Chaos, the state of a nation devolved into hatred, gun violence, political assassination. Murder as a warped political act: terrible sadness. What happened to America? 9/11 happened creating raging hatred in response to hatred from the other side. The 2016 presidential campaign happened, unleashing long-suppressed unspeakable prejudices, fears; fanning resentment and hatred for division as a strategy to herd people into political camps; an open season of racism, bigotry, and of rights over responsibilities and human decency.  A class war of sorts: n obody wants people who are different rising above them in power, status, wealth, control.  An assertion of religious and moral certitude in which everyone must be forced into conformance with the convictions of the group in power; religion bigotry and the brutal suppression it brings is not new in human history, has been common in Christendom, is common in Islam; we thought we had left that kind of theocracy behind us but it is fas...

BIrthday month: last evening with close friends we had a happy birthday supper that I continued the happiness this morning with breakfast of an incomparably most excellent liver pate sandwich.  The homemade liver pate is a topmost favorite that she sent me home with last night. In my lifeTime, I've had liver pate all over the USA and in Japan and Australia, and I've bought liver pate from Jewish delicatessens including Katz's in New York City, and none ever compares to this. The story gets even better in that I'm the only person here who eats it. My task now is to prepare for Sunday morning, officiating services at HNEC while most of the congregation is across the Bay celebrating our annual Shell Island Sunday. For my priestly costume, I'm down to two black clergy shirts, both with the tab collar. I ordered them on special about 2005 from a Chinese source, for $33 each when the price for regular American clergy shirts was more than double that. I'd specified reg...

See, I've ordered pastrami from Katz Deli in New York, and I've ordered superlative cheeses but no pastrami or other meats from Zingerman's Deli in Ann Arbor. Recent emails from AA, though, got me to thinking I'd try a pound of Zingerman's pastrami. But I've not done it yet, so Monday had a pound of Boar's Head pastrami cut at Publix, along with buying a loaf of Jewish pumpernickel rye and a package of aged Swiss cheese. Already have my deutscher Senf, and it's all in mind for a sandwich at Tuesday early afternoon dinner. Maybe along with pop a can of German beer, eh? and dine out on 7H porch.  So, will Boar's Head pastrami live up to Katz's or Zingerman's? Katz's is fatty, luscious, indulgent; this looks rather lean.   +++++++++ Thinking ahead to Sep 21, Mark 5 New International Version (NIV) Jesus Restores a Demon-Possessed Man 5:1 They went across the lake (the Sea of Galilee, Lake of Tiberias) to the region of the Gerasenes.[a] 2 When...

  Full moon to waning gibbous at 99%, next full moon 29 days. Pleasant outside, a little cool, 72°F, 62% humidity, wind NNE 10 mph gusts to 19 mph, lightning in the clouds offshore to the SSE of me here on 7H porch. Going inside, as it's sneeze-Time, more likely the pollen than feeling a bit chilly. Good hot & black though I don't take my magic mug outside on the concrete deck of the porch. The plastic measuring cup for coffee water doubles as a drinking cup if I'm going outside. Tap the weather icon on my phone and it says thunderstorms this afternoon. September 8, still two weeks of summer left before the autumnal equinox Monday, September 22. Yesterday September 7 was, would have been, Linda's father's birthday. 1905, Pete was born 120 years ago in Birmingham, Alabama to Dr Urban J W Peters and Mary Shaw Peters. In memories a gentle, kind man of the Old South. Shared my loving preference for Buick cars! My first Buick ride was in Scotty Fraser's mother...

Our Navy and Apalachicola years, one of my great happinesses visiting my parents in late summerTime was the fig tree in the side yard just off the kitchen; me circling the tree, walking round it again and again and having my breakfast by picking ripe figs and eating them right off the tree. The tree would be loaded with fruit that seemed to ripen so rapidly that a fig that was nearly ripe this revolution would be ready to pick and eat next Time, a minute or so later.  It was a joy in life that I miss. But we do buy figs in grocery stores this Time of year, Brown Turkey figs and Black Mission figs. Deep, dark purple almost black, the fully ripe Black Mission figs we've bought are more sugary sweet. My memory of figs on our fig trees is that they must have been Brown Turkey, lighter color with more pink and green unto purple.  The trouble with having your own fig trees, though, is getting out there to pick them before the birds. A bird will peck a bite out of this fig, and that ...

  Just before going to bed last night, 10:34 pm it was, I went out on 7H porch and snapped a picture of the moon, 66% as I recall, waxing gibbous, decent shot as the red light flashed on the tower in the Bay Point area the other side of Courtney Point between 7H and the Pass; and posted it on Facebook.  About the same picture as above. Tuesday POD. City inspector is due here sometime this morning to inspect electrical work that Peaden's permitted here during our recent kitchen renovation. I'm no electrician, but we think the Peaden workers did fantastic with our electric as well as with our plumbing.  Magic mug of hot & black Club coffee this Tuesday, 2 September 2025 as, 14 September 1935, I anticipate my 90th birthday and heading on for 91. This is my birthday month. What am I thinking? As most will suspect, besides visits with friends and loved ones, I'm thinking what food I will want to be sure and enjoy. I want a steak that someone else cooks, I'm thinking of a...

Nearly every weekday morning, hours after my early magic mug of hot & black, I think of making myself a sandwich for breakfast. Those years that Robert and I were walking and having breakfast out, someTimes at Big Mama's on the Bayou I'd have a BLT with double tomatoes and double bacon, someTimes at Cahall's I'd have a rare roast beef sandwich. Can't do it anymore because of a thing that's common especially among us elderly: carbo coma - - within ten or fifteen minutes the bread carbohydrates cause my BP instantly to drop, and so far down, 78/39 for example, that I have to collapse in bed, then sleep away my morning.  At this age, my hobby is taking a nap, preferably a morning nap after breakfast and an afternoon nap after noon dinner, but I don't always welcome having my morning wiped out, so've started trying to remember to avoid eating bread, toast, for breakfast unless I'm okay with the instantaneous morning nap.  Which brings me to this morn...

  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, ...