A poet I'm not, but I love where some poetry takes me, and I do read some of the Poem A Day offerings that every morning arrive in my email. Read some, scan most, let some slip through and accumulate with the 12,016 other emails in my in-box.   Honestly can't say what kind of poems I like best, Holmes, obviously,  Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay, That was built in such a logical way It ran a hundred years to a day, And then, of a sudden, it -- ah, but stay, I'll tell you what happened without delay, Scaring the parson into fits, Frightening people out of their wits, -- Have you ever heard of that, I say? Seventeen hundred and fifty-five. Georgius Secundus was then alive, — but even poems I like I forget the poem and poet even faster than I forget good jokes that people tell. Some classics, Poe, "The Raven" Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, Frost, several of his classics, Tomas Transtromer, do you know this one - - one Eng...

  Having left 7H just after six o'clock yesterday morning, our son Joe arrived safely home in Louisville, KY about five or six o'clock last evening. What with the extreme weather for everyone between Panama City, Panama City Beach, Tallahassee, and Louisville, its effect on driving and flights, and driving our high anxiety, Joe's phone call closed our most stressful Holiday Season in memory. TJCC home safe. PCB contingent home safe. Joe home safe: apparently the seventeen-year old car did fine for him, although he told me the check engine light came on part way through his drive home, and of course it glowed threateningly at him the rest of his trip. A check engine light is nowhere near as startling and blood-pressure-skyrocketing as when the car suddenly belches a loud-ringing chime and the Low Fuel warning comes on miles from nowhere. Or the Low Tire Pressure light. But it's good for a bad word anyway. Cursing, profanity, has been shown to reduce stress; while panicke...

  Omigosh, sometimes Sean, Sean Dietrich, Sean of the South, can cause you to dissolve in a puddle of tears with a column that touches where it hurts most, nomesane? "Birthday Gal" this morning. ++++++++++ Joe just drove away in his new car, my 2006 Cadillac SRX V8. Unfortunately, when we went to the tax, tag, title office Tuesday morning to change ownership and get him a temporary tag, the office was closed until January, which I observed as "a helluva note". So he's driving with no plate, just his insurance card and bill of sale taped inside the rear window, hoping maybe something displayed might at least reduce the number of Times he's stopped by police today on his drive home to Kentucky. Every time Joe leaves after a short visit it brings flooding to mind, how we felt when he left once and for all. I've told this before. We lived in Pennsylvania, and he drove away in his red VW convertible to be with his girlfriend in Las Vegas. When that happened, ...

  Getting off at a strange new bus stop to look round and ask "What next, What now?" leads me to social, political, religious and theological topics galore. One such is contemplating the lines in the Apostles' Creed, "I believe in the resurrection of the body" and in the Nicene Creed, "We believe in the resurrection of the dead," and the teaching in The Catechism: Q. What do we mean by the resurrection of the body? A. We mean that God will raise us from death in the fullness of our being, that we may live with Christ in the communion of the saints which, remembering the vapid, vacuous, airy vagueness of Share a Cup of Tea with Goldie, is, I think intentionally vague because no detail is settled as doctrine or dogma, and so there is nothing to clarify, leaves detail explorable and arguable.  We do not believe, for example, in the Roman concept of Purgatory (Articles of Religion XXII. Of Purgatory, BCP page 872), and our death-thinking and funeral-preach...

  What to do now at a new bus stop of life, what captures my attention or even fascinates me? For one, an article from The Atlantic, which, along with The New Yorker and several of the independent blogs their staff writers post fairly regularly, posts from intelligence and wisdom. Here's that particular link:  https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/06/evangelical-church-pastors-political-radicalization/629631/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=one-story-to-read-today&utm_content=20221228&utm_term=One%20Story%20to%20Read%20Today Like a sermon that passes several good stopping places, the article is way too long to hold my concentrated attention, although I, an outsider looking in when it comes to the new "evangelical church" and politicized "evangelical Christianity," think the writer, who grew up as the son of an evangelical pastor and speaks as an insider, totally rocks it. (Is that an expression?) In America today, ...

  38°F here, wind NE at 5 mph making it feel like 34°F but, at least for us here on the Gulf Coast of the Florida Panhandle, the 2022 Winter Nightmare seems to be over as warmup happens - - supposed to be 71° on Thursday, 74° this Time next week.  For a return to seasonable weather, Son of God, we beseech thee to hear us . By "seasonable" we mean Warm. Son of God, we beseech thee to hear us . The Christmas Tree brings a warm glow to 7H when I turn its lights on these early hour mornings. Don't really need any other light until the sun starts lightening the darkness. Here in 7H, indeed all the years before, our Tree comes down early, well before New Years Day. This year it's felt so warming and heartening that I'm hoping it may stay up until Twelfth Night, Epiphany, 6 January 2023 - - but I'm not in charge here. The philosophical equivalent of a statue, our artificial Christmas Tree has no soul, hears no prayers, relishes no burnt offerings, unlike Christmas Tr...