Other people's bad or sad news becomes soon old hat, no longer of interest, not news to the rest of us, we lose interest and concern, we lose patience with them for continuing, staying, walking and breathing in place when the rest of us have moved on and are done with.  Who has noticed, then: main roads are cleared for the most part and the public is moving on; but many back roads and neighborhood streets continue piled eight and ten feet high with construction materials and the sawn logs of tree trunks, many dwellings continue split in two by the huge pine tree still lying across top of what was someone's home, some folks continue living in tents, stunned, despairing. Many small businesses and local franchises of chains, auto parts stores, restaurants and fast-foods stand ripped apart by the winds, wrecked and closed to business, their workers no longer employed and hopeless.  This is not A Wrinkle In Time, and we cannot: five weeks the day before yesterday, on the chart, ...

An interesting, unusual to my memory, fall, autumn we are having. Raw chill, windy with rain, early morning thick fog lying over the Gulf of Mexico due East in front of us here and, a mile or so in the opposite direction, just slightly north of due West and in plain sight from this seventeenth floor, the same fog lying thick and white over West Bay. Breathtaking and beautiful it is, disturbingly so when mood and the day are colorless, gray and dank. It does not have to be so. From this west end of Panama City Beach, today we intend to venture back Across the Bridge into town, StAndrews, battered paradise where enter our still Do Not Enter Under Containment 7H in company with a contractor representative, to retrieve a few essentials, legal documents, thence business and return to exile, purgatory being too harsh a condemnation of such a lovely holding cell, as in Temporary Quarters, not my plan for this Time just beyond 83 and moving on, not my plan, but my calendar.  201811...

So many emails show up daily in my inbox that I no longer try to read them all, and from time to time, as they build up unread, I scroll down and delete nonpersonal ones without reading - - news, spiritual aids, some I've subscribed to and enjoy but life gets in the way of reading them all. Browsing my inbox early this morning I came across and opened the DelanceyPlace.com piece about a blind boy who learned to navigate life and "see" his world with echolocation. It was remarkable. Ben Underwood was born with retinoblastoma and had to have both eyes removed when he was three years old to prevent or slow the cancer's spread. He seemed to have missed little in life including running, playing sports, walking places. He refused to use a cane and, close to my intrigue, he could tell a car from a truck! I wonder if knowing of such people might help turn discouragement to challenge in facing one's own inconveniences, difficulties and troubles. Last evening we had ou...

Lifted from an online news article about the California wildfires, this short paragraph caps the human sense of probably any scene of disaster.  "One of our correspondents, a former Baghdad bureau chief, writes that the  scorched   landscapes are   reminiscent of war zones  — not just in how they look, but in how they make people feel." It reminded me again of a recent photograph that showed a man walking dazed and stunned in the rubble that had been a street, of his war torn and desolate, devastated hometown and his new life in a dystopian nightmare totally beyond his ability to be in charge of even himself. It is apocalyptic if you are there; and if you are not there, or never have done, it is impossible for you to understand, or for the one who is there to reduce to words about feelings. Here at the far west end of Bay County the world looks safe and normal and my mind settles down, the sea is calm and we can buy tomatoes and a bottle of wine at Caro...

After church yesterday, making our way from the Cove westward toward our present residence (as in Where do you stay?) at PCB, we stopped by Harbour Village, parked in the garage and took the elevator up to the seventh level. Beginning at the first we passed, every condo in the South tower is sealed shut and marked Do Not Enter. I did not glance down to see if this was so for the units below us. It appears that our plan, it was after all a thought and tentative intent not a plan, to move back in to 7H next month, is shot, W ho Knows For How Long? is the rhetorical question. Thanks for Britany, we family have a reservation for accommodation in Walton County starting after Thanksgiving, as the countdown begins of Shopping Days 'til Christmas and on toward Spring 2019. If we/I had a taste for it, which at least I do not, having done my time at sea both in warships and on pleasure cruises, this would be the time to book consecutive, continuous or continual cruises. There are fol...

Saturday, November 10, a calendar month after Hurricane Michael, Wednesday, October 10, and the devastation is visually unchanged except that some of the blocks-long eight and ten foot high stacks of tree trunks and storm debris are being cleared. Many ruined homes, at least from Hathaway Bridge to the Glen Bridge, I've still not yet driven east beyond the Glen Bridge, still have huge trees lying across them crushing roof and walls.  The wave of depression and anger returns instantly upon driving down streets narrowed by piles of storm ruin so high that one cannot see the houses beyond them. How long, Lord? Also murderous California wildfires. And the second is like unto it, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. How long? Maybe until every human is as devasted by the misery of others, including those far away, as by his/her own. This is a first for me, and I'm learning. Not all that fast, but learning. Breakfast this morning, slice of toast, buttered. Toast is a platform f...