“Robert, come home!” was a memory & story from when Robert was a little boy, and the family lived over by Johnson Bayou, Robert running around in the marsh grass while his mother was calling him in for supper, and Robert pretending not to hear her!  You do not know me: I am Thomas Carroll Weller, Jr. People call me Tom, or Fr. Tom (I’m a retired priest of the Episcopal Church). But Robert and our Cove School classmates called me Carroll, my middle name.  Robert started Cove School with us when we were in second grade, and we attended each others’ 7-years-old birthday parties in 1942. Friends in later life, we enjoyed long walks around The Cove, and having breakfast at local restaurants. Robert was elected President for Life of our Cove School Class of 1949 alumni group, which he gathered together, and for whom he hosted several class reunions, held on our old Cove School campus in later years.  Star basketball player at Cove School and Bay High, Robert was...

  Looking at the online news about the young man who murdered Charlie Kirk, he's so young, 22 years old, could be anybody's beloved grandson. I feel so sad for him, the destiny he has set for himself; and I wonder if he ever asks himself, "How could I have been so stupid!"  In my Time, I've seen now, I guess, four political assassinations that come to mind, two Kennedy brothers, MLK, and Charlie Kirk. I don't want to live in a society where mad shooters take from the people the opportunity to make our own political choices. This opening digression because I saw the young man's face again as soon as I opened my computer to contemplate a blogpost. And news coverage of NATO leaders meeting and frantic to cover what the US is pulling from NATO involvement, as I think again and always of ants fighting and killing the next ant bed as though we were so important on this Earth in a galaxy of trillions. We will kill the Earth in our determination to save it from th...

  At Beck Avenue and 12th Street, this is how the downtown area of St Andrews now known as Smith's Yacht Basin was when I was a boy, the sheltered little "harbor" opened into St Andrews Bay; far across the way you can see the Magnolia Beach shoreline. In the photo's background, the pine trees made good shade for getting cool, but cars and trucks parked under them got pine resin dripped on them, difficult to get off and quickly dried to solid lumps ruining any vehicle's paint. There are four pine trees in the photo, but in my Time the little one was gone, and there was that wonderful line of three large  pine trees, as I say, cool shade on these hot July days. The two-masted schooners are fishing smacks like the Annie & Jennie that took my father's brother Alfred to his death when she broke up in a storm while transiting the Old Pass the night of January 8, 1918.  To the right of the schooners, the smaller white boat was owned by an old Norwegian fisherman ...

It used to be a custom, taken from the Church of England, that the first Episcopal parish in an area was named Christ Church. Just so, Christ Church, St. Andrews, Florida; but later, probably in 1926 when St Andrews and Millville were merged into Panama City, the name was changed from Christ Church, St Andrews to St Andrew's  Episcopal Church, Panama City.  Similarly but for different reasons, originally chartered as Christ Church, Apalachicola the name was early changed to Trinity Episcopal Church. Our custom has gone by the way, but it was not unlike naming First Baptist, First Methodist, First Presbyterian. And there came to be something prestigious in being "First Church" or "Christ Church."  It's sad I am that in my Time, the gender, sex, marriage issues have divided Christian denominations, and so fiercely and in concrete certainty. I have my certainties also, trying to keep myself mindful that there are just as many on the other side who are just as c...

Early always: hot & black in my magic mug. Later, Wednesday breakfast: heart pills with ice water, then pickled herring with second mug of hot & black. To ward off ppht, no bread, crackers or other carbs.  Nap came on anyway, and carried me to half past twelve noon. Early again: hot & black in my magic mug. Later then, about seven AM, Thursday breakfast: heart pills plus furoforty with ice water, then soft-scrambled cheese-eggs with ice water. Hopefully, no nap today. POD includes one o'clock at Pruitt Health with M, then lunch/noon dinner/lunch somewhere with K. Last week, Chili's to try the ribs (excellent), today who knows then. ++++++ Reading, on my computer screen, "How Green Was My Valley" by the Welshman. With that as my sole commitment, all day yesterday, how would you like to be so totally retired that you can afford to enjoy a full day early morning until nine o'clock PM with your nose in a book? I can speed-read, but this one is to read, sto...

We had weeks-long plans for yesterday, our 69th wedding anniversary, that featured a five to seven pound red snapper going in the oven for baking, along with cheese grits, the stone-ground long-stir kind. Neither Tarpon Dock Seafood nor Buddy Gandy's had a large red snapper, though, so we shifted gears mid-morning and elected for two o'clock dinner at Hunt's, where Linda had the bit of snapper filet, Kristen had the ahi tuna, and I had a dozen raw half-shell and the seafood platter.  The oysters, I order their Louisiana oysters because they are large, and for me the bigger the better, and if they're not salty that's easily seen to. So, even though we were overwhelmingly exhausted and down for naps before noon, the day turned out maybe even better, because it was no more costly than our plan would have been, plus there was nothing to do in our own kitchen here in 7H.  The bag of stone-ground grits is ready to open, and I'll take notice of the fish markets for whe...

Our gospel reading for today is the REWARDS section at the end of Matthew 10:40-42. Matthew has Jesus promise a suitable reward to specific people for certain acts or for living a certain way. As he does not elaborate, it is frustratingly unclear what Matthew intends us to understand the rewards to be. In fact, some Christians will glom onto the "reward" as being what the later church came to promise, everlasting life in a heaven that's described at the end of Revelation - - first bodily at the general resurrection with the coming of the Son of Man to institute God's kingdom on earth at the end of days - - then, as the understood kingdom did not come, reward shifted to the soul passing into paradise at death (or to paradise through some cleansing period such as purgatory); all in compliance with and obedience to church authority.  Seriously as though an earthly institution in human life could control the workings and actions of Melek ha-olam.   So, what are the Reward...

For my own reasons, which like mañana  is good enough for me, I moved this segment out of my June 26, 2026 blogpost to stand separate. If I publish it, it won't be linked on my Facebook page. It's - -  - - an observation, to comment on something. Two somethings really. Announcement yesterday that the Italian-themed chain restaurant Olive Garden will be adopting a dress code for clients. For folks who want to dine there, no armless shirts. Shirts should have a collar. No shorts as I recall. No flip-flops. Women should wear dresses, skirts. No slacks for women? I don't think they really want "a higher class of clients," I think they just want to make dining there a bit less sloppy. I've eaten at both:  There's an Olive Garden on MLK across from Target in the NW block of Highway 77 and 23rd Street, here in town where life is pretty informal; when we've eaten there it was more a casual drop in, not a planned and scheduled family outing for which we'd d...

Basket!!! At a request, I'm recalling and writing down personal memories of my eight years as a student at Cove Elementary School, Panama City, Fall 1941 through Spring 1949, first grade through eighth grade, teachers Violet Heyward through our beloved Virginia Parker. Writing it started off with a bang, and I've roughed it out through fifth grade, then let it slide several days, with sixth, seventh, and eighth grades yet to be stirred and written.  Encouraging the memories to surface  is fun and good, and I'll get back to it in due course. Needless to say, that I'm soon coming up on my ninety-first birthday tends to give the little project a certain urgency! For a title, it's "Golden groves and crystal waters," which was the opening line of our Alma Mater song at Cove School, but memory slips and I'm missing a line of the song I thought would stick with me lifelong. I remember all the words of "On our city's northern border, reared against th...

  Was ist heute? Heute ist Dienstag, nicht wahr? Today is Tuesday, and my one commitment today is a 9:00 AM appointment with the dermatology clinic. They will, no doubt about it, cut pieces out of me and bill for it; somebody's got to make the Escalade payments, eh, nomesane? No, I'm still alive because of them and others who've known what they are doing over my years of life.  And there's always something about me that needs cutting. In fact it's been observed and said that Mr B has gone off eccentric, if not downright weird at Times. Maybe it's the meds, the little tablets in their plastic containers that ship from GOK where several Times a year: I've been taking them nearly sixteen years now, same Time span as writing this more or less daily nonsense.  My Meds, the tiny pills, started that October Sunday in 2010 when, pale green of pallor, I was delivered to the ER and The Man asked, "Has anyone ever told you that your EKG is TERRIBLE?" No. ...

  Around here we see ospreys every day, they are local here in St Andrews, circling high over the Bay and diving for mullet, often flying by right close to 7H porch, with or without a fish. But I've not seen an active local osprey nest in years. The nest I watch in Colorado, though, via the Boulder County Fairgrounds Osprey Nest Camera in Longmont, is an annual treat starting when the osprey male and female arrive from their separate migrations in South or Central America early spring. Some years there's still snow on the calendar, even heavy snow, maybe endangering the eggs; the pair mating, the mom bird laying her eggs, beginning the countdown to hatching that shows which eggs are viable; the actual hatching, which I've watched some years; the parents catching and feeding live fish to the hatchlings as they grow into recognizable young ospreys, I snapped this picture yesterday: to when the chicks fledge, are taught to fish in the adjacent waters; then in the autumn of eac...

Tomorrow's OT lesson from Genesis 21 is below, along with my fooling-with-it notes inserted. It has been some years since I taught my adult Sunday school class and the prep effort and actual presentation are in my rearview mirror anymore; but I liked to make the Sunday school hour specifically relevant by focusing on the Lectionary readings for the instant Sunday.  Just so, if I were teaching a class tomorrow I'd work on the Genesis 21 story, which is a continuation - (that's the way Lectionary Year A OT readings after Pentecost work, series of stories) - a continuation of last week's droll story about the conception of Isaac, son of Sarah and Abraham (?!) by the Holy Spirit. Last weeks' story has 90-year-old Sarah laughing when The Lord promises that she will give birth to a son, and The Lord taking offense at her for laughing. Her laugh, though, seems not to be delight, you see, it's scorn; because the promise itself is outrageously absurd. And it's on top...