Povey Prattle

We had a tornado watch last night in Sarasota. I did not know about it because I was sound asleep!

The Pet Supply Center  (Webber and Beneva, SRQ) is a locally owned business which many of us love to patronise, not only because of the wide range of products and the terrific staff, but also because of the oasis of urban beauty this business has created. A gorgeous pollinator habitat. Spilling down on to the walkway.   Attracting bees,butterflies and humans Good work!  A place of loveliness at a busy urban intersection. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thank goodness for the urban beauty here  (and at the Cove Cleaners business,  which I featured yesterday). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There is also Urban Ugliness.   SRQ  (and most villages, towns, cities throughout the world) has infestations of urban ugliness: sources of environmental degradation;  of difficult/dangerous road cond...

Cove Cleaners is a business on the corner of Central Ave and Fruitville Rd in downtown SRQ.  Fruitville Road is noisy, busy, oft times congested - a filled with diesel fumes. Thank you Cove Cleaners for creating an oasis of beauty in the midst of a barren urbanscape. -------------------------------------------------------------- Today is the Revd. Jack Chrisman's 86th birthday.   Jack and his wife Donna are good friends of many St. Boniface, Sarasota parishioners, and of my family. Their good daughter Ashley is up in Blacksburg, VA  for a while - taking care of her own daughter who's just had surgery; an her young grandson. In Ashley's absence I had a simple bite to eat with Jack and Donna at a low key birthday celebration. Then I took their Westie "Andy"  and my Zion out for a "necessary business walk. We were joined by a neighbourhood dog -  creating a trinity of canine good sniffing.

T his gorgeous article is by Kristen Sundberg Lunstrom,  as published on Image Journal. Org. The article came to me via my colleague Bruce Lomas. THANK YOU BRUCE .  I love Cather's novel so much, and Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrom's  article has helped me to love, appreciate,  and understand it even more. As the Puritans might have said "It speaks to my soul". The following is  by Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrom, For years I read the same novel every spring—Willa Cather’s  My Antonia.  I was first assigned this novel as a classroom text when I was in the ninth grade, and I recall reading it with the fervor the defining books of one’s life always inspire. The simultaneous wide, raw beauty and harsh living conditions of Cather’s prairie made a kind of literal and spiritual sense to me. My family had spent a year in Nebraska when I was a child—my father serving as an intern pastor at the Lutheran Student Center of the campus of the University o...

With thanks to the friend who posted this on my Face Book page, and apologies to the hand full of  friends to whom I sent this earlier today.

Prelude to Genocide Day Prelude to  Genocide  Day Prelude to  Genocide  Day

Zion and I spotted her/him last Wednesday morning as we took our early morning walk, long before daybreak. There she/he was, squatting in the middle of a planting circle just outside my villa; big eyes following our every move  Mr. Zion was hugely excited and wanting to start a chase:  so much so that I did not let him off the leash until we were well and truly indoors. My neighbour B. (a nocturnal walker) also saw him/her (the animal) on Thursday morning as she/he dashed across the street. What had we seen?   B. and I have come to the conclusion that the Glen Oaks Ridge visitor was an albino Racoon. So gorgeous to look at of course. But some sadness too.  Because of their colour,  Albino animals stand out in the crowd, making them vulnerable to predators.   And they are frequently rejected by the "mainstream" pack,