My conscience jerks me around every Time I turn on the faucet and let the water run to get warm, mindful that in Gaza sufficient water is not available to sustain human life, much less worry about its temperature.  Which side am I on? Does it matter? What difference does it make? Neither. Both. I am always on the side of whoever is being bullied; and my sole certainty in life is that All Government is All Ways, Always, All Bad. Governments are evil, composed of humans whose concern is self-interest, to hold on to power.  Even democracy in the form that we thought we had it until January 2020 only worked so long as everyone treasured and honored its precepts, including honorable, peaceful transfer of power according to established rules and practices. Yesterday and today I read then copy, paste, and published different points of view about what is going on in Israel Gaza. In mind, barring Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, it would not be possible to find a governme...

  Israel War on Gaza ‘Fire and forget’ in Gaza Those who survive Israel’s genocidal bombardment may not survive the sight of the death and destruction it leaves behind. Ghada Ageel Professor of political science Published On 23 Apr 2024 23 Apr 2024 Nima, the author's sister-in-law, hugs two relatives in a photo taken in Khan Younis before the latest Israeli war on Gaza [Courtesy of Ghada Ageel] Earlier this month, the Israeli occupying forces withdrew from my hometown of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, presumably to prepare for an attack on nearby Rafah. Now, those civilians who won the lottery of life and death are on a trail of broken dreams back to Khan Younis. It is a pilgrimage – hajj in Arabic – but one of grief not of faith. Danger still lurks in every corner, but my cousin Ikram and her husband, Awad, felt compelled to join the hajj and venture to the al-Qarara area in the north of Khan Younis to check on Awad’s brother Mohammad and his family. What they disco...

What if I asked them why they support murderers and rapists?  Many fear that it’s like the 1930s, when age-old hatred resurfaced ahead of the murder of six million Jews. It isn’t. It’s worse Demonstrators protest against the Israel-Hamas war in front of The New School university in New York on Monday, April 22, 2024. (AP/Patrick Sison) APR 23,  2024,  4:00 PM  A young woman danced and whirled like a dervish, another sat cross-legged, beating on a drum; around them, 28 dupes marched in a circle chanting every vacuous slogan. I set my iPhone on video to ask: “What does it feel like to be the useful idiots of Palestinian murderers and rapists?” Then I rephrased it in my mind. Not Palestinian, but Hamas. After all, not all Palestinians agree with the Islamic killers. But these young Americans clearly do. It was a mild little demonstration of students outside The New School on New York’s 5th Avenue and East 13th Street. Of course, they chanted from the river to the sea, a...

  Breakfast on this first morning of Passover: duck eggs scrambled with extra sharp cheddar cheese, and a matzah and charoset sandwich. OMG. Linda had her charoset on raisin bread. A raisin bagel might be just right with it. Mug of hot & black. Picture, Israeli soldiers walk past a house destroyed in the October 7 attack on kibbutz Beeri, Israel, near the border with Gaza: anamnesis, I am not forgetting that, for all its unspeakable horrors, this is what the war in Gaza is all about. Yes, rage phases into merciless searing vengeance that will ensure the cycle goes on for untold more generations to come, but this is what it's about. For all the pro-Palestinian riots that are supposed to pass for demonstrations, and arrests at Yale and elsewhere, and unconscionable rise of antisemitism, October 7 is what it's all about. Israel is doing what outraged humans do in wartime: either the enemy will surrender or the enemy will be destroyed beyond ability to regroup. +++++++++ ...

  We've lived here in 7H going on ten years, and one of innumerable things I've loved is the porch, facing south overlooking St Andrews Bay and Shell Island into the Gulf of Mexico, very early predawn mornings watching lightning in the clouds far out over the Gulf. Usually silent, though distant rumble of thunder if they are near enough, and sometimes their storm moves in close and over us. But best is watching as the cloud formation slides on off to my left, eastward, as most of our weather does here.  That came to mind early this morning when I went out on 7H porch to a heavy overcast of dark, ominous, low-lying total cloud. The sky has cleared up, though, and promises to be fair and beautiful for this evening's event honoring our rector's upcoming retirement.  In a barn, it's to be square-dancing, so I'll wear my Levis and red shirt. Would wear brown belt and brown penny-loafers, but CHF has seen to it that my feet no longer slip into the shoes, so shoes that...

Not always, but mostly over the past soon fourteen years I've been writing and posting my +Time blog, I've avoided connecting this morning's blogpost to yesterday's blogpost. This morning is a little different.  Yesterday I'd written a long blogpost, and pressed Publish as usual, and then moved from Blogger to Facebook and on FB posted my usual link to the blogpost. Later, I went back and corrected a spelling or spacing error and pressed Publish for the correction. When I did that, somehow (it has happened a few Times in the past, and can be quite frustrating because it means I was careless), I cut out all but the first part of the blogpost.  I didn't discover that until later, when I just went back and took the blogpost down altogether.  But here's the thing! Nearly always, I attach a picture to my blogpost. Not always but usually, it's related to something about the blogpost itself. All my life I've loved cars, and yesterday's blogpost pictured...

  After church Sunday dinner, a superior hotdog with coleslaw on deer sausage and an ice cold Land Shark followed by my High Priestly Nap, this one from 12:30 to 4:30. The four-hour nap may be a record for me, but it followed getting up early, an intense but gratifying morning with extraordinary people; plus, the unrelenting CHF is bringing on epic exhaustion not experienced since October 2010.  Supper last evening, a mug of ice cold Japanese barley tea with a sandwich of chopped liver on extra thin whole wheat bread. If you thought liver pate was only for delicately dipping with a chip of some sort, you are mistaken. All my world needs now is a trip back to whoever will set a tray of two-dozen cold salty oysters down in front me - - that and my Coffee Club edition for April - May to arrive. The regular email notice has already come, so my anticipation is building. What's on my mind this 15 April Monday of 2024 other than those miserable wretched years in Harrisburg when,...