It's 3:12 out here on 7H porch, the moon is gone, set, I snapped that picture of the moon with a humidity halo circling it at 1:07 and've been out here ever since. Quiet except for the fan rotating and stirring the air with a little breeze. To bed at eight, or maybe it was nine, IDK, and up at midnight, couldn't go back to sleep, so a mug of hot black coffee and a 12 ounce mug of ice cold milk to sip along with it out here on 7H porch.  This seems to be MLP anymore, My Laughing Place, everybody's got a laughing place, a laughing place, to go ho ho. Take a frown, turn it upside down, and you'll find yours, I know ho ho. MLP has as well been a place to cry from Time to Time, a Time for weeping. What's bothering me that I can't sleep tonight. Well, I did sleep, from eight or nine until 12M. Twenty-four-hundred hours if you prefer. But then thinking and finally up and about. Nothing stands still, surely not life and me at sixteen and seventeen looking a...

6:16 Saturday morning, July 21, looking south across StAndrewsBay, Shell Island in the background, BBC Chartering's vessel BBC Ganges 470LOAx76Beam just cleared Davis Point (not in the picture), passing 7H enroute to West Terminal with general cargo, about to pick up her first tug. This is the best and most peaceful place in the world to live.  Grew up here and wouldn't change it for the world. Reading Salinger's Catcher in the Rye inside the mind of an adolescent boy growing up in the NYC area in the late 1930s or early 40s (easily dated because there's a LaSalle convertible, and GM's last model year for the LaSalle was 1940), and sure I'd not want to have lived and grown up there. At the moment in the story he's telling, or thinking, the boy is 17 recalling the December just before Christmas vacation when he was 16 and a prep school junior - - a time in life I also recall, being a junior at Bay High that December 1951, that was when Linda & Philip...

Morning, I love this morning, Friday. Not TGIF like, hell, I’m retired and no longer have an office with my secretary filling up my “IN” basket all day long, haven’t had that for forty years, sixty years I’ve been a naval officer now, forty of it retired and TGIF is no longer my motto, it’s more like TGIMonday anymore.  As a parish priest I always took Monday off, it was a great day to make a gap between last week’s sermon and next week’s. Nowadays with no office hours, it’s every day actually, 82, I ain’t nobody’s gardenia assistant, I just help out as needed, good for a codger. When my father died, July 1993, I started driving from Apalachicola to Panama City every Sunday afternoon, returning to Apalach on Wednesday morning, to look after my mother and especially to raise Kristen, who was mine from before she was born, I claimed her the instant I found out she was a girl and, living in the rectory parsonage manse next door to the church and so never having had one day off al...

Psalm 29 A Psalm of David. 1  Give unto the  Lord , O ye mighty, give unto the  Lord  glory and strength. 2  Give unto the  Lord  the glory due unto his name; worship the  Lord  in the beauty of holiness. 3  The voice of the  Lord   is  upon the waters: the God of glory thundereth: the  Lord   is  upon many waters. 4  The voice of the  Lord   is powerful; the voice of the  Lord   is  full of majesty. 5  The voice of the  Lord  breaketh the cedars; yea, the  Lord  breaketh the cedars of Lebanon. 6  He maketh them also to skip like a calf; Lebanon and Sirion like a young unicorn. 7  The voice of the  Lord  divideth the flames of fire. 8  The voice of the  Lord  shaketh the wilderness; the  Lord  shaketh the wilderness of Kadesh. 9  The voice of the  Lord  maketh the h...

Today I just wanted to update those who can't see my mom's post and have been trying to following Joseph's accident. It has now been a full month since the lightning strike and Joseph is completing week 3 of now 6 of intensive outpatient therapy at Shepherd Center Pathways in Atlanta (week 4 of being at Shepherd Center). He goes 8am to 2pm Monday through Friday and is doing well. Physically, you w ould never know anything ever happened & the therapist are working intensively with him on the cognitive side of things. I've gotten to enjoy a few weekends with Joseph & my mom on the boat doing what we all love to do: swimming, boating, and relaxing. Finally, I think I speak on behalf of my whole family by thanking everyone for all the prayers, positive thoughts, support, gift cards, and cards of encouragement sent to Joseph. We still have a long road ahead of us as they transition from Shepherd Center to home, so please continue pray ...

While it was happening the thought in my mind was that always before it was an anxiety dream, but this time it was real. The bishop had asked me to preach at a special diocesan gathering at the cathedral on Christmas Eve, all the clergy and a packed congregation in the nave. My sermon notes were laid on the pulpit table waiting. I'm going to omit all the many details and cut to the point.  During the sequence hymn I realized that I was dressed in suit, black shirt, clergy collar and coronation stole, but not vested. Realizing that as the gospel procession headed down the aisle I had time to go to the vesting room, change into cassock and long white thing (not cotta, wth is it called?), get back into the church and be in the pulpit as the gospel reading was finished and gospel procession headed back up to the sanctuary. I stood up, but was seated behind the Christmas tree, which I bumped and it tipped over and fell crashing to the floor, ornaments scattering widely. The sequen...

What am I doing - - nothing significant in everlasting terms, a ham & cheese sandwich for breakfast yesterday, this morning just plain ham sandwich. Sourdough bread toasted with a smear of mayonnaise inside each slice. Ham sliced thick, so a ham steak sandwich. Second cuppa hot black, all out here on 7H porch as Tuesday continues to open.  Couple of boats buzzing by, first now out of sight after skirting the reef that continues Courtney Point, what a quarter mile, off my starboard bow as 7H maintains a steady heading of 189° nine degrees west of due south.  The reef seemed fully exposed in the extreme low tide associated with last September's hurricane probably combined with sun and moon positions, lowest tide've ever seen here. Heading to TAFB BX & Commissary later this morning sometime after neck, BP/pulse and thought process recover from morning pills.  Yellow boat speeding by and heading round toward the Port and bridge. Pax & blessings. T