James Lee Burke and the Creole Belle
James Lee Burke is number one on my guilty-pleasures list.
I first met his main character Dave Robicheaux in A Morning For Flamingos, a book I picked up in a military library at Lindsay Air Station, a post that doesn’t even exist any more. In the cold dark endless winter in Wiesbaden, Germany, James Lee Burke lit up my life. I had thought I was picking up just another escapist mystery novel, but when James Lee Burke puts words together to describe the way a storm moves in over the bayou, prose becomes poetry.
There is a downside. Whether it is his character Dave Robicheaux, the former New Orleans cop, now head homicide investigator in New Iberia, Louisiana, or his Hackberry Holland series set in West Texas, James Lee Burke’s books are filled with extreme violence and disturbing images that live in your head for a long time.
I’ve recommended James Lee Burke to friends, some of whom have said “Why do you read this trash??? It is HORRIBLE! It is full of over-the-top violence!”
And then again . . . he is writing about some really really bad people. They are out there. There are people who exist who inflict cruelty. I don’t understand it, I can’t begin to fathom where the urge would come from, but I’ve seen it. It’s out there. James Lee Burke pulls up that rock and exposes the dark happenings underneath.
On one level, as I started reading Creole Belle, I thought “Oh James Lee Burke, stop! Stop! It’s the same old formula! A downtrodden victim (often a beautiful woman) cries for help. You and Clete start looking for information and end up beating people up and then they retaliate by threatening your family! There is a rich, beautiful woman who seems vulnerable and who you kind of like, but she is complicated. There are rich amoral people who keep their hands clean, but who are calling the shots and never go to jail! Stop! Stop!”
Well, I should say that, and maybe I should stop. Then he starts talking about the smoke from the sugar cane fields and the bridge over the Bayou Teche, and the big Evangeline oak in St. Martinsville, and I am a goner. I’m sucked in, I’m hooked.
I detest the violence and the images. I keep coming back because James Lee Burke has some important things to say.
I’d love to have him to dinner. I’d love for him and our son to have a chance to talk about Law Enforcement. Here is what James Lee Burke has to say in Creole Bell:
There are three essential truths about law enforcement: Most crimes are not punished; most crimes are not solved through the use of forensic evidence; and informants product the lion’s share of information that puts the bad guys in a cage.
My son hates shows like CSI, and Law and Order, where the evidence convicts the criminals. He says it raises unreal expectations in juries, and makes it harder to get a conviction.
We watched a Violation of Parole hearing, or actually a series of hearings, where the judge asked each individual whose parole was about to be revoked what had happened when he or she was re-arrested. In each case, the parolee had done something stupid; drove a car with an expired license, drove to another state, was arrested driving drunk, etc. EVERY time. The judge made his point, I believe.
From Creole Belle:
But if Caruso was the pro Clete thought she was, she would avoid the mistakes and geographical settings common to the army of miscreants and dysfunctional individuals who constitute the criminal subculture of the United States. Few perpetrators are arrested during the commission of their crimes. They get pulled over for DWI, an expired license tag, or throwing litter on the street. They get busted in barroom beefs, prostitution stings, or fighting with a minimum-wage employee at a roach motel. Their addictions and compulsions govern their lives and place them in predictable circumstances and situations over and over, because they are incapable of changing who and what they are. Their level of stupidity is a source of humor at every stationhouse in the country. Unfortunately, the pros – high end safecrackers and jewel thieves and mobbed-up button men and second story creeps – are usually intelligent, pathological, skilled in what they do, middle class in their tastes and little different in dress and speech and behavior from the rest of us.
And then there are paragraphs like this that discuss the human experience, and have a far wider application than the book:
No one likes to be afraid. Fear is the enemy of love and faith and robs us of all serenity. It steals both our sleep and our sunrise and makes us treacherous and venal and dishonorble. It fills our glands with toxins and effaces our identity and gives flight to any vestige of self-respect. If you have ever been afraid, truly afraid, in a way that makes your hair soggy with sweat and turns your skin gray and fouls your blood and spiritually eviscerates you to the point where you cannot pray lest your prayers be a concesion to your conviction that you’re about to die, you know what I am talking about. This kind of fear has no remedy except motion, no matter what kind. Every person who has experienced war or natural ctastrophe or man-made calamity knows this. The adrenaline surge is so great that you can pick up an automobile with your bare hands, plunge through glass windows in flaming buildings, or attack an enemy whose numbers and weaponry are far superior to yours. No fear of self-injury is as great as the fear that turns your insides to gelatin and shrivels your soul to the size of an amoeba.
Last, but not least, this is what keeps me coming back to James Lee Burke, so much so that I buy the book almost as soon as it is released. James Lee Burke isn’t afraid to take on the big guys. He “gives voice to those who have no voices.” (Proverbs 31:8) His focus is always on the dignity of the common man, the dignity of hard work, done well, and on the dignity of doing unexpected kindnesses to those who have no expectation of kindness.
. . . All was not right with the world. Giant tentacles of oil that had the color and sheen of feces had spread all the way to Florida, and the argument that biodegradation would take care of the problem would be a hard sell with the locals. The photographs of pelicans and egrets and seagulls encased in sludge, their eyes barely visible, wounded the heart and caused parents to shield their children’s eyes. The testimony before congressional committees by Louisiana fisher-people whose way of life was being destroyed did not help matters, either. The oil company responsible for the blowout had spent an estimated $50 million trying to wipe their fingerprints off Louisiana’s wetlands. They hired black people and whites with hush-puppy accents to be their spokesmen on television. The company’s CEO’s tried their best to look ernest and humanitarian, even though the company’s safety record was the worst of any extractive industry doing business in the United States. They also had a way of chartering their offshore enterprises under the flag of countries like Panama. Their record of geopolitical intrigue went all the way back to the installation of the shah of Iran in the 1950’s. Their even bigger problem was an inability to shut their mouths.
They gave misleading information to the media and the government about the volume of oil escaping from the blown well, and made statements on worldwide television about wanting their lives back and the modest impact that millions of gallons of crude would have on the Gulf Coast. For the media, their tone-deafnessness was a gift from a divine hand. Central casting couild not have provided a more inept bunch of villains.
James Lee Burke has a voice, and he uses it. He could just cash in on his reputation as an Edgar Award winning author, but he uses his voice to speak out against injustice and corruption. He is a champion of the people. I’ve written several book reviews, and taken some trips just because I wanted to see James Lee Burke country; if you are interested in those, you can read them here.
I have a concern about this series, in that this book ended differently than all the others. So differently it made me seriously question whether Burke intends to continue writing about Dave Robicheaux or if Dave is about to hang up his shield and call it a day. He’s a guilty pleasure I am not yet ready to give up.
Another Broken Egg in Pensacola
AdventureMan and I often discuss why one restaurant succeeds and another fails. One restaurant with a high quality food was very successful, moved to a larger location, and soon after a popular Chinese buffet moved in close by and now, he complains the competition is killing him.
These are killing times, highly competitive times, when people have less money to spend on eating out. While we prefer non-chain, local owned places which prepare their own food, many of the success stories are parts of chains where they can maximize standardization and gain benefits from ordering supplies in large quantities.
Another Broken Egg is somewhere in between. It is part of a chain, but a very small, very high quality and successful local chain. The Pensacola owners visited a Broken Egg in Destin multiple times, loved its product, and decided to bring the chain to Pensacola.
We’re glad they did. First, they serve a really, noticeably GOOD cup of coffee.
Then, they have a menu with a lot of variety. My first time there, I ordered the Popeye, which had lots of spinach, and it was yummy. This time, I tried the Smoked Salmon Eggs Benny, another hit.
Umm . . . err . .. yes, it is half eaten. Sorry. One funny thing, I thought “oooh, that is too much whipped cream cheese” and scraped it off, only to realize that the fluffy white thing was the egg, beautifully and artistically poached. What is not to love, a beautiful poached egg, smoked salmon, an English muffin (hardly any fat)?
AdventureMan had the Greek Wrap; he loved it.
The wait-staff is well trained; they make easy conversation, pay attention to what you need, and the owners/managers come around to make sure you enjoyed your meal.
Another Broken Egg
721 East Gregory Street
Pensacola
(850) 912-8347
Maria’s Mermaid
We like Maria’s; we like the variety of seafoods they carry, and we like that the fish is fresh. We often see the fishermen parked with their boats next to Maria’s, hauling out this morning’s catch.
AdventureMan runs into Maria for tonight’s dinner and I notice their mermaid. I think the artist must have had a lot of fun painting this Mermaid, who is not your Starbucks Mermaid:
And doesn’t strike you as sad that this perky little mermaid would be offering up her half-brothers and half-sisters for eating?
Maria’s Fresh Seafood Market
621 East Cervantes Street Pensacola, FL 32501
(850) 432-4999
Adonna’s Pensacola for Breakfast
We’re all about small adventures for keeping life exciting, so we like to hit the Saturday morning market on Palafox in downtown Pensacola, picking up a home made jam or two, a plant to try in our garden, some fresh fruit or vegetables.
AdventureMan has a yen for biscuits and gravy, and it has to be Adonna’s. There are biscuits and gravy and biscuits and gravy, but he believes Adonna’s does it the best. I have to take his word for it; biscuits and gravy have no appeal to me, and I don’t touch them.
On the way in, I saw a couple runners eating outside, and I asked one what she was eating.
“OMG, it’s the best cinnamon roll French toast ever!” she enthused. I don’t usually order French toast, I can make a really good French toast myself, but I was just in a mood to try something new, so I ordered the Cinnamon Bun French Toast and grits, which I also never order.
I can’t let myself do it often. The Cinnamon Bun French Toast is just too good. It’s addictive, and I am really sure it is not at all good for me. But oh, heaven. It is so good. The grits were just grits, but not bland; they had a little salt in them. Not good enough to eat – for me – so I just took a nibble and was proud of myself for not eating them all 🙂
Adonna’s, near the Post Office on Palafox, serves breakfast and lunch.
PATRICIA WELLS AT HOME IN PROVENCE: Recipes Inspired By Her Farmhouse In France
Ahhhhh. . . . . this is a gift for Father’s Day to AdventureMan, a gift that just keeps on giving.
The first night, he read it in bed, enthusiastically reading aloud ingredients for various recipes; they all sounded so delicious we were HUNGRY! Today we headed for the grocery store to find the crucial ingredients, which, because this book is very homey, are not hard to find. AdventureMan is making a pasta with sweet red peppers, and tonight, because we trust Patricia Wells, he is even going to add the Parmesan cheese which he sometimes hates. He has discovered that if it is really really good Parmesan cheese, it’s not so bad. (I don’t think he will ever like the stinky, salty Pecorino that I adore.)
I can hear him whistling in the kitchen as he prepares the onions and red peppers. My tummy is grumbling; I know this is going to be good!
We are Patricia Wells addicts. When we lived our many years in Germany, we had her books The Food Lovers Guide to France, and the Food Lovers Guide to Paris, and they were our major resources to go see things we might never otherwise have even known. She introduced us to Monsieur Fallot’s magnificent moutardes, and to La Duree’s hot chocolate and macaroons. We found kitchen shops and bakeries and charcuteries, and while she often led us into temptation, she never led us astray.
The recipes in this book are doable. She requires GOOD olive oil and fresh ingredients, we can do that. There is nothing very complicated or difficult – it’s home cooking, as only the French can do it. God bless you, Patricia Wells. 🙂
And now . . . to dinner 🙂
Nkwali Camp, Day 2
We’ve booked three nights at each camp, so we get at least two full days at each, and additional drives or hikes for the transfer days – there is never a dull moment.
The drums, the drums, and we are ready and out the door in no time. Today, as we are walking down to catch the boat, my toe catches on a root and I almost fall into the river. Even though the Luangwa is shallow, it would still be humiliating, and I would have to go back and change clothes, and then (gulp) there are those crocodiles . . . . The path is rough and I am a little unbalanced by my backpack, and by the grace of God, the guide, Keyala, steels himself, I hit him and he doesn’t fall in the water when I hit. He holds steady. Thanks be to God! (By evening, there was a new set of stairs, and no roots.)
Our day starts with leopard. We are once again at a green lagoon, watching ducks and cranes, when Keyala says “look, there is a leopard!” and about two hundred yards back, he is at a pond, drinking, then quietly, slowly, turns and walks back into the forest. What a great way to start!
Sorry, the leopard is in the distance and you learn to shoot fast. It doesn’t always make for the sharpest shot, but by the time you get all the settings right and the focus set, the leopard is gone and you have a photo of the lagoon where the leopard was, who wants to see that?
We have a lively morning, full of birds and more elephant and giraffe:
These giraffe are young males, and they are fighting with their necks, sort of comical to watch, but they can seriously hurt one another. I think these ones are more playing at fighting:
This hippo has gotten tired of the fighting for a spot in the river and has found a lovely isolated spot in the lagoon. You can tell he is a weathered old soul by the scars on his body.
We also get a chance to photograph that glorious fish eagle in a tree – this is how you usually see them; the one I shot in the previous post on Nkwali was actually catching a fish. You don’t get that shot often:
Many stops later, we are driving along and we smell sausages. Keyala says it must be a nearby lodge, but there is no lodge near by. . . We turn a corner and there is a crew, with a fire, and camp chairs all set up, and we realize we are about to experience one of the infamous Nkwali BBQ cook-outs, oh what fun. We are overlooking another great lagoon, full of hippo, Cape Buffalo, baboons, and all kinds of wildlife. Robert, the stellar camp cook, is there asking us how we like our eggs, and with our eggs are sausage, bacon, corn fritters, fried onion, baked beans and toast from loaves of bread made in camp, big thick slices.
On our way back to camp, we will cross the river again:
And here is one of many of the crocodiles sunning on the river sand:
Just before we get back to camp, we see a Zambian local, fishing in the river. Look closely at the canoe – we used to see canoes like this in Alaska, too, dugouts. Imagine the hours it takes to hollow out a tree so that you can use it as a boat, and imagine that if you have very little, the man who has created for himself a boat can be a man with an enhanced opportunity to feed his family . . .
Once again, we arrive back at camp, and snooze a little until dinner. Bumping around in the Toyota trucks wears us out, and we are still jet lagging, some times we think we’ve beat it, and then when we least expect it, it beats us. I really need to wash my hair, it gets so dusty from the trails, but I really really need a nap and a nap almost always trumps washing hair.
As we head out on our last Nkwali game drive, there is an air of excitement. We find the noble-looking kudu, so shy, and he astonishes us by walking across the road so we can get a clear shot of those amazing curled antlers.
You’d think there would come a time when we might think “Oh, it’s just another elephant family,” but for us, that time never comes. We always watch them with fascination, thinking how very smart they are, how far they range, how they communicate, and how they mourn the deaths of their group. Elephant are huge, and they have their own agenda, they are not there for our entertainment but for their own survival, so we watch them with great respect.
Keyala takes us across the river and we head up to the highest hill for sundowners, half-searching for lion and leopard on the way. The highest hill has a 180 degree view of the land all the way to the escarpment, and the sun sets at just about 90 degrees – right in front of us. Behind us, about the same time, the full moon rises. It is awesome.
This is Keyala and Keyfus. Keyfus (Kay-fus), on the left, is the same as Cephus in Greek, meaning rock – Saint Peter’s name. Keyala is our guide, and recently marketed for Robin Pope Safaris in Seattle. 🙂
On this high hill I spot a tree, Sterculia quinqueloba, a tree I have never seen before, and Keyala tells us the name. It is such an unusual tree:
Sunset from the high hill in the Chongwe Game Park:
Moonrise in the east, magical:
Dinner conversation is fast and furious back at camp, and we excuse ourselves to make sure we are packed up and ready for departure the next day for Tena Tena. We say a sad farewell to Chris, and Tina, and Keyala, who have taken such good care of us and gotten our Zambia safari off to such a great and happy start.
Lusaka, Zambia to Nkwali, South Luangwa Valley, Zambia
Lusaka to Nkwali
“The shuttle will leave promptly at one” the concierge scolded, as if we had been late for any shuttle before.
“We’ll be there!” we responded, and we were. We had our bags packed and ready, and were in the lobby by 12:45. The shuttle, this time a big bus, was just for us, and in spite of Friday afternoon traffic, made good time to the airport.
For all our efforts to be on time, we learned that our flight would be delayed another hour and a half. On one hand, we are always glad when airlines make needed repairs . . . we’d rather have a safe flight. On the other hand, the sun sets early, it is winter in Zambia, and it would be nearly dark when we arrived. It isn’t like the US, or Kuwait, or Qatar, or even Lusaka, where there are strong lights so you can land after dark. If it is dark in Mfuwe, your plane can’t land. We really, really don’t want to stay in Lusaka another night when we really want to be in the bush.
It was very nearly dark when we arrived, but we did arrive in time to land. We missed the sunset, but we got to see the villagers all en route to the nearest markets for Friday evening shopping, and got to camp just in time to set down our bags and have dinner. Earlier campers have left, and for the first night, the four of us have the entire camp to ourselves.
Here is a view that thrills me – the full moon, as seen from our shower:
Nkwali is a Robin Pope Camp, and we have been coming back regularly since our first trip about 12 years ago. We were last there four years ago with out son and his wife.
“What would you like to see?” our hostess Tina and camp manager Chris asked us.
“I’ve always loved giraffe,” one of our group replied, “Can you arrange for a giraffe?”
“Yes, we can arrange that,” he smiled.
Meanwhile, camp wildlife joined us for dinner:
Still jet lagging, we went to bed and AdventureMan was sound asleep quickly, just after hearing the “hahahahahahahaha” of the hippos. Just as I was falling asleep, I heard what I thought were the guards footsteps around our cabin, but they went on and on, and it sounded like he was sitting on our front porch. After about five minutes, I got up and peeked out the curtains. A hippo! A hippo, not ten feet away, munching on greenery just off our patio. It’s amazing how quietly a hippo walks – soundlessly, on those big round feet – but how noisily he munches. It was the munching I had mistaken for footsteps.
There are also monkeys, which are adorable, like tiny kittens, playful and scampering, but they like to come in the cabin. We are told that they don’t bother with anything except food, so not to keep food open in our cabins, but our neighbor had her medications knocked about, and a glass full of soda sent crashing to the floor by monkeys – while she was right there showering!
Morning came too quickly, the drums drumming at 0530 to wake us for a 0545 breakfast and 0600 departure for the bush.
It’s a beautiful day, we eat some hot porridge and load up for a morning in the bush.
Just leaving the camp, we saw hyena ahead of us on the road, and a warthog family, and then giraffe! One, off in the distance! Later in the day we would see more of these Thornicroft giraffe, endemic to this part of Zambia.
We drove up to the river cross barge, a private barge funded by the local camps to help get their guests across to the national park on the other side. The barge trip is an event in itself, hand pulled across the wide, but shallow Luangwa river. Shallow, but full of hippo, and full of crocodiles, too.
The best part of the morning was reaching a huge lagoon, full of exotic birds, and with a constant stream of animals coming to drink, parades of zebra, elephant, a fishing eagle, ibis, Egyptian duck and many others. We are a patient bunch, and we loved just finding a good position and watching the game pass through, getting a good shot when we could. By the time we headed back to the lodge for lunch, we were exhausted.
This isn’t the most crisp photo, but I love the length of that loooonnng trunk reaching out into the lagoon for water. Sometimes you only get one shot:
This is a fish eagle. The next shot, he has a fish in his claws, but it isn’t a very clear shot:
Nkwali Cape Buffalo
Then, just for our companion, we came across giraffe – lots of giraffe, but it’s not easy to get a good clear shot, because you are mostly shooting them against trees, head in the leaves, and you have to shoot fast or all you get are giraffe butts, walking away:
We leave the Land Cruiser on the National Park side of the river, and men from the camp poll us back. The river is so shallow that we almost get stuck on the sand bar.
You’d think we could just walk across, but there are territorial hippo and hungry crocodile, and we don’t want to tangle with either of them.
One of the funniest continuing jokes on the trip are the questions from people who have never traveled in Africa who with great concern ask “But what will you eat?” We took photos often, because we ate often, and well. This is our lunch the first day when we got back:
I always have a list of things I need to do. Like at these camps, women need to wash out their own underwear, it’s a cultural thing, men are doing the laundry but they won’t touch womens underclothes, so I always have some clothespins to hang things to dry. I also wanted to wash my hair, which gets dusty quickly out driving on the game drives. I have to do it in the afternoon, so it will dry (no hair dryers in the bush), and then I need to lay down, because I’m really sleepy, still jet lagging. When I wake up to the “tea-time” drums two hours later. I felt so good! I felt like it was the best sleep I had gotten since leaving Pensacola, and it made me feel good, and full of energy once again.
Here is what our cabin, and Nkwali Camp, look like:
This is our writing desk; there is one in each cabin:
This is where you can unpack while you stay here, and where I lay out my clothes the night before so I don’t have to think when we get up early the next morning. When you are getting up really early, and only have about 15 minutes to get ready, you need to be able to get dressed without thinking too much about it. (It’s kind of like going to kid’s camp, only this is grown-up camp, LOL)
I almost hate to show you too much, it’s all such a wonderful surprise, finding these lovely cabins in the wild, but some people are so afraid to give it a try, I wanted to reassure you that it is quite civilized:
This doesn’t look like a lot, but the screen is enough to keep the wild animals out of your room when the sun goes down:
We love this bathroom:
We really really love this, this huge shower, with dual heads, big enough for both of us to shower at the same time, in the hot afternoon.
This is the Nkwali dining area:
This is the pool area and lagoon adjoining the dining area:
This is the gathering area/bar, and also where the campfire is, and where we eat breakfast around the campfire:
It seems to me that Nkwali is pretty much the intake area, where they help us all understand how things work, then they send us off to the other camps, Nsefu and Tena Tena, or to the fly camps (outdoor camping), or the mobile tented safaris. Before you go, you have to know the protocols, so Nkwali sort of educates you.
Your day goes like this – drums, get up, get dressed, go eat, load up into the car, go look for game. Back to camp for lunch, take care of washing underwear or hair, take a nap, drums, wake up, drink tea and eat cake, go for a game drive, stop for sun-downers, see lions (if you are lucky), back to camp, meet up in the gathering area/bar for drinks, drums for dinner, eat dinner, lay out your clothes, fall into bed (repeat)
After tea, we took a boat, polling back across to the national park, where we left the car. We drive, admiring giraffe (many!) and elephant and hippo. We run into one elephant who seriously, seriously does not like us. He does several mock charges, but he doesn’t walk away, he keeps charging.
We had a beautiful sunset on the river, and then went seriously looking for lion.
At the same time the sun is setting in the west, the full moon is rising in the east, fabulous:
The most exciting part was coming across a group of three young lions, one with a battered and bleeding ear, who tolerated our photo-taking until they didn’t. Then, one got up with a roar, and started walking and roaring.
Have you ever heard a lion roar? It is very very impressive; very loud, very resonant, it shakes your bones with its power. Shortly, one of his brothers joined him. They walked away down the wadi (what we call dry river beds when we live in the Middle East) and we thought we had a great night. Little did we know we were also going to have a leopard walk right next to our vehicle, and each of us was working frantically to figure out night time settings, so totally unexpected that not one of us got a photo. It didn’t matter. The very closeness of the passage and his utter disregard for our presence, his focus, was amazing and memorable.
All this fresh air and fabulous meals – Now I am back on schedule and sleeping through the night. I can hear the hippo outside munching as I am drifting off – but I just smile to myself and go happily straight to sleep.
The Lord Looks on the Heart
From today’s Lectionary reading:
It’s a common failing, when we study scriptures, to believe we get it right. The more you study, the more surprises you get, and the less sure you become about dogma, i.e. what your tribe believes is true. One of the things that comforts me is that the Lord loved Moses, who murdered a man on an uncontrolled impulse, and David, who had another man killed in battle so he could marry his wife, carrying his illegitimate child.
The Lord sees things differently.
We make things more complicated than they need to be. Jesus told us to believe simply, as a child. Jesus told us to love God with all our being, and to love our neighbor. He did not say love your fellow Christian and hate the Moslem, or love those who love you and don’t worry about the others. He pretty much said that we are to love – and serve – those with whom we come into contact.
To me, the good news is that the Lord loves sinners, even though we grieve him. If we confess, if we are truly sorry, if we ask for his forgiveness, he gives it to us. The great gift of grace – it’s a comfort to me.
1 Samuel 16:1-13
16The Lord said to Samuel, ‘How long will you grieve over Saul? I have rejected him from being king over Israel. Fill your horn with oil and set out; I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king among his sons.’ 2Samuel said, ‘How can I go? If Saul hears of it, he will kill me.’ And the Lord said, ‘Take a heifer with you, and say, “I have come to sacrifice to the Lord.” 3Invite Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will show you what you shall do; and you shall anoint for me the one whom I name to you.’ 4Samuel did what the Lord commanded, and came to Bethlehem. The elders of the city came to meet him trembling, and said, ‘Do you come peaceably?’ 5He said, ‘Peaceably; I have come to sacrifice to the Lord; sanctify yourselves and come with me to the sacrifice.’ And he sanctified Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice.
6 When they came, he looked on Eliab and thought, ‘Surely the Lord’s anointed is now before the Lord.’* 7But the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.’ 8Then Jesse called Abinadab, and made him pass before Samuel. He said, ‘Neither has the Lord chosen this one.’ 9Then Jesse made Shammah pass by. And he said, ‘Neither has the Lord chosen this one.’ 10Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel, and Samuel said to Jesse, ‘The Lord has not chosen any of these.’ 11Samuel said to Jesse, ‘Are all your sons here?’ And he said, ‘There remains yet the youngest, but he is keeping the sheep.’ And Samuel said to Jesse, ‘Send and bring him; for we will not sit down until he comes here.’ 12He sent and brought him in. Now he was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome. The Lord said, ‘Rise and anoint him; for this is the one.’ 13Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the presence of his brothers; and the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward. Samuel then set out and went to Ramah.
Want a Long Life? Cook and Eat at Home
Home Cooking Increases Longevity, Cambridge Study Shows
(from AOL News/ Huffpost Healthy Living)
For those of you who use your stove for shoe storage, nota bene: all that wasted time with an inactive kitchen could be shortening your lifespan. In fact, a new study found that people who cook up to five times a week were 47 percent more likely to still be alive after 10 years.
“It has become clear that cooking is a healthy behavior,” said lead author Professor Mark Wahlqvist in a statement. “It deserves a place in life-long education, public health policy, urban planning and household economics.”
The research team, made up of Taiwanese and Australian researchers, published their work in Public Health Nutrition, a Cambridge University journal after looking at a group of 1,888 men and women over age 65 who lived in Taiwan. At the start of the study, they interviewed each participant about several lifestyle factors, including cooking habits, household circumstances, shopping habits, diet, education, transportation and smoking.
During the initial survey, researchers found that 43 percent of participants never cooked, while 17 percent cooked one to two times per week, 9 percent cooked three to five times in a week and 31 percent cooked five or more times a week.
After 10 years, they followed up to see how many of the participants had died. They then matched lifestyle answers to the 1,193 participants who remained alive. The researchers discovered that frequent cooking was associated with survival. Also associated? Grocery shopping, taking public transportation, not smoking, and being a woman. Frequent cooking — and survival — was more common among women and most profoundly among unmarried women, though also among women with families.
There were limitations to the study: women generally live longer than men and, for cultural reasons, women were more practiced at cooking than men. Additionally, those who remained healthy were more able to perform errands related to cooking, like shopping for food, walking and taking public transportation. The truly ailing wouldn’t be able to cook because of their health — not the other way around.
But even after researchers controlled for these other factors, they found an association between frequent home cooking and longevity. “The pathways to health that food provides are not limited to its nutrients or components, but extend to each step in the food chain, from its production, to purchase, preparation and eating, especially with others,” added Wahlqvist.
AdventureMan Does Lobster
I don’t know if you remember, but when AdventureMan retired, it didn’t stick. He retired in April 2010, went back to work on contract to the same company in June – August 2010, retired, went back from October 2010 – February 2011. Finally, I think he has really retired. He hasn’t worked in a year. I think the last stint was ENOUGH! Thanks be to God.
I wasn’t sure how life would evolve, once he really really committed to retirement. And it definitely has been an evolution, starting with the day he told me he was going to re-organize my spice drawers (No! No! No, you’re not!) to yesterday, when he told me he had a yearning to broil some lobster for dinner.
You know those Red Lobster ads, like for a whole month they show these mouth-watering dinners featuring lobster, but if you actually go to Red Lobster, they are overcooked and pretty tasteless, sometimes even covered in cheese? We always say ‘never again.’
AdventureMan is a GREAT cook. Who knew? We had hints, back when our baby was born, and had colic, and AdventureMan took lessons in Chinese cooking on Saturday mornings and would cook Chinese food while I walked the squalling baby, but once the baby no longer had colic, we reverted to more traditional ways of doing things. (Pity, I still love his Chinese food!)
He started with simple things, and has become more and more daring. Lobster is expensive, but his lobster were PERFECT. He basted them with a mix of olive oil, a little sea salt and herbes de Provence. And he also fixed green beans, which were perfectly cooked, still just a little crisp, perfect.
Wooo HOOOO on you, AdventureMan!
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