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. 🙂
Pray – then Listen
(Warning – this is religious based musing; if that is offensive to you, skip this post 🙂 )
Jesus often used the phrase “if you have the eyes to see” and “if you have the ears to hear” after telling his listeners a metaphorical story.
Yesterday, AdventureMan and I had another huge surprise. We filed for a tax exemption, and we were told that for this year, the previous exemption would hold, and then next year, our exemption would start. You would think that might be bad news, but in our case, the previous owner had all kinds of wonderful exemptions, and in a year with a lot of expenses, not having a huge property tax bill sounds really good to us.
“Humd’allal!” I said to AdventureMan as we left the building. (Thanks be to God!)
When we knew we wanted to retire this year, we began praying about it together every morning before AdventureMan headed off to work. We specifically asked that God be in every detail of the move – and as you can imagine, a move back to the USA from Qatar has a lot of details. It was more complicated than “just” a move. We had a huge storage shipment which needed to meet up with us in Pensacola, a cat that needed to come with us. We needed to buy a house, and to do that, we had to sell a house, and we needed to buy cars, and basic household appliances; we needed to start up all over again with groceries, and with cleaning supplies, and gardening supplies, and the most basic items you take for granted every day in your well-established lives. There were a LOT of details, an overwhelming amount of detail, and, by the grace of God, every detail was covered.
Some details, like the total rewiring of our house, may not seem like such a blessing, but, by the grace of God, we had the money to cover the need, and we are glad we could get the rewire done before moving in, and we are really really glad not to have to worry about fires happening in our electrical system. If and when we need to sell this house, having had it rewired helps its salability, too.
Some people might call it good luck. We don’t think so. We think it is God, answering prayers, in control of all the details, and blessing us in ways we can’t even begin to imagine. Every now and then, we have “the eyes to see.”
Hurricane Season Begins Today
As if the oil spill isn’t enough, today is the first day of hurricane season.
The hurricane guide tells us to have three days worth of food and water stored to get people through a hurricane and its aftermath – loss of electricity, highways blocked with fallen trees, etc. We have a safe room, a large closet next to an outside wall. We have a 7 gallon water storage container, and matches. I’m still working on the rest; I don’t want to be one of those running to the supermarket the day the hurricane might hit.
The good news – for us – is that we did not buy a house in the evacuation zone.
You cannot imagine how seductive some of these houses are. We had assumed we would buy a house on the water. Our beautiful 10th floor apartment on the Arabian Gulf in Kuwait gave us a taste for an endless water view, and that’s what we were looking for:
House 1
House 2
House 3
Every house on the water faces the possibility of serious damage in a hurricane. Two of the houses had damage from Ivan, one had ongoing damage from the dampness of being adjacent – well, almost inside – the wetlands. The wetlands are encroaching on two of the properties. One house, we totally loved. We could see ourselves living there, even facing the danger of hurricanes. That is, until we visited the basement, felt the humidity, saw a rotting pillar and realized we would face an unending battle with rot. The doorframe to the outside was rubbery with dampness:
It was a real blow to us giving up our dream.
On the other hand, it is a relief, now, knowing we are not in an evacuation zone.
There are no guarantees against a direct hit by a hurricane. All we have done is improved our odds, somewhat, which is about the best you can do when you live in a hurricane zone.
Me and Homeland Security
Honestly, I don’t mind getting these; some of them just crack me up:
Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
Washington, DC 20528
US DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Attn: Beneficiary,
This is to Officially inform you that it has come to our notice and we have thoroughly completed an Investigated with the help of our Intelligence Monitoring Network System that you are having an illegal transaction with Impostors claiming to be Prof. Charles C. Soludo former Governor Central Bank Of Nigeria, Mr. Patrick Aziza, Mr. Frank Nweke, none officials of Oceanic Bank, none officials of Zenith Bank and some impostors claiming to be the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents. During our Investigation, it came to our notice that the reason why you have not received your payment is because you have not fulfilled your Financial Obligation given to you in respect of your Contract/Inheritance Payment.
So therefore, we have contacted the Federal Ministry Of Finance on your behalf and they have brought a solution to your problem by coordinating your payment in the total amount of US$800,000.00 which will be deposited into an ATM CARD which you will use to withdraw funds anywhere of the world. You now have the lawful right to claim your funds which have been deposited into the ATM CARD.
Since the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been involved in this transaction, you are now to be rest assured that this transaction is legitimate and completely risk-free as it is our duty to Protect and Serve citizens of the United States Of America. All you have to do is immediately contact the ATM CARD CENTER via E-mail for instructions on how to procure your Approval Slip which contains details on how to receive and activate your ATM CARD for immediate use to withdraw funds being paid to you.
The total amount for everything is US$300.00 (Three Hundred US Dollars). We have tried our possible best to indicate that this US$300.00 should be deducted from your funds, but we found out that the funds have already been deposited in an ATM CARD and cannot be accessed by anyone apart from you the beneficiary which the PIN would be released to. Therefore you will be required to pay the required fee to the Agent in-charge of this transaction via Western Union Money Transfer or Money Gram International Transfer.
In order to proceed with this transaction, you will be required to contact the agent in-charge ( Mr. David Wills ) via e-mail. Kindly look below to find appropriate contact information:
CONTACT INFORMATION
NAME: Mr. David Wills
EMAIL: davidwills101@yahoo.cn
Immediately contact Mr. David Wills of the ATM Card Center with the following information:
Full Name:
Address:
City:
State:
Zip Code:
Direct Telephone Number:
Current Occupation:
Once you have sent the required information to Mr. David Wills he will contact you with instructions on how to make the payment of US$300.00 for the Approval Slip after which he will proceed towards delivery of the ATM CARD without any further delay. You have hereby been authorized/guaranteed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to commence towards completing this transaction, as there shall be NO delay once payment for the Approval Slip has been made to the authorized agent.
This letter will serve as proof that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is authorizing you to pay the required US$300.00 ONLY to Mr. David Wills via information in which he shall send to you, if you do not receive your ATM CARD containing your funds in amount of US$800,000.00 we shall be held responsible for the loss and this shall invite a penalty of $3,000.00USD which will be made PAYABLE ONLY to you (The Beneficiary).
Once you have completed payment of US$300.00 to the agent in charge of this transaction, immediately contact me back so as to ensure your ATM CARD gets to you rapidly.
Mr. David Wills
Special Agent DHS.
Note: Do disregard any email you get from any impostor or office claiming to be in possession of your ATM CARD, you are advised only to be in contact with Mr. David Wills of the ATM CARD CENTER who is the rightful person you are suppose to deal with in regards your ATM CARD PAYMENT and forward any email you get from any impostors to this office so we could act upon and commence investigation.
GMAC Rates American Drivers
This is an excerpt from Worst Drivers in America By State on AOL’s Wallet Pop:
GMAC’s sixth annual survey quizzed more than 5,200 licensed Americans from across the country on their driving knowledge and New York drivers fared the worst for the second year in a row, with an average score of 70 percent. That’s more than six percentage points below the national average score of 76.2 percent. New Jersey residents shouldn’t laugh too loudly at their neighbor’s expense. Garden State drivers finished second to last. Kansas, on the other hand, proved to be the best place to drive with a score of 82.3 percent. Oregon, South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska drivers were also among the best performers on the survey.
Overall, though, the findings were pretty dismal. The study found that “nearly 1 in 5 licensed drivers — roughly 38 million Americans — would not pass a written drivers test exam if taken today.” A whopping 85 percent could not identify the correct action to take when approaching a steady yellow traffic light (hint: it involves the brake pedal). Many drivers also remained uncertain about safe following distances.
Nationally, the average score slipped from 76.2 percent from 76.6 percent. “When analyzed regionally, the results reveal that drivers in the Northeast may not be as road-rule savvy as their Midwestern counterparts,” according to GMAC’s press release. “The Northeast had the lowest average test scores (74.9 percent) and had the highest failure rate (25.1 percent). The Midwest region had the highest average test scores (77.5 percent) and the lowest failure rates (11.9 percent).”
Some other notable trends: Older drivers outperformed younger ones and men did better on the test than women but also flunked it at a higher rate. One-in-four drivers admitted that they did “distracting behaviors” such as selecting music on their iPhones, applying make-up or reading, though only 5 percent admitted to text-ing while driving.
(See full article from WalletPop: http://srph.it/ahqOZM)
2010 GMAC Insurance Driver’s Test Results
(Ranked in order of worst drivers by state to best drivers by state)
Scoring is from 1 to 100 on a 20 question test.
1. (WORST) New York – 70.0
2. New Jersey – 70.5
3. Dist. of Columbia – 71.9
4. California – 73.3
5. Rhode Island – 73.8
6. Louisiana – 74.1
7. West Virginia – 74.8
7. Hawaii – 74.8
9. New Hampshire – 74.9
9. Kentucky – 74.9
11. Florida – 75.2
12. Mississippi – 75.6
13. Pennsylvania – 75.8
13. Massachusetts – 75.8
15. North Carolina – 75.9
15. Arkansas – 75.9
17. Texas – 76.0
18. Connecticut – 76.3
19. Illinois – 76.6
20. Georgia – 76.7
21. Alabama – 77.1
22. South Carolina – 77.2
23. New Mexico – 77.3
24. Virginia – 77.5
24. Ohio – 77.5
26. Maine – 77.6
26. Delaware – 77.6
28. Colorado – 77.8
29. Utah- 77.9
30. Vermont – 78.1
30. Nevada – 78.1
32. Maryland – 78.2
33. Tennessee – 78.3
34. Wyoming – 78.4
35. Arizona – 78.5
36. Missouri – 78.8
37. Michigan – 79.0
38. North Dakota – 79.1
39. Oklahoma – 79.3
40. Wisconsin – 79.4
40. Washington – 79.4
42. Alaska – 79.8
43. Montana – 80.0
44. Idaho – 80.1
45. Indiana – 80.4
46. Nebraska – 80.5
47. Iowa – 80.8
48. Minnesota – 81.1
49. South Dakota – 81.2
50. Oregon – 82.1
51. (BEST) Kansas 82.3
See full article from WalletPop: http://srph.it/ahqOZM
Florida – where I am living now – is the 11th WORST state in the nation. . . .
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.
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.
Orange Beach, Alabama, Oyster House
We were looking for a place to have a nice lunch on our way home, and I was sure we would go Mexican. AdventureMan felt so deprived of Mexican for all our years overseas that he is still catching up, and when given his druthers, Mexican will mostly be his first choice.
But today – and this is the POWER of advertising – we saw a huge billboard telling us that The Oyster House was THE place to eat.
“We’re going to eat there!” AdventureMan said, and I sure didn’t argue – I am a big fan of seafood. 🙂
We followed the signs. There were a lot of restaurants, but only The Oyster house had big billboards telling us they were THE place to eat. When we got there, a spot was available right in front of the front door – “RSP!” shouted AdventureMan as he parked.
It was a nice place. We got a table where we could see the Bayou:
The menu had so many good choices we hardly knew what to do, and, as usual, we ordered more than we could eat and we brought the rest home to nibble on for dinner:
I had the Seafood Gumbo appetizer while AdventureMan had the salad buffet:
Then our main courses came – and my gumbo had filled me up! I had the appetizer crab cakes as a main course, and it was still too much food! But oh, they had a lot of real CRAB in them:
These were really really good crab cakes – and Wooo HOOO, I still have one for dinner!
AdventureMan had the grilled MahiMahi – also delicious – with red beans and rice. Poor guy, can you see his hand there, just so eager to have his first bite of the MahiMahi and I am so rude as to insist on taking a photo before he takes a bite, LLLOOLLL:
Plenty for dinner for him, too!
Victory at the Shrimp Basket
This is a moral victory. AdventureMan and I ate at the Shrimp Basket last week and we DID NOT eat fried food! We tried their non-fried platters, AdventureMan had the grilled fish and shrimp, and I had the blackened fish and shrimps. I took the photo before eating! (another victory, woooo HOOOO!)
Yes, I did dip my shrimp in the melted butter. I could not resist. This is one of the best seafood meals I have had in a long time, it was totally delicious.
On the table was this sign:
The oil has started coming ashore in Louisiana. It is thick and gooey, and it is sticking to the marshlands, clinging to delicate feathers on birds and suffocating wildlife. This is the beginning of a long, long, ugly process of trying to reclaim what nature never intended the oil to touch. It is devastating.
Old Time Pottery
We were on a reconnaissance; an exploratory trip, or so I thought. We had passed through Elberta, Alabama, “Woh Das Leben ist Gut” and the Lutheran Church welcomes you; AdventureMan said it was a settlement of Germans, and the German names still dominate as you scan the businesses in town. We had perused the Foley Outlet Mall, and we were on our way down to the beach road to head back to Florida when AdventureMan said “What’s that?!”
It was Old Time Pottery! We had looked for Old Time Pottery in Destin last week, but I didn’t know there was one in Foley, too. I could see the grin on AdventureMan’s face, he had known.
“How did you know?” I asked.
“Oh, zee internet, it is a vonderful sing,” he replied, grinning and turning into the huge, gigantic store.
Right in front were the terra cotta pots I had been seeking, at a reasonable price. I picked up two 14″ pots.
For some reason my camera refused to focus, but as I pulled off the pots, I was surprised to find two bright green frogs. I thought they were decorations, and one quickly hopped through the pot hole and back into the dark:
“Only two?” AdventureMan asked, disappointment loud in his voice. “We come all this way and you only buy two?”
“I wasn’t planning to buy anything!” I protested. “You totally caught me by surprise! I thought we were just looking around.”
You can look around inside the Old Time Pottery for a LOOONNNNGGG time. They have everything. A lot of what they have is also available around the same price at other discount stores, TJ Maxx, Bed, Bath and Beyond, etc. But the sheer massive amounts of stuff was purely mind-boggling. It would be easy to buy stuff you didn’t even know you needed, just because it is all there. Actually (she congratulates herself) I managed to hold it to just the two pots. I know where the store is. It’s not that far away, about an hour, I can go back if I need to. 🙂
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