Tomorrow morning we drive east and east through Mexico Beach and on east to Apalachicola to overnight at a hotel on the river, for a Saturday morning funeral in which I am to preach the homily (sermon?). Homiletically, they are not the same. A homily briefly exposits on scripture that has just been read, a commentary to draw out spiritual meaning and application. A sermon might be  on about anything, whatever the preacher has in mind and for however endless. But I've noticed Episcopal priests not seeming to know the difference, saying homily as more catholic and sophisticated than sermon; and Episcopalians think of ourselves as nothing if not sophisticated and katholische We may even say homilist for preacher. After the interment we drive north for two nights, and parts of three days with beloveds, in Tallahassee.  Reverting to diary, yesterday good visit over lunch with my sister. Half-shell oysters, and fried. Family chat, and she told me a place to be on lookout for to ...

Poem, life is a poem, and if so, it must be one of those Victorian era poems that observe, experience and portray life serious and to be contended with, contentious even melancholic. In a convoluted world and convoluted life that 2018ly struck hard and grew yet more convoluted, A Word a day and A Poem a day are welcome bits of distraction that lead the mind off the main path to where I'd otherwise not wander but where as part of mental fitness I need to go; and that, leading, also help me establish new mental files to open as needed for escape from the convolution. I can escape onto that ferry riding across Narragansett Bay toward Jamestown. I also can escape into Matthew Arnold. Robert Frost. Marcus Aurelius. Recently a friend put me back in touch with Matthew Arnold, whom I can find online. Not for everyone, his poems, I can and do find myself. And though another friend several years ago put me onto contemplative Marcus Aurelius, his book of Meditations, along with other boo...

”Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” How? How is scripture fulfilled? Listen up, because I may be asking for a show of hands. Or an enthusiastic response. You may be seated. +++   +++   +++ That day at Nazareth, his hometown, in the church where he grew up, Jesus rolls up the scroll, hands it back to the attendant, and sits down. The eyes of all are upon him as he says, "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing." They smile expectantly, amazed at his teaching. But suddenly he turns sarcastic. “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’ And you will say, ‘Do here here in your hometown the things we’ve heard you did at Capernaum.’” And he says, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months bringing a famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to no one in Israe...

For years, generations, centuries, even to the ages of ages, chefs of renown have sought to serve a breakfast better than Nana's meatloaf on whole wheat bread smeared with gravy, yet none has succeeded, as again this morning I breakfasted and a third cup of black coffee. In the large, flat Krispy Kreme box from Wednesday afternoon, one donut waits: one single lonely glazed donut, longing to be loved. Who will take the last donut out of its box and warm it six seconds in the microwave? “Not I,” said the cat. “Not I,” said the goose. “Not I,” said the rat. “Then I will,” said Little Red Hen. But the truth is, my breakfast dessert this clear chill Sabbath morn will be the best under the sun, a pecan pie cupcake mixed, stirred, poured into little tinsel cups and baked by my sister-in-law, my brother Walt's beloved wife Judy. Early up, I witnessed Venus and Jupiter still slowly moving apart.  Saturday: a workday for Father. T  

Their long awaited union apparently not meant to be, Venus and Jupiter are going their separate ways. With a nod to propriety, their hookup last Tuesday was cloaked in privacy. Unless Venus starts spinning out baby moons, one might only conjecture what may have happened behind the clouds that drew a curtain across the event. Below, there they are this morning, picture taken from my pillow as I sat up sipping coffee, parting. Venus is the brighter, lower.    Reading yesterday morning's MRI, Malinda's neurosurgeon pronounced it perfect, her three brain surgery procedures successful, aneurysms gone and no sign of more, blood flowing correctly through the stents. Her short term memory loss from the mild stroke that happened the evening of the third surgery may or may not fade with time, as well as behavior shifts that I read are normal after the brain is touched by medical procedure.  What with hurrication and the above, almost no day has a plan any more. If it works o...

A highlight of life these days, that my brother now lives in Pensacola. Yesterday we met Walt and Judy at Joe Patti's Restaurant for late lunch. I love my brother more than life can show or say, and all our lives he has been and is everything I never was, and having him nearby and married to his highschool sweetheart after all these years, is beyond even his own dreams. Two hearts constantly aflutter. See, the kingdom of heaven is more than loiteringly "at hand" as John the Baptist proclaimed, the kingdom has come. What? oh - - little cup of slaw, fried mullet, fried shrimp, fried oysters. Vegetables: baked beans, cheese grits. Ice water. Bite of their, what is it, mandarin-orange whipped cream pineapple cake, they don't serve you a delicate slice either. Joe Patti's has come to be a favorite. By ten o'clock this morning at Sacred Heart Hospital, a brain scan for Malinda, then one o'clock appointment with the neurosurgeon, then back to Inlet Beach ...

Yesterday we drove down toward Pier Park to finish some business. While in the area lunchtime came upon us, so instead of stopping at one of many restaurants at PCB, we went to Fresh Market for sushi. Well, Linda bought salads for herself and Malinda, I bought two obentos, two bento boxes of sushi, one for my lunch and one hoping Kristen might be coming over for pot roast supper with us. She didn't come, so what was to be hers is now my breakfast. And just as the last time I reported on sushi, I got it out of the fridge, "reefer" is the Navy term, to come up to room temperature. We have a busy day in mind. During and between said business, I mean to read and write. If only the car had a roomy back seat for that, but it does not, indeed, only one affordable American car offers a model with plenty of legroom and comfort behind the driver; so I'll work squnched up and unable to move my legs. Besides styling absurdities, car manufacturers must have closed up the str...

Yesterday? Not sure what happened, near noon got in my V8 and drove into town with an errand or two in mind, realized it was MLK and places were closed so drove out 77 toward Lynn Haven. Seeing more broken and fallen pines, changed mental and physical directions, turned around to head south on 77, didn't recognize 23rd Street intersection, memory says there was a bombed out bank building there, turned west at US231 for 15th Street and on toward Hathaway Bridge, only stopping at a gas station in "Little Dothan" then drove straight back here wondering why I'd not at least stopped some' ers for a dozen halfshell. Sixty miles nonstop and nonsense but that it'd sprung me for maybe two hours, I didn't clock it.  Last evening's moonrise. This morning's disappointment, sky too cloudy to view the conjunction of Venus and Jupiter. It's okay, in stargazing years when I was 20-something and 30-something, I learned early to look when I could and not wo...

Our church has a Dining Out group, which is meeting tonight across the street from 7H at Alice's on Bay View in StAndrews. We'd love to go, but events of 2018 changed our circumstances, and the after-dark 25 mile drive back to SoWalton would be a foolish risk for us, most unwise. And it's an Episcopal event, which suggests the not unlikelihood of leaving with a buzz on.  The church event brings back to mind our annual "birthday event" Dining In my Navy years. For officers, it was a command performance, which wasn't necessary because it was not to be missed anyway, fun and formal in the fancy dinner dress uniform that we almost never otherwise got to wear, a classy dinner of many courses, with a never empty glass, the wine changing with each course, and lots of toasts. Part of my recollection is that there was only wine to drink, no water on the table, and always drinking a lot of liquid with my meals, at the first one I got totally smashed even beyond d...

Breakfast of TJ's cheese and TJ's fig preserves, all with butter on TJ's crackers from Christmas carefully kept crisp for enjoyment in mid-January, interrupted in mid-bite when I noticed the leftover sushi bought in the commissary yesterday after my haircut, half of the box eaten and the leftover kept overnight in the refrigerator, that I'd set out earlier this morning to recover from over-refrigeration, which ruins sushi: it has to sit out and come to room to recover for delicious eating. So I set TJ aside for later and tackled the sushi smeared with wasabi and dipped in Kikkoman & dash of Tabasco.  Evolution is real. The sushi I learned to eat and love and at times suffer ravenously for when we lived in Japan in the mid-1960s, has evolved, sushi is evolving. Occasional ravening for sushi is like unto the occasional ravening for oysters on the half-shell that strikes, indeed, both a trait of my Being, as with the walrus and the carpenter enticing the little fe...

When Kristen came out for supper yesterday, she brought the elegant documentation of her Christmas gift to me, the leaseholdership, my twenty-year ownership of a little plot of land in Ireland. Maps too, and a couple of charming pictures. I love this, thought, love, gift and reality, realty. That's the road to my place. I love this. Stirs me to check my passport and book a flight. Now I'm Irish maybe I'll contemplate moving there, rent a cabin, what the hell I'll cash out here and buy one, an Irish shanty, tiny but plenty big for the two of us. It will make us young again, my hair will return black and I'll grow that beard we were forbidden my Navy years on the ruse it would prevent our gas mask being airtight. As I visualize mornings there, Linda will stick her head out, open the shutter, tell me my oatmeal's ready. She'll bring it out to me, go back inside to get dressed while I eat, then she'll come back out to get my empty dish and spoon and ...

It's all in the mind's eye - "And," from Longfellow, "things are not what they seem," scroll down, raiding a long, heavy poem for just one line. Even to print it may seem Morose, who despite sometime appearances does not live here - though at this age one is aware that one is being followed. Stalked. Aside somewhat but not entirely so, "A Psalm of Life", the first time I heard it was in class at Cove School, maybe 8th grade where Virginia Parker made life exciting, Warren Middlemas got up and recited it when everyone else was memorizing something simple. Another first was when he stood up and began, "'If' by Rudyard Kipling." Memorable and moving at the time as I listened and got it, lodged in my mind these seventy years. Nearly every class has its brilliant one and he was ours at Cove School from first grade through eighth. "If" and "A Psalm of Life." Bright, witty, good ball player, left-handed hitter w...

- - is good news. One of the joys - and, yes, for all the twilight zone-ness of it there are joys in it - of hurrication, is never watching television news, or indeed any kind of television; though there are four large screen TVs here, and at least one is always going though thankfully not blaring, and seems to me I did once or twice watch something on television in the six weeks that we've been at this SouthWalton location. Football, that was it, bowl games, I watched some bowl games, didn't I. And a few days after Hurricane Michael, while we were at the first in our succession of hurrication abodes several miles east of here on Front Beach Road PCB, the horrid remnants of a Pacific hurricane swept through here adding outrage and further injury, and I watched that even knowing what it was doing to our property. So well yes, if there's bad weather at hand I may watch, Ross Whitley on Channel 13. But news, the news, never "the evening news" - and never ever glued ...