Oh, it's only you, Tom There are lots of sayings, a favorite at the moment being I thought getting old would take longer. But it hasn’t, didn’t. Who is that old man anyway. Sure as aitch ain’t me, only thirty-nine years old.  Or, I was. Thought I still am. Somebody’s lying. If it’s not the camera, it’s the mirror. Lately’ve been waking up still asleep. The grogginess, e.g., up early this morning for twenty-one seconds, back into warm bed to doze another hour. But dozing doesn’t help. Up. Sit on edge of bed. Cuppa black and square of dark helps, eh, though yesterday was still groggy being followed down the aisle. What is it? Three shopping days ’til Xmas.  Eighty minutes ’til the mill whistle blows and the walk starts. Don’t say eighty.

A perfect Christmas morning-in-waiting out there, 38F and 80% by the weather map, actually a little warmer at 7H, above forty right here on the water. Jesus says (MT 18:3) "Except ye ... become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven," and it all comes back every year at this season.  When I was a boy I always wished for snow at Christmas. It never happened, I never saw snow until that December 1957 morning in Newport, Rhode Island, and I never saw snow here in Panama City until February 1988. But being outside in the backyard on Christmas morning, barefooted and wearing my new holster with cap pistol ready for cowboys and indians or war, put snow the farthest thing from my mind.  All it took to make a boy happy was Christmas vacation, a cap pistol   and a roll of caps. All I want for Christmas is to be a boy and to enter the kingdom of heaven. I am already in the kingdom of heaven. But no one will ever be a boy again. Thos...

Weather on 7H porch earlier this morning was 45F and 53%.  Nearly four hours later, 6:47 temperature is 43F, still 53% bright, clear sky all the way across St. Andrews Bay beyond Shell Island into the Gulf of Mexico.  Saturday awakens up with a streak of low pink haze fading into light blue sky. Pics from 7H, first Friday morning sunrise.  The first shot was spectacular but when I looked it was video and still running and I couldn’t get it to trim down to one frame and by the time I said my bad words,  four or five seconds had passed and the image changed. You have to catch life running, but make sure the movie camera is off on your iPhone.   All the rest are last night’s sunset looking west, south and east, not respectively. Thus far shall you come, and no farther. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX I have left undone those things which I ought to have done, and I have done those things which I ought not to h...

Micah 5 Revised Standard Version (RSV) 1   Now you are walled about with a wall;     siege is laid against us; with a rod they strike upon the cheek     the ruler of Israel. 2  But you, O Bethlehem Eph′rathah,     who are little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me     one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose origin is from of old,     from ancient days. 3  Therefore he shall give them up until the time     when she who is in travail has brought forth; then the rest of his brethren shall return     to the people of Israel. 4  And he shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the Lord,     in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God. And they shall dwell secure, for now he shall be great     to the ends of the earth...

Early to bed, early to rise is not making me healthy, wealthy and wise, nor is the early bird getting the worm. Though the mild mental exercise may save the brain from developing a thicker outer crust.  Here on the south of this condo village we view a quartersphere, half of the dome that is the firmament sitting on top of the earth and keeping out the waters. God opened some of the windows during the night, I went out on the porch to witness rain falling when Father Nature roused me at 0200. With a clear flat view south across the Bay to the horizon and all the way round from east to west, and straight up to the zenith, the clouds are as different from moment to moment as people’s fingerprints, or DNA, or faces.  No two sky moments are alike, there are no identical twins in the heavens. As a small boy I wished for a twin, but now having made that theological observation I’m ok as a one-off.  There goes the Navy out for another hard day’s work at sea...

Maybe it’s the Humidity Something is wrong, can’t tell if it’s physical, mental, stubbornness, mood, temperament, the season, a block, not a blockage but a block, some obstacle to moving, doing things, meeting expectations, honoring commitments. Half a dozen or more emails want answering, one from a grandson I love dearly and see never, and the mind shuts down when I remind myself. It isn’t that I don’t want to, or at least want myself to want to. But instead of doing what I want to do I trap myself in the ordinary, crawl under the box and pull the string: hide behind writing a sermon, preparing a Sunday School lesson, reading a Forbes article about the fifteen worst cars, writing this blasted blogpost, watching a C.S. Lewis lecture. In a meeting this week I let someone frost me in a way that crippled me unable to focus all day. I’m a grouchy old man, goddammit, don’t alphabet with me, leave me alone or we’ll both wish you had. But no, it isn’t you, it’s the … WTH is it, IDK, i...

Most of the pictures I bother snapping are from the Bay door here in 7H, above is from the Beck door, on the sidewalk outside the bedroom window. Captain’s Table is at the right, their parking lot where the ice plant was, Texaco sign to the north, can’t really see Hunt’s. To the left, north of Harbour Village, St. Andrews Marina.  Center is the Shrimp Boat complex where Pop’s fish house was seventy years ago and where I practiced backing up, driving one of the trucks or The Pontiac to the ice plant for a block of ice, or crushed. In my mind when I look out, a white sand dune stretching half a block from our fish house ramp to the edge of Bayview Avenue, all dirt roads. We kept our supply of empty fish boxes stacked up semi-orderly out on the sand dune. Or not so orderly. My main memory that comes when I stand here looking across over there is the fish boxes, wood, thin wood planks, they must have measured, what, a 24 inch square on each end, maybe 48 inches long, wood si...