August in Connecticut???

The last few days have been cool and dry. Not what I've come to expect from my nearly 30 years in CT.

No AC in our room at night and we slept the sleep of the dead.

It's been more humid tonight, but still comfortable.

Tonight, though, AC to sleep with.

But wondrous while it lasted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2spGLdMV94 link to my youtube blog 

Days three and four

I was up so late Wednesday and last night, watching the DNC, I haven't found time to write about days 3 and 4.

They were both so great!

Day 3 was Kamala's night. Her acceptance speech told us much about her upbringing and the glass ceilings she has already broken. She has a great and oft-used smile. It lights up the room--even the huge, empty room she spoke from. She is fierce and compassionate and committed.

Great speech.

Day 4 was Joe's night. so many great things happened. Just a few: Tammy Duckworth's speech, which began showing her two artificial legs from having  her helicopter she was piloting in the war shot down. A zoom meeting of most of the people Joe defeated in the primaries. One great moment was when Sen. Booker asked Sen. Sanders, "tell my Bernie, why does my girlfriend like you better than me?" Sanders replied, "because she's smarter than you are."

Then there was Brayden Harrison, a 13 year old who met Joe at one of those hand-shake lines. Joe discovered Brayden stuttered and met with him for an hour to share how he too had a stutter as a child. Brayden talked about how kind and compassionate Joe was to him. Moved me to tears.

(An aside: Joe's stuttering came up in a video about his childhood. A nun in Joe's elementary school mocked his stutter. He went home in tears and his mother took him back to school and told the nun, "if you mistreat my son again, I'll come down here and jerk that bonnet off you head!" Steven Colbert, late last night, live after the convention, (I watched it on you tube this morning), said Joe should work that into his campaign: My Mom Threatened a Nun For Me!)

The women who hosted each session were all lovely and well-spoken. Julia Louis-Dryfus was also hilarious. One of her lines was when she was giving a number to text for information on voting safely. It ended with a number, something like 303033, and Julia commented that would be Trump's golf score if he didn't cheat. Then she added, "I know I shouldn't have said that, but we know he is a cheater, and I'm a nasty, nasty woman." Pretty good, Julia.

What the Democrats did the last 4 nights is something the Republicans can't do. They showed us the faces of America. Every color, ethnic group, religion and background--both in the speakers and in the ordinary people the hosts talked with. Democrats and Joe and Kamala represent the 'whole' of American, not a slice of it.

Come on people--Get out and Vote.

We are "we the people".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2spGLdMV94   (link to my you tube blog)

(All opinions here are mine and mine alone.)

 

 

My oh, so odd night

I watched night two of the Democratic Convention. It was all about Joe Biden being The Right One--a healer, open to everybody--a lovely tribute to Joe's friendship with John McCain, being nominated, not by a politician, but by a Black, female elevator operator in the Capital who Joe befriended years ago, Jill's loving speech about her husband...on and on and on.

But when I went to bed I got a searing pain across the middle of my back--excruciating. Nothing worked, so I woke Bern at 2 a.m. to take me to Mid-State Hospital in Meriden.

I could hardly walk when we got to the emergency room. Even at that hour, things moved slowly. Finally a nurse took me into a room and put me on a bed with the head elevated.

While she asked me endless questions, I began to relax some.

By the time she left and told me a doctor would be in 'soon', my pain was gone.

It was like a miracle! 

After waiting 15 minutes, I called her back and told her I wanted to go home.

I asked her how long for the doctor and she said 15 to 20 minutes. That sealed it.

She made me walk up and down several hallways before agreeing to let me leave. I even drove home and got into bed at 4:15!

Slept well. Have had no pain at all today.

Bern's theory was a kidney stone (she's had them) that passed while we were waiting.

I remember her kidney stone like it was yesterday.

It was a Sunday morning and she felt poorly so she and Mimi didn't go up to St. John's. I was in the middle of my sermon when someone, luckily, heard the phone in the vesting room.

They pulled me out of the pulpit to tell me she was on her way to Waterbury hospital. Josh had been an acolyte that day, sitting behind the altar rail. He leaped the altar rail in his robe to come to me.

We beat her to the hospital. Her pain was so bad she called 911 and forgot Mimi was in her room!

A couple from the church went to Cheshire to be with Mimi.

Bern is a tough cookie, but I've never seen her in such pain. They somehow dissolved the stones and we were home by dark.

I hope that wasn't what I had. And I don't want that pain again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2spGLdMV94 

(link to my you tube blog)

(these are my opinions and mine only)

 

 

The Democratic Convention--Night One

 It was odd, a Convention without crowds. But as it should be in the days of this virus.

It was quite a lot in a little over two hours: Republican John Kasic in a field where a road had two forks, people from every state and territory singing the national anthem, a lovely hostess asking questions to many ordinary people, Bernie Sanders in front of a year full of wood for the stove, lots of entertainment, and, most, most of all Michelle Obama's moving speech and firm denunciation of the president.

I thought it was done flawlessly in the technology.

How hard that must have been to pull off.

Very up beat--"we the people" was the theme.

Watch it on youtube if you didn't see it.

Lordy, Lordy, upbeat and uniting, just what we need in these strange and dangerous times.

(The opinions here are mine and mine alone.)

(link to my You Tube Blog)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2spGLdMV94

I can't find anything

 Cheshire has two supermarkets. Big Y (which used to be Everybody's) and Stop and Shop.

After Everybody's became a Big Y, they expanded into an empty restaurant next door and became much larger.

In response, Stop and Shop has changed everything around, taking out the health food section and expanding their produce to match Big Y.

And both stores have moved most things around.

It's become so I can't find anything I'm looking for in either one and am walking around, searching for pickles much more than I want to be.

I guess it's a sign of age.

I don't want things to change.

I want everything to stay the same, so I won't be confused and can find what I want where it used to be.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2spGLdMV94 (link to my youtube blog)

.

In a box

Bern does face time on her phone with Eleanor every weekday. Today, Eleanor put her dad's tablet in and box and shut the top. Bern was in the dark.

These days it feels like that to me--I'm in a box.

Part of it is good--I'm safe from the virus out there in the world.

The other part isn't good. The president creates an alternative reality and I have no access to the truth except around the edges where the light edges through.

Schools should open--it's safe.

The economy should open--it's safe.

The Israel-United Arab Emirates peace deal saves the middle east--believer Jarred.

The post office changes are for the best--all is well.

Kamela Harris is 'nasty'--all the time.

But the light that seeps in tells me all that is a lie.

Things are not well.

Our democracy is in peril.

Joe Biden must--MUST--be elected.

It's the only hope, the only way to open the box.

(all opinions here are mine and mine only)

 

 

 

An Email

(I took this from an email I wrote.It explains my commitment to Black Lives Matter.)

I grew up in the only county in the US, outside the deep south, that was almost 50/50 Black and White. I knew only a few adult blacks and none of their children. The adults called me "Mister Jimmy". I only realized years later that it was probably meant derogatorily. I just grew up thinking it was the way things were. My father--not my mother---was a quiet racist. In his many jobs he served lots of Black customers, but when he came to my first Church, St. James in Charleston, WV, as I was showing him around he said, "It doesn't smell like I expected." I never went to school with Black students until my Senior Year of high School. The Black High School had sent over 3 male athletes and 3 smart girls to pave the way since the next year, the schools would merge. (Which meant that all over the county the Black Schools would close in disrepair and the Blacks would come to the better kept white schools). I became close friends with a student from the Black School when we were in college. He would introduce me to his friends by saying, "we went to different high schools together."

Since college I have done all I could for the Civil Rights Movement. During seminary I walked in marches. Since then I've given money to Civil rights groups. My childhood taught me how terrible and limiting segregation had been.

As a young priest, I went to St. James in Charleston, a black parish. With so few black Episcopal priests, St. James couldn't afford them. For five years they educated me in what it was like to be Black in America. The Senior Warden, a man who served in the army and went to the level of Colonel, showed me the turban he wore traveling through the South. He was light skinned and wearing the turban meant he could get a room in a hotel. Disgraceful that he had to do that. Most of the members of St. James worked or taught at a local previously all--Black college. It was the most educated congregation I ever served, yet they faced discrimination daily. It outraged me.

The other two churches I served--St. Paul's in New Haven and St. John's in Waterbury--both had large minority groups. An important member of the Cluster was baptized at St. Paul's (not by me) but members of his extended family were there when I was. St. John's had a huge extended family of Island Blacks. I would always wait for the moment when a seminarian would ask me why so many of the Black people sat together. I would say, "what if they all had red hair and freckles?" Then they'd get it. That family, all dressed almost formally for church. The little girls wore gloves and hats. The little boys, suits and ties. That family, almost 50 people, took me in and made me an Island White with food and drinks and jokes about the Islands.

So, as you can see, my entire full time ministry was surrounded by people of color--including a Hispanic congregation in Waterbury of over 100 which required a Spanish speaking assistant.

Given my segregationist upbringing, my commitment to civil rights is bone deep.

I hope you can understand why I come from where I do about Black Lives Matter.

 

 (The opinions here are mine and mine alone.)