Copy and paste from ADM  W H McRaven, USNavy (Retired). Head of U S Special Operations Command 2011 to 2014,  he oversaw the 2011 Navy SEAL raid in Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden:  Edmund Burke, the Irish statesman and philosopher, once said: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Over the course of the past three years, I have watched good men and women, friends of mine, come and go in the Trump administration — all trying to do something — all trying to do their best. Jim Mattis, John Kelly, H.R. McMaster, Sue Gordon, Dan Coats and, now, Joe Maguire, who until this week was the acting director of national intelligence. I have known Joe for more than 40 years. There is no better officer, no better man and no greater patriot. He served for 36 years as a Navy SEAL. In 2004, he was promoted to the rank of rear admiral and was chosen to command all of Naval Special Warfare, including the SEALs. Those were dark days ...

My cardio health, in October 2010, when the blog started first as a personal journal, then at Mary's firm suggestion moved to Caring-Bridge, it was about my heart issues and keeping loved ones, friends and neighbors up to the minute on how I was faring. Continuing, though, starting maybe the day of the early February 2011 flight home from Cleveland Clinic, my decision was that if I posted every day, more or less daily - - which I've done (missing now and then because, although it's never the case that nothing occurs, everyone has to hell with it moments when we just don't want to do that today - - there'd be no series to it, no attempts to follow on with a previous day's post. So, they're jerky, here and there, this and that, as jerky as a 12-year-old boy driving a clutch and stick shift standard transmission car for the first time. And that's been pretty much the case.  I also decided that there'd be no phony effort to pass myself off...

Always good wisdom, this from Anu Garg's blog A.Word.A.Day earlier this week, made me pause, full stop, and let mind wander A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: There's nothing that makes you so aware of the improvisation of human existence as a song unfinished. Or an old address book. -Carson McCullers, writer (19 Feb 1917-1967)  I will add. Or an old diary. Or a photograph of a teenage girl and boy standing close together dressed in clothes people haven't worn in nearly a century - - found tucked away in a box she left behind and never meant for anyone to see.  Or an old man's schoolbook with a girl's name written all through from front to back -- in the margins his initials and hers united by tiny plus signs and hearts drawn.  I always wondered what happened with those two.  A family photograph from half a century ago: Papa! Who are these people? That's my mama, do you remember her? And OMG, that's me, have I changed THAT much?  My mother died when I was...

This is our living room area at the moment, and has been for some weeks now and evidently will be foreseeably, not only because HV residents must keep porches empty until cleared-for-use by the contractor, and so all the porch furniture and plants (and not unlikely animals) are here in the living room with me, and Linda has mothballs in the potted plants to keep the squirrels away, so it smells like an old folks home in here, but WTH, it IS an old folks home; but also because all furniture, lamps &c are moved away from the windows while we wait for the contractor's people to come check and measure for the new windows that the HOA is installing post Hurricane Michael, so the shutters are open. Poor us, eh? I'm sitting here squnched up in my Bay side chair, but there's no Bay out there, it's all and only white.  Fog Season, I love fog season, it's what we have instead of winter here on StAndrews Bay, so I anticipate it and enjoy it. Can't ski on it o...

In my family as a boy growing up, my mother cooked and served us three meals a day, breakfast, dinner and supper, which we sat down and ate together as family. I've said here before, that you had to be sitting in your place when our father said the Blessing. The rule was that if you came late you could not sit down, and you missed that meal. I don't recall any of us three ever being late, and I'm sure that if it ever happened to me it was only once: I was always hungry, and I learn fast.  For breakfast this morning I'm having Wheat Chex. Bit of maple syrup dribbled over the little squares, sliced half a banana and the rest of a box of raspberries. Milk. Yesterday I had corn flakes. When I was a boy, breakfast was usually cooked. Grits and scrambled eggs, or fried. Bacon or sausage. More often, hot cereal: oatmeal or cream of wheat, or my favorite "Hot Ralston". Once in a while mama made corn meal mush, but it was nobody's favorite.  Very seldom cold...

One wonders (okay, maybe you don't but One does) WTH is going on with the red giant Betelgeuse, Orion's left shoulder as we look up into the winter night sky here in the northern hemisphere. If he's looking toward us, it's his right shoulder, but he's not, we're looking toward him, so it's his left shoulder. Scaffolding on the Bay side of Harbour Village that bars pleasurable nightly sky gazing will be in place some months yet while we wait for the new windows that will cost us another assessment, in the case of our unit size about $12k, but worth it to bring us up to code, hopefully before any next hurricane. Anyway, if Betelgeuse explodes then disappears will it be over ages, in cosmic time, or experiential, in our Earth Time? And if in Earth Time, will we still know and greet Orion as the seasons change? IDK. https://earthsky.org/todays-image/betelgeuse-dimming-supernova-new-vlt-images?utm_source=EarthSky+News&utm_campaign=ac87b17201-EMAIL_CA...

Quite a weak promise of rain this morning, but I grabbed a favorite hat on the way to church anyway, whassat, is Weller all of a sudden no longer a Gator? No, a Gator too, others. Furthermore, if Caroline goes to FSU, I'm becoming a Seminole and have been promised a hat. Cap.  Tough gospel this morning unless one knows what's going on with Matthew and his agenda. Don't know about your preacher, ours did the usual outstanding work with gospel proclamation, I was proud. The same gospel will be around on cycle in three years, but I'm busy that day and won't be available to preach it. Bought crabmeat in TAFB commissary Friday and was looking forward to a bit of it as my after church preprandial, an olive martini.  Sunday dinner: pork chop, spinach and dark brown rice. Water. Then? high priestly nap. T+