Yesterday's FSU game was the best and most satisfying CFB season opener I remember in all my years. Linda had the game on, and I watched the first half 17-7. But I've watched games when Alabama was down at halftime only to come back and wreak terrible vengeance the second half, so when halfTime started I came in to my computer, did other things; and only checked the second half now and then, nervously, on my phone. I did go back to the television screen when FSU was leading 31-17 and it was obvious that even Alabama couldn't overcome, FSU with the ball and two minutes left in the 4th quarter, to watch the countdown and the tumultuous crowding of the field as the clock clicked 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0. Final.  Charlotte was there and snapped the picture from the bleachers behind the end-zone and goal uprights. That's the most fans I've ever seen crowd the field in jubilation - - although seems to me it happened a few years ago in a last second Auburn upset over...

This, extract below, is the world I grew up in. America was not Great. It's a continuing amazement to me that, whatever we grow up in, at least if we are On Top, we think that's the way the world is supposed to be; it never occurred to us that it was wrong, that we were wrong, the depth of inhuman immorality. For some reason I realized it my first year at college 1953-54, although the University of Florida was an all-White institution my years there.  Told here several Times in the past fifteen years, my night on a bus, August 1954, from Panama City to Birmingham. Eighteen going on nineteen, I had a window seat in the middle of the bus, which was nearly empty when we left Panama City. The bus began to fill as we stopped at various places to pick up passengers. By the Time we left Marianna the bus was full, or nearly so, with Black passengers standing in the aisle. I motioned for a Black mother holding an infant to take the empty seat beside me, and she did. On the empty dark hi...

She's got a ticket to ride, She's got a ticket to rihihihide She's got a ticket to ride, but she don't care. "Two children dead and death toll likely to rise" in shooting at a Catholic church and school in Minneapolis. The wisdom says "refraining from speaking out against evil is complicit in the evil itself," why do I seldom speak out against the evil in which our civilization is drowning?  What's the point, when half of us, actually half-plus-one I reckon, enthusiastically support and are therefore complicit? Why is the national executive administration so involved in matters that have run along fine without bully interference for decades, and ignore the evil in our midst?  Whoever doesn't know the answer is asleep with Rip Van Winkle. The rest of us know and are either complicit or resigned to and hoping to ride it out. =======+= Decades, eons ago, a colleague, neighbor, childhood playmate and sometime friend criticized our rector, Fr Tom ...

  Children look on as Palestinians remove their belongings from a house damaged by an Israeli strike on a nearby home, in Gaza City. REUTERS/Ebrahim Hajjaj   How long wilt thou forget me, O Lord? for ever? how long wilt thou hide thy face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily? how long shall mine enemy be exalted over me? Consider and hear me, O Lord my God: lighten mine eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death; Lest mine enemy say, I have prevailed against him; and those that trouble me rejoice when I am moved. But I have trusted in thy mercy; my heart shall rejoice in thy salvation. I will sing unto the Lord, because he hath dealt bountifully with me. We are not there, I'm not there. If you're not there it's not possible to know the horror and fear of it through the eyes and life of a child. The Children as Gaza City lives into its destiny of being reduced to rubble the height of the sea. How long, O Lord? Then said I, Lord, ...

  With early hot & black, which is decaf because, up at two a.m., I may want to go back to bed before sunrise, a cheese sandwich: okay, a half-sandwich, extra sharp cheddar on one slice Pepperidge Farm's very thin sliced whole wheat bread, folded over, with mayonnaise. It's a treat, and I'm entitled.  The mayo adds the slightest hint of lemony. An hour outside on 7H porch watching creation. No boats moving, but the intermittently flashing channel navigation lights add a sense of life. Then the early fisherman wades by in the Bay seven levels below me, searching the shallows with his light. Not unusual to see. Is he looking for flounder?  An enormous flounder, baked, floating in melted butter, chopped green onions on top, head hanging off one end of a long platter, tail hanging off the other end ... Quiet out here, without my hearing aids, silent and lifeless. If life on earth suddenly disappeared, how long would the channel lights continue? IDK, a couple of ...