3:11 a.m. For an early morning in late August, the way summer 2023 has been so far, it's surprisingly pleasant out here on 7H porch. 79°F with a fair breeze coming in off the Bay and Gulf. First mug of hot & black and the other half of a peanut butter sandwich Linda made for me after supper soup last evening. Life is Good, and if nobody was hurt or killed in Hurricane Idalia Life is Better, Best. And also, Life is Fun and Good with personal computers, wifi and the web, and modern meteorology that tells us where a storm is going days out, and that gives us weather radar to stay right on top of a hurricane as it makes its way toward us. It's all so different from my growing up days, when everything was guess and wait and see.  On the other hand, it's not Good, much less Better Best, that warming and warmer seas are producing faster and fiercer tropical storms. Though these tropical systems are a natural and normal part of creation's looking after itself, herself, th...

We have a high tide this morning, the Bay is up past its usual and into the grass, but calm.  Gray skies, gray day, not threatening, but I guess those are storm bands from Hurricane Idalia? Otherwise, we got off this Time, though the season is really just ramping up; I mean, Hurricane Michael was in October, eh? 2018, five years ago, and all our landmarks are still so gone that I can't drive at night anymore with any sense of knowing exactly where I am or where to turn. Can't drive after dark anymore anyway; not safely, so can't and don't. Making landfall to the east and south of us as I sit here looking out on a peaceful day. Jim Cantore is broadcasting from Cedar Key, an island community from where most of our oysters come these days - - if memories hold true from our Apalachicola years, of too much fresh water in the Bay, it'll be a while.  Trying to be a good patient anyway, with my closely monitored promise of no raw oysters because of the publicized fibrio thr...

  Tuesday morning early, 3:47 o'clock. From 7H porch, August's second full moon hanging low in the clear western sky just above Thomas Drive. Stars, a stationary satellite winking high and to my left, but lightning in low clouds across the full range of the horizon over the Gulf, far enough off to the south of me that there's no thunder. Some city sounds down the shoreline to the east, and rippling sea sounds in St Andrews Bay at my feet seven floors down. A cool, gentle breeze coming in, and with it the sound of light rain: it may be drizzling, too dark to see and I'm too settled to get up and step over to the balcony rail and hold my hand out. No, I'm sure it's raining. Eleven inches from my nose, the lily-like fragrance of two blossoms on a flowering plant that seems to be thriving out here. Linda's a gardener and makes wherever we are bright with plants and herself. "All the rest have thirty-one" -> August 2023 closing down on us before the ...

  While we seldom or never have them, I do love a baked potato, the whole thing, dark skin and all. Enjoyable "loaded" but good no matter how. Most often with butter, salt and pepper. Linda's step-father Jim Graham told me he ate a baked potato every day, and only put salt and pepper on it. IDK, I probably could do that, although the butter is the final boost into perfection. Maybe a butter-flavored sprinkle would do it? It becomes different altogether if famine is such that there's nothing to eat but potatoes, though, and a dietary problem. That's where the little family is in "The Potato Eaters" painting by   Vincent Van Gogh.  The detail in the painting is exquisite, the worn, cracked edge of the table's boards, the curl in the young man's hair, his gaunt face and fingers, prominent lips and almost protruding eyes; the way the young woman looks at him, is he her brother or her husband, and is that love, lust, adoration, fear, or worry on her f...

  Yes, we're watching it, the cone has shifted east and south, and it's working up to become hurricane status soon. Yesterday, when it still seemed to be headed here, after church to Grocery Outlet for our evacuation supplies - - water, food in containers with pop-off top, so no can openers required. While there I made a detour past the sausage case and picked up a package of boudin, which I first had in Louisiana some years ago when Walt still lived there.  Cajun: a different culture and even civilization, you know that? We've been eating on a huge pot of gumbo that Linda made for Thursday, starting the beautiful roux from scratch. We made sure to have plenty leftover and we made it in two pots: one regular, with lots of okra (there's file' gumbo in the pantry though), peppers, onion, andouille sausage, chicken thigh meat, shrimp added at the last minute to cook and still be tender and luscious.  My second pot, which is even more scrumptious, is the regular plus a ...

  Our job now is to have a full tank of gasoline and watch track updates for the wobbling. Water bottles in the car, food in cans that can be opened without a can opener. Toothbrush &c. Batteries for our ears.  Our hurricane evacuation of memory took us east and south, from Apalachicola to Perry the fall of 1985. We left town with neither a credit card nor a penny, must have had a gas station charge card though, because I don't recall fuel for the car being an issue.  Arriving in Perry, we headed straight for a motel on US98 with a restaurant that I remembered stopping there a few Times on drives from Panama City to Gainesville when I was in college 1953 to 1957. It was still there and the same Southern cooking. I told our motel hosts that we had left home with no cash, and they said don't worry, just send us a check when you get back home. It was Southern Hospitality in caps. Linda, Tass and me.  Fall 1985 we had three hurricanes, for one, we went to Marianna an...

Shame not to have gotten pictures of it: what a violent electrical display we had with last evening's thunderstorm. The lightning, WOW!  Power flickered off and on back and forth several Times, then went out to stay, and by eight o'clock or eight-thirty had been out long enough, and we'd been working around with flashlights and emergency lights long enough, to know it was permanent for the evening, don't open the refrigerator, don't open the outside doors and lose the cool air, so we went to bed.  Waking early this morning and, because all the clocks were flashing, unable to tell what Time it was, but knowing the electricity was back on because I could feel the cool breeze of the air conditioner's blower fan, I got up and punched Go for my first cup of hot & black. Then saw the battery clock in my bathroom showing one-thirty. We have a busy morning ahead, and in order to be up for it, I'll need a long nap before the sun rises. Why do I write these mind d...

What's happening? What's the buzz, tell me what's happening? Reading early this morning, this and that. Read a long Vox piece on the collapsing Retail segment of our economy, it all makes sense, everything is available online; in Retail stories, falling sales, reducing staffs, overworked and unhappy employees, poor in-store service, facilities going shabby, out of stock situation, are all intertwined.  Finished another really weird, man, they're way beyond eccentric, Fiction piece in The New Yorker, this one in a June issue that I'd laid aside and just now gotten round to.  Started the story last evening, it twisted up the mind, I realized what was going on probably just about the point that the writer intended, but the hour was getting late (our bedtime is nine o'clock, head down on the pillow and pull up the covers, Linda keeps it 69°F in here at night), so I put the magazine down, leaving the strange tale to finish this morning.  Okay, the story was a success...

Joel Zetzsche is right, Sunday IS coming, and with it Matthew's gospel passage that we call "Peter's Confession," when Jesus renames Simon as Peter, which we don't "get" unless it's explained for us, because the word play doesn't work in translating from Aramaic to English or NT Greek to English.  Lots of things don't work right, a favorite example to show and tell in Bible classes over my years was psalms that are acrostics, with verses following the letter order of the Hebrew alphabet. It only comes out in looking at the Hebrew text, or especially in listening as a Hebrew scholar reads it aloud. And discussion of problems with acrostics, including that forcing the acrostic becomes more important to the poet psalmist than that the text flows to make literary sense. Lots of translated texts cause key features to not work as intended or for competent study, for example Mark's breathless rush of immediacy to get his gospel told, especially ...

Nice: 78° on 7H porch at five-thirty and six o'clock, 91% humidity, wind ENE 8 mph, feels like 78° a lovely Monday morning, and just a small craft or two moving across StAndrews Bay. Every Day Is A Beautiful Day, which you also will realize when you get to this point in life, and today's day is not and never will be "just one more day in the life of" but its own Beautiful Day for me to thank God we both woke up, plus there's not a hurricane making landfall, is there. A person, a friend I loved and admired, in his life after being diagnosed with a terminal health issue, once lay in a pond, a small lake, to enjoy a thunderstorm with fierce lightning that drove everyone else inside the house. What he did that day will, to me, always symbolize perfect values and the ultimate perspective on life itself - - which his life had always demonstrated anyway. For me, it was a picture to hold in my own mind, a statement that life is worth the risk. But I wander, as usual. Firs...

  Jesus calls us, o’er the tumult, of our life’s wild, restless sea. In our gospel story last week, Jesus walked on water, and called Peter, who stepped out in faith; but then, losing sight of Jesus, Peter sinks, and Jesus saves him. Salvation again in our Genesis story this morning, as we finish the story of Joseph and God’s plan of salvation for Israel. Joseph after all these years, reuniting with jealous brothers who hated and betrayed him, Joseph in the end telling his brothers, (Genesis 50:20) “ye thought evil against me; but God meant it for good, for the salvation of many.” God's plan of salvation for Israel: does God have a plan for our lives? In spite of the worst that humans can do to ourselves and each other, in the salvation story, God finally has his way in the life of Israel, how about you, in your life?  There is a much loved Bible memory verse at Jeremiah 29:11, “For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans to prosper you, and not to harm you; to g...