The sun plays games with Creation, making clouds one instant flat, another instant sharp and crisp. And often back to flat in the next instant before I can get to the porch rail with my camera to snap the shot. A shrimp boat with its bright light down deep finishes up overnight work and heads for StAndrews Marina as personal boats speed out toward The Pass.  From the shoreline just below me, seagulls fuss noisily. Pelicans glide east into the rising sun, headed wherever their habit is for the day, some of them to the pilings of that private dock that, until Hurricane Michael, with a padlocked gate. and sign "Private" extended out from the sidewalk along East Beach Drive. Since the storm, just pilings for the pelicans.  This evening they'll glide back into the setting sun, toward Bird Island to rest. Thursday, June 30, 2022, a summer morning on the shoreline of StAndrews Bay in the Florida Panhandle. From here on 7H porch. 97% humidity and even with a bit of mi...

  A near perfect day of life yesterday, beloved StAndrews Bay, Florida humid and warm, a pop-up black cloud thunderstorm bullied its way through, and the day closed beautifully.  Again from 7H this morning, June 29, 2022 78F 95% a breeze from the east at 5 mph, gentle, cooling, soothing. Black coffee and a pinch of cashew nuts for breakfast out here on 7H porch, where a bit of Fr Richard's meditation this morning sits just right:  The following saying captures the Hasidic emphasis that, as the biblical Jacob discovered, “this place is the gate of heaven” (Genesis 28:17):   It is said of a certain Talmudic master that the paths of heaven were as bright to him as the streets of his native town. Hasidism inverts the order: It is a greater thing if the streets of a person’s native town are as bright to them as the paths of heaven. For it is here, where we stand, that we should try to make shine the light of the hidden divine life. ++++++++ And this is indeed th...

  There's the day, Tuesday, looks promising, doesn't it, 75° 99% humidity, and my weather app promises 70% chance of rain this afternoon, pop up thundershowers.  There are always fishing boats headed out toward the Pass this Time of morning, usually a red-hulled small craft either headed out, or returning from apparent overnight. Some of these boats are owned and operated by local restaurant owners. Catch of the Day: Mkt Price. Coffee early, 3:45, why? IDK, it's the way life works. Coffee strong and first cup with an ounce of heavy whipping cream for once, warmed in the mug while the coffee brewed, and a couple ice-tea-spoons of beautiful brown Demerara sugar tasting like the stalks of cane sugar we used to chew as kids. Second cuppa now is black, still quite strong.  Why am I telling you this? I'm not. This is me journaling for myself, a diary entry of sorts, sometimes it helps to write life down. If I post it public you may find it as boring as I, not my problem, w...

  What’s all this? Father Steve got off at the same bus stop last week: the preacher pours over the Scripture for Sunday and waits to be inspired by the Holy Spirit, who never shows.  This morning’s Bible readings are what my homiletics professor at seminary meant - -sometimes you “struggle with the text and lose”. What’s this all about? First of all, the Lectionary included a reading from Paul, but I totally understand the story of Paul at Acts 20, where the narrator says, 20:7 On the first day of the week we came together to break bread. Paul spoke to the people and … kept on talking until midnight. 8 There were many lamps in the upstairs room where we were meeting. 9 Seated in a window was a young man named Eutychus, who was sinking into a deep sleep as Paul talked on and on. When Eutychus was sound asleep, he fell to the ground from the third story and was picked up dead. 10 Paul went down, threw himself on the young man and put his arms around him. “Do...

Sunday morning breakfast: salmon melt on whole wheat toast, and a hymn written in 1930 by Emerson Fosdick of Riverside Church, NYC, as a prayer for the Times: God of grace and God of glory, on thy people pour thy power; crown the ancient church's story; bring its bud to glorious flower. Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, for the facing of thls hour, for the facing of thls hour. Lo! the hosts of evil round us, scorn thy Christ, assail his ways! From the fears that long have bound us, free our hearts to love and praise. Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, for the living of these days, for the living of these days. Cure thy children's warring madness, bend our pride to thy control; shame our wanton, selfish gladness, rich in things and poor in soul. Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, lest we miss thy kingdom's goal, lest we miss thy kingdom's goal. Save us from weak resignation to the evils we deplore; let the search for thy salvation be our glory evermore. Grant us wisdom,...

  "Where were You in '62?" reads the headline from ClassicCars.com in my email this morning, featuring images from American Graffiti, the graduation night film with Ron Howard and other favorites including beloved cars and memories and loaded with scenes from Mels drive-in.  And who remembers dancing cheek-to-cheek with the girl of your dreams, head over heels smitten, and certain this was forever? In '62 we were nine years beyond American Graffiti graduation night, but our world of the fifties to early sixties was a place of the dreams to return to if you were a White American. Safe, no gun problems. For us teenagers here in Panama City, a date was "dragging main" back and forth, up and down Harrison Avenue from the turn-around on the Bay at the Civic Center to the Tally-Ho at our city's northern border. Bay High, reared against the sky.  Our other, Jimmy's Drive-In on east 6th Street, the building's still there.   And we had a third drive-in ou...

  In my dreams. Which come and go, daydreams and night dreams. Forty-some years ago, about the Time of my last Navy tour in WashingtonDC, there was a hillbilly song (in cultural right-speak upgraded to "Country & Western"), "I'm having day dreams about night things, in the middle of the afternoon," that used to whine into the radio of my Olds Cutlass Supreme hardtop coupe, Ronnie Milsap singing, that caught my ear. The guy's hands were hired out, but his mind was his own. That was before the internet when your mind is no longer your own, maybe an omen of what was to come, employees using office computers for personal correspondence, so much so that businesses put an App on that monitors to make sure hearts and minds, as well as fingers, are on business during business Time.  On my computer desktop I have an icon for a link to a blogpost that someone wrote around Mothers Day, entitled "write a story about her", someone jotting down a memory, a s...

Lovely this morning, but WOW! quite a violent thunderstorm last evening, wasn't it, a furious, threatening electrical display as if to say "dare you to come out and shake your fist at me?" It was 2018, now four years since Joseph was struck by lightning, and I cannot ever again feel the same about Creation, never again feel comfortable and easy that Nature is on our side. In 2018, Father Nature drew a line in the sand and warned me not to step over, a fence, and a sign Posted! No Trespassing! Huge, deep, dark, flashing, rumbling black clouds rolling in from the north and out over StAndrews Bay in front of us, a new experience every Time, the essence of ominous. Moses' I AM from the Burning Bush, "You! Yes, You! You in my yard: take off yo shoes" A seething bully threatening and hoping you will take his dare.  Recess, and Calvin sees Moe coming his way.  +++++++ But everything in mind isn't light and joy this morning. Yes, we have our six-monthly eight o...

As of sign-on Time this morning, there are 11,712 unread emails in my in-box, for my main email account alone. The couple of email accounts that I used when email first started decades ago are still alive and also have accumulations. So, if I missed responding to an email from you, it's not that I'm ignoring you, it's because I missed it, as dozens, scores, maybe hundreds of emails arrive in my in-box every day, and I've just given up on them.  And the Facebook Messenger account - - I've tried to turn it off, coded it inactive because of the Time several years ago when I unwittingly opened a spam message and attachment from a "friend" and it got spread throughout to everyone I know or am FB friends with. So if you FB Message me, I'm not likely to see it for days, weeks, months until something grabs my attention and I go over there to investigate. Regardless, I NEVER open attachments on Facebook Messenger anymore. Why start out that way, when Monday is ...

In what is now known as Juneteenth, on June 19, 1865, Union soldiers arrive in Galveston, Texas with news that the Civil War is over and slavery in the United States is abolished.  A mix of June and 19th, Juneteenth has become a day to commemorate the end of slavery in America. Despite the fact that President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was issued more than two years earlier on January 1, 1863, a lack of Union troops in the rebel state of Texas made the order difficult to enforce.  Some historians blame the lapse in time on poor communication in that era, while others believe Texan slave-owners purposely withheld the information. Upon arrival and leading the Union soldiers, Major Gen. Gordon Granger announced General Order No. 3: "The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters...