Life Is Good If Life is to be not simply Good but Better, Best to be comparative, superlative, Life might include some treats, eh? Friday morning we stopped at Somethin’s Cookin’ and caught my eye a treat that Linda totally forbids, liverwurst, as heart unhealthy, so I no longer eat it. As a child I loved liverwurst sandwiches, thick on bread with butter. The liverwurst my mother bought was sliced, and you peeled the protective string of fat off each slice; this was just the little sausage. Anymore the only time I had liverwurst in recent years was a long October weekend Linda and Pat went to the church women’s conference at Blue Lake up near Andalusia, and that was several years ago. She never suspected and if she doesn’t read this blog post my secret is still good.  But there it was Friday morning at Somethin’s Cookin’, Deutschland über alles, the real thing, just a tiny sausage, and I bought it for my 90th birthday treat in case I don't make ninety. Jeremy helped me...

octopriest CFB heart attack day, however all but one of my teams won, Michigan, PennState, South Carolina, Florida Gators. My only loss was whoever was playing Ohio State. My teams would have had a second loss except that FSU had a bye week.  For next week there’s not the slightest chance of another rained out cancellation , the only hope is that the Gators get lost on the way to Tuscaloosa. For chrissake, Will, take the wrong exit. Okay, it’s official, Bubba is 79 in spite of myself, starting my eightieth year this morning. Does this render me an octogenarian, or must I wait to actually complete the eighty? I claim it anyway.  My parents named me Thomas Carroll Weller, Jr. and the first two years of my life we lived in a house across from a ball diamond on Frankford Avenue, a dirt road, a block from where my grandparents were living on Baker Court. In 1937 my parents built the house on Massalina Drive: it was finished and we moved there in January 1938 a coup...

quintain & triphthong Watching me stand in the street and wave forlornly as the car drove away, her waving back at me, my mother once observed to Linda, “She’ll always be his baby, won’t she.”  She’ll be here today, the four arriving late morning for my birthday weekend. Some so flood life with happiness and love that as from some point in life’s way every road taken is because they might not be down the other. Even cars chosen over the years, this one for safety vice that one for speed and excitement. The Olds instead of the Cadillac. One can wax total sap about these things, but Robert Frost said it best, so his poem below again instead of my sentimental nonsense. What might happen if my wish were “to start over” and I blew out all the candles? Well, it’s my birthday, I can dream. It might be a room full of tiny girls clamoring “Pick-a-me-up, Daddy.” Or I might go out to the garage and ride to the moon in that yellow 1951 Cadillac that was on the lot when I was a...

Downhill The Federal Highway Administration and the Florida Department of Transportation have guidelines for deciding whether to install a traffic signal. A series of accidents may prompt calls for a signal, setting the process in motion. It may be that several accidents occur at a location and then a signal installed, or the required study may determine that a signal would not necessarily reduce accidents there, or might even increase accident risk. The point is, when something new is installed there can be a rough patch to getting there. I’m thinking about Roger Goodell and whether it’s fair for NFL owners to fire him for not acting against Ray Rice before the NFL became active in moving against players for such abuse. If the Commissioner lied about whether he’d seen the video earlier that’s one thing, fire him; otherwise he seems to be just caught up in a process of change. This isn’t a political blog, but one American has as much right to comment as another. One thing that...

sinners ... I am chief In 79 years, nothing I have ever read is more true or more incisive than Barbara Crafton’s essay “The Civil War” that arrived overnight, opened in email this morning, link below and shared on my FB page. It brings countless memories and events to mind, chief at this predawn moment of this day of horror -- -- the 6 August evening I was duty officer at the U.S. Naval Base, Yokosuka, Japan. It must have been 1965, twenty years on. Stretching into the city’s streets beyond what the eye could take in or the mind grasp, a fearsome throng of angry, protesting, almost rioting Japanese, most wearing red headbands, chanting vehemently anti-American slogans, the mob a unity, a single being surging back and forth in massive human waves of vitriol as they pressed against the high steel main gate of the naval base, pushing and pressing, bending and bowing the gate inward, and back, inward and back, inward in waves of hatred -- memorializing their dead city, cities, tw...

Call it: hands or tails Designing the human body, most of us would have done better than this. I guess it was God’s first time, although it’s an awfully big universe with, what was that number, our Milky Way galaxy has 100 billion star systems that might support life. Scientists’ guesses on how many have life range from 10,000 to 1 million. * That’s just here in our own galaxy and there are what another hundred billion or so galaxies in this universe alone? Anyway, for one thing, typical this morning was carrying a computer in one hand and a cup of hot, black coffee in the other, and needing a third hand to open the doors. Two isn’t enough, I would have given us three arms. Or maybe keep the prehensile tail that Linda’s maternal ancestors had, it would have been fine for holding the laptop just now. I think I like the idea of the tail better than three arms, though a third arm could have all thumbs. It’s just a thought. For a Florida native, it’s not too bad out ...

Golden Hydrant Club  What do you know, here’s Anu Garg with one of my favorite old words this morning. And not only the word, but using it relatedly (Anu always gives us an example of usage) in a focus of my vocation. "Is Homo sapiens the only species vouchsafed to be in the afterlife club?" Jeremie Harris; Soul Searching: When Did We Become So Special?; Skeptic (Altadena, California); Issue 2, 2014.  First opening our new (1976/79) Book of Common Prayer and participating in its liturgies, I noticed “vouchsafe” had been almost banished. Not quite, there it is here and there, now and again, but nearly. What a shame, lofty, it lent airs, a touch of class. Vouchsafe: to grant or give something as if as a favor. It works well with our concept of grace , doesn’t it. As in “here vouchsafe to all thy servants what we ask of thee today.”  But what catches my eye is the context of Anu’s usage example. Is Homo sapiens the only species vouchsafed to be in the afterli...