It snowed this morning in Cheshire.
First snow of the year.
Not much, just a dusting, nothing to measure.
But it means that winter is here.
I hate winter!
I love the rest of the year.
Spring, when things come to life.
Summer and the heat.
I love the heat.
People say, "hot enough for you?"
And I always answer, "no, not nearly!"
And fall, with cool nights, good for sleep, and warmer days, great to be outside.
But winter?
Not for me.
Bring it on.
I'll survive.
I haven't written much over the Thanksgiving week.
My mind was on other things.
But I did hear about the report of a think tank is Stockholm, Sweden called International Institute for Democracy, that gave the US a rating of 'democratic backsliding'!
In the Pilgrim Holiness Church of my early childhood, "backsliding" meant people who were "saved" were losing that level and 'backsliding' into sinfulness.
Given the events of the last President (he who will not be named here) and what's happened to our unity since Biden was elected, this is no surprise.
The 'big lie' about the election still resonates with a sizable amount of the population.
The Anti-Vaccine movement flies in the face of science and common sense. Even though 'their president' and all at Fox News are vaccinated!!!
The Republican party is full of people in Congress who call Muslims 'terrorists' and put out videos about killing AOC.
Democracy in the US is, I repeat IS IN DANGER.
We must do whatever we can to restore sanity in our country.
Biden is trying, but people not taking the vaccine and inflation caused by world shipping issues, aren't helping him.
Pitch in!
Defend Democracy at all cost--ALL COST!!!
Please....
My favorite holiday is over and done for a year.
Mimi and Eleanor left this afternoon for upstate New York where they've lived during Covid.
Most of the turkey is gone, but some dressing and gravy remain.
Probably to be thrown out soon.
I love kids and grandchildren being here--but the refrigerator gets so full I can't handle it and our orderly home gets disordered.
So, as much as I love it, I also love Bern and me getting back to our orderly, ordinary life.
But I have much to be thankful for.
Much!
MUCH!!!
Hope you do too....
Mimi and Eleanor arrived today about 4.
Tim comes tomorrow.
Having our daughter in the house where she became an adult is amazing!
Having her daughter her is amazing too!
Life is good.
Life is so very, very good.
We should never forget that.
Never....
Mimi, Tim and Eleanor come tomorrow until Saturday.
That's enough to make me Thankful.
We'll Zoom with Josh and Cathy and their big girls at some point.
Our old friend John will come to dinner.
A small group, but a great one!
I fix the dressing--it's not 'stuffing' since it isn't in the turkey, do the before dinner cheese and snacks, set the table and pour the wine.
Bern does everything else--and beautifully.
I love Thanksgiving...more than Christmas, I think.
All of you--Have a Happy, Happy One!
I don't agree with it. I think it was wrong. I think the judge was too much leaning toward the defendant.
But as the President said, disappointed in the verdict, we must support the justice system.
No one should walk away free after killing two people and wounding another with an illegal gun at 17!
It makes me want to take guns away from everyone!
It makes my skin crawl.
It makes me against the right to bear arms, which was, at the time the Constitution was written, meant arms to defend the country from foreign aggressors, not to shoot people on the streets of Kenosha.
Will we ever come to our senses and drastically limit guns?
Probably never.
But we should.
We really should.
This trial proves that explicitly.
Tonight (or early tomorrow morning) there's going to be a total eclipse of the moon.
In CT it will be from 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. And it will be raining.
Going to miss something that doesn't happen very often.
Oh, well.
Going to sleep and (hopefully) have good dreams.
Maybe next time.
When I'll be several hundred years old.
We'll see....
The House of Representatives censured Rep. Gosare today for his video of him killing AOC and attacking the President.
Only two republicans voted for the censure.
The two who are on the Jan. 6 committee.
What is going on that one party in our democracy can choose not punish someone who showed a video of him killing another member of the House? And attacking the President?
How F***ing divided can we be as a nation?
It is really frightening to be so divided.
Be scared, beloved!
Be very, very scared!
And, more importantly, speak out and do something....
It's November in Connecticut and the sound of leaf-blowers resounds through the land.
For the most part, Bern doesn't bag our leaves.
She cuts them up with her grass cutter and lets them be the fertilizer for next year's grass.
It seems to work.
But neighbors all around us keep getting the leaves off their lawns.
Who knows who's right?
There were some tornadoes in CT on Saturday. One of them in Cheshire.
Driving around town I have been amazed at the tree damage.
First time since 1950, when I was three in Anawalt, West Virginia.
Come on Climate Change Deniers and you Vaccine Deniers.
Smarten up.
Look around you.
Change your minds--it can be done!
We had a violent rainstorm this afternoon.
Lots of bright lightening and rolling thunder.
It scared our dog, Brigit.
And wind, wind, wind.
Cable went our for a while.
As did internet.
Lights flickered.
With daylight savings time over, it was also very dark.
A bit scary.
And a bit exciting.
Nov. 21 sermon
This is a very personal sermon. I mention the gospel near the end—but it comes from me.
OK?
This week was Veterans Day.
I want to tell you about my father, who served in World War Two.
My father grew up on a turkey farm in Monroe County, West Virginia. He finished the eight grade at his local school and then had to go to a boarding school, but dropped out after a few months.
In spite of that, as I look back, he was one of the wisest men I ever knew. (I just wish I had recognized his wisdom when I was a child! But what child does that?)
He left the farm and moved to McDowell County to be a coal miner.
A funny aside: on the farm his family never ate the cash crop so my father had never tasted turkey. At a boarding house for unmarried coal miners, he told the cook, “that was the best chicken I’ve ever tasted.”
She told him it wasn’t chicken, it was turkey, but he wouldn’t believe her until she took him in the kitchen and showed him the carcass. He’d been told growing up that turkey didn’t taste good except to stupid city people!
He joined the army by lying about his age (he was too old to enlist) and spent the early part of the war in England and was part of the invasion of Normandy. By then, he was in the Engineers and spent the rest of the war building bridges across Europe so Gen Patton could drive his tanks across them. “Then,” he told me, “we would blow the bridges up because Patton said ‘we’re not coming back!’”
That was the only thing he told me about the war though I begged for stories. I’m sure most of his memories were too painful to recall.
He did come home, though many he knew did not, and became my father and a life-long member of the VFW.
Things are not good these days for many veterans. You can buy a coat at Ocean States Job Lots down the road and give it back for a gift certificate and the coat will go to a homeless veteran. People who risked their lives for us are homeless!!!
The GI Bill did not pay Black veterans of WW II at the same level as White veterans.
John Anderson, one of my oldest and closest friends, is a psychologist at The Veterans Hospital in West Haven. He spends his days counseling veterans with psychological problems in person or on zoom. Many have serious issues.
Their lives, like the Temple in today’s Gospel, are in ruins.
There is so much more that needs to be done for the men and women who served to keep our lives safe.
In God’s name, we must seek to help them.
We are so divided as a people and as a country.
It breaks my hearts.
House Republicans who voted for the much need Infrastructure Bill--which the former President promised for four years and did not deliver--are receiving death threats and being called traitors by others in the party.
How did we get here?
What is wrong with us?
And the U.S.--us?
How are we to get back to being one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all?
Why is everything political and polarized?
I'm at a loss.
Do what helps us all, America--like that bill--and forget this stupid and divisive division.
For the sake of you and me...and out nation.
I am in love with Creme de Brie.
It's a Brie spread. My favorite cheese is Brie but I can't finish a round before some of it goes bad.
But Creme de Brie--I eat one container in two days. I put it on pretzels and crackers and even made a ham and Brie sandwich today.
I love it.
And Big Bird has announced he's running for Ted Cruz's Senate seat!
He has a campaign staff with Bert at the head of it.
He promises not to fly to a foreign country with Texas in danger.
It's all a parody, but I wish it were true.
Big Bird for Senate!
Go for it....
Sen. Ted Cruz accused Big Bird on Sesame street as being a propagandist for saying on air that he had gotten his vaccine.
A Republican House member called Big Bird a 'communist'.
Oh, come on. How low can you go, Republicans?
Sesame Street is a kid's show teaching kids about reading, morals, proper behavior and fun.
Urging kids to get a vaccine because a 7 foot tall bird did is looking out for kid's health.
Every frigging one should get the vaccine and we would all be safe.
Republicans and Fox News continue to push 'anti-vaccer' rhetoric when Fox has a vaccine requirement for employees!
What is wrong with these people?
Big Bird is doing a very good thing and you guys are lying!
And lay off Big Bird--that's avian racism!!!
Church today was great.
The vocalist, Jordan, did several spirituals--"Amazing Grace" and "Just a closer walk with thee" among them.
I told him it was like sitting behind my grandma, Lina Manona Jones, as she played the piano in the Pilgrim Holiness Church in Conklintown, West Virginia.
My sermon was decent, but not great.
But the people were so glad I was getting better, it didn't matter.
I love that little church in Milton.
But I've loved every church I've served in 40 years of parish ministry.
I didn't use my cane.
For some reason my hip and knees are better all of a sudden.
I don't care why, I just embrace it.
Coffee hour, as always at Trinity, was amazing.
I'm so glad to be there.
Today, after nearly ten days, my catheter was removed!
The nurse took it out at 9 and I went back at 2:45 for a scan that showed by bladder was almost empty.
I've been drinking a bottle of water an hour and peeing each hour.
Free!
It's humbling to know your body owns the you you are.
No matter what you think in your brain, your body is in charge.
Just remember, whatever you think in your mind--your body is what owns the you you are.
Humbling, surely.
But good to remember.
Every time I think I've seen all the crazy in the world, something crazier shows up.
Take this: hundreds of Q-Anon followers showed up in Dallas this week, sure that John F. Kennedy Jr. was going to come and reinstate President Who's Name I Will Not Write to office.
J.F.K. Jr. died 20 years ago in a plane crash.
But Q-Anon said he hadn't died, had been in hiding and working for the former president behind the scene.
(Way 'behind', I'd say!)
Then the rumor said JFK himself would show up--not having been killed in Dallas after all. And he would proclaim the former president as president again.
(He'd be 104, but what is that to 'true believers' in MAGA?)
They lined up on the street where JFK was shot--very familiar looking--waiting for the arrival at 12:30 p.m.
It did not happen.
Surprise!!! Surprise!!!
So then they said JFK Jr. would come at half-time at the football game that night.
Can you even take that in?
Crazy is all around us.
Don't ignore it, make fun of it....
A couple of weeks ago, Bern said to me, "you have all these specialists and I have none."
This week when I told her I had four doctor appoints, all with specialists, in five days, I think she changed her tune.
Yesterday I saw my cancer doctor--I don't have cancer--because my PSA went up last year and it shouldn't because I have no prostrate gland. She's driven it down with shots but I've lost all the hair under my arms and some body hair.
I'm becoming gender neutral!
Today I saw my gout doctor who has rid me of that awful joint pain I suffered with for years--mostly in my ankles.
Tomorrow, NO DOCTOR!!!
Thursday I see the cardiologist for a scan. I have a leaky valve but he want's to make sure I don't need it replaced.
Friday, I see my urologist so she can take out my catheter and check my bladder.
I have to go at 9 a.m. for the first and 2:45 p.m. for the second.
I'll deduct all the miles on my tax return as a medical expense.
Lots of miles this week.
Stay well and stay away from specialists, no matter what Bern might think....
