Heartache in Pensacola
It’s a beautiful full moon over the oil soaked beaches of Pensacola. There is a beach advisory against children on the beach, against pregnant women or people with weak immune systems being on the beach. The surf is contaminated with oil and VOC, which is volatile organic compounds, whatever that means, it is bad.
Checking Out Pensacola Beach
After our water aerobics class this morning, AdventureMan and I drove out to the beautiful sugar-white sandy beaches of Pensacola to check the damage. The clean up crews have been busy, and the beaches look gorgeous. People are sunning, swimming, and sharing the beaches with the clean up crews.
A big huge electronic sign announces that the road to the beach will be closed all day tomorrow. How can you close a major road? Is this Kuwait, or Qatar, where the will of the Amir says “Make it so!” and it is so? Oh. Wait. President Obama is coming, so the road will be his and his alone to go out to the beaches and see what we saw today.
The huge, gigantic glob of oil has only sent tendrils, so far, to the pristine white beaches, but doom impends as storms and winds blow the thick oily sludge toward the shores. God willing, President Obama will find a way to encourage British Petroleum to work with a little more conviction and energy to find a long term solution to this unthinkable TWO MONTHS and hundreds of thousands of gallons spewing into the Gulf.
Breath of Fresh Air at Christ’s Church, Pensacola
AdventureMan and I slid into our seats just as the bell started ringing, and looked at one another in concern – “Does it feel hot in here to you?” “Yep.”
It was only eight in the morning, but the church was breathless.
It made me smile, remembering our church in Tunisia, St. George’s, where there was no air conditioning, only fans – when the electricity was working. St. George’s is the oldest Anglican Church in Africa, and is located in the large Tunis souk. Summers were long and hot, and many a Sunday I had to gather my squirming two-year-old and take him out to the garden for a stern talking-to. It was a wonderful, diverse church, and we loved our time there – breathless or not.
And we got through the service, heat and all, it wasn’t that bad.
The sermon was really good. Father Neal was talking about Jesus, invited to a banquet, having his feet washed by the tears of Mary Magdelen, and dried with her hair.
As an aside, one of the things I love about Jesus was his kindness to women, including them when he talked, healing their hurts, defending them against stoning – in a culture not unlike that in which we have been living, where women are contracted into marriage, “protected” by laws which often deprive them of independence and choices, and living lives greatly separate from men. Jesus spoke to women, and he spoke to their hearts. He included them among his followers and supporters. In the context of his society, his behavior was radical and challenging to the status quo.
Father Neal totally got that. He talked about the scandalous sensuality of Mary’s act, washing Jesus feet and then drying them with her long hair. He talked about hair, traditionally covered in that part of the world, being a woman’s glory, and only privately displayed among family and to husband. He talked about her remorse, and her humility, and that through her loving act, her spirit was cleansed and her sins forgiven. And he talked about the customs and traditions of hospitality, and the shock of Jesus criticizing his host – who was criticizing him – for his lack of welcome, and signs of hospitality to an honored guest.
His sermon was a breath of fresh air in a very warm church. We held on to every word.
Later in the day, old friends came for dinner, and our son and his wife and our grandson. Cannot imagine a more wonderful day. π
Save This for a Down Day
Thank you, Kuwait friend, for this wonderful video “Free Hugs.” You can’t help but smile after watching it. π
Garden Gate Newsletter for June
We love this place!
The Garden Gate
3268 Fordham Pkwy.
Gulf Breeze, Fl. 32563
850-932-9066
thegardengategb@bellsouth.net
June Class Schedule
Cut Flowers
Flowers are used to mark every occasion in our lives — bouquets celebrate the birth of a baby, weddings and engagements, or other special celebrations and even help us mourn the passing of a loved one. Since Victorian times, certain flowers and flower colors have had special meanings and were used to convey tender (or not so tender) sentiments. Many of these meaningful flowers can be grown in our landscapes, either in an area dedicated to cut flowers or incorporated into other plantings. Join us Wed. June 9, from 10:00 until 11:00 A.M. to learn the about the language of these flowers plus how and where to grow them. Cost of the class is $5.00. Please call to register.
Shade Gardening
Even though shady sites can limit the plants that can be used, and are often hard to dig in because of roots, these areas can provide landscaping interest with color and texture. Many plants that grow in shade donβt bloom as long as their sun-loving counterparts but continuous color can be achieved by choosing species that flower in succession. Join us Sat. June 12, at 10:00A.M. Until 11:00A.M. to learn about plants that thrive in shady areas and how to successfully grow them. We will talk about under-story trees, shrubs, perennials, and ground covers to use in shade, how to amend your soil to plant them, plus other ideas to turn you shade into an low-maintenance asset rather than a landscaping problem. Cost of the class is $5.00. Please call to register.
Cooking Demo β Tomatoes!
Tomatoes will be the main ingredient in this cooking demonstration. Beefsteak, heirloom, cherry, grape β no matter the size and shape, they are delicious! Join us Sat. June 12, at 11:30A.M.when Kim Armstrong will demonstrate simple and exciting recipes using these home-grown favorites (we will talk a little bit about growing tomatoes in our area, too). The cost for this cooking demo (and tasting!) is $7.50. Please call to register.
Natural Pest Control
As the heat and humidity rise, so do the number of pest and diseases that attack our gardens and landscapes. Join us Wed. June 16, to learn ways to keep your plants healthy without using manufactured fungicides, pesticides, and other βcidesβ. We will discuss using organic products, physical barriers, beneficial insects and other wildlife, and companion planting plus other tips and techniques for less toxic gardening. Class will be held from 10:00 A.M. until 11:00 A.M. Cost of the class is $5.00 β please call to register.
Topiary
Join us Sat. June 19 to learn about the craft of topiary — growing plants on forms or by pruning plants to create shapes. This ancient form of gardening is enjoying a resurgence in popularity right now, adding a touch or formality or tradition when used in the landscape or in interior spaces. You will learn which plants to use for topiaries and how to plant and grow them, whether in containers or in the ground. Tips for maintaining topiaries will also be discussed. We will provide all materials for you to make a topiary during the class, to take home. (This is the season to start topiaries to use or to give as gifts during the holiday season.) Class will begin at 9:30 A.M. until approx. 11:00A.M. Cost of the class is $30.00. Space will be limited for these classes, so please call to register.
Summer Containers
This class will teach you tricks to plant and maintain beautiful planters in summerβs high heat and humidity. Choosing the right plants for your growing conditions is only a part of successful summer container gardens. How to select plants for dramatic effect will also be discussed β combining βthrillers, fillers and spillersβ (using flowers, herbs, vegetables, or grasses) to make fantastic, functional focal points in your landscape. Learn watering, fertilizing and maintenance techniques in the lecture part of the class. After the class, you are invited to put together a great container garden to take home. We will provide all plants and materials. This class will be held on Wed. June 23, and Sat. June 26, at 10:00A.M. Second session will follow immediately at approx. 11:00 A.M. Cost of the class is $5.00. Cost of the after-session is $25.00. Please call to register and let us know if you will be staying for both sessions.
News and Notes
Hot weather, rainy weather, steamy weather β it must be summer! Spring flowers are beginning to fade but the heat-loving flowers are coming on strong. Annuals such as zinnias, cosmos, and coleus are tried and true for summer color. Unlike in our grandmotherβs time, however, coleus can now be grown in the sun and cosmos can be found in dwarf or double forms in a much wider range of colors. The dwarf zinnias are our favorites, blooming from now until frost with a low mounding habit that does not need dead-heading. They are available in pinks, oranges, reds, yellows, and whites. Try the Profusion series or the Narrow-leaf zinnias in hanging baskets or other containers or in the front of a flower bed. Plant breeders have also worked to improve some old-fashioned perennials. For example, there are many new forms and cultivars of rudbeckia (black-eyed Susans) and gaillardia, or blanket flowers. Some of the most recent and interesting breeding breakthroughs have been with Echinacea (or purple-cone flower). By crossing a yellow species with a purple species, a series of orange flowered Echinacea have been developed. These North American native perennials are now available in all the colors of a sunset or a sunrise. They make spectacular and long-lasting cut flowers, blooming from summer well into fall. Purple cone flowers like sunny sites on the dry side, with a little compost or manure to slightly sweeten the soil. Butterflies love them!
We are seeing lots of birds at our feeders right now, mostly hard-working moms and dads feeding their nestlings. The Carolina wrens that have built the nest in the canvas bag on our porch seem especially busy, not only visiting the feeders but also combing the gardens and container plants for insects for their ravenous young. This week, we have seen the wrens, chickadees, house finches, cardinals, sparrows, bluejays, and red-bellied woodpeckers at our feeders. And then we have our βotherβ birds — for those of you who have not met βthe girlsβ, we now have six chickens (all hens) brought to us by a customer in early April. We have two California Whites (Beatrice and Gertrude), two Rhode Island Reds (Perryia and Katherine Hepburn), and two Americaunas (Betsy Ross and Martha Washington). We are busily preparing to build a new coop for βthe girlsβ. Come by and check our progress.
We are planning a number of new upcoming classes and cooking demos, and we would love to have your input about garden subjects or related crafts that you would like to learn about. Ideas that we are working on include classes on meditation gardens, romantic gardens, gardening on the water, living roofs and walls or vertical gardening. We are always looking for ways to engage children in gardening or the environment, we are always interested in connecting cooks and gardeners, and we are always interested in passing along information that makes gardening easier or more successful. Please let us know your ideas for classes and other activities, by calling, e-mailing, or just stopping by. Thanks!
Rise in Single Teen Age Mothers in US
Excerpts from new study out from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention found on AOL National News are below. To read the entire article, and for a link to the original report, click on the blue type above.
(June 2) — Attitudes among American teens about birth control, sexual activity and pregnancy have remained largely unchanged since 2002, according to a new federal report.
Stalled progress is bad enough, but some subtle changes also have experts concerned.
Most notably, more teens than ever are using the “rhythm method” to prevent pregnancy, and a growing number of teen girls approve of underage childbirth. . .
After dropping steadily for more than a decade, the teen birth rate in the U.S. rose between 2005 and 2007. Compared with other developed countries, the U.S. posted the remarkably high rate in 2007 of 42 babies per 1,000 teen girls. In Canada, by contrast, only 13 babies are born per 1,000 teen girls. . .
Laura Lindberg, senior research associate at the nonprofit Guttmacher Institute, speculates that the growing number of glamorous celebrities bearing children — especially as single mothers — is having an impact on the attitudes of America’s youth.
(Article contributed to AOL by Katie Drummond)
Grilling at Garden Gate Nurseries
Late Friday, we saw a notice in the paper that there would be a class on grilling vegetables held on Saturday at the Garden Gate Nursery. Any excuse will do; AdventureMan calls and finds there are still a couple slots available and we sign up.
Oh what fun! The teacher, Kim, was clever and entertaining, and best of all, she has a gift for imagining what flavors will go together if fresh ways. We learned how to grill corn-on-the-cob which is plentiful right now in the Florida markets, and how to grill pineapple, with an orange sauce, fabulous over ice cream.
Garden Gate is so clever, combining gardening and growing and grilling, but also, they are coming up with classes on how to manage the vegetables and fruits that you grow – cooking with basil, iced courses made with exotic and unexpected ingredients, new ways to utilize all those zuccini and tomatoes . . . Well worth the drive. π
Kuwait or Qatar or Pensacola?
Showering after my water-aerobics class, I could hear voices discussing a local political-social situation. A benefits agency has groups of families working in it, and they know all the tricks. They know how to insure more of their own family members hired, and they know how to help all their family members (and friends) take advantage of all the entitlements.
Expats abroad call it nepotism, and scorn it as a third-world corruption. In truth, it happens everywhere.
There is an ongoing schism taking place in Qatar and Kuwait, countries that have been gracious and welcoming to me. The nationals of Kuwait and Qatar control citizenship carefully. The citizen base is about 20% of the population, on a good day. The rest of the population are people who are in Kuwait and Qatar to work. Most there to work can never hope for citizenship. For many, the poverty in their home country is so brutal that no matter how hard the working conditions, at least it is a salary, and they can send something home so that, literally, their families can eat. They dream – like we do – of educating their children so that they will have a better, more secure life.
Here is the problem. When 80% of the population is NON-Kuwaiti, or NON-Qatari, your country starts to change. One way in which things have changes is that in a very short time, the highways have gone from very quiet to gridlock, due to a dramatic increase in drivers and cars. In Qatar, the situation is made worse by nationalization of the taxi service, resulting in so few taxis that hotels now use private limo services, because finding a taxi at peak times is near to impossible.
That’s one issue. The second issue is language. Imagine your elderly parents going into shops to buy something – in their own country – and the clerks don’t speak their language. As they are stumbling and bewildered, some noisy “workers” walk in, state their needs, are understood, conduct their business and exit before you even get served. This is happening in Kuwait and in Qatar; everyone is speaking English. In a country where the workers are Indian, Nepalese, Philipino, Saudi, Yemani, Omani, Lebanese, Syrian, French, Dutch, English, Australian, South African, American (and about thirty or forty others) the common language has evolved to be English, not Arabic.
How do you think you would feel if it were happening here? If the great majority of cars on the road were not “us” but “guests” in our country? If the clerks in stores couldn’t understand what you want, because although they are in your country, they don’t speak your language?
Another problem is what to do with the huge, disproportionate number of geographically single males brought in to work as builders, cleaners, heavy equipment operators, dishwashers, drivers, security guards and other fairly low-paid positions? In Kuwait and in Qatar, non-married sex is strictly forbidden, even holding hands in public is considered an affront to morality. These men are banned from malls where families might gather, and from other public places. Their existence is grim, and they often find themselves unpaid, or paid far less than they were promised for their labor.
Last, but not least, this very modest Gulf culture has people – foreign guest workers – parading themselves on their streets in various states of undress. Think about it – that’s how we look to them. We have no shame. We bare our faces. We flaunt the glory of our uncovered hair. Sometimes a shawl might drop and a glimpse of bare arm or even a hint of cleavage might shock the modest eyes of a believer.
In Pensacola, there are also fundamentalists who wear long skirts, long sleeves, and determinedly modest clothing. I wonder what these believers think about the skimpy clothing on the beaches, or in the malls?
Coming home has been a real eye opener. It was easy for me to be critical of things I saw in Qatar and in Kuwait. Coming home, we joke all the time about “Kuwaiti drivers” here in the US, but the real joke is – they sure look a lot like us.
Last week, we saw a man here make a U-turn right in the middle of the road, and rock as he tried to regain control of his truck, and almost blast right through a red light he didn’t see. The back of his truck was down, and items loose in the truck bed were heading toward the highway – fortunately he figured that out, and last we saw, he had stopped to fix his rear door. Maybe he wasn’t sober. Maybe he had had an argument with his wife or boss or someone and was not paying close attention to his driving. All I know is that we have seen a goodly number of inattentive drivers here, too.
When a bureaucracy gets corrupted, when the rules are not applied equally to all, when select groups get favored treatment – here in Pensacola, at the immigration department in Kuwait or in the traffic department in Qatar – everyone suffers. It’s a political problem, a social problem, and a systemic problem. God willing, if we are truly evolving as a species, we will find a way to create truly fair and transparent systems which will work as they are ideally intended to work.
It’s on us. We have to make it happen. We have to want it badly enough to make it happen, even making sacrifices for the greater good.
I don’t have any answers. I don’t know how to make us better people that we are, how to make ourselves make the right choices. I do know this – whether it is a tiny village in Germany, or an eagle’s aerie in Kuwait, or the lush life of Doha – we are all more alike, and share more similarities and problems, than we are different. If we could only learn to see through one another’s eyes, maybe we could find ways to resolve our differences and learn to cooperate.
Kuwait Bans Blackberry?
I have always loved politics. I don’t love politick-ing, I love watching what politicians do. One of the first rules, in my book, is “Don’t pass laws you can’t enforce.”
It’s pretty basic. Have you ever watched parents who tell their children over and over “Don’t do (whatever)” but they are too lazy to get off their big bottoms to go over and distract the child or to enforce penalties for misbehavior? What happens? The child does – or continues to do – what he or she wants, while the parent either gives up or escalates to a punishment out of proportion to the infraction.
Governments are the same. Don’t make a big noise if you don’t intend – or can’t – follow through. Don’t create penalties you can’t or won’t enforce.
Trying to ban Blackberries in Kuwait – LLLLLOOOOOOLLLLLLLLL! Trying to ban message services? These tech-savvy young people can run circles around the politicians and bureaucrats who try. This is a total hoot.
BlackBerry Ban Eyed
KUWAIT CITY, May 23: The Ministry of Interior is planning to stop BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) service and a decision to this effect might be issued within the next few days, reports Al-Shahid daily. A security source said the service cannot be controlled by the Ministry of Communications or security authorities and hence, users of BlackBerry sets were taking advantage to spread rumors and call for strikes.
He added that the ministry came to the decision after conducting studies and holding several meetings in the last fortnight. The three telecommunication companies in Kuwait, however, said they had not received any official request from the Interior Ministry so far.
Arab Times Online
BBC and the Oil Spill and Ethiopian Elections
You would think that living here on the Gulf Coast within miles of the huge oil spill spewing out to putrefy the beautiful, sparkling gulf waters, that we would have the best, most comprehensive coverage of the local news.
Not so.
“I love BBC!” I called out from my studio to AdventureMan, in his study next door. “Who else is covering the Ethiopian elections in such detail? And they have the best coverage of the oil spill!”
Here is the latest; and excerpt from the Huffington Post:
BARATARIA BAY, La. (AP) — As officials approached to survey the damage the Gulf oil spill caused in coastal marshes, some brown pelicans couldn’t fly away Sunday. All they could do was hobble.
Several pelicans were coated in oil on Barataria Bay off Louisiana, their usually brown and white feathers now jet black. Pelican eggs were glazed with rust-colored gunk, and new hatchlings and nests were also coated with crude.
It is unclear if the area can even be cleaned, or if the birds can be saved. It is also unknown how much of the Gulf Coast will end up looking the same way because of a well that has spewed untold millions of gallons of oil since an offshore rig exploded more than a month ago.
“As we talk, a total of more than 65 miles of our shoreline now has been oiled,” said Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who announced new efforts to keep the spill from spreading.
A mile-long tube operating for about a week has siphoned off more than half a million gallons in the past week, but it began sucking up oil at a slower rate over the weekend. Even at its best the effort did not capture all the oil leaking, and the next attempt to stanch the flow won’t be put into action until at least Tuesday. . . .
In Barataria Bay, orange oil had made its way a good 6 inches onto the shore, coating grasses and the nests of brown pelicans in mangrove trees. Just six months ago, the birds had been removed from the federal endangered species list.
The pelicans struggled to clean the crude from their bodies, splashing in the water and preening themselves. One stood at the edge of the island with its wings lifted slightly, its head drooping — so encrusted in oil it couldn’t fly.
Wildlife officials tried to rescue oil-soaked pelicans Sunday, but they suspended their efforts after spooking the birds. They weren’t sure whether they would try again. U.S. Fish and Wildlife spokeswoman Stacy Shelton said it is sometimes better to leave the animals alone than to disturb their colony.
Pelicans are especially vulnerable to oil. Not only could they eat tainted fish and feed it to their young, but they could die of hypothermia or drowning if they’re soaked in oil.
Globs of oil have soaked through containment booms set up in the area. Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser said BP needed to send more booms. He said it would be up to federal wildlife authorities to decide whether to try to clean the oil that has already washed ashore.
Recent Comments
ExpatAlien on What Country am I Living … intlxpatr on Yellowstone: Old Faithful to C… Michelle on Yellowstone: Old Faithful to C… Cathy on No Grown-Ups in Charge intlxpatr on Waiting for Snow Wikipedia Donate Button
Amazina
Early Voting in Florida
Here There and Everywhere 