Mood:  chatty

I would be very sad if, for some reason, I could not take long walks. I found the church where I worship on Sunday mornings by walking home every night from the Amtrak station in our little southern New England state capital. Near the church is the public library, with a respectable collection of fiction. 

In the mid-eighties, Isabelle Holland began publishing whodunits in which the main character is a female Episcopal priest, the stunningly beautiful Rev. Ms. Claire Aldington, a widow with two growing teenagers. 

I recently read the first such novel, _A Death at St. Anselm's_, and now I have borrowed another one of her novels, _A Lover Scorned_, which I just started reading. There is virtually no church politics in these novels; it is not clear that the author is an Episcopalian.  But they are entertaining, nonetheless.

In the first novel, the parish where Ms. Aldington is on staff as a resident psychologist (where I worship, we actually have a parish nurse), has a ministry to street people, who apparently populate the Lexington Avenue neighborhood where St. Anselm's, described as an upper-class church, is situated. So there are similarities with our parish church. While the Rector in the first novel is kind of a cartoon of a progressive priest, Ms. Holland's writing is enjoyable.  

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In apartment news, the Bobster has returned from his trip to Florida, with a bit of a tan and in a very good mood. He went to see his Dad, a retired Boston cop who worked vice. Bob's two nephews went too, and they all went fishing everyday they were down there in the sun. Bob loves the weather in Florida, so I encouraged him to call his former wife and get an invitation (they are on friendly terms) for an extended stay in the sunny South.

My mother used to drive my Aunt and Uncle to Florida for their vacation, which they took in mid-summer, when the weather in that state is blazing hot. I never made the connection before, but Aunt Edna's trips to Florida took place during hurricane season too.

A few years after my Mother died, I dreamed about heaven: despite what everyone else thinks, heaven is a lot like the mountains of Western North Carolina, where I gew up: In my dream, I was sitting in the living room of a modest wooden house in the mountains on a beautiful spring day; my mother, who was her old, friendly, kind self, was there, with my other Aunt, Billie. It was a glorious sunny day; I do not remember what we said, but I was so happy to see my Mother again.