Yours portly is squeezing in a quick, post-cruise Lazy Sunday with some recent posts featuring reedy chorales:
Enjoy!
—TPP
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Today Dr. Wife and I will be returning from a week-long Royal Caribbean cruise through the Western Caribbean. The cruise left from Tampa on Saturday, 11 July 2026 and returns this morning (Saturday, 18 July 2026). Along the way, we made stops in Costa Playa, Mexico; Roatán, Honduras; Belize City, Belize; and Cozumel, Mexico. It was a jam-packed itinerary with plenty of time for rest—and celebratory gluttony.
Before diving into the details, here were my favorite stops, from most favorite to least favorite:
1.) Roatán, Honduras – they have Bojangle’s! It’s also just a beautiful place with super friendly people.
2.) Cozumel, Mexico – we only saw the touristy area just off of the cruise ship, but you can buy stuff like azithromycin over-the-counter, which is wild.
3.) Puerto Costa Maya, Mexico – we saw Mayan ruins here and drove through a village called “Pineapple Town.”
4.) Belize City – I really wanted to like Belize City, hoping it’d be some kind of Anglo-Caribbean wonderland nestled in Central American. Instead, it was like the rest of Central America and the Caribbean, but somehow worse. I thought British imperialism would have left a bit more of a positive mark on this damp, effluvial city.
This cruise was only my second, but it cemented for me that I am a cruise person.
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Dr. Wife and I are on the penultimate day of our cruise, one last day at sea before we get back to Tampa, and then Charlotte, and then South Carolina. It’s been a really enjoyable trip before she starts her “big girl” job post-residency.
We’ve had several stops on this cruise, including two in Mexico and one in Belize City. Our favorite stop, however, was at Roatán, Honduras.
Roatán is an island off the coast of Honduras. It has the feel of both an island and the mountains, as it’s essentially a forty-ish-mile long mountain range with a width of only four-ish miles, so you’re pretty much in the “mountains” when you set foot on shore.
The day we landed in Roatán, the weather was overcast, but quickly turned rainy. The rain then morphed into a torrential downpour mere minutes after got out of our little Hyundai tour bus at a place called “AJ’s Monkeys and Sloths“; it’s the kind of place where I’m pretty sure the owner and his family live on the premises and charge admission for people to see guinea pigs, spider monkeys, and sloths.
It was pretty awesome. The rain was intense, not unlike the sudden downpours we’ll get in South Carolina on a really hot, humid afternoon in late summer. The soaking rain gave the whole visit something of a festive and adventurous feel. At one point, a gust of wind knocked loose a tarp, which fell upon Dr. Wife and me, which was humorous and only hastened our steps into a cage with a large parrot.
The staff was amazing. They spoke the best English of any of our various tour guides on the trip. Apparently, Roatán has a large English-speaking population. Lots of places had English names attached to them, and Dr. Wife and I cracked up to learn that Bojangle’s—yes, the Southern fried chicken franchise—was ubiquitous on the island. I did a little research (talked to AI), and learned that Bojangle’s experimented with international franchises, and the only one that worked was the initial one in Roatán, where the English-speaking population, coupled with the popularity of spicy fried chicken in the Caribbean and Central America, made it an instant hit.
We also visited an iguana farm, but because the rain cooled things down so much (Dr. Wife actually had the heat running in our stateroom when we returned), they largely stayed in the trees. On a hot day, they apparently descend from the trees and bask and feed on the shore. Also, they are a delicacy, and our tour guide told us that, if prepared properly, they taste “better than chicken.” The owners of this particular iguana farm raise them to protect them from the cook’s pot, so it functions as a sanctuary. They also protect tarpan and some other local fish species that are popular with Honduran cooks.
There was one really obnoxious Boomer grandma on the trip with her two young grandchildren. She kept asking annoying questions in that voice that George Costanza’s mom has, but even more irritating. The cruise line indicated the tour was about four hours, but the actual tour was around three-and-a-half. The lady piped up and asked if we were going to lunch. You could almost hear a mental groan from everyone on the bus. I actually said, “no” from the back of the bus. I’d like to think I was something a a hero that day.
Regardless, here’s a little video about all the stuff we saw in Roatán (including the Boomer lady):
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I’m writing today’s post the morning that we head out for our flight before our current cruise (that’s a lot of clauses). I’m excited to see what kinds of modern art adorn our current ship, as it’s a different one (I think) than the one from our honeymoon.
As such, it seemed like a fun time to look back at the art from that honeymoon cruise. Some of it was quite odd.
With that, here is 19 December 2025’s “Phone it in Friday CXIV: YouTube Roundup CLXXIV: Cruise Art“:
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One of the enduring temptations for Christians of a more intellectual or theological bent is to take pride in their knowledge of Scripture. It’s scarily easy to fall into that trap, but it’s one that must be avoided, lest we either a.) fall into the heresy of Gnosticism or b.) are so proud in our knowledge, we sin against God. Really, both are likely outcomes, and “b.” includes “a.” Furthermore, no one is an effective witness if they come across as a boastful know-it-all.
The danger of that pride is very, very real. Consider that it was the pride of the Pharisees that condemned Jesus to the Cross. The pride of the Athenian elites condemned Socrates to hemlock. In both cases, the condemned poked at and exposed the foolish pride of their tormentors.
The appeal to know some “secret” knowledge, or to have the real answers, is one that those of an intellectual stripe must constantly guard against. I speak from experience (and that’s not me giving myself a very roundabout, backhanded compliment, but acknowledging that I have struggled with this sin). Ultimately, Jesus Is the Source of all Truth.
With that, here is 26 November 2025’s “Wayback Wednesday: Gnostic Mysteries“:
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Yours portly has been in a chorale mood, to the point that I was asking CoPilot about churches that actively commission original sacred pieces (it’s information was fairly dated, unfortunately, as the few leads it offered were from some years ago). I love playing around with little mathematical harmony problems, and seeing where long, sustained notes will take me.
When putting together last week’s piece, one of the proposed instrumentations I pitched to readers on various platforms was soprano saxophone, English horn, and oboe—a highly unorthodox blending of higher reeds. I ended up going with a more traditional woodwind trio of flute, oboe, and bassoon, but I wanted to try that other instrumentation for this week’s effort. I was pleased with the outcome.
The piece itself began as some jotting after Dr. Wife and I had our pre-breakfast Bible reading time together. I wanted to play around with writing a chorale in 6/4—something a bit different, which would also give me some more flexibility in moving the voices.
The process for mastering/mixing this piece was virtually the same as last week’s piece. I imported the WAV from Noteflight into Audacity and applied a “Small Dark Room” reverb effect; an “Wide Synth Pad” chorus effect; and a “Tape” master effect. The granular effects are probably slightly different, as I tend to tweak the chorus and master effects slightly, but listeners will recognize a similar soundscape as the one I shared a week ago.
I then took the audio and pictures of the score and track artwork and imported them all into iMovie. From there, I imported the resulting video into YouTube Create, where I added my favorite filter, “Vaporwave.” I got this one churned out quickly, as we were packing for our cruise (I took advantage of a Dr. Wife nap to hammer it out).
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Back in late 2022 and early 2023, Ponty and I did a series of posts about our favorite films. I ranked 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back as my number one pick. If we redid the lists, I doubt it would rank that high, but it would certainly be in the top five.
At the time, I noted that Empire was the first film I ever reviewed for what would become Monday Morning Movie Reviews. At the time, I just called it Monday Movie Review, perhaps knowing there’d be days I’d miss the “morning” deadline. Regardless, the review of that film marked something of a turning point for The Portly Politico, moving away from primarily political topics and moving more decisively towards cultural ones.
With that, here is 28 September 2020’s “Monday Movie Review: The Empire Strikes Back“:
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As you’re reading this post, dear readers, Dr. Wife and I should be cruising the high seas, adrift in a wonderland of luxury somewhere in the Gulf of America (née Mexico). As such, why not cast our gaze back to cruise- and cruiser-related posts of yestyear (specifically, last yesteryear):
Happy Sunday—and, if you’re also on a cruise, Happy Cruising!
—TPP
Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive. To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more. For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.
Today’s post includes Amazon Affiliate links to the books referenced. I receive a portion of any purchases made through those links, at no additional cost to you. If a book is linked, it is an Amazon Affiliate link. —TPP
After some delays and enjoying America’s 250th anniversary, yours portly is back with some reading, now featuring a once-great literary form: poetry.
Poetry gets a bad rap, likely because the former has largely devolved into the latter. It’s pretty easy to write prose and then chop it up into sentence fragments with some white space and indents and call it poetry.
Here’s that last sentence as “poetry”:
Poetry gets a bad
rap, likely because the former
has largely
Devolved
into the latter. It's pretty
easy to write
Prose and then
chop
it
up
into sentence frag
ments with some
white space and
indents
and call it
Poetry.
Well, you can see the problem right away. It’s obvious that this style isn’t really poetry at all. A humorous example of this phenomenon is the gag book The Collected Poems of Donald J. Trump, 2009-2019, which Dr. Wife (then Dr. Girlfriend) got me for my fortieth birthday. The “poetry” consists of our president’s tweets formatted into various blends of shapes and white space akin to my example above. It’s fun and a big, beautiful addition to my collection, but part of the joke is that it’s not poetry (although there is a poetic quality to President Trump’s tweets, at time).
That said, one needn’t harken back to the days of yore to find good poetry. All of today’s examples are from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Naturally, there’s tons of great poetry from the first half of the twentieth century (apologies to W. B. Yeats for not making the list this time; you will soon!), but the twenty-first century tends to be moms writing lengthy odes to their children on Facebook. There’s nothing wrong with the latter, but the efforts are rarely “poetic” in the truest sense of the word.
But poetry is vitally important, as is the ability to read and analyze it. Consider that large chunks of the Bible consist of poetry. The Book of Psalms is a collection of poems and song lyrics. Song of Solomon is a sensual love poem that depicts both the intense passion of a groom for his bride while also echoing the intense love of The Groom (Jesus Christ) for His Bride (us, the Church).
All that preamble aside, here are four works of poetry and/or collections you should add to your home library:
You can pick up all of these in paperback on Amazon for between $36.88 and $51.88 (Jeremy Miles’s—God Rest his soul—collection in full color is $30, but the greyscale edition is half the price). Centrism Games is the best value at just $5.57, and I highly recommend it.
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Dr. Wife and I are hitting the road for a lengthy cruise before she begins work, so stay tuned for The Best of TPP next week while we’re away. In the meantime, here is a grab-bag of some recent YouTube videos for your delectation. Enjoy!
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