Advent Four: today is Mary Sunday, in the background she sings her song while I read poetry, this morning by Seamus Heaney. And Yeats: are the Irish poets best? Here's one I liked, "Twice Shy," but then I liked them all, like them all: Her scarf a la Bardot, In suede flats for the walk, She came with me one evening For air and friendly talk. We crossed the quiet river, Took the embankment walk. Traffic holding its breath, Sky a tense diaphragm: Dusk hung like a backcloth That shook where a swan swam, Tremulous as a hawk Hanging deadly, calm. A vacuum of need Collapsed each hunting heart But tremulously we held As hawk and prey apart, Preserved classic decorum, Deployed our talk with art. Our Juvenilia Had taught us both to wait, Not to publish feeling And regret it all too late - Mushroom loves already Had puffed and burst in hate. So, chary and excited, As a thrush linked on a hawk, We thrilled to the March twilight With nervous childish talk: Still waters running deep...

Fri Dec 20 2:25 AM, seems like up too early, but it was early to bed so it's early to rise, a man in extreme old age sips hot & black from his 8 oz. mug. As yesterday, it has a teaspoon of oil in, but this Time it's the recommended EVOO, California brand bought at Target after the 9:30 dermatology appointment.   It is strange, fresh EVOO may have a peppery taste, and this does, adds it to the coffee. Reminds me that the Chief Commissaryman used to add a pinch of black pepper to the coffee urn as it was perking and brewing. Established in 1948 combining several specialties of cook and baker, the rating Commissaryman was changed to Mess Management Specialist in 1974, and then to Culinary Specialist in 2004. I'll venture to stir the pot by speculating: was that all about getting "man" out of the title, and was it a form of Woke at work, and did I read that Pete Hegseth is waffling on his position against gays in the military and women in combat assignments? Havin...

What am I doing? After extensively reading about it yesterday, trying one teaspoon of EVOO in my hot & black this morning, but not violating my magic mug with it. It's not noticeable except for the oil film on my lips. And I can't use it, as I frequently do, as acidic hot coffee for cleaning my eyeglasses. Why all this nonsense? If you really want to know, read about it yourself.  Which would be healthier for me, EVOO or the spoonful of cod liver oil that I remember having to swallow as a kid? Or the fried mullet red roe that I used to love - - I missed the mullet roe this year, when I was a boy working in the retail fish market, red roe used to show up in the mullet in our ice case in October. It was delicious, but don't eat too much, nomesane? If you don't nomesane, go ahead and eat too much fried red mullet roe and then you'll soon nomesane.  Except that we don't have any EVOO so I used avocado oil this morning. After our dermatology appointments this mor...

  We all have experiences and memories in life that make each of us unique humans, unlike anyone else on the planet, living, dead, or yet to Be. And so, from my perspective as one who, as a boy growing up in America, lived through the period of The Third Reich and its NSDAP era with the brown-shirt storm troopers beating up people on the streets, and eventually the Gestapo and Germany's expansive aggression and mind-boggling cruelty in warfare; and witnessed our discoveries about the Holocaust and its horrors - - these are things I recall that are part of what makes me who I am. You are different, you don't have the same things in your head, and so you don't necessarily understand how I'm feeling these days - - distressed beyond measure as I see and read about and hear about political upheavals going on in Western democracies where people don't have the past that I have. It's distress so keen, unto despair except for my being thankful that I lived when I did and...

  Waning gibbous 94%, Moonset 8:50 AM  58°F and Mostly Clear. 93% humidity, Wind NE 6 mph with gusts to 10 mph. Forecast to be 74°F today: if it's climate warming I'm sad, if it's just another Florida Gulf Coast winter morning, I'll take it happily.   Along with my magic mug of hot & black, a slice of Pepperidge Farm's very thin sliced whole wheat bread smeared thickly with a runny soft creamy yellow cheese from Zingerman's Deli in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It was a small wheel of washed rind cheese, and there's just enough left to enjoy one more Time. The top and side crust is edible, but not the bottom, a bite of burlap. Tuesday, December 17, 5:05 AM, slip on a pair of socks so my feet won't be cold, cover my lap with my plaid lap blanket. Open the shutters and gaze out into the darkness. Tomorrow would be the birthday of my grandfather Walter Henry Gentry. I think 1885, and if so then 139. Next week it would have been 140 Christmases ago. Daddy Walt wa...

Retirement should not be devoted solely to making the world a better place, one also needs to waste Time, to set aside Time for total wasting as a sabbath commitment of life. My such is playing a half-dozen or so different solitaire card games online, and reading the comics that I enjoy.  My comic strips in my growing up years included Alley Oop, The Katzenjammer Kids, Popeye, Lil' Abner, Nancy; Buzz Sawyer - - which after WW2 phased to his pal Roscoe Sweeney and sister Lucille, and with the Squatley family; Don Winslow, Blondie, Annie Roonie, Dick Tracy, Little Orphan Annie, Archie, Out Our Way, The Boarding House with Major Hoople. On the comic book side it was Superman, Batman, Captain Marvel, and probably a few others. Later comic strips included Pogo, Charlie Brown, Calvin and Hobbes. Doonesbury. For Better or For Worse - - now going through a second iteration of the lives of Canadian dentist Dr Patterson and family generations. There was Shoe, and Zits with another ...