Tant de Brouillard – Foggy Morn in Pensacola
I learned a new word today, le brouillard, from a blogger who liked my Pensacola parade post. I always take a look to see, and this time, it was like taking a brief vacation to a place I love – the villages of France, and the morning market, or marche. His blog is My French Heaven, and he writes in French and English, good exercise for those of us who need to polish up our language skills. Warning: the photos on his blog are EXPLICIT. You will want to eat those oysters, vegetables and sweets right off the page.
He was waiting, this morning, for ‘le brouillard se dissipe’ and I smiled because on my way home from the early service this morning, I had to stop and take some photos of foggy Pensacola and the foggy bayou:
If, in the midst of this crazy time of the year, you can give yourself a small gift and a short virtual vacation, take a moment to have a cup of green tea and visit my friend Stephane at My French Heaven.
Favorite Things Restaurant Opens on Cervantes
“Have you eaten at Favorite Things yet?” our friend asked us.
“They have a restaurant?” I asked. I knew they had a little coffee shop and gifts, but I hadn’t heard they had a restaurant.
“Just opened,” he replied. “I took folks there for breakfast after church last Sunday. It was GOOD!”
So the next day we had to go, missing entirely the police shooting two burglars in our neighborhood.
I had driven by this place a million times, but I had never been in. It was cute, lots of unique gifts and good ideas, an old fashioned candy store and – a newly opened restaurant. Actually, they had just opened the previous Friday, this was still their soft opening while they work the kinks out of their system.
The dining room is cute, all different tables and chairs, all a country theme.
The menu offers a lot of options, breakfast options, sandwiches, entrees, local specialities. I overheard a manager talking it over with a long time friend; Favorite Things is associated with Jerry’s, next door, but “Jerry’s does all the fried food and we do all the rest!”
We ordered, then roamed through the store, looking at the gift offerings:
Oops! Food arrived while we were ooohing and aaahing over all the goodies.
AdventureMan ordered the soup and sandwich special with their gumbo and a turkey sandwich:
I ordered the Reuben sandwich on whole grain with a cup of the gumbo:
When I put the top on the Reuben, I saw something I really liked – look at all the grains on the top of the roll, and look at the whole grains in the chips:
We went back and tried breakfast, taking little-boy-Q with us, who was good as gold and ate everything with a fork except for the grapes. AdventureMan had a traditional egg special, little-boy-Q had parts of our meal and a fruit bowl, and I had the lachs and bagel breakfast, excellent, and I don’t even usually like bagels. Nice to know there is another good breakfast option near us.
Pensacola Christmas Parade 2012
A perfect evening. Got there minutes before the one mile runners came by, parking at our church and walking to our favorite spot, meeting up with our son, his wife, and the adorable little boy who truly gets everything that is happening. This is his third parade; he always loved the lights and loud noises, but this year, he GETS it, gets the floats and the bands and the BEADS!
“I love this tradition,” my daughter-in-law says, leaning over to kiss me as we meet up to watch the parade and do a little-boy-transfer. He is coming to spend the night with us. He has his own room in our house.
ZOOOOOMMMMM! the motorcycle police accompany the runners, EEERRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWW the fire engine, all lights and noise comes by at the beginning of the parade, and then a high school band from New Orleans with a killer beat leads the parade. Wooooo HOOOOOOOO, shouts Intlxpatr, totally into another cultural experience. 🙂
One of the optical shops had running eyeballs, totally hilarious!
“Beads! Beads!”
This float was giving out Chobani yoghurt
“Beads! Beads! More beads!” People taller than I were catching beads – and then passing them on to the little children. So kind, so generous.
My favorite, of course, a pirate ship:
This parade is great fun. Here is a thing I love about Pensacola. About 50,000 people attend. Many walk from nearby neighborhoods, others drive down and park – there is still plenty of parking in Pensacola. People gather peacefully. There is no fighting over great spots; there are a lot of great spots from which you can watch the parade. At the end of the parade, everyone disperses peacefully – no fighting. In fifteen – twenty minutes the crowd is GONE, 50,000 people gone home, peacefully. It is a great community, all walks of life, all having a great time watching this home town Christmas parade.
Early this morning, the morning after, we started a new tradition – we got a long stick with a hook, and went after some of the beads stuck up in the trees. AdventureMan and Q got started while I went to church, meeting up with some experts who gave them tips – and beads. Such is the kindness of strangers, and the brotherhood of bead chasers. 🙂
Great Weather for the Pensacola Christmas Parade
The weather in Pensacola is crazy right now, after a couple months of cooling temperatures, we are up in the 70’s during the days and down in the 60’s at night, maybe the 50’s – it is so warm that our aloe is blossoming, she thinks it is spring.
The good news is that the Pensacola Christmas Parade is tomorrow night, and it looks like it will be a balmy evening with NO RAIN! We are looking forward to taking our grandson – this will be his third Christmas Parade, but this is the first time he is really walking and talking, and we think the sound and lights (it always starts with the motorcycle police and the fire engines blasting and all their emergency lights spinning) are going to blow him away. This year he will be able to shout “beads! beads!” and scramble with the other kids for beads and candies; the parade is a wild mix of Christmas and Mardi Gras. It is a hilarious experience, and we are eager to see it through his eyes.
Indian Village Bans Cell Phones – For Women
LOL – what about those cheating, eloping MEN? Ban only women from using cell phones? What about calls from mothers who need you to run an errand? What about calls from the children’s school? Women – and man – who are going to cheat are going to cheat, whether or not you take their cell phone away. Found this on AOL/Huffpost via Reuters:
PATNA, India – (Reuters) – A village council in the eastern Indian state of Bihar has banned the use of mobile phones by women, saying the phones were “debasing the social atmosphere” by leading to elopements – a move that set off outraged protests from activists.
In addition to the ban, the Sunderbari village council in a Muslim-dominated area some 385 kilometers (239 miles) east of Patna, the capital of Bihar, has also imposed a fine of 10,000 rupees ($180) if a girl is caught using a mobile phone on the streets.
Married women would have to pay 2,000 rupees ($36.60).
“It always gives us a lot of embarrassment when someone asks who has eloped this time,” said Manuwar Alam, who heads a newly-formed committee tasked with enforcing the ban, referring to queries from neighboring villages.
He said the number of elopements and extramarital love affairs had risen in the past few months, with at least six girls and women fleeing their homes.
“Even married women were deserting their husbands to elope with lovers. That was shameful for us,” Alam said. “So, we decided to tackle it firmly. Mobile phones are debasing the social atmosphere”.
Local officials have begun investigations, saying that such bans cannot be allowed in a healthy society, while women’s rights activists called it an assault on freedom that could potentially end up harming women by stripping them of one source of protection from trouble, such as unwanted advances by men.
“Girls and women are capable enough to protect themselves,” said activist Suman Lal during a debate on local television. “Technology is meant to be used, not to be banned…The order is nauseating.”
Fellow activist Mohammad Islam said it was “disappointing” that the village council ignored the many advantages of mobile phones before placing a ban on them for one reason.
“I want every girl to be given a mobile phone so that she could call up family members if she has a problem”, he said. ($1 = 54.6400 Indian rupees)
(Reporting by New Delhi newsroom, editing by Elaine Lies)
Thanksgiving on the Bayou
The Thanksgiving venue changed this year. We all have families, families have struggles, and one of those struggles meant that the Thanksgiving celebration would shift to another home. Same cast of characters, same fabulous food, just a different location.
The organization is superb. Everyone has a part to play. Nieces and nephews arrive to assist in preparations, clearing the grounds, putting out tables and chairs, helping wherever they can. Cousins get to spend time together, catching up, as they work together. The aunts are all busy in the kitchens, cutting, chopping, baking, cooking, stewing, putting their best efforts into making the dishes everyone loves.
The guys do the turkeys. They may have help, but the turkeys seem to be the guys prerogatives. They also carry in the hams.
There are so many desserts that they won’t fit on one table. They won’t fit on two tables! When all the desserts are put on the tables, there are still back-up pies and cakes in the pie-safe behind the table!
Cousins fill glasses with ice; guest can choose lemonade, sweet tea or “un”
The tables groan with turkeys, hams and side dishes – beans and peas from the garden, corn bread, sweet potato casseroles, and more, much, much more:
There is fun for everyone – kayak rides, tractor rides, and ring toss:
There’s always a special room where babies can nap – this is a very child friendly celebration. This family loves babies and little ones, and encourages all the cousins to stay close. It’s always a full day, Thanksgiving, with much for which to give thanks. 🙂 When the great meal is over, people play, visit, walk, chat . . . and then sneak back for another taste of their favorite dish!
Celebrating Diwali in Pensacola
A friend shared a flyer with us and said “I thought you might be interested in this.” He was right – it was a celebration of Diwali, and it would take place in a nearby Presbyterian church.
First, though, we had to buy tickets, which meant finding the Indian grocery store. This was a really good thing, as AdventureMan wanted some good hot chutneys, and I was hoping I could find some of the dark chana dal that I used to buy so inexpensively in Doha and Kuwait, but found myself ordering from Amazon.com because I couldn’t fine them in Pensacola. I knew it! I just wasn’t looking in the right place!
My first Diwali was magical. It was held on Al Fardan Gardens, in Doha, and all the Indian families strung thousands of white lights and lined the sidewalks with votives, so it was like a fairy land. By this late in the year, it can cool down enough to make the thought of walking inviting. To walk among the lights and to stop here and there for some truly divine cooking was delightful.
Diwali in Pensacola? Whoda thunk it?
As it turns out, Pensacola has a substantial Indian population, tightly woven together and cooperating in times of celebration and times of sorrow. Last night was a little of both – the Diwali celebration had been planned and organized for several months, but a sudden death of one of the long time members on the day of the Diwali celebration saddened the day somewhat.
While all grieved, the show went on. Lots and lots of lively traditional dances, a few Bollywood numbers, and a wonderful sword dance that reminded us of similar sword dances we had seen in the Gulf, performed only by men, while these were performed by women.
After all that energetic dancing, we were ready to eat. Butter Chicken, chicken korma, dal, rice, all kinds of good things provided by one of the newer Indian restaurants in town, the India Palace.
I never dreamed when we came to Pensacola that there would be an opportunity to celebrate Diwali. 🙂
The Power of Kindness to Change Lives
This week AdventureMan and I have been blessed, greatly blessed. We have met some wonderful people and heard some amazing things. Two stories in particular have shaken the earth for me.
“How It Happened for Me”
The first story is about a friend we met from the newest country on earth, South Sudan. A group of us were sitting together when one woman turned to this man from the South Sudan and asked “How did you find Jesus?”
This was not a religious gathering, so it is an unusual question on a social evening. But this quiet, modest man responded “I will tell you. It is a long story. It starts when I was only five months, not a baby, five months in my mother’s womb.”
He told us of a life with no security. His parents and family fled to the forest, and were on the run continually most of his life – until recently. He told of a life trying to find safe places, sometimes being separated from his parents.
He told of a priest who, when he and his brothers and sisters were very young, taught them to say “God bless Mother and God bless Father and God bless my brothers and sisters and watch over us always.” He was kind to the children, and taught them that God loves them, that God is kind. He said they did not know who this God was, but he and his brothers and sisters said this prayer every night, to keep his family safe. He said they learned other simple prayers. There would be rare times when someone would teach them a letter, or some numbers, drawing in the sand, or the floor of the forest, simple, quick lessons.
“So I don’t know all the stories you do,” he said. “I don’t even know the bible very well, we never had educated priests, just simple men who taught us simple prayers. Only later did we become more educated.”
As we listened, we had huge lumps in our throats. I could hear Jesus’ voice saying that we must believe as little children, and this man had the pure simple faith of a child, a memory from his earliest years, as he prayed for his family to be safe in a world where life was continual chaos and a struggle to survive.
“When I understood about God,” he went on, “there wasn’t even a church or a pastor-man who could baptize me; I had to believe for many years before I could become a Christian.”
As a footnote, he told us that somehow, most of his village managed to survive, helping one another. His entire family made it through, his parents are still alive. The village children little by little gained education, becoming doctors, lawyers, professionals of all kinds. His village now has a church, a simple church, not always staffed, but a church. The war is ended. For him, the simplicity of peace is all he ever wanted.
We will never forget his, and his story. We have met an extraordinary human being.
Today, we went to a lunch, invited by a friend, to raise funds for public education. LOL, this is what I used to do; I worked for an education foundation and raised money for public education. I love this kind of thing. I knew just what to expect – lots of success stories, stellar achievements, and a gentle pitch.
Whoa! Wrong! Darling kids – check. Recognition of important guests – check. Gentle pitch – no way! They got right to business; you will see this form, please take your pens RIGHT NOW and fill it out and give what you can, education funds seem to get cut more every year and we are trying to do more with less and less. Give NOW. CHECK!
The final speaker was a local businessman and patron-of-just-about-everything, a man who also brought baseball to Pensacola. He talked about his own public education. He talked about his speech impediment, and his deafness, he talked about his short stature and his inability to sit still and concentrate. He talked about teachers who identified him and instead of treating him as an obstacle, made him believe they were glad to have him in their class. He talked about teachers who gave him special assignments, who taught him math by having him calculate baseball averages. He knew their names, these saints who kept him in school, no matter how discouraged he might be.
He graduated with a 1.9 grade point, and had no intention of going to college, but ended up astonishing everyone by doing well on the ACT test and having a guidance counselor who found him just exactly the right environment where he could flourish on the college level.
Important people usually enjoy telling you the great things they have done. This man focused on his disabilities, his humiliations and his weaknesses, and how the kindness of educators had pulled him out of a very dark place and set him on the road for the success he is today.
I am willing to bet that the education foundation gained a lot of donors today. We were caught by surprise. We can defend against the powerful and successful, but when the heart speaks from vulnerability and failure, our hearts respond. This man is a success, but he gives credit to those who looked at him with caring eyes, with caring hearts, who lifted him and helped him on his way to the incredible (wealthy) success he is today, with a flourishing business and innumerable local charities who are grateful for his support.
What a week! And it’s only Tuesday! I wonder what the rest of the week will bring?
Election Day Fun
No more same old, same old. Today, Pensacola had a group of up-and-coming leaders from twelve African countries in town studying Grassroots Democracy and the US Elections. There is nothing like questions from non-US citizens to keep you on your toes and even give you a good laugh as you try to explain the eccentricities of our electoral system. This group, brought to Pensacola by the Gulf Coast Citizens Diplomacy Council, asked some great, probing questions.
Their questions were thoughtful and open-ended. At the end of the session, one delegate from Uganda summarized his observation that although we are deeply polarized in this election, we have confidence in our civil servants and the bureaucracy. While the leaders at the top may change, and while policies MIGHT change, they have to go through processes to change. It’s not like one leader or the other comes in and overnight, everything is changed, everything is done a different way.
AdventureMan says he loves that we live in a country where power is transferred peacefully – no coup. No revolution. We might have ugly elections, but they are peaceful, and when one triumphs, thousands of people supporting the losing side are not killed.
Had not thought about it that way. 🙂
These visitors are in Pensacola at just the right time for them to observe our biggest election. They have questions about everything, from the signs in our front yards to voter fraud and deceptive wording on proposed amendments. They talked today with the Supervisor of Elections, with elected officials, and with normal, everyday citizens. Tonight they will attend some of the parties around town, as the votes are counted. It is a very special experience for us, to see ourselves as others might see us, as we hold our elections.
Doc by Mary Doria Russell
Mary Doria Russell is one of my favorite authors because she tackles large topics fearlessly, humorously and with great compassion. I first read her many years ago in a novel called Children Of God; you can read it stand-alone as I did, but I should have read The Sparrow, which preceded it. That one is about the Jesuits who take the Gospel into outer space, and has some laugh-out-loud moments in the midst of utter hopelessness. Yes. She’s that kind of author, my kind of woman.
Here is the ending Question and Answer from an interview at the back of Doc, an interview with John Connelly:
Q: Authors are often asked what advice they’d give young writers. I would like to ask you a similar question: What do you think the worst advice a young writer could get is?
Mary Doria Russell: Major in English. Join a writer’s group. Blog.
My advice is to major in and do something REAL. Have an actual 3-D life of your own. And please, shut up about it until you’ve got something genuinely wise or useful or thoughtful to share. Then again, I’m a cranky old lady! What the hell do I know?
Reading a book about legendary heroes of the Old West is not something I looked forward to, so the book languished on my “to read” pile until one day I picked it up just because it is written by Mary Doria Russell, and because she has knocked my socks off with every book I’ve read by her.
It starts off slow, summing up the early genteel years of John Henry Holliday in Georgia, just prior to, during and after the War Between the States. At 22 he is diagnosed with acute tuberculosis, and is advised that a drier climate out West might provide him with a more comfortable life, as short as it was likely to be. He had trained as a dentist, so he had a skill. Times were hard, and while he was a very very good dentist, it was a good thing he also had skills with card playing, to supplement his income when people didn’t have the money to go to the dentist.
Don’t skip over the early years, because what happens in the early years resonates into his years living in the West. The majority of the book takes place in Dodge, a border town where laws are made over a card game and by the men who will profit from them. Lives are hard, and short. While it is surely the wild west, the focus is on the relationships Doc builds – Wyatt and Morgan Earp (all the Earp brothers), Bat Masterson, the gals . . . here is where Russell’s artistry shines; the cardboard figures begin to become real people. We start to like one or two, admire another, despise one more.
Here’s what I love about Mary Doria Russell – without being at all preachy, she makes you stop and think about some of the values you hold most dear. Once you get west, 80% of the women featured in the book are prostitutes. Most of the characters drink heavily, and routinely use drugs which are today restricted to prescriptions. There is corruption, and murder, and arson, and abortion, and contraception, and adultery, and there is no one character who is purely good or purely evil, they are all complicated, just as we are. She can lead you to dislike a character, who at just the right moment knows just the right thing to say, and suddenly, you see that character differently, because another facet of his or her character has been revealed.
In the questions at the back of the book, we are asked if we were to meet Doc Holliday, would we like him? I had to ask the question the other way around – if I were to meet Doc Holliday, how would he perceive me? I found myself thinking outside the box, found myself thinking that if I knew my life were going to be very very short, would I want to hang around with normal people, dull, predictable people? Maybe people who look better on the outside than they are, or think more highly of themselves than they ought? Doc Holliday hung around with lawmen and gamblers and prostitutes and bartenders; his patients were law-abiding church-going citizens. Who gave greater color and meaning to his life? Who were more likely to be down-to-earth and practical and unpretentious?
There is an absolutely delightful segment about a Jesuit priest from an old Hungarian aristocratic family who finds himself riding out to visit all the small Catholic Indian parishes on a donkey, replacing a highly popular priest who is very sick; he is teased and mocked and treated with disrespect. One night, cold and wet, covered with dirt and filth in the desert, he has an epiphany that changes his life. Mary Doria Russell books have these luminous moments, worth reading the entire book for, and which will bring a smile of memory to your face long after you have finished reading the book.
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