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Ancient age has interesting surprises: the early and earlier riser - - this morning I'm up at, like 12:51 or something, go out on 7H porch to watch a tug inch a long stretch of barges toward the hard right turn in front of Magnolia Beach, and head north for Hathaway Bridge and points west along the intracoastal waterway. Sacrifice to Father Nature, brew a cup of hot & black, take a TGvg cookie from a tin, and settle into my chair here at the window. Sip coffee as I look out across St Andrews Bay and the red flashing tower light near The Pass.

Open my computer to confirm the pause is holding in the Gaza Israel War as hostages and prisoners are released, and move on quickly because why should I start my new day agonizing about something I can't stop. Open and read part of an article that says a European breakfast staple is taking over American breakfast tables: waffles, it's waffles. Pardon my language, but what a load of it. We had waffles as a breakfast treat all my growing up years. A privilege you were allowed as you grew into it was pouring the waffle mix into the waffle iron, lower the lid, and maybe watch for the red light to go out. I mean, if you want to eat waffles because they're a European sophistication, have at it, but I was eating American waffles before your grandfather ever met you grandmother. 

To our annual rummage sale, or maybe she gave it to Penny's Worth, our thrift shop, to be sold, one year in Apalachicola, a church lady brought a waffle iron to be sold. That evening her husband Ed exploded that she had given away his treasured waffle iron, and the next day she was back to retrieve it. A very dear person, her name was Betsy. I remember when her children were born, and her little boy, who's now in his late thirties or early forties, wandering around the Altar area while I celebrated Holy Communion at our Tuesday morning healing service. She was under strict orders from me to let him wander! 

They divorced and she moved back home to Jacksonville and changed back to her family name. I googled and found her, a writeup and photo from 2000. Her son looks about 16, which would be about right, would make him 39 now. In this priestly vocation, sometimes really classy people move through your life, and Betsy was one. I pray she's well.   

Lots of things show up in my email every day, news flashes, pesky commercials for products I once checked on but never ordered, a poem every morning, a word every day - - you don't realize how sparse your English vocabulary is until Anu Garg sends you a new word every day, that day it was "exolete" - which means outdated, obsolete. Sometimes but seldom (no really) there's a personal email from someone I know or have known. 

Some of the poems touch the heart, ring bells, some are sheer - - they're making a living writing this stuff? Yesterday for example, I sort of expected something related to the turkey, but get this (just below, scroll down), and then I've got something other to say if memory holds,

BICUSPID 

Clemonce Heard

Of course the moment your parents mentally divorce a baby gap appears between your two front teeth. Then not before long your four canines follow suit the way a pack of puppies might follow a child home one afternoon—the half-eaten lunch in their book sack crushed to unleash the mutt version of myrrh. Finally, your molars & premolars no longer thirst to slumber on the same cot, so branch off to sofas, the floor, even wising up to comfort themselves in dirt. So your poor parents, to save your gums from hardening the way plaque steels the arteries, grief, the heart, your parents are forced to break the bank on turquoise braces for however many years it takes for your smile to straighten itself out like the curve of a swing when the sky plops down. They must split the payments until your sore mouth no longer doubts its separation. Your tastebuds chained beneath and behind the fence your parents went Dutch on like their first dates. The masseter carrying all the bells & more whistle than master. & your tongue in its lunacy pawing at every ivory picket for its escape. I enjoy poetry, poems, and they don't have to rhyme to be lyrical, but it needs to be something more than a stream of stoned consciousness lined out like verse with the commas and periods in strange places. I'm again, still and always thinking of Robert Frost reading his poetry to our overflowing crowd of students. Go Gators. M Go Blue. We had a fine Thanksgiving Day feast here, ten of us, the 14.96 pound turkey was exactly the perfect size with the only leftovers being one drumstick and two wings. So, no turkey sandwich for me, but Joe is coming early and leaving before Christmas, I will plan another turkey for during his visit, and I will see to it that it's sized for leftovers, turkey sandwiches!! (I don't use exclamation points, because they are a mark of insanity and low intelligence, but I put the exclamation points there to show that I'm not sore about there being no Thanksgiving turkey leftovers, nomesane? No, really, I'm not mad, but I am remembering "A Christmas Story" in which Ralphie's father the Oldsmobile man was looking forward to turkey sandwiches and turkey hash and ended eating Christmas dinner in a Chinese restaurant. BTW, I'm looking forward to watching that all the way through at least once, maybe three times, on its 24 hour run on Christmas Day. You have your favorite Christmas films, I like "A Christmas Story" - maybe because it's where I grew up. I remember toys showing up in store windows on Harrison Avenue, I remember pouring over the toys section of the Sears and Roebuck Catalog, I remember the PC News Herald starting, the day after Thanksgiving, their little notice in the lower right hand corner of the front page that told us how many shopping days till Xmas. Keep the Xpistos in Christmas). What's bothering me though is the fiery riot in Dublin, property destroyed and people hurt and threatened. I'll try to say as little as possible, but it was a sad display of human nature: we stick together, we don't trust and don't like people who are Other, different from us; and if there are enough of them that we feel threatened, we hate them. The Dublin riot was ignorant stupidity turned evil, but the situation is there anyway: we like the way we are, and the way we do things, our neighbors and our culture. Our certainties, our religion. Our customs, the way we look, the way we dress, the way we wear our hair. Anybody's different, we hate them and want them gone. It may not come to hate if there is just one of them, our token, "oh I love Black people, my cousin knows someone who has a Black (or Brown, or Muslim, or Vietnamese) friend and tells me she's very nice." But when they arrive desperately in droves, immigrating and bringing their culture, dress, ways, totally different world view, not "staying in their place," we feel threatened and soon hate them. In this blog some years ago I lamented that Europeans would in Time regret having opened their gates to waves of Brown Muslim immigrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea from North African countries and seeking asylum. It's come true in Northern Europe and it's come true in America. People feel threatened by people who are Other, different. Bad or good, like it or not, we're fighting human nature, and the backlash is horrendous, protests, mindless violence. This week's Dublin riot is case in point: people's fear of Others turned to mean, rioting hatred. It's the problem in the Middle East, where there will never be settled peace in the Holy Land. It's the case in America where politicians are stirring up populism among an element who are afraid yet another group will press them even further down into the bottom of the human barrel, and promising to bring down American democracy as we have known it these nearly 250 years, screaming to cheering wild-eyed Untermenschen about building walls to keep out foreigners and promising to deport those who are already here. The US deporting people to Argentina. Pakistan deporting Afghan refugees and causing crises of inability to accommodate. Answers, seems there are no humanitarian answers. Too many of us. What to do? IDK. The day after your sixtieth birthday, report to the resettlement center for your trip to Mars. Bring your toothbrush and a change of underwear.