New Year’s Eve that began beautifully with orange streaks among ominous clouds, slowly shading to pink and grey, now is silver bright across StAndrewsBay this Saturday morning. It’s our day for folks to reminisce about their passing year. National happenings, international events, news reports, bad news and good. For each of us the real news is personal, happy family events, trips, visits, weddings, births, some intensely searing losses from which one never recovers, all of it 2016.  At the moment I’m looking across Shell Island into the Gulf of Mexico, a peaceful NYE in mind. We bought tickets to the ball benefitting Anchorage Children’s Home, but if we went, we’d never stay awake halfway to midnight, and New Years Day would see FB shots of some old man with his white head lying face-down asleep in his supper. At the moment my notion of New Year’s Eve celebration might be a Stella and small thin crust double-anchovies pizza down the street at Enzo’s. Or perched on a stool...

oh-four-fifty-six and in two hours I should be standing by the rising Holy Pavilion waiting for Robert to arrive for our walk. Usually on Friday we walk then have breakfast at one of several favorites, two mainly: Bayou Joe’s on Massalina Bayou watching traffic cross Tarpon Dock Bridge on their way to work, yuk yuk we're retired. Big Mama’s on the Bayou watching mullet jump and birds fish on Johnson Bayou: when the weather’s nice we sit outside on the back porch closer to the action. Eggs over medium, Big Mama’s has good better best cheese grits, thick and slightly sharp cheese. 43°F 48% sunrise 0638, wind 5 mph, zero precip, windchill 38. Linda’s car’s recently been serviced; mine should go soon, an SRX V8 that scampers like a scared rabbit and taking care of it I hope lasts my lifetime. Bought it this year, ten years old 55k miles. Keep an eye on Cramer’s used car lot online or they sneak the best stuff past me. I don’t know how many hours this car had been listed, but I...

It was a long time ago and this is my memory, what I recall. Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, all of us barely out of our teens together, romance of the age, of the ages. That’s what always comes to mind for me. Eddie was a fool: remember all that? I do. What a stunning disappointment. But this morning it’s all over. Interesting sun fiddling with clouds and condos about sunset last evening and again this morning, no fog but early drizzle, promise of rain, pills, lemon water, black and dark, walk now on 7H porch, 71.8° 81% hat on, hat with bill because the sun is having the victory and not only the bright yellow disc but its glare on the Bay in my eyes.  What’s online for Sunday, January 1, Holy Name of Jesus/Mary, Mother of God: Luke 2:15-21 15 When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” 16 So they ...

Early, clock on this laptop reads Wed 3:47 AM, a moment ago I saw total whiteout at the Beck window and confirmed sitting here at my 7H living room window on the Bay, so another seasonal fog whiteout. Monday the fog did not lift until late morning. Winter fog deserves to be complemented with a chill in the air, but I’ve not been out on the porch because Linda is asleep in the Bay bedroom and the curtain drawn for darkness, and in this room without a light it’d be necessary to slip by the Christmas tree to get to the door, incurring a chance of either pulling the tree down or tripping and falling. 64°F says weather.com , high today 74° and 80% chance of rain tonight. But for now, it's that fogged in I can’t see even one red or green navigation light on the Bay. Coffee black but temporarily no dark choc by this chair.  What’s on mind is Luke’s annunciation and nativity scene and things I’ve learned about from reading and from other people whom I respect. Couple of verses....

Far as I can tell, only way 201612270500 might have been more perfect up here in 7H would've been waking to a thunderstorm raging outside. But it’s just me, I’d not wish that on anyone with outdoors hopes for 2016's final Tuesday. Warm here, 63° 95% zero precip, foggy and going to 75° Hot honey-lemon water. Maybe resume the daily walking regimen, IDK, though it could be a good thing like 2007-8 was for me and lost 47 pounds. Monday’s walk was Places of the Heart: from the Holy Pavilion at Linda Ave and 2nd St, north on Linda Ave, east on 2nd Ct, south on Hamilton Ave, left onto Massalina Drive and along that part of Massalina Bayou where I grew up and Robert's green house across the bayou. Walking our first Monday in 2017 we may walk round his side of Massalina. Round, up to where Massalina Drive begins with a Y at Linda Ave and Allen Ave, left fork onto Linda Ave and north. Across 3rd St, cross 2nd Ct again, back along Holy Ground to my car where ...

That’s a Simplex-Crane motorcar — a short remembrance of the cars and company history is on Wikipedia. Brief because that’s about all the Time they had.  This black touring car with red leather seats was ordered by his son and given to senior John D Rockefeller for his 83rd birthday in 1917. Still operable, it’s a hundred years old now, which is why it’s popping up in classic car material I read. Simplex-Crane was long gone by my Time, but another top car of the era, and of my day in my growing up years, was Packard. 1917 below, contemporary with Rockefeller's car I've recalled here before that when the 1951 Packard was introduced, must have been autumn 1950 because that's when the new year models were introduced annually in those days,  my father went down to the Packard dealership on Grace Avenue to see, most unusual for him, brought home a brochure, which I still have, of the beautiful new cars, and talked about buying one. Along with the 1948 B...

There is a ghost from Hell, one of the overnight bus riders in C S Lewis’ The Great Divorce , whose sole interest in heaven is taking pictures, photographing everything. I don’t have the book, chapter and page open this Christmas morning, and I forget details, but she (female ghost as I recall) didn’t wish to stay on in Heaven because all the beauty was already and always there for posterity, for eternity, and photographs were wanted nor needed; and because everything was always so magnificently perfect that there was no need to capture fleeting moments, indeed no fleeting moments to capture, all was eternal. Tell a truth, this comes to mind every sunrise and every sunset and every gathering storm and every clearing sky and rainbow as I stand outside on our 7H porch waiting for the perfect instant, cognizant of perfection in every passing and present moment, and I can’t stand out here forever.  Returned to mind at our 4:30 Χριστός in Xmas Eve celebration last evening as I snapp...

Twins Ah, last evening came a delightful message, long phone text from my brother, concerning our intended and upcoming visit to Louisiana, Denham Springs where they live. My brother has in his life, and shares with me, interesting stories, episodes, adventures. One I’d not heard, of years ago on travel — he traveled on business as I did years ago — by calculation, I was away from home those years, driving and flying, more than seventy-five percent of my Time — which I would never do again because it kept me away from Tass in her years from five, as she was when I retired from the Navy, until twelve, when we packed off from Harrisburg to Apalachicola for her teen years. So seven years I traveled on business, and missed so much of her growing up though I loved her so, and do love.  The older two were grown and gone. See, the mind wanders. Waking this morning, up to curse Father Nature then back futilely to bed, the mind was thinking that it’s its own worst and only enemy, stir...

Early, we are up and out on 7H porch early, and Friday appears a beautiful morning. Sky seems clear, black, crescent moon and two companions close by and barely out of reach, all of which confirming there’s no reality after all, only perception, perspective. Already I begin my Seventh Day, Crime and Punishment open on this laptop, Feodor, I'm only in Part I, Chapter 2 of Parts 12, and already recognize the Holy Fool, Sonia, by her drunkard father's description: Sonia with the yellow ticket. Already been set up for the crime, murder, of the victim, Alyona Ivanovna, cagy, severe and stingy mean from the very first cracking of her door. How can Feodor possibly get twelve parts with all the chapters when without ever having read it before I already see. Well, I’ll learn about Feodor, and maybe come to feel sympathy for the old doomed pawnstress.  Elsewhere already, Ivan yet she called him Jean, but of course they spoke French, undeniably a revolution factor, and thus begin...

Things wander through the mind, don’t they, busy little bodies, they shouldn’t, but they do, things, nicht Dinge aber Sachen, thoughts, notions, memories, ideas, longings, wishes that are not horses, die kleine Sache like how in hell did I get to be 81, I thought I was forty: where was I, did I miss it, what was I so busy doing when this sneaked up on me. Not to say what is an unsaved wretch like me doing wearing a white collar, fooling people I’m a holy man. And why did I use up Time of life being a workaholic, Saturdays into the office and worked alone for hours when we might’ve been up on Skyline Drive, but now I am 81 and they are 80 and 58 and just turned 56, what happened? Where was I? Even Tass is 44 and Kris three weeks from 24, what happened, where was I? “Working.”  First time living in Northern Virginia 1966f, we had a camper, a small travel trailer, did some camping, not enough, but pulling it, the 318 V8 Dodge station wagon averaged 4 mpg. Backed into the drivewa...

This drear week of the year, a few days before keeping the Χριστός in Xmas, mind turns to the genealogies of Jesus in Matthew 1 and Luke 3, and that they are so different, in content and in agenda (btw, agenda is not a four letter word implying something sinister, devious or manipulative, it simply refers to the writer’s literary purpose). Writing for a Jewish Christian audience, Matthew’s agenda with his genealogy is to show that Jesus is a son of Abraham, a Jew notwithstanding that he is a Galilean; and to show his legitimate claim to messiahship on the throne of David by tracing his ancestry back through kings of Judah, the old Southern kingdom. Matthew, subtly to us, loud and clear to his audience, underscores, emboldens his case by asserting there are  14 generations from Abraham to David,  14 generations from David to Jeconiah, and 14 generations from Jeconiah to Jesus. Matthew’s Jewish audience will understand his numerology: 14 in Hebrew is ד ו ד   D+V+D (...