I'm not stupid, and I don't think you really are either even if I do notice that you do have problems. But lest we cause embarrassment, let's not discuss it. Instead, I'll go this way with it. Years ago, it must have been 1978 soon after my retirement from the Navy,  during my first of several annual visits to Australia, one of my new clients, the managing director of a defence industry company, arrived apologetically a few minutes late for our early morning appointment for him to give me a tour of his engineering and manufacturing facility: driving in to work, he had been stopped by traffic police and ticketed for failure to wear his seatbelt. The traffic ticket was going to cost him A$40, forty dollars, an outrage. And I was indeed outraged. I remember telling him that we had seatbelts but no such draconian laws in America, if you wanted to wear your seatbelt, and anyone who was not stupid would indeed wear it, you wore your seatbelt. If for any reason you didn't ...

  Good morning, and I never know what typeface will or won’t "take" on Blogger, but this one appealed to me largely because of the g and the j and the y. I don't care that much for the z, but I like the tall lower case l and d and k and f and h and the interesting y. Its name is Papyrus and, among other places online, you can read about it on Wikipedia. It isn't perfect yet, and  I'm going to continue my search until I find a sans typeface with the appealing g, maybe a more prominent cap, but that has a properly tailed z. Yet, the typeface was an aside and not meant to be my direction today. Living in a condominium apartment is, for me at this age in years and stage in life, far superior to living in a house. Even The Old Place that was built by my grandparents more than a hundred years ago as a happy home for their large family and served them well for a few years, at the best, for half a Time, two sons and three daughters, ranging from a few months (Marguerite) ...

When in late May or early June 1955 I arrived home from my sophomore year at college for summer vacation, things had changed permanently. And while I didn't realize its significance at the Time, bits of its significance still keep occurring to me two-thirds of a century later. It was a Time of turning for me; in what some years later folks who considered themselves up to the minute but had never heard of Thomas Kuhn would trendily term paradigm shift.  What stood out to me then that I most often remember now and have commented on any number of Times, is not what would have been most significant to others in my family - - that first Sunday morning of my 1955 summer when, heading for church in the green 1948 Dodge sedan that later was my second car and then Linda and my first car of dozens, at the imaginary Yield where Massalina Drive and Hamilton Avenue are momentarily One, instead of turning left on Massalina for St Andrew's Episcopal Church that had been my lifelong nurt...

It isn't that I've lived too long, that, hopefully - - language is never static, there was a Time when "hopefully" meant what it was meant to mean instead of how people began to misuse it; but, as language does, over Time, and not very much Time as evolution goes, people's misusing it made its misused meaning its new meaning, all made official in some recent recognition, to the disgust of some, the relief of some like me, and right over the heads of the ignorant who had no idea what all the fuss was about - - will not happen. For one thing, living in a place that has mornings like we do here at 7H, it seems impossible to live too long. And to my recollection, of people close to me, only my mother lived too long - - after about age 95 into years of increasing physical disabilities too many to get into here, and her own deepening depression into despair about how she was, her sight gone, her hearing gone, her balance gone, her mind okay and her heart at age 99 bette...

Basically retired a while now, no self-imposed discipline of writing a daily blog as for a decade; revolting and bolting in my ancient age.    So many cards and notes coming from dear people who over the lifetime saw my sister living her own life, or saw my sadness that her life ended as it did.  As our old Litany said,     From lightning and tempest; from earthquake, fire, and flood, from plague, pestilence, and famine; from battle and murder, and from sudden death,     Good Lord, deliver us .      Kind folks writing to share my feelings, thank you kindly and lovingly.  Reading more than writing at the moment, in fact reading two books. Remembering that "A Soldier of the Great War" was an all time favorite, read during my January and February 2017 sabbatical. A novel: his life well lived, an old soldier telling his life story to a young traveling companion. Now, these, and others I read recently, books, and several films set i...

O God, whose blessed Son came into the world that he might destroy the works of the devil and make us children of God and heirs of eternal life: Grant that, having this hope, we may purify ourselves as he is pure; that, when he comes again with power and great glory, we may be made like him in his eternal and glorious kingdom; where he lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Lo! the Hosts of Evil round us scorn thy Christ, assail his ways!  Cure thy children’s warring madness;  bend our pride to thy control;  shame our wanton, selfish gladness,  rich in things and poor in soul.  Grant us wisdom, grant us courage,  lest we miss thy kingdom’s goal!  (You may be seated) ++++++++++++++++++ Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God?  Seizing my attention, and I do not want you to miss it, is our Episcopal theology in this morning’s Collect for the Day: O God, your blessed ...

Sunday morning, keeping an eye on the clock, still have a few extra minutes, so Rambling Time, eh? sermon past the at home prep stage (prep is actually finished about the Time I say "The Gospel of the Lord" and "You may be seated" and head for the pulpit: Time, a moment for last and final second thoughts before I step up into the sound box and look at the People, reminding myself to seem oblivious to the camera streaming Fool's Name and Monkey's Face beyond the Room to Public Place(s), that's actually when sermon prep is wrapped up, so be it this morning. What about, and where to let the mind wander to? as some other FoolFussBudget chides me to get my prepositions in order.  Reading in the PCNH about what's going on around town makes me wish I were thirty-seven instead of eighty-six. New oyster bars downtown? A new seafood restaurant as part of the new downtown marina? This morning, a crawfish & seafood restaurant on W 5th Street, at 302 West Fif...