moving along

Brilliant sunset as we were leaving church last evening, the cellphone camera failed to capture the colors, but I wanted to get a shot showing Nature's continuing determination to survive in the trees' still peculiar clumps of leaves growing every possible place along branches that remain instead of naturally at the ends of branches that because of the hurricane are no longer there. 

Evening Prayer Rite One, pizza, and then the feature of the evening: slide presentation with pictures the folks took on the Holy Land trip from which they just returned. The pictures were great, but the greatest thing was watching the travelers, nearly all of whom were there, their enthusiasm, laughter, talk and conversation as they relived the joy and experience of the trip. And from traveling and living together they seemed to have formed a close group that I hope will continue to bring them pleasure and happy memories. It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening. I don't need to have gone: I can't possibly have enjoyed traveling and being there as much as I enjoyed watching them.

To miss the horrible beach traffic, we left PCB early and, arriving in the Cove way too soon, stopped by the school. A sign on the door said please don't enter today, so I didn't, but I did open the door and snap a shot of what I was hoping to see, new flooring in the north end entryway. It looks good. That's pine of the same cut as the building's original pine floors. A room or two have new oak floors, and many have the original pine floors but a three foot section of oak against the windows to replace the section of original pine flooring that had to be torn up to completely rebuild the window walls inside the brick exterior. As their "landlord", I am so proud and happy with the way the school building has been renovated, refinished, reclaimed, better and more solid construction than ever. Even the new LED lighting, showing in the picture above. The old ways have the best memories, but it isn't true that the old ways were best: the new ways are better than best.

And stopping by our condo, the flooring man, who came from Tallahassee to lay the new floors, said he'd surely finish yesterday. 

I got to sit in a favorite chair at my Bay window and look out. Through the scaffolding, as the scaffolding goes from ground to the 8th level while the building exterior is refinished. 

Many things will, but everything won't be even better, because so many businesses are closed, gas stations gone, churches destroyed and no sign of rebuilding, restaurants gone, and especially natural landmarks, obviously mostly trees, gone forever such that the mind has to erase intuitive driving, quit feeling lost, and establish new ways of knowing that this is my land, my town, my home, my place of the heart.

T

ps