More St. Mark's Holiday and Misc. Pics

Here are more pictures of St. Mark's, Palm Beach Gardens. The pretty blonde lady is Pastor Jeannie Martz, Priest-in-chage.

St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Palm Beach Gardens, FL: Holiday Pics

Here are a variety of picture's from St. Mark's. You'll notice that the architecture of St. Andrew's and St. Mark's are totally different. St. Mark's is absolutely beautiful modern architecture. St. Andrew's is traditional, but beautiful gothic. St. Mark's stained glass windows are contemporary, St. Andrew's traditional. St. Mark's is laid out funny making weddings and certain other events challenging at times. Yet Both churches are wonderful with great folks in both.

St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, Lake Worth, FL: Holiday Pics

Larry was the king in the St. Andrew's Christmas pageant. A picture of King Larry is posted on the previous post. Here are more pictures of the Christmas season at St. Andrew's.

Gordon's Birthday & Ringing in the New Year

Dec. 27th is my birthday. I came back from lunch and Carla, one of my co-workers told me to look on my desk. I went in my office and found a bouquet of a dozen red roses and teddy bear in the arrangement. Larry had never sent me flowers to work before. It was neat. We went to Beefeaters for dinner that night. It was a lovely day. New Year's Eve was totally fun and took place in Lake Worth. It started at Ann's House for dinner. New Year's Eve is also Ann's birthday and we were celebrating her 80th with her. Then at 10:30, the merry making party goers moved over to Margo's house. Margo is the artsy type, extremely talented in music, the theater and culinary delights. She and her husband Michael have a theater troupe called the Core Ensemble. If you google Core Ensemble you will find that they have several sections to the troupe and travel all over the world. Margo's house and yard is something else. Walking up the walk to the house reminds me of the San Francisco house in Tales of the City. It was a warm and lovely evening and we spent it looking at the planets through a huge telescope. I spent a lot of time in the flower covered swing and consumed a lot of chocolate! We sang Ald Lang Syne at midnight, made our toasts and I pleaded being very tired and we went home and I was asleep in 10 minutes. This brought to a close the busiest but most fun holiday season in my adult life. There are many stories I didn't tell which I'll attempt to do in the form of some of the many pictures taken in November and December. 2006 has come to a close. But in spite of bad news when it comes to health, it was a wonderful year of closeness, love and appreciation to church friends, work friends, alzheimer's friends and spiritual growth of realizing the interconnectedness of people, making new friendships and drawing closer to those who are important to me. It was a year of having to make tough medical decisions and putting a different medical team in place. I have three wonderful doctors who work together as a team. Dr. Briskin, my PC team let me know in no uncertain terms, that my health care is a team approach. He's the team leader, he's the boss and I finally have some cohesive health care rather than fragmented where one doctor doesn't know what the other one is doing. I look forward to what's in store in 2007. My hope for the new year is that America will continue to move forward in what's right for the American people and that our newly elected leaders will continue to vote for legislation which makes life a little easier for average middle class Americans and the poor like they've been doing for the past two weeks. It's time for the United States to turn it's back on evil, to stand up and say "No to Halliburton as they amass billions of dollars while serving our troops expired food and water laughing all the way to the bank, "no" to cutting the taxes on the richest one percent of America, "no" to abolishing estate taxes for multi millionaires and leaving. It's time to say "no" in memory of the people who died as a result of cuts in Medicare and Medicaid, who died in Tennessee when the Medicare was cut. It's time to stop the lies, the deceit, the death and destruction of our country. I'm hopeful for a New Year where love and caring for people ushers in an era of morality and closes the door on the stench of evil and corruption of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Gonzales and their ilk. Hopefully we might even have elected officials who won't allow the Evil One in the White House to send our Border Patrol sent to prison for going after drug smugglers. Maybe we'll even get our borders and ports protected. God Bless America. Better days are ahead.

Elections,Thanksgiving,Christmas & Other Stuff Part II

Every year my union's local (AFGE/American Federation of Government Employees) has a holiday party. This year I was chairman. I must have been NUTS when I agreed to do this at one of our union meetings back during the summer. I was also the emcee. But everybody seemed to have a good time and nothing disastrous happened. Also during December was the Palm Beach Chapter of The Daughter's of the British Empire Holiday Tea. This is something I've supported for years. The proceeds from the tea support a nursing home operated by this organization in Houston. The Daughter's of the British Empire started in America over a hundred years ago. Many sociality wealthy Americans wanted English girls as their maids. It was a social status thing. These young women would come to the U.S. from the U.K., work hard for low pay and no medical care or families in America to take care of them when they got too old to work. This wonderful organization has chapters all over the world. Anyway, I have a HUGE poster of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip which the Daughters borrow every year to use at the tea. I think there are a couple of pictures of it on earlier posts. At this year's tea, wonderful homemade scones,cucumber sandwiches and great tea and my favorite, little cream puffs were enjoyed by all. A few days before Christmas, Carey arrived from Fort Worth, actually Euless, a suburb of Fort Worth. Carey is past retirement age but continues to work as a hospice nurse, is a volunteer at DFW Airport and sings in his local Episcopal Church choir. We've be friends for many years. Carey is a very outgoing guy who is a lot of fun. But to be truthful, the Christmas weekend was exhausting as well as fun and spiritually enriching to all three of us. Christmas weekend was tiring this year not only for Episcopalians, but all of those Christians who worship in the higher liturgical denominations whose worship has followed the liturgy of the Christian Calendar for about 2000 years. And this year Christmas Eve fell on a Sunday. The poor clergy at my church, St. Mark's had 5 services that day, and Larry's church, St. Andrew's had four. So Christmas Eve morning we went to Lake Worth to worship at St. Andrew's and then to downtown Lake Worth with friends from church. Then, knowing that there was NO WAY I was going to be able to stay awake for us to drive to my church, St. Mark's in Palm Beach Gardens for midnight service, we went to 8 PM service instead and then skipped church totally on Christmas Day. The Orchestra, choir and candles and worshipping with folks close to me was wonderful. Christmas Day we went to Bohemian Gardens for Christmas dinner, a wonderful family owned, home cooked meal kind of place which has been operating in western Lake Worth for more than 50 years in the same location. Carey flew home the day after Christmas. But the holiday's weren't over yet. There was still my birthday and New Years to come. TO BE CONTINUED

Elections,Thanksgiving,Christmas & Other Stuff Part I

It's been several months since I've posted. I just didn't feel like it. This morning I woke up at 4:30 feeling extremely anxious, I had butterflies in my stomach and felt ready to throw up. I put the decaf coffee on and tried to watch TV. The nausea got worse and then I threw up. I attribute this to medication side effects as my meds have been changed around in the past couple of weeks. In addition, I've been having dizzy spells 5 or 6 times a day for a week now. I've walked into things a few times over the course of a year. But this week I've been walking into walls, the patio sliding glass door, the TV set, just about everything. What is going on? Who knows. If I'm still like this Monday, I'll call my Primary Care or Neurologist. But for now, I'm going to try a diversion and write in my blog. The Elections I donned my red, white and blue Dr. Seuss hat and hit the streets. It was obvious to most Americans that the Bush administration and the GOP House and Senate were not listening to the American people. While corporate America was doing well economically and the Bush administration created more jobs in history (the jobs are in China, but Bush forgot to mention that part), Ameicans were suffering. The largest number of uninsured Americans in history, employers paying less insurance coverage, the stealing of millions of dollars from FEMA during the Hurricane Katrina disaster, the huge property taxes and home owner's insurance rates left thousand of Floridians in foreclosure and for the first time in our historoy, more people leaving Florida than moving in simply because it's too expensive to live here. The working class were being squeezed as Wal Mart laughed all the way to the bank. The fact that most of their employees depend on public aide and food stamps to survive is besides the point to Bushies. Bush kept telling America that the war is going great, that democracy has come to Iraq. But he forgot to mention that the democracy is hidden behind a very secure wall called the Green Zone. They've even got running water and electricy in there. In Florida, the sleaziest of the sleaze of corporate cheerleaders was Rep. Clay Shaw who was very vocal about opposing worker's rights and unions. Thankfully, we were able to remove him from office. But make no mistake. This election was about the war. Americans were being lied to on a daily basis by Bush who remained strong in his stubborness and arrogance. His GOP cheerleaders continued the mantra that the war is going great and that democracy is on the march. They totally ignored reality. What Americans saw was a bloody civil war with our troops as the targets caught in the middle of this Bush dream of buidling a strong American presence in the middle east, dreams of military bases in Iraq and control of all that oil. But Americans were asking, "Is it worth it? This isn't what we went to war for." Anyway, the elections are over and everybody has their fingers crossed that the bloodshed to Americans will be at a minimum and a solution to a graceful way out of Bush's War will be obtained. Speaking of Bush's War, last Friday at the "No More Troops" rally in downtown Lake Worth, a reporter from the Sun Sentinel interviewed me. Here is a link to the article: http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/palmbeach/sfl-pantiwar13jan13,0,6759841,print.story?coll=sfla-news-palm THANKSGIVING This holiday season was a lot of fun. Cousin Kevin came from Dallas to spend Thanksgiving with us. We did some sight seeing, ate out and stayed up late at night. There was a lot of burning CD's and transferring of music to Ipods and MP3 players. We had a great Thanksgiving Day at the Duke's house: A lot of food, great conversation and fun.