Years ago, must have been 1983 judging by related incidents involving the car, my ordination and my service at Mount Calvary Parish, in another tale told here at some time past, I drove to Stratford, Connecticut and took an Australian client into Sikorsky division of United Technologies, for a conference. The final day of meetings, the UT folks took us all out for a delicious lunch at an Italian restaurant, and then I drove home to Harrisburg in my car, which of course is part of the memory, a medium blue Renault 18 station wagon with stick shift,  that I loved. I had bought the car new in 1983, trading in a 1981 Buick Skylark sedan, only lemon I ever owned, that in every rainstorm, water poured through the cowl into the interior, soaking my feet and threatening to drown out the electrics. A lovely car, I’d bought it as a gift for Linda, but it proved a total bust.  Anyway, on arrival home in Harrisburg I walked through the front door hoping for a welcome hug o...

Though we don't have a Buick at the moment, and may be lifetime finished buying cars, my favorite car was always Buick (this is Sunday, whoever wants a sermon, go to church, ὁ ἀναγινώσκων νοείτω, instead of sitting there reading my wandering nonsense), from as far back as I remember. Singular, my all time most coveted, albeit a continuation, the final year, of the pre-WorldWar2 1942 Buick, was  the 1948 Buick Super sedan that I wanted my father to buy, as I've said here before: but instead of buying from his Bay High classmate Bubber Nelson, my father bought a new 1948 Dodge from Karl Wiselogel (W&W Motors, Dodge - Plymouth) because in the post-WW2 vehicle shortage Karl got him a truck for his seafood business in just a couple of weeks, after he'd waited months and over a year for Nelson Chevrolet Buick to deliver a new Chevrolet truck. To my momentary chagrin the 1947 Dodge truck, a prewar 1941 design,  arrived before the brand new postwar design Chevrole...

Green Silence, when studying, reading, writing, trying to concentrate, focus, compose, dream, I want silence, absolute silence, and don’t startle me out of it. Silence. Just ‘ve never been able to get it with those who like music running in the background. But I’m going to learn, at least as part of trying to train and exercise a different part of my brain. Thus, online this morning with Brahms, nope, takes me to a place and time. A favorite priest writer likes Bach, Mozart, nope, won’t stay in the background, pushes to the front. Songs, music from my life, nope, takes me down, way, way down. Pachelbel, Canon in D, nope, same as with Brahms. At the moment trying Body Mind Zone, “3 Hour Focus Concentrate: Study Music, Focus Music, Alpha Binaural Waves” on YouTube, and may have found it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nby5jgjb0Dk With green running as a meditational meadow, I’m reading a book by Walter Wink, thinking that spring 2017, when I may again offer a Bible Seminar,...

Anyone who has enjoyed as many Bible stories, especially “call stories” as I have can’t help but love them. I love Abraham called at age 75 and blithely packing up and driving off into the sunset in his BMW with the sunroof closed because Sarah has strapped the chicken cages to the roof-rack (let the reader understand); the call story of Moses where I AM introduces himself, takes charge, and turns Moses’ pastoral life upside down; and of Isaiah seeing the Lord, high and lifted up and his train filling the temple, while my wandering mind sees a smoking locomotive waiting there on Track 9 and 3/4 like the Hogwarts Express; and our first reading for this coming Sunday (scroll down), the enchanting story of YHWH telling Jeremiah, “before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you a prophet to the nations (לַגּוֹיִ֖ם the goyim).” And Jeremiah protests famously (as Moses had weakly whined centuries before him), “Ah, Yahweh Elohim, I don’t know how t...

somewhere ages and ages hence Whether to blog or just say the hell with it this morning? Choice, choosing is a challenge. Even decision by indecision, which lets things stand, is a choice. To attack or not, fight or walk away, love or not. Speak up or keep silent. Cast actively or passively. Tell all or keep my own confidence. Trivially for me this morning, photo with the moon’s trail on the Bay coming to my feet or with the red navigation light, choose. With the green navigation light my choice would have been made for me, but the red flashed instead. Almost instinctively after these years, awareness of choosing takes me to my freshman year at Florida, fall 1953 or spring 1954, watching an elderly, white-haired poet on stage, the age I am now, listening as he reads “… I shall be telling this with a sigh  Somewhere ages and ages hence:  Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—  I took …” And he captures me, heart and soul, for a lifetime.  Googling and re-r...

Lovely outlook on fairly clear mornings, as this. About five o’clock, Orion in the eastern sky, and south of Orion low in the east, a geostationary satellite that we spot often evenings, and there this morning. Not to mention the moon moving to set in the west if it doesn’t fall into the Gulf just offshore from Thomas Drive. That could cause a high tide. Fuzzy moon shot, but below a more interesting one because my hand moved: Yesterday on the vessel schedule, Linda caught Pac Suhail 591x90 arriving from Baltimore to offload reels, a tug poised to pick her up in the channel headed north toward the Port; at the upper right, a pelican rushed to get into the picture. A crackling afternoon thunderstorm flashed, boomed, and rained heavily off in East Bay, moved on over Tyndall, arriving in StAndrewsBay, looked to be pouring at EBeachDr and Cherry Street, then downtown, and gave us a cool, damp breeze, otherwise not a drop, drenching Shell Island and dissipate...

It's my blog, and within limits of decency I'll post here whatever I DWP. So, it pleases me to gaze upon a couple outlooks from 7H while contemplating the day ahead. Gazing, I see an iceberg dead-ahead.  Opens with the elixir of hot lemon water (not my idea but I'll do anything to maintain the truce), read some of C.S. Lewis, then Kona and dark chocolate, heart pills, contemplate breakfast, decide on liverwurst on very thin wheat toast but open fridge and settle on one stuffed egg half that wasn't pretty enough to take to church Sunday, and from FM yesterday, one garlic clove, one large green olive stuffed with sun-dried tomato, one mushroom in olive oil, one queen olive stuffed with pimiento, second cup black Kona in my glass cup that Tass brought me from England, August 2001. I'm a treasure person, see, this is one of my treasures, Linda knows better than to touch it. What I'm contemplating is the fraud I was made out to be, the word is actually reveal...