Which to read: Fr Richard's guest on his Daily Meditations or John McWhorter's column in The New York Times, "These Are the 10 Old Television Series Every Kid Needs to Read" - - not that there's a limit of only reading one, and of course I read McWhorter because glancing down his favorites I see more than ten, including some of my own, "The Carol Burnett Show" and "Fawlty Towers" and "The Amos 'n Andy Show" although I remember it better as a radio show. "The Honeymooners" and "The Twilight Zone" Maybe television is still good, IDK and don't need to know, because I can scroll and find Carol Burnett, Ralph and Norton any Time I want to lose myself in the twentieth century. "The Smothers Brothers' Comedy Hour" is not as funny as it was in the late 1960s, nor is "Rowan and Martin's Laugh In." Once, I searched and found Red Skelton, it was sad, lower and worse than pathetic. Jack Benn...

12:35 am, then 1:22, now 1:49 am, instead of being sensible and letting the under-desk eliptical exercise my legs and feet for thirty minutes or an hour and sapping my energy so I can go back to bed for a long autumn's nap, I'm sitting here with the early mug of hot & black and three saltine squares, each with a smear of a soft cheese from Zingerman's Jewish deli in Ann Arbor and thinking to blog for a few minutes.  Or not thinking. At ninety and not counting I need all the physical exercise I can muster. This is a tart cheese, could be goat milk cheese but it's not. We bought steak yesterday, and will cook it probably early afternoon; Kristen is coming over for Sunday dinner. Weeks ago we'd made the family commitment for Saturday and Sunday and we're keeping it, everything else will have to wait, is suspended, off the calendar.  Steak, and Linda's made a salad. There'll be a couple kinds of mushrooms, collard greens, chocolate chess pie from Zingerm...

Some of my blogposts do not make it past Draft and may eventually be deleted, or I may press Publish, or it may stay in Draft until the eschaton; this is one of those; I intend to wander and think and remember. It's because I'm still agonizing over Kristen's loss of Pacey yesterday. He was critically ill and she took him to the vet knowing what the vet might say but hoping against hope. Anyone who has ever loved and lost a pet understands, as do I even as my agony is about Kristen; I can hardly bear it when one of mine is hurting. There was the film "All Dogs Go To Heaven," and any dog owner and lover knows it's true. This death of Kristen's cat brings it to mind, and the entire nature of my own faith in the human realm. So, I'll muse on it a bit. That said, ... ++++++++ Emily Dickenson's poem The Bustle in a House The Morning after Death Is solemnest of industries Enacted upon Earth - The Sweeping up the Heart And putting Love away We shall not wa...

Instead of our usual Christian approach to prayer as an opportunity to ask God for something, a Jewish formula of prayer as praising God for something, bread, wine, life itself, seems most right and good - - baruch ata, Adonai Eloheinu, Melek ha-olam: blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the universe, who creates little animals that fill our lives with companionship and our hearts with love, and breaks them too.  Kristen named him Pacey, a Maine coon cat whom she loved all his years. Pacey was seventeen, Kristen is thirty-two, he was a kitten, seems to me they chose each other on her fifteenth birthday. They saw each other through the critical years of growing up until yesterday; baruch ata, Adonai Eloheinu, blessed are you. Kristen asked for a photograph that hangs in our dining room, Pacey as she holds him. I will miss the picture, which makes it even dearer to give it to her and for her to have it. +++++++++ Our own last cat - - he was Tassy's cat actually, from her teen ...

No, Uncle Bubba has not forgotten his main interest in life, which is food (well, there are two main interests, food and naps); in fact a blogpost I typed earlier in the week went on about the Cajun sausages I bought at Bill's Grocery Outlet the other day, I forget the names of the two sausages, what keeps coming to what's left of my mind is funiculee funiculah, but those ain't them, it'll come to me in due course.  One sausage we bought to go with the shrimp and grits we're planning for when Joe comes, though we're thinking about trying it out on a special friend if the opportunity arises before Joe comes.  Did I mention the fruit cake? We ordered fruitcake on line. For years I ordered Texas pecan cakes from Ellenbergers, but they're out of business, so I ordered from Collins Street Bakery in Texas, their new candied strawberry fruitcake. It's quite good, and now soaked a couple weeks in rum. First Time I've seen strawberry fruitcakes offered. Recom...

Early morning is my only thinking Time and my only reading Time. I have long past issues of wonderful magazines that I've not opened even to read the bright title of the wonderful front cover, even less thumb through the cartoons, and not at all read the intelligence within. Instead, I open something that's waiting on my computer desktop and stored inside. Again this morning as often, "Waiting for God," my English translation of Simone Weil's thoughts, and especially her letters to her friend Father Perrin. The nod to Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" is not coincidental.  She struggles for Truth, even for the Truth. Born and raised a secular Jew, she is outside the church but she identifies with the Christian message as she understands it, that God is love and that God's will for us is love; but she struggles with her certainty that God calls her to deny herself baptism into the Christian community but to remain outside as a self-identified Christia...

Ninety, I'm so glad to be ninety, retired and living in my own 7th Heaven. Paul didn't make it, he got caught up in the third heaven, so I reckon that was it for him, eh? I say "eh?" because I don't know and neither do you.  You can see by the birthday balloons that ninety is wearing and wearying, though. The balloons are turning out to be a good, better, best possible metaphor for life at ninety: up early, a nap before breakfast, a nap mid-morning, a nap following noon dinner (it's usually one o'clock or going on two o'clock, not noon though), early to bed and early to rise. This, four o'clock predawn darkness, is my best and only thinking Time of day, and that itself, like the 90 balloons, is sinking. A fact of ninety, though, is that these are not short power naps but two hour naps, from which I wake feeling sleep-logged and dopey, not invigorated.  Two doctor appointments today. No, it's three, two for her and one for him. This is the five-...

Tomorrow morning, Sunday, 19 Oct 2025, we will pick up where we left off last Sunday and press to finish up our adult Sunday school class discussion of Mark and his gospel, at Holy Nativity Episcopal Church, Panama City, Florida. The text of our Handout has already been emailed to class members who signed up for that; and is printed below for anyone else who may be interested. TW+ image: Mark the Evangelist, pinched online, credited as French art, the lion is frequently associated with Mark symbolically Mark 14  Good News Translation Jesus Prays in Gethsemane 32  They came to a place called Gethsemane, and Jesus said to his disciples, “ Sit here while I pray.” 33  He took Peter, James, and John with him. Distress and anguish came over him, 34  and he said to them, “ The sorrow in my heart is so great that it almost crushes me. Stay here and keep watch.” 35  He went a little farther on, threw himself on the ground, and prayed that, if possible, he might not have...