Saturday Farmers Market
Looking east toward Tyndall Bridge, we watched the orange, huge-appearing full moon rise last evening. And now I'm watching out my 7H window here in the living room, across the Bay beyond Magnolia Beach, as, between Bay Point and high-rise condominiums on Thomas Drive, still large but pale yellow, it sinks into gray hazy clouds over the Gulf of Mexico.
Two little birds pausing on our porch rail, one trying to impress the other.
Interesting casual reading yesterday, half a dozen or so essays from various sources. One about soda crackers, which I remember my father calling them, but saltine crackers has stuck, saltines. They make a good base for lots of food bites without changing their taste. Raw oysters from a pint container (raw oysters from half-shell I don't want nothin' between the oyster and my tongue, not even a saltine), smear of cheese, slice of German liverwurst from Aldi's, a spoon of strawberry preserves. We like the Schwartau brand strawberry jam from the German selection at TAFB Commissary, but are out of that and not on calendar to return to Tyndall soon, so I researched online and found Trappist strawberry preserves rated tops. Ordered two jars online through ETWTN, the Roman Catholic television network, and they arrived yesterday, along with two jars of Kadota fig preserves. So, Trappist strawberry preserves atop a cheese slice on my soda cracker this morning, along with the magic mug of hot & black.
Up early, a nap from 6:45 to 8:35, then up and to the Farmers Market in Oaks by the Bay Park next door. Out the side gate, across the park's grass, up to the Marianna couple's booth, bought crookneck squash, tomatoes; and patty-pan squash, which we've never had and not sure how to cook them.
Quite tempted to buy all their crookneck squash because I suspected, asked, and she confirmed, that crookneck squash season is about over for 2024, next week is likely to be the last Time they have them. But it seemed selfish to buy up all they had, so we bought four baskets, will eat one this weekend, and freeze some for later in the summer. Linda slices each squash lengthwise, treats them with butter, breadcrumbs, salt & pepper, and bakes them in the oven. There's more in the freezer for holiday festivities with family, but this is how we've liked them ourselves for many long years.
The Marianna couple are the only booth we buy from, then straight back across the grass, in the gate, and home to 7H - -
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- - where breakfast of a tomato sandwich with mayonnaise on Pepperidge Farms' very thin sliced whole wheat bread, and a second mug of hot & black. Probably my last mug of the special club coffee that came in early June and that I've carefully rationed out; but the late June/early July package is on the way and should arrive Monday or Tuesday.
What am I doing? Got an essay set aside to read later about Why it's important to do nothing.
Read a long essay yesterday by a psychologist about dealing with social change, in fact it seemed so important for openminded folks to read and understand, that I posted it onto my Facebook page. Change, ongoing change, is part of civilized humanity, though social and religious dogmatists cling to their certainties even to the point of legislating them into law, which seems especially so here in Florida, indeed throughout the South. As an elderly person fighting to keep my mind open to all points of view, including social change that's underway all around me, I found the essay helpful, maybe can be to others as well. On every issue, everyone on both sides can be rude and cruel to those on the other sides, which is counter-helpful. I do not grasp how to use the new pronoun language, for example, so rather than offend people to whom it's important, I'm sheltering here in 7H and trying to keep my mouth shut.
Yet another essay yesterday, on Daniel Radcliffe's life before, during, and now after Harry Potter. He became Harry at age 11, finished at age 19, he's 34 now and making a life that he loves for himself with his partner Erin and their son. Somewhat opposite to Harry Potter author Jo Rowling, who's somewhat homophobic, Radcliffe has for long years been a supporter of the LGBTQ transition into accepted society.
Me, as a Southerner and third-generation survivor of the Confederacy (a family story is that my great-grandfather Weller was arrested and jailed by Union troops for sheltering Confederate soldiers in the basement of his church), I've found life itself a struggle to deal with all manner of bigoted certitude, including certainties that go unrecognized and so unchallenged within myself. That essay on social shift did say that, on a good/evil scale, not all evolving social changes are necessarily good, some are not. Sometimes it's not objective black and white, there can be earnest, convicted people on both sides; as is the case with abortion, for prime example. Where do I stand on that? There are people whom I love and deeply respect on both sides, and I feel all their pain. Black, White, and Brown issues. LGBTQ+ and straight issues. Gender identification. I think there may have been more social shifting and social change in my lifetime than in all the earlier centuries of the Common Era.
When we are living in a social setting it may never occur to us that we are wrong about our certainties; we don't even realize that we are certain of things that history will look back on as deadly immorally evil. Our old Southern hero Robert E Lee has been cancelled, and Thomas Jefferson to some extent, maybe George Washington next; but St Paul said slaves obey your masters. And without challenging slavery in any way, Jesus healed the ill slave of a centurion and restored the cut off ear of the high priest's slave. In his parables, Jesus referenced slavery: the prodigal son, ten gold coins, unforgiving tenant, and tenant farmers. We are not inclined to recognize evil entrenched in our social institutions; and even when we do see evil we fight changing it because change is not in our personal interest.
Where am I going with this? IDK, sometimes when I'm out for an early morning walk, I wander off in directions that I never intended. What I was going to write about today was the essay I read about Ralph Waldo Emerson's prescription for the happiness of living your own life instead of the life you think other people expect of you. I'll leave it at this, that Emerson propounded these eight principles (scroll down), and I've not done well with some of them:
1. Be a private person; never share details of your life with total strangers.
2. Don’t conform to any conventional wisdom; question everything.
3. Make independence your goal; walk alone when necessary.
4. Don’t take the easiest path; choose to do hard things.
5. Get the cultural garbage out of your life; focus only on what edifies you.
6. Change your mind as you see fit; make no apologies for doing so.
7. Commit to complete honesty; this includes honesty with yourself.
8. Do not count on external forces for your happiness; look within.
Of certainties, doctrine and dogma, as a Holy Man, I am fairly certain that the gods we humans have constructed, and do construct, in our image, are too small. J B Phillips again, "Your God Is Too Small." In fact, your God is likely to be an idealized image of yourself, in your own likeness.
RF&PTL anyway
T88&c
pics: a book I read to my girls when they were small and I thought they were mine and would always belong to no one but me; JWST image peering into the distant universe, almost back to יְהִ֣י "yeh-hi, Let there be ... " where, even in the beginning, God spoke in Hebrew