Christ-Church-in-the-Gym
Today, with ample notification, the congregation met over in the Episcopal Day School Gym, while the air conditioning in the main cathedral and office buildings is being replaced. We sat on folding chairs, shoulder to shoulder, and we didn’t have kneelers.
Except for the congregation not being 1/3 Indian and 1/3 African and 1/3 all-the-rest-of-us, I would have thought I was back in Doha. 🙂 We sing the same music, follow the same liturgy – it is such a comfort, just about anywhere in the world we go, most of what we do follows the same pattern. Fellowship was held in the back of the gym, just like Doha. I’m beginning to know a few faces, and we nod a little (after all, we are Episcopalians) and I am happy our son and his wife also know a few people so worship feels more like family. Our little grandson loves the baby-care; they take such good care of him.
We have learned to live with – even adapt to – the differences wherever we might go. Some places, it’s all “smells and bells” i.e. incense, bells, high church formality. Some places it’s more evangelical, “new” music and hands in the air. Christ Church in Pensacola is old school, liturgical, but without the smells and bells. The sermons are down to earth and applicable.
The sermon today was on just that – keeping our mind on the substance of what we believe, and letting the stylistic differences go. Amen to that.
Tropical Storm Bonnie On the Horizon
Yesterday Little Diamond and I headed out to Fort Pickens, a long spit of land out on Pensacola Beach where there are old forts and batteries, campgrounds and hiking trails. The campgrounds looked heavily occupied, and there was a heavy surf – not to far from the road. In fact, although I am usually courageous, I felt uncomfortable about how close the surf was to the road. Out on this long, isolated spit, the land isn’t that much above sea level. It wouldn’t take much to wash right over the spit, and were that to happen, there is no place to run.
Personal security sort of becomes a way of life. It becomes second nature; you don’t even know you are constantly surveying your surroundings, looking for escape routes, keeping your back to the wall, facing the door, watching cars around you, etc. You don’t even know you are doing it, until you get that sort of choking sensation, knowing there is one way out and if that way is compromised, you might be sunk – in this case, literally.
On our way out and back, we saw mysterious activity, involving tents, lots of workers, surveyors and GPS systems. We speculated it might be movement of turtle eggs to avoid contamination from the oil spill, but we didn’t stop and ask – they seemed very intent and focused on their task.
We quickly toured and left for a nice lunch at Crabs – We Got ‘Em. DELICIOUS! We had the crab and spinach dip – oh Yummm. I had the crab cake sliders, which were so big I could only eat the crab cakes. Little Diamond had the Crab Ceasar. All in all, we were greatly pleased. Although yesterday was another hot hot hot and humid day, we ate outside in the shaded area, fanned by fans and Gulf breezes. Another day in Paradise. 🙂
(For those of you in the area, here is our review of our first visit to Crabs – We Got ‘Em several months ago.)
This morning, looking at the front page, we had confirmation of our fears – under the headline Bonnie Flies Over the Sea is a sub-headline “Ft. Pickens evacuates campers as storm enters Gulf, regains steam.”
A second article, above the line, is Sea Turtles Changing Shores and you can see a photo of a sea turtle nest full of eggs being moved to avoid damage from the oil spill.
Pensacola is actually just outside the projected path of Bonnie, but those storms are often known to veer from the projections. I have water and candles and matches and blankets, peanut butter and crackers stored in the closet of what Little Diamond calls the Fantasy Guest Suite. She is, as has become tradition, our first visitor. 🙂
The Devil’s Queen by Jeanne Kalogridis
“I need an ESCAPE!” I shouted to AdventureMan, at the end of my rope. So many things going on in my life that are out of my control, I just don’t want to deal with it any more, and I just want to run away and hide. “I’m going out to buy a BOOK!”
I found just the book, The Devil’s Queen by Jeanne Kalogridis.
I don’t know much about the late 1500’s in Europe, do you? At first, reading about this rich, spoiled little girl growing up in Florence, I felt a little impatient with her. All around her people are starving, and she hasn’t a clue. The plague strikes, and people are dying, but she survives. She starves, she suffers cold and fleas and is tossed by fate like a little cork on the water – all before she is 12 years old. Catherine de Medici learns early in life that she has no control over the forces of history and society swirling around her, over who she will love and who she will marry, even over whether she lives or dies. Surviving an attack on her family compound, held prisoner – alone – in nunneries until she is 12 years old – this girl’s life makes mine look peaceable!
I’m feeling better already.
Kalogridis is no Phillipa Gregory, but she has done her research, and draws us in. By the time Pope Clement betrothes Catherine to Henri of France, we are totally hooked. Thirteen years old, and off to live in a strange country as the bride of a man she has never met. She studies French as quickly as possible, but then again – this is a very bright young woman, who has been trained – by life and by education – to survive.
One of the paragraphs made me laugh out loud – as Catherine enters France, she is aware that her very fashionable Italian clothing is very unfashionable in France. She also notes that all the French women are painfully thin, thin to the point of gauntness, and are whispering behind their hands at her more normal size.
Lack of thinness is the least of her problems. She marries Henri, who is also 14, scared, and not in love with her, and they are expected to consummate their marriage under the eye of the King. Oh aargh! Catherine is on a steep learning curve, mastering French culture, diplomacy, the art of war, court politics and fighting the threat of repudiation the only way she can – with utter humility.
What I like the most about this book is that I feel like I was there with her. She is very human, and also very royal. People who are royal have different ideas than the rest of us, and are entitled in ways we can never imagine. They have obligations we can’t imagine. She makes choices I would never make, and yet the author convinced me that given her circumstances, she does the best she can with the resources at hand.
I also like it that Catherine of Medici was a brilliant and educated woman who held her own in a world where the balance was definitely in favor of being a man, and women were greatly at a disadvantage. While she made some horrifying choices, she had her reasons. This is not a book for the faint hearted; it is very earthy and it feels like an accurate portrayal of the times.
As I read these books, I think, too, how little we appreciate how free women are these days, and how recent that freedom is. Being able to choose our own mates – this is very recent. Being able to inherit and to manage our own money – this is very recent. As I talk with my friends who live in the Arabian Gulf, where marriages can still be based on family alliances, maintaining wealth and power, and where divorce can still equal personal disaster, it no longer seems so alien to me – we have this in our own history. We used to marry by contract, and our husbands had full use of our wealth. We used to be judged by whether we could bear children, how many, how many were sons, and how well we managed our households. We used to die in childbirth, and many of our children didn’t survive their infancy.
If you are looking for a good escape, this is a book that will take you there. It will make your own troubles look small in comparison. This book will keep you engrossed, horrified, and entertained, and, in the end, you might learn something, as I did.
You can find The Devil’s Queen at Amazon.com for a mere $10.40 plus shipping, and yes, I own stock in Amazon.com. LOL, we invest in that which we believe to lasting and important, and books play a large role in our lives. 🙂
Gushing Oil Stopped
This is what the latest live feed of the Gulf Oil gusher looks like:
It is not totally stopped. It has already spewed millions of gallons of life-killing petroleum into the Gulf. No one knows how well it will hold, or if it will hold. No one knows what the long term effects of this gaffe will be.
We’re just all glad it is tamed for now.
No Standards for Virgins or Extra Virgins in USA
I found this today on AOL News/Slashfood and it is a subject – long time readers will know – of interest to me. Ever since I read the article on The Olive Oil Scandal in The New Yorker I have been a religious reader of labels. I have discovered that in most of the US stores, the olive oil, virgin, extra virgin or otherwise is a blend of oils from Turkey, Spain, maybe even a South American country. To get olive oil from one country, I go to specialty shops. I have not seen one single bottle of my very favorite – Palestinian olive oil – and I wonder if it is even exported. I always bought it from my friends overseas; someone would bring in gallons and gallons of it and it was always so fresh tasting, and so tasty. It smelled so good you were tempted to eat a spoonful! No, no, I didn’t. The smell is unforgettable, and nothing I have tried in the US comes close. I can’t even find any California olive oil in the local stores!
Virgin? Extra virgin? Or something else entirely?
You never know what you’re really getting when you open a bottle of “100% extra virgin” olive oil, but the U.S. Department of Agriculture is hoping to change that with new standards for the green-gold oil set to roll out this fall, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The new rules come at a time when olive oil demand is surging. Americans bought 79 million gallons in 2008, up from 47 million gallons a decade earlier, the paper reported.
There are no federal rules that define “virgin” or “extra virgin” olive oil, Vito S. Polito, professor of plant sciences at UC Davis and co-chairman of the school’s Olive Center, a research group, told the Times. As a result, he said, “the U.S. has been a dumping ground for cheap olive oil for years.”
Bob Bauer, president of the North American Olive Oil Assn., said most of the olive oil on U.S. store shelves is legit, but his group alerts the FDA when problems occur.
Bauer told the Times 3 to 4 percent of the 200 to 300 samples his group tests each year are unadulterated or mislabeled, meaning they’re not as pure as they say they are or they’ve been combined with another type of oil.
“We’ve petitioned the FDA to create a standard of identity, which would define in black and white what olive oil is and is not,” Bauer told the Times. “They never acted on the petition.”
A spokesperson for the FDA told the Times that the agency does not regularly test olive oils for “adulteration,” but relies on information from the public or other groups.
The voluntary regulations being rolled out this fall set parameters for freshness and purity, fatty acid levels and ultraviolet light absorption, which can tell how fresh the oil is. USDA experts will also conduct tasting reviews, the Times reported.
Some worry that the regulations will be meaningless until they’re mandatory.
“It’s like saying you have to stop at stop signs, but there are no cops at the corner,” Paul Vossen, a University of California Cooperative Extension farm advisor for Sonoma County, told the paper. “Standards are a good start, but enforcement is important.”
News and Roosters
“How’d you sleep?” I cheerily greeted my sister, Sparkle, newly arrived from Paris to our small farming village in Germany.
“That #*%@ing ROOSTER!” she exclaimed. “He started crowing around 3:00 a.m. and never stopped! You must have heard him! He was right under our window!”
No. No, there was no rooster under our windows. The nearest rooster was up in the next farm, maybe 100 yards away. But I kind of remembered when we first moved in, I think I remember we heard him. We no longer heard him. You just get used to it, I guess.
What brings this to mind is that KUOW in Seattle has a program today on the Seattle City Council vote – they are about to vote to increase the number of chickens allowed by ‘urban farmers’ but to prohibit the roosters.
You can hear the discussion for yourself by going to KUOW. There are some hilarious comments, one by a man who said “Sure, ban roosters, right after you ban boom boxes, and teenagers, and heavy trucks, and garbage pickups. There are a lot worse sounds in the city than roosters!” (I may have paraphrased that quote, I was laughing too hard to write it all down.)
AdventureMan and I love National Public Radio. We support our local NPR station, WUWF in Pensacola, which I listen to while I am driving, but when I am working on a project, I still stream KUOW, which I started doing while I was living in the Gulf. I love the huge variety of opinions and subjects, and I appreciate that there is more news in the world than what they show on TV, after all, on TV they can only show what they have film footage of. There are books to be discussed, and movies, and music, and social situations in Khandahar and Botswana and Sri Lanka and boy soldiers in Liberia . . . things I haven’t a clue about unless I listen to my national public radio station. I read the paper daily. I watch the news once a day – but it doesn’t meet the depth of coverage of NPR.
I think chickens are pretty cool. They are also pretty stupid, but I am all for a chicken or two, fresh eggs, etc. When I needed fresh eggs in Germany, I just walked up the hill and bought them from the chicken lady. When I asked my landlady about recycling, she just laughed, and we walked our food leftovers, peelings, coffee grounds, etc up the hill and threw them over the fence for the chickens. I don’t even mind roosters. Sorry, Sparkle!
Butler’s Pantry
This room is kind of an LOL; it is called the Butler’s Pantry, but we don’t have a butler. It has a dual wine refrigerator, one held at 47°F for white wine and one at 61°F for red wine. We do have wine in them, but we are not great collectors of wine. The cupboards have come in handy for all the beer and wine glasses we collected during our years of living in Germany. The white wine refrigerator also holds beer, which is tasty in hot hot weather and with Mexican food.
This is a room we are in and out of all the time – on our way to the garden, on our way to the laundry, and on our way out the door to the garage. The photographs are by AdventureMan:
Home Improvement: Spackle and Paint
When you paint those walls (or have them painted) save a small container of your paint in an airtight container. When you are putting things on the walls – yeh, you can measure all you want, but sometimes that wire on the back of the mirror or heavy painting is just a little longer than it should be. It happens to everyone, even the pros.
When I was an Army wife, our houses had to pass inspection before we moved on. I was GOOD. I learned how to mix a little spackle and paint, and use a toothpick to seal the holes.
Once the hold is sealed, use a paper towel or kleenex or toothbrush (in a pinch your clean finger) to make the surface a little rougher, otherwise the spackled area stands out because it is smoother than the surrounding area. Using a toothpick works best for filling in small holes, if you have a larger area, use a popsicle stick or small spatula. Having a little paint of the original wall color mixed in to the spackle makes the fill invisible. 🙂
(Whenever I use spackle, I think of my sister Sparkle, who calls oatmeal ‘spackle’, LOL!)
Pensacola, Tuesday, Rain and Sunrise
Sometimes I have trouble sleeping, so what a difference it makes when I have a good night’s sleep! Last night, for the first time, I tried the ceiling fan – what a difference! This morning, I was awake, rested, and ready to get up before six.
For a minute, I thought I was in Kuwait, it was all fuzzy and dusty outside, but I realized it was just the fog on my windows, and it was raining.
I grabbed my camera; you know me, I love sunrises, and this was a beauty, pink and rainy:
Turned around, and there was a sparkling rainbow. Pardon the fuzziness, but my camera keeps fogging due to the change from inside to outside:
All the peppers I have planted seem to be flourishing, and I am wondering what I am going to do with all these peppers? Maybe I can make some kind of relish? I could make something like stuffed jalepenos, chili rellenos, except I don’t think I have enough peppers ripe at one time to make a real dish. Maybe later in the season . . .
Lots of tomatoes, all the Black Krim. My other tomatoes have flowers, but I can’t spot any tomatoes on them yet. I am loving the Black Krim! Fresh tomatoes, tasty tomatoes, every day, oh what luxury!
This house used to have a swimming pool, but long ago, they filled it in and made a garden. I love what they did – their plant selections attract all kinds of birds and butterflies:
Margaritaville on Pensacola Beach
The weather was beautiful in Pensacola, all 4th of July weekend to the fireworks. Early Monday morning, all hell broke loose, the heavens opened and it poured rain.
In spite of the good weather leading up to the Fourth, the droves that usually invade the beaches to celebrate didn’t materialize. One restaurant owner said his business was down 80% from last year at this time. We decided, in spite of the rain, to head over to the beach for lunch, do our small part for the Pensacola Beach economy.
LLLOOOLLLL! The first place we tried, Peg Leg Pete’s, (“Our Latitude Will Change Your Attitude”) had such a crowd that the wait was 25 – 30 minutes, standing out in the rain, so we passed. Our second choice, Crabs – We Got ‘Em was closed until 4 pm. Oh AAARRGH,, but there is still the brand new Jimmy Buffet hotel, Margaritaville and we’ve been eager to take a look so in we go.
Bad news is that you can’t use the underground parking lot, even on a rainy day, unless you are a hotel guest. Good news is that if you are dining in the restaurant, valet parking is free, and when you have a baby and car seat with you, valet parking is very very good. 🙂
Margaritaville is beautiful, and fun. As soon as you walk in, it is beachy; beautiful sand and sea colors, a faux straw mat floor and comfy beach-home furniture. Beach music, too.
The view of Pensacola beach, even on a rainy day, is glorious. Please note that the beaches are CLEAN. Come to Pensacola! Save the economy!
Our original plans had been to find one of the beachy restaurants, you know, family restaurants, full of kids, one more little baby wouldn’t even be noticed. The main demographic in the Margaritaville restaurant was couples, mostly 50-ish, women in sundresses they were a little too big for, and men in big bright flowered shirts, drinking fancy beach drinks (There is a whole page of them 🙂 ). There was one baby, and few other children.
We only had to wait about 15 minutes to get in, and there was a nice lounge where we could wait. We had the popcorn shrimp for starters, and we liked it. The bacon cheeseburger was good, according to my son, and the crab cake sandwich disappeared in a heartbeat. Baby Q was good as gold and had is first taste of dill pickle. He liked it! My seafood salad had macaroni in it. Aargh. Service was good, unobtrusive and friendly.
It’s a nice place. I would stay there. I love the clean lines and the sea colors. There are other places I would rather eat.
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