Saturday we went to Aldi's for the first Time. My Navy friend has been suggesting it for decent wines at reasonable prices, but it was the new store out in Calloway, open just a couple of days, and the empty wine racks said Coming Soon. I shopped anyway, buying products labeled Deutsche Küche, German cooking, German cuisine. Sunday dinner we had their pork schnitzel, which is a pulverized patty or cutlet, it was okay, but their red cabbage is superlative. Read too late last night, until 12:19, which I seldom and never do, but it's "Dresden, Tuesday, February 13, 1945" part of my Lenten discipline. So the coventrieren of Dresden: ja oder nein? I'm only halfway through my reading commitment, but anyone who says "There were good people on both sides" when some demonstrators were carrying the flag of the Third Reich down an American street is himself either a consummately evil narcissist, or an alphabet moron as SecDef reckoned, or All The Above. But there

First Sunday in Lent, going to 10:30 church, where the gospel will be Matthew's view (an expanded version on Mark, which Matthew gets from Q, modifying slightly from Luke's version) of the Temptation of Jesus in the wilderness by Satan / the Devil. Not my turn in the pulpit until next Sunday, Lent 2A. In my Lenten discipline, I've finished three books and got two going: "Voices from the Third Reich" currently with interviews from Austrians and now from people in the Baltic States; and "Dresden - Tuesday, February 13, 1945" that has an overabundance of history leading up to the main event, but I'm seeing the vicious enthusiasm in Dresden and all Saxony for the National Socialist program, as well as significant local involvement in war production, fast coming aware of Dresden as a legitimate target. Fully realize that nobody but me is interested anymore in what happened in Germany during my early lifetime, although I'm seeing the same base elements

You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear, You’ve got to be taught from year to year, It’s got to be drummed in your dear little ear— You’ve got to be carefully taught! You’ve got to be taught to be afraid Of people whose eyes are oddly made, And people whose skin is a different shade— You’ve got to be carefully taught. You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late, Before you are six or seven or eight, To hate all the people your relatives hate— You’ve got to be carefully taught! You’ve got to be carefully taught!      Richard Rodgers, "South Pacific" My 2023 Lenten discipline is reading books in an area of lifelong fascination to me, World War Two, especially the German experience and perspective. Something that I wonder about, uneasy that it may be racist, is that I am far less to not-at-all concerned about the Japanese experience; though my German focus has heightened in the years since my sister Gina uncovered and revealed to us that our heritage is not English as we were

Any true Southerner knows how azaleas are supposed to be and look. Unvaryingly, when my mother saw azalea bushes that were trimmed and shaped, she would spit out contemptuously, "That's like Yankees." And it was not intended as a compliment.  First the Russians start another World War, and now it looks like we have been overrun with Yankees. OMG, and in our own front yard, yet! ++++++++ Lent. Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, our fast season of forty days before Easter, not counting Sundays, we say Sundays are \"IN Lent" not "OF Lent" - - because "all Sundays are a feast of our Lord Jesus Christ" meaning that steak and chocolate ice cream are okay on Sundays during Lent. We are a liturgical church, and my view is that if we really meant it when we said that (i.e., that Sundays are feast days, you don't have to keep your Lenten fast on Sundays), we would shift colors for Sundays, changing Lenten purple, violet, or drab to white for the

  Yes, it's sort of like camping out. From clearing the utility closet for the new water heater installation, everything from the utility closet shelves is still out on the kitchen counter, dining room table, and pantry/laundry room floor. While we were reloading the closet, Linda spotted a leak, a drip in a valve of the supply line into the new water tank, so we had to stop loading tools, batteries, flashlights, and all manner of supplies collected over the years, back into the utility closet after yesterday's new installation. We stopped and texted the company photographs of the leak/drip and asked for advice.  T he company rep arrived in short order to correct the situation, but turns out something is cracked and must be replaced with a part that can't be obtained until Monday. So 7H is still such a mess that Kristen cut her visit short. We'll try again on Monday. 7H will still be a cross between an episode from Hoarders and a dump site, so we may simply go out to ea

It's noisy here this afternoon. Loud, quite loud. A technician is here to install a new water heater, and the first part is to empty the old one, a very loud pumping process.  Day before yesterday Linda spotted a small puddle in the utility closet, a leak from the water heater. I'm with water heaters as I am with car tires, car brakes, and car batteries: first sign of trouble, replace before I'm sorry.  Original to Harbour Village construction, the water heater was some twenty years old, Time for trouble anyway. So a most efficient company came out promptly and is taking care, to prevent an issue. +++++++++++ Graveside this morning at Greenwood Cemetery, son of a lifelong friend whom I always admired as an Eagle Scout and a leader in our Boy Scout and Explorer Troop back in the 1940s. His son, whom we buried today, was an Eagle Scout too; as was my friend's brother, who years ago was also a friend. I remember their mother, a single parent, head of this extraordinary fam

  What am I doing and Why am I blogging so late, early afternoon instead of early morning? Well, I guess everyone thinks we climb into the pulpit and the words just come; in fact, at an Easter Sunrise service years ago, a large crowd of townsfolk and us dozen or so members of the local ministerial association were at the end of a pier jutting out into Apalachicola Bay. One of us, a pentecostal holiness preacher, had volunteered to preach the Easter Sermon. (I've remembered this story here at least once in years past). Someone read the Easter Gospel and then turned it over to the Designated Preacher. He started off boldly but quickly went totally silent, embarrassed, and us anxious with him, for him.  After some sixty or seventy seconds of wordlessness, he said, "Ya'll pray for me, cause the Holy Spirit has left me."  I don't remember whether our prayers were efficacious, but I think he struggled through a brief Easter proclamation and we went on to sing "He a

  Neither sleeping nor idle, I blogged Sunday afternoon and again yesterday, Monday. Sunday after having read in the March 2023 issue of The Atlantic, an article on "The Great Gatsby" about a viewpoint and substantial case that Jay Gatsby is Black, "a pale Black man who passes for White," with Fitzgerald having sprinkled compelling allusions throughout the book for readers sharp enough to pick them up and "see". Fascinating, but I don't think so. Another read in the March 2023 issue, about the French and le wokisme. That on the Woke issue the French come down in a different place from us, wanting to avoid the Woke firestorm that establishes identities and sets them against each other politically and socially, counter to the French determination for equality as the foundation of their republic; yet to ignore differences denies current events, a head in the sand danger to their secular society today in a flood of Muslim immigrants whose culture increasin

Our responsive psalm for today, the Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany, Year A, is the first eight verses of Psalm 119, in Hebrew an elegant acrostic poem of 176 verses consisting of twenty-two sets of eight verses each. The first word of each set of eight begins with the same Hebrew letter, beginning with aleph אַ and working successively through the alphabet. Thus, verses 1-8 begin with  אַ aleph, as shown below, verses 9-16 begin with בַּ beth, as shown, all the way through to verses 169-176 beginning with תִּ tau, the twenty-second and final letter of the Hebrew alefbet! Several of the psalms are acrostics but with just twenty-two verses, the first word of each verse beginning with the next letter of the alphabet. It was a masterful way to write poetry, sometimes difficult to force a logical sequence of thought through the poem while conforming to the acrostic format. And imagine the challenge facing the author of Psalm 119! Of course, the acrostic format is seen only in the Hebrew or

  Back in October we drove over to Wakulla Springs State Park and stayed at the Lodge there for five nights, in order to get close enough to Tallahassee to visit TJCC and go to a Lincoln High School football game. We loved going to a game or two each of the seven years the girls where playing in the marching band, though I think we missed a season during covid. Caroline is now a junior at Florida State; and this year Charlotte was leading the marching band as drum major, and a graduating senior, so it was our final opportunity for the doting grandparent adventure to see the girls in the band. It is also the end of our driving out of town except maybe once in a while to Apalachicola, which is straight shot just beyond Tyndall, easy traffic, and if we do that it'll be for a midweek overnight or two and maybe once across the bridges to the Blue Parrot on St George Island. On our October trip we stopped in Apalachicola at the bookshop, where I nearly bought them out; and at the honey s

  Immediately after my father died, I became newly, oddly aware of days that were unusually nice, especially as I would ride along West Beach Drive where he lived a large part of his life, my mind dwelling on the thought, "he didn't get to enjoy this beautiful day." The thought also came after Hurricane Michael "he doesn't know that a Category Five hurricane has swept through Panama City."  Though my father will have been dead thirty years this summer, the thought still comes to me frequently, along with the realization that - - as our priest says in his blessing, "... life is short, and we haven't much Time" - - I need to notice and enjoy the days. Not just that it's a beautiful day, but especially "hey, I'm alive! thank you, God!" Strangely perhaps, the thought often includes wondering how the days were for Marcus Aurelius, and having no doubt that he noticed beautiful days of life as he thought and wrote, with no idea that

  Life goes on, doesn't it, indeed, that's what it's all about, isn't it, life going on. "Anthony passed away this evening at 5:30," last evening's text says, "Elizabeth was with him and said it was very peaceful." And life goes on because we are fruitful, and multiply, and replenish. "26 And God said, Let us make אָדָ֛ם mankind in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 27 So God created אָדָ֛ם in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. 28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." Genesis 1 (KJV) A sophisticated fellow

no news, but still waiting and hoping   from Weill Cornell Medicine Newsroom Doctors Detail Unexpected Recoveries from Long-Term Coma After Cardiac Arrest MAY 13, 2020  Share to Twitter     Share to Facebook     Share to LinkedIn     Print  EEG wave in human brain. Neurologists traditionally have expected that patients who remain in coma after cardiac arrest have almost no chance of making a meaningful recovery if they fail to emerge from coma within a week. But a new study from Weill Cornell Medicine, NewYork-Presbyterian and NYU Grossman School of Medicine neurologists suggests that a small but significant fraction of such patients can recover even after much longer periods of coma. In the  study , published January 29 in Annals of Neurology, the investigators describe three patients who became comatose following cardiac arrest but made excellent recoveries despite comas that lasted 17 to 37 days. The investigators found patterns in the electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings of the pa