rorschach

 

Four-fifty-three a.m. and still pitch black dark outside; cool, forty-something Fahrenheit. The Fahrenheit scale (/ˈfærənˌhaɪt, ˈfɑːr-/) is a temperature scale based on one proposed in 1724 by the physicist Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (1686–1736) and we're stuck with it, too obtuse to think Centigrade, which makes a lot more sense to an orderly mind, Celsius after a Swedish astronomer. Or would we rather do Kelvin after a Scots-Irish baron? At eighty-seven and losing count, I'm sticking with °F and miles, feet, yards, inches, ounces and pounds.

Inside: Bubba with a lap robe blanket and a mug of hot & black. 

Ship passing inbound. Per the vessel schedule, it's Bahama Spirit 614x105 bringing aggregates from Freeport. Loaded, she's always so heavy and deep draft that the pilot picks up a tug at her stern to help with steering and forward motion. Boarding three miles out in the open Gulf in the darkest wee hours, that pilot captain earns his keep, I hope they pay him a million dollars a year, he's worth more than any heart surgeon, corporate executive, or football coach. Civilization: our society's priorities and values are so zeeeed-up it's incredible. 

Temper, Father, cool it, calm down, mind your tongue. 

Okay, make that "alphabet" instead.

Who are life's most valuable and worthy people? EMTs and elementary & middle school teachers.

Wednesday a good part of the day at Tyndall. Today with Billy Lynn, the prophet Haggai, and a handful of pee pills. Also, a doctoral dissertation about Apalachicola before 1861.

Did you ever wake up to the fact that you're in an insane asylum, and not as a member of the staff, and would have been better off staying inside that unsettling dream of correcting a conscience mistake that still lingers from over sixty years ago? Does a dreamed apology count? Everybody but me's dead, so might as well, eh?

Image: this morning's Rorschach. Left to right, the lights of a tug to a ship's stern and below the tug her light's reflection in the water, the ship's hull, her lighted superstructure and her green starboard running light that shows which way she's heading (to the right), reflection lights below her in the water, lights of buildings across the Bay in the distance behind the ship, the ship's white bow light, more lights of distant buildings. Did you get it?

Breakfast: steel-cut oats for oatmeal, made with large fat brown raisins, sprinkled with a teaspoon of brown Demerara sugar. Sip of hot & black from my coffee club. 

My socks are already on from having slept wearing them, but PTL anyway, eh?

T