Saturday:

Tired of fooling with them - - these eyeglasses are clean enough, I'll just ignore the smudges. 

Late to bed, up early, at least it was still dark. The magic picture show on Linda's desk in our living room turns itself on at five o'clock, this morning it was just as I started pedaling the exercise walker and lifted my magic mug for my first sip of hot & black. 

Breakfast: I like a challenge of some sort. SomeTimes raw oysters, someTimes pickled herring, now and then a sandwich, but not these last few days before my weigh-in at my PCP's clinic Tuesday morning. So, today's breakfast: soba noodles with a piece of baked salmon that I minced to go under the noodles, noodle water, and some Japanese umami powder. 

As I may've reported earlier, Tuesday's is a special appointment to discuss the results of the sonogram, catscan, and lab work investigating possible causes for the syncope, an ailment that strikes now and then. At first I thought it was CHF or circulatory system based, but I've decided it's posture-related and nothing I can't control myself by holding my head up straight so I don't squeeze a blood vessel and impede blood flow to my brain. 

Probably telling more than is wise here, eh? 

Saturday: the heart meds include a once a week vitamin D capsule, a little green thing that shows up on my pillfish just this one day a week. That's a pic of the pillfish after I've gulped its dose. Daily there's a morning dose and then an evening dose that's different.

Linda bought us the pillfish at the little soap shop in Apalachicola. Apalach is different to when we lived there 1984-1998: there's a shop that specializes in goat milk soaps, where I buy my shaving soap and where Linda bought our pillfish; there's a shop that specializes in honey, where I've bought sourwood honey, our traditional Southern tupelo honey, and honey mead from Sandinavia; and the fish houses and restaurants consider themselves too upscale to sell and serve mullet anymore. If you want fried mullet, come to Captain's Table or go to Gene's in Millville. Gene's is fun, but they fry the fish too long; it's best at Captain's Table here in St Andrews. 

Gene's is a better deal, though: a mullet platter is two whole fried mullet, which is four filets and two backs fried crispy so you can munch the crispy tail, and it's the same price as one whole fried mullet here in St A.

Somebody said, you pays your money and you takes your choice.

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Below is our OT Bible story for tomorrow, at the end of Genesis, the story of Joseph's emotional reunion with his brothers. Starting where it does, the lectionary framers assume that you've been to Sunday school and already know the Joseph story, all that happened earlier in Joseph's life, and probably most of us do. If you don't know the Joseph story you can go to Genesis 37 and read from there to the end of Genesis, it's pretty interesting and Joseph has quite an adventurous life.

You may notice that I seldom or never talk about the NT epistle reading, often something from St Paul, currently from Paul's letter to the Romans. We're reading through that this summer 2026, Lectionary Year A. Paul, on whose writings much of Christian theology and doctrine is based, is highly admired by most everybody but me. I know where Paul starts out, and I know what he believed that was a product of his apocalyptic, flat-Earth age. Romans is loaded with Paul's imponderable theological statements, but if you want to know where he's coming from, read 1st Thessalonians chapters 4 and 5 and you've got him. Paul wrote Romans later, his expectations have shifted, and, unlike his earlier epistles, in Romans he's writing to people he's never met and whom he's trying to convince of his orthodoxy before he arrives in Rome. So, Romans is weighty, sort of Paul's masters thesis, nomesane? or his doctoral dissertation. If you're still in grammar school with Bubba, stick with One Thessalonians, eh?   

Genesis 45:1-15

Joseph could no longer control himself before all those who stood by him, and he cried out, “Send everyone away from me.” So no one stayed with him when Joseph made himself known to his brothers. And he wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard it, and the household of Pharaoh heard it. Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph. Is my father still alive?” But his brothers could not answer him, so dismayed were they at his presence.

Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Come closer to me.” And they came closer. He said, “I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. And now do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life. For the famine has been in the land these two years; and there are five more years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God; he has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt. Hurry and go up to my father and say to him, ‘Thus says your son Joseph, God has made me lord of all Egypt; come down to me, do not delay. You shall settle in the land of Goshen, and you shall be near me, you and your children and your children’s children, as well as your flocks, your herds, and all that you have. I will provide for you there—since there are five more years of famine to come—so that you and your household, and all that you have, will not come to poverty.’ And now your eyes and the eyes of my brother Benjamin see that it is my own mouth that speaks to you. You must tell my father how greatly I am honored in Egypt, and all that you have seen. Hurry and bring my father down here.” Then he fell upon his brother Benjamin’s neck and wept, while Benjamin wept upon his neck. And he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them; and after that his brothers talked with him.