To bed too early due to ongoing exhaustion from previous day activity, so up way too early, eleven o'clock p.m. and with a mug of black and thin slice of raspberry Kringle from something bakery in Wisconsin. They are among the most organized, timely and reliable places I've ever ordered online, and their Kringles, billed as Danish pastry, among the most appealing holiday sweet treats from a commercial source instead of memories of mama's kitchen.  Another is Eilenberger for their Texas pecan cake and Texas pecan fruitcake. They arrive innocent, but quickly fall into sin when soaked first round with Canadian Club and then liberally with Southern Comfort. Up at this hour though, I'm not going there, just the coffee and thin slice of Kringle. As anyone who knows me well will attest, I know nothing, and +Time is never a political blog (never a religious or spiritual blog either no matter how readers take it, it's impurely personal), yet it seems to me that just...

No two people always like exactly the same things. Everyone doesn't have the same perspective on anything. My politics are sure as aitch not the same as yours, I'm telling you, I guarantee. My religion isn't the same as yours either, even if you and I sit in the same pew Sunday mornings, I warrant we don't believe the same things about the Bible or about God, even though we stand and say the Creed in unison. I'm with the Athanasian Creed* on Incomprehensible, even more so when the question is not "What?" or "How?" but "Why?" There's no telling how it shows up on your device screen, but I'm using Trebuchet from time to time even if it is MS, because I like  the lower case "g" with its subtle topknot (though I'd rather have a flashier topknot as some other fonts have) and open tail; and I like  Trebuchet's lower case "l" with the little toe as in taw on the Hebrew letter ת. Trebuchet being sans ...

My back to the Bay, light coming in from the wrong side, needs to be from the left for right-handers, which has to do with the shadow that's cast, I'm sitting here in Linda's chair, actually it's the electric riser chair we bought for my mother for her 97th or 98th birthday, I'm sipping my second cup of black from my PAPA mug.  Thin-sliced a biscuit from Publix and toasted the three slices, nod to an early breakfast following two morsels of chocolate with my first PAPA mug of black while the sky was as black as the cuppa.  Daylight now, 38°F and the wind gusting to 30 mph. Can't be told from the picture as I hoped it might, but the wind is moving the Bay water in what looks like sea-swells. I remember sea-swells from destroyer days.  From the second ship not so much, what I recall from those days is my unhappiness with my chosen life that first evening underway, 1 Nov 1969 enroute from SanDiego to WestPac, nights in Danang harbor watching our planes lo...

Winter evenings we like to have a pot of soup waiting and heat a couple of bowls for supper. Depending on the soup, that is if its liquid is thin, I may like a dollop of sour cream or plain yogurt in mine. Last night was cool not frigid, but here in 7H we pretended it was one of those blustery winter evenings we enjoyed, truth, not so much, our Navy years in Rhode Island, Ohio, Pennsylvania, WashingtonDC, and had a wide bowl of reddish clear vegetable soup, this one with bits of ground beef.  Not a deep bowl, it has to be the wide, shallow bowl, and these were. And the right color broth, transparent pale reddish from the tomatoes, with carrots, celery, we like okra in ours. Might have lima beans, yep. Maybe thin sliced onion. Yellow squash sliced in if there happens to be some left over from dinner yesterday, and there was. Perfect, it was perfect. And someone from long ago, the early 1940s, announced "Soup's on". Which signals stop what you're doing and come to the...

Like the rest of us, and especially me, Freddy Buechner, as the Rev Dr Madison Currin used to call him, has put on considerable years since that portrait (scroll down) was taken. Matter of fact, he may have even more years on him than I do; and I also, when I picture myself, prefer to any selfie this morning, a picture the Navy snapped when I was training to be commissioned ensign that summer and fall of 1957. Age 21 and counting: it's as I am inside with all my own, as Buechner admits, secrets. And, like him, I too am my secrets.  Looks as if he's getting ready to tell not only his own, but secrets of his friends and loved ones as well. I'm not going there. In fact, for myself, I'm telling no secrets, neither mine nor yours. And, believe me, there's plenty about you to tell. Sunday, my lifelong friend Robert shared a post that says "Learn to be okay with people not knowing your side of the story. You have nothing to prove". I'm going with that,...

A reluctance to turn on the internet and go online this morning, IDK why. Yesterday's ongoing classic:  Army Navy 7-31. Looked at CFB rankings again, my warped suspicion, Alabama intentionally got themselves pushed down to 13 so they could be matched with and beat the hell out of 14 Michigan. Go Blue. Looked at FSU 2020 schedule and hope they'll be on their way back up, and tomahawk chops for Sun Bowl game with Arizona State. Third Sunday of Advent is Rose Sunday, the pink candle will be lit. It has zilch to do with anybody in the Holy Family, and once again the rumor is quashed that the pink candle means Mary & Joe are still hoping for a girl in spite of his nightmare.  Eons ago the Pope decreed that the penitential season of Advent could be eased up a bit by allowing flowers on the Altar, and organ music, and refreshments, and clergy could wear pink vestments instead of penitential purple, thus Rose Sunday. Has nothing to do with today's lectionary readings. A...

BBC's The Essential List has an article that, the catching sentence "Is time real?" ensures that I'll be back to read it this morning. Little interests me more than Time and its concept, the fact that, as Psalm 90 tells, we are here for a lifeTime, however long each one's Time may be, and then gone forever; yet to Whoever or Whatever inhabits Eternity it's but a watch in the night, not even that: less than the blink of God's eye. So, is Time real, or is Time a human concept? Maybe it's real, but its significance depends on one's perspective.  And Time is so easy to waste, isn't it, as when I was a child urgently wanting Time to pass quickly so I could be walking into the living room where the Christmas tree lights would be shining and Santa Claus not long since left. At this age and stage of life where every second is too dear for that, I wouldn't begin to wish Time would pass quickly. Because it does, and friends and loved ones are lost,...