Now in my office pecking out a blogpost and contemplating Sunday School class day after tomorrow, what? All Saints Day it is:  John [11:32-44] When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping,...

What happened yesterday, Wednesday, what did we do, how was the day filled out? Reminding and remembering this is no journal nor diary.  Noon to GCSC for a tour of their magnificent new building, delicious lunch with a friend and friend who, years ago (1991) in the parking lot scene, was the double who slammed the Ford sedan repeatedly into the red Volkswagen convertible in Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe .  Trip to the PC Mall, first time in years. Stop at Sam’s on the way home, flu shot, refill toothbrush heads for my Sonicare. I’m always concerned not to buy too many refills, sure as I do the base will die and refuse to charge, it’s about time, this is my third or fourth Sonicare in the past twenty years. In the beginning I had one in the rectory in Apalachicola and one at 2308 WBD. This one five or six years, maybe eight. Nap. To church. In some future age I might fly to my blue heaven, passing my flashing green channel marker on the way or maybe...

Weather up here can be exhilarating. Last week we were longing for a storm, and this week it roared through as the last gasp of category 5 Hurricane Patricia circling in the Gulf of Mexico  and now headed north. We had wind, waves and rain last night, and a bit of heavy rain predawn this mooring. all good stuff. At one point there was thunder from strong lightning in a severe storm off the coast. What a great place, what a great life, what a great world, and it’s only Wednesday. Totally stirred up muddy, even the Bay is clear and calm at the moment. And 7:28, here comes a heavy rain across the Bay from the Gulf.  So I reckon we’re not done yet. Two tugs waiting for her, a large ship bearing general cargo arrives from Angamos, enters the Pass; a large workboat just passing my porch for a busy day at sea,  out of my picture to the east a shrimpboat heads home from overnight on the Bay. The WisdomLine ship Genius Star X rounds the hairpin ...

Despite appearances, our weather is not cold or even chilly this morning, we have 70F and 97% humidity and precipitation at 86% and wind about 20 miles per hour up here in Seventh Floor subHeaven right now. Because my feet get cold at night, I sleep in socks year round, and right now they’re soaking from walking on the porch. Just as last night, I can hear the surf from the Gulf of Mexico about four miles distant, telling me there may be wave action rolling in. And the Bay at my feet seven floors down is lapping ashore noisier than usual.  Our topic in this morning’s Bible Seminar is the Divinity of Jesus. Not a review of Bart Ehrman’s current stocking stuffer How Jesus Became God — though I love Professor Ehrman, a master at rearranging words over and over again to get a blockbusting ‘nother best seller with a sensational title and circling round his personal spiritual autobiography — but an open discussion of the church’s christogical evolution — you should pardon the four ...

All Saints, November 1, ranks with Christmas and Easter, Epiphany, Ascension, Trinity Sunday, and Pentecost as one of the seven Principal Feasts of the Church. This year it happens to fall on a Sunday, giving it liturgical precedence over the normal Sunday propers, prayers and readings. Customarily, we sing at least one hymn celebrating the saints of God in the church militant and triumphant, and in some parishes we commemorate members of the parish and loved ones who died since All Saints Day the previous year. It will be an opportunity to name them in prayer and bring them again into the Mind of God.  Twenty-five or thirty years ago, in the small town parish I was serving at the time, I noticed that a local couple whom I knew were coming to our Sunday services, and I always made a point of welcoming them warmly. About their third or fourth time, which turned out to be their final Sunday with us, I greeted them again at the door going out after service, and asked if I could come...

Has anyone noticed 2015 passing so fast that already Christmas is only two months from today? 69F 87% out there. The urge for max comfort is keeping me inside this morning, coffee and one dark square. Actually this morning it’s a triangle of dark. A splash of chocolate milk in my coffee for a change. Linda tells me our Christmas tree this year will be out on the porch. She makes those small day to day decisions, as someone said, I make the big decisions. Like who should not be president, that sort of thing.  My teams had a break this week, we watched the Alabama game to a win. Were watching the FSU game until about halftime, when it was clear the Seminoles were going to win again, and I went to bed -- why should I watch a team whose coach has forgotten how to lose a football game. “The president is sleeping.” “When he wakes up, tell him he’s no longer president.” Woodrow Wilson v. Charles Evans Hughes 1916. 16-22? That can't be right. I keep checking the score again to see...

Sitting here thinking about Sunday School tomorrow, when I should have been writing my blog post. Actually, the SS possibilities are more interesting than anything the dancing fingers might tap out. In the lectionary, we finish Mark chapter 10 with Jesus and Friends arriving at Jericho and then immediately leaving Jericho. As I’ve said and written ad nauseam, this surfaces Secret Mark, I’m not sure whether even to bring it up again.  The more interesting possibility, to me, seems to be that we who are following Track One of the lectionary will finish our series of readings from Job. Job is a poem, maybe you’d call it an epic poem that pits Job against life itself. The poem is introduced with a semi-detached prologue that almost fits but serves to set the stage, and is closed out with an — epilogue, I suppose is the term, that wraps it all up with an arguably happy ending. The poem itself is a dramatic presentation of how life is, to use Kushner’s phrase and book title, “When Bad...

Hurricane Patricia, 879 mb, category 5 with 200 mph sustained winds, gusting to 245 mph, 40 foot waves, 30 foot storm surge according to the National Hurricane Center. Strongest storm on record in the northern hemisphere, catastrophic, "the most dangerous storm in history," and is supposed to come ashore today. An eastern Pacific hurricane.  Not complaining or jealous but wondering why hurricanes have preferred Pacific to Atlantic recently. Returned from this morning’s walk heavily sweating, shirt sopping wet. We walked fast for two octogenarians. Couple of hills, which we call grinds, in the alley between E 3rd Court and E 3rd Street, which goes between Scotty’s house on Massalina Drive and Bill’s house on Cove Boulevard, where we walked for, what? old time's sake. Shirt dripping with sweat reminded me. This may turn out R rated. Forty years ago I had an Australian client who in his late teens and early twenties had worked for a moving company. It was in New Zeal...

Anu Garg’s word.a.day website may be my favorite daily email. Many of the words he introduces, I never heard or saw, and this week he’s come up with some doozies. Today, for example, “sooterkin.” In fact the  only word I’ve known this week is poppycock, and it’s origin, like b.s., is perfect for helping reign in the sometime foul mouth of which I am not at all proud but rather greatly ashamed. Often even better than the words is Garg’s Thought for Today, which always is the last thing on the post; this morning,  "A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: Think for yourself and question authority. -Timothy Leary, psychologist and writer (22 Oct 1920-1996)"  With my healthy, or perhaps unhealthy, and certainly sometimes unfortunate over the years, deep contempt for authority, this may be Anu’s top best Thought. It’s where I am in life, where I always have been so far as I recall. This attitude, which in me derives from my growing up years, where I’m not going this morning to the pla...

What's happening? Out on the porch enjoying three tiny slices of meatloaf for breakfast, with catsup and wheat crackers. One slice from Linda's “mom's usual” and two from “usual” that I mixed with liverwurst after remembering liverloaf at some earlier point in life. We once loved liver and onions, probably haven't had it in forty years. In the PCNH this morning, obit of Bill Bailey. My age, in my class at Cove School and Bay High. In our growing up days, Bill lived in a house on Cove Boulevard right behind Scotty Fraser's house across the Bayou from us on Massalina Drive, so Bill was a Massalina Bayou boy. Bill and Scotty Fraser were roommates across the hall from Philip Johnson and me our freshman year at UFlorida. He and Scotty were Presbyterians, and when it turned out that I didn't mesh with the Episcopalians at Canterbury House, we started going every Sunday to First Presbyterian in Gainesville, where the much loved popular pastor, Preacher Gordon hel...

Probably I should have stuck to automobiles instead of branching out into life and theology and Bible stuff. It's the Bible stuff that catches me up short, surprised, puzzled and ignorant. Linda says people get tired of my reminding them I'm no scholar, but I'm so conscious of it and selfconscious about it that it keeps popping out of my mouth anyway. It pops up again as I read the gospel for the upcoming Sunday – 46  They (i.e., Jesus and his disciples) came to Jericho. ---  As he and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside. 47  When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” 48  Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” 49  Jesus stood still and said, “Call him here.” And they called the blind man, saying to him, “Take heart; get up, he i...

Chilly out here, 55F 66% and wind at 9mph makes welcome, necessary and comfortable the bathrobe with hood up. There are clouds up there, but it's not overcast, because beyond and between clouds the stars are clear. Eleven days from November, this is a welcome autumn morning. A few of these and I'll be ready for summer, but that's not how it works. Couple of football heartbreaks Saturday and I'm not even going to check the rankings this morning. Watched the Gamecocks at least one last time and was proud of them over Vanderbilt. I love a football game of passing with lots of interceptions and that's what I saw. Coach Elliott did a good job and I know he's hoping to stay, but my heart's not there anymore.  Whipped by a stiff breeze, St Andrews Bay is lapping ashore noisily just below. From next door comes the sound of wind in the trees in Oaks by the Bay park, where yesterday afternoon there was a wedding, and on the deck at the end of one of...

Sermon in Holy Nativity Episcopal Church, Panama City, Florida, Sunday, October 18, 2015, the Rev Tom Weller.  Text: Mark 10:35-45 (RSV)  The Request of James and John 35  James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to Jesus, and said to him, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” 36  And he said to them, “What do you want me to do for you?” 37  And they said to him, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” 38  But Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” 39  And they said to him, “We are able.” And Jesus said to them, “The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized; 40  but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.” 41  And w...