82-year-old Rolling Stones legend Mick Jagger says there's nothing good about getting old. Mick would be absolutely correct except that the alternative is to not get old, and so far, getting old older oldest is proving worth living. We know what Mick means, of course, and he is right unless one lives on St Andrews Bay. Getting old here in 7H is the best that life has to offer. The only way it could have been better would have been spending my entire life here instead of starting at age 79. I could have done better myself by coming home to PC from UF and never leaving - - as indeed when we lived in Apalachicola we knew some folks who had never been out of town, and I almost envied them.  ++++++++ Nice church today, our visiting priest was the fellow with the thick Scottish brogue, except that, strictly speaking, it isn't Scottish: he's from Yorkshire in the North of England up right on the border with Scotland. He's retired and a good man, if he could be persuaded to rel...

Enjoying the brouhaha around NFL and NCAA about players leaving their NFL contracts to return to college and play a fifth year. Not that my opinion matters, but I don't have an opinion, I'm just watching. Seems like these young men are graduated or graduating seniors who would rather have stayed in college and play another year if the opportunity had been available earlier. My sympathy tends to be with the players, whoever is the least powerful in the scenario. +++++++ Last evening we had supper at the new restaurant across the street, Basil Asian Cuisine. They've spent a heavy investment in renovation, are really welcoming, trying very hard, and our food was good, the sushi dishes were well prepared and attractively presented, my soup was excellent, and the fried calamari was the best I've ever had. I had the grilled squid too, for the first Time, and am not a fan though the sauce was nice. They offer a huge menu: I don't see how they can afford to carry all the in...

  Choosing between two pictures this morning, I like this one because it's the mama cloud with her chick clouds gathered round her, and two following along right behind her, as little chicks do.  Today is Day One of my birthday month, and I mean to make it count thirty full days, nomesane? It's not one of those special birthdays because of ending in 0. Rather, it's one of those special birthdays because, as I said in yesterday's blogpost, "Hey! I showed up again today!" and at this age and stage of life it's apt every morning, every Time it happens, every single day. When you get here you'll see that I was right, wishing you long years. ++++++++ This is the other picture.  I like this one because it reflects everything about Linda's porch here in 7H, its ongoing cheerfulness. There are always colorful plants in some stage of blooming, or heading toward a bloom, or fading from a bloom, this summer including zinnias, which, after weeks of flourishing...

  Hey!, as they say, I showed up again this morning. Alive, I like being alive. I've been under deepest anesthesia for surgery several Times, and came back having been nowhere, absolutely nowhere,  not even in darkness, but beyond the nothingness of oblivion so total as to not even have existed, nonexistence: to NOT BE.  Returning to life, I realized that Time had passed during which I was not. There was Before Me, and there will be After Me. To any extent I WAS before being conceived, it was the WAS-ness of a dream, not even my dream but someone else's dream. To any extent I WAS during deep anesthesia, it was the WAS-ness of memory, someone, anyone, else's memory, not mine. Not "NDE," a near-death experience, it was the experience of no experience at all, not remembered upon returning, but realized, the experience of death, which, having returned to think about it, I realize it to have been no experience at all, none whatsoever, fading into eternity. To be raised...

Woke up to brilliant lightning and close claps of thunder this Friday August the 28th morning of 2026, mug of hot & black. The bed was so comfortable and warm, and, late to bed last night, I'd counted on another hour or so of sleep. No matter: hey! I'm still here, eh? Thank you, God!  We really enjoyed watching the lunar eclipse last night, from its tentative start of just a little smudge of shadow on the bottom left of the moon, right through the narrowing crescent phases until there was just a tiny bit of light right on top of the lunar surface. Clouds were in the way at first, but by half-way the moon was out in the open, higher and clear of clouds.  We were looking high, southeast, and were treated to intermittent bursts of fiery lightning low on the horizon over toward Apalachicola. This is a great place, with a clear view to watch the southern sky. The only thing is that the bright streetlamp right on the Bay edge in Oaks by the Bay Park next door has lightened the n...

Life goes on with or without us, and as people die it occurs to me again this morning that some of us make life better in some way or other for the rest of us. Some measure and mix of their integrity or intelligence, honor, trustworthiness, generosity, kindness, brightness, the very value of their existence among us in our lifeTime.  None of us really know anyone else, and there are things about everyone that we don't know or might not admire, but thinking beyond family, loved ones and friends, for me it's been people I've named here before and others - - in my Time, Franklin D Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Gandhi, Harry Truman, Jimmy Carter, scholars of The Jesus Seminar, Ike Eisenhower, maybe Bart Ehrman and Sean Dietrich; some in the entertainment industry including Dolly Parton this morning, whose brightness illuminated a Time in my own life.  Even today some of her songs run through my mind and get stuck there, repeating for maybe days on end. As with anyone, IDK, mayb...