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Showing posts from August 5, 2018

Balloons over Bristol

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The Bristol (U.K.)  Balloon Fiesta is now in its fortieth year.  It is the biggest such festival in Europe.  Much of this is due to one Don Cameron. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Cameron_(balloonist) My niece Emma once worked for him. BRISTOL BALLOON FESTIVAL 2018 Bristolians don't give a fig for Albuquerque  

A verse from the Bible.

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"God never gives you more than you can bear".  From the Book of Baloney, Chapter 1, Verse 1. It is not from the Bible.  Nor is it congruent with the overall teaching of the Bible.  But it gets trotted out by well meaning but stupid people in the face of apparently unbearable tragedy and suffering. Your child committed suicide but "God never gives you more than you can bear".   So God knows that I can bear the searing pain of a teenage suicide?  Such horrid nonsense. The one you love most is being slowly brought to death by an insidious and creeping cancer,  but "God never gives you more than you can bear".   Oh thank you God.  I will bear the suffering of my best beloved, and I hope that she/he can also bear it. "God never gives you more than you can bear".  Tell that to the poor people of Yemen who are being torn to shreds by the bombs, missiles and bullets (courtesy of the U.K. ...

Them books! (and my binging)

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I posted this meme the other day to follow up on my blog entry about the joys of reading. The meme says it all for me, and it's been well received and forwarded by many. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Now back to the books I read.  Well not all of them (!) but to say that when I discover an author I binge  on her/his books. Here are four of my binge authors, and the book which introduced me to them. --------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Interesting:  three north American, one south American                       three females,one male) --------------------------------------------------------------------- If you ...

The Weight Of Grief

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( I forget which of my friends posted this to Face Book, but I am grateful.  'Tis so powerful. )

Author! Author!

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Most of you know that I rarely watch television  (my set is at least twenty years old). Maybe this is because I did not grow up with T.V.  I was sixteen years old before it entered our home. I grew up with Radio (or "The Wireless"as we called it then).  The good old Beeb  (BBC) had many broadcasts which were unconnected with news and current events, unlike the current AND ghastly American National Public Radio (news, talk shows, political speculation and blah, blah, blah to the max). That old Beeb had such programmes as "Afternoon Theatre", a five days a week thirty minute radio play, one for each weekday  A radio play -  by which our minds and imaginations created the sets, the faces of the characters,  and the homes, streets and districts in which they lived.  Indeed, that good old Beeb commissioned  Dylan Thomas's marvelous play  "Under Milk Wood" for radio broadcast.  It was never intended to be staged...

All in a day's work

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Zion, my neighbour Barbara and I  cut loose from our Sunday morning tradition today.  Instead of walking in Arlington Park we went to Sarasota County's Urfer Family Park. https://www.scgov.net/Home/Components/FacilityDirectory/FacilityDirectory/492/4251 We liked it well enough,  and afterwards we enjoyed our usual Sunday morning Coffee at either Panera Bread or Starbucks. Barbara prefers Starbucks, I prefer Panera but we agreed that Arlington Park is a better venue for our Sunday morning peregrinations.  ----------------------------------------------------- Then everything changed. My friend R. had invited me to his home for Sunday lunch. I arrived at his home in good time. He did not answer my door knock so I walked into his thankfully unlocked Condo. 'Twas then that I discovered, (via something that I must keep private) , that he'd had a seizure on Saturday night and had been admitted to Sarasota Memorial Hospital. I raced to the Hos...