Is it tomorrow yet, or is it still yesterday? So the last of our American troops are out of Iraq after what is a lifeTime for many and death for tens of thousands. Judgment on whether we should have been there or not is moot, we're out, and the Iraqi people should be relieved because once America gets in and a foothold, it's not easy to get shed of us. I've wondered how Germans really feel, even with the Russian threat, about American soldiers still being there, now eighty-one years after our World War Two victory and occupation.  And Japan, the Japanese. Living in Japan in the mid-1960s, I watched as hordes of Japanese demonstrators danced and chanted and moved against the main gate of the U.S. Naval Base, Yokosuka (a major Imperial Japanese Navy base during WW2, but ever since then the homeport of the US 7th Fleet), the weight of the immense crowds bowing the gate and fence inward while I stood and watched as the evening duty officer. I was a US Navy lieutenant, there was...

Magic mug of hot & black outside on 7H porch at three o'clock for an enjoyable half hour in the quiet predawn darkness of just me, Creation, and life itself. +++++++ Ages ago when I started +Time weblog, I tried various fonts, looking for one I liked, preferably sanserif with several strange lower case letters. Maybe the one I liked best was/is Wunderlich, which I still use except for blogposts. For blogposts, though, I settled on Arial Black because, even though not lovely, it prints out clear and easy to read, at least for me. And it seems to run consistent, which proved not the case for fonts not already predesignated for Blogger. So, it's bold and black like my morning mug of coffee.  +++++++ Up too early again, and outside on 7H porch in the 73°F Wednesday morning. Fall, autumn seems to be coming on with more pleasant hours for being outside, especially in the pitch black dark with a clear view southward looking toward the Florida Strait and on beyond to South America,...

Two of my favorite characters,  Aslan the Lion, who in Narnia represents the Emperor-over-the-Sea.  Dewey Duck, sibling of Donald's triplet nephews Huey, Dewey, Louie, who enjoys a ubiquitous presence here in 7H.  Aslan and Dewey lie down together but do not eat hay. +++++++++ This is an interesting Time of life when one realizes the late aging experience of good days and bad days. Bad days are not mood or pain, but a certain tiredness, a groggy, drowsy exhaustion, disinterest in old joys: haven't had a tray of ice cold salty oysters on the half-shell in three weeks and did not enjoy the last one.  Sitting with legs propped up and dozing off with head tilted sideways and mouth open; observers judge mentally dull. The days of total retirement I've shrunk into lack aspiration: what does one do, think, or say to earn the air one breathes? From "The King and I," is a puzzlement. A puzzlement, a struggle with oneself. No suggestions needed, there's nobody living in...

Doing a nice thing for myself, having a second magic mug of my club hot & black after breakfast. No reason, just because. Looking at our lectionary for this morning, Jesus in the Temple, I realize that I did comment earlier in the week, though not on the gospel reading, so I'll give it a shot.  Jesus in the Temple is a key thing for Luke; it's so for the other evangelists as well, but a lesser key to his identity than in Luke. In any synoptic, though, a scene with Jesus in the Temple confronting his adversaries clues us that the tension is building and Jesus' end is near. Matthew gets his 21:23-32 temple confrontation scene from Mark 11. The parable of the two sons that follows, which Matthew inserts between the temple confrontation and the parable of the leased vineyard, is Matthew's own. We don't know what Matthew intended, but maybe I'll come back to that.  First, the confrontation, which seems to end in a standoff, neither Jesus nor the priests answer th...

There was a film, memory slips because all I recall is one scene - - an elderly woman is dying (seems like I wrote about this a week or two ago but IDK and IDC), in her house in a village in must have been Italy or Greece. Noise stirs her, she opens her eyes, raises her head and looks up to see her neighbors, elderly peasant women who are not dying yet, dashing into her house, grabbing things that she soon will leave behind, and running out with them. To me it was shockingly unfeeling, but it must have been a custom there.   AI knows everything: "The film you are thinking of is Zorba the Greek (1964). In this classic drama, there is a famous, bleakly memorable scene where the elderly French innkeeper, Madame Hortense (played by Lila Kedrova), is dying of pneumonia in her bed. As she draws her final breaths, the local village women—who have been waiting outside like vultures—swarm into her house. They frantically run in and out of her room, pulling down her curtains, looting her fu...

  "What is life?" continues to eat at me this morning, Tuesday, September 22, 2026, 2:48 AM. The question is more basic at this hour and age, when I feel life centered here in 7H, and responsibility to a specific handful of people and no one else under the sun. If you wonder whether you are on the list, you certainly are, of course you are, how could you doubt it? Responsibility to continue looking after myself as best I can, that is; to take my meds, exercise a bit, mind my weight, get some rest, eat & drink mindfully, keep my leg elevated. Life Itself, though: now that I've surrendered all former responsibilities of life into the void, life is down to awareness: continue to take notice, respond when I DWP.  That's pretty much it. Respond or simply Abide, Be - - as in: I Am, kindly leave me alone see vou play.  ++++++ Last evening I was exhausted, lay down and turned out my light too early, so early as to be up first at eleven-something, back to bed fitfully wit...