Epiphany and The Star of the East at Christ Church in Pensacola
“Pay attention!” AdventureMan nudged me, hard. I was trying to find the Star of the East that Father Neal Goldsborough had just pointed out on our Christ Church dome, but I couldn’t find it. And I WAS listening, I was paying attention, I just also wanted to see the star, the special star on our dome, signifying the star that the wise men followed to find the child Christ.
I see a lot of other heads swiveled to look up, searching the dome for that special star. It’s one of my favorite feasts of the year, Epiphany; I can hear those camels grumbling and sputtering as they clop across the hard roads, I can feel the bite of the cold in the deserts (yes, in the winter deserts can be bone-freezing cold), and I can imagine the wise man consulting as to exactly where that star is leading.
Later after the service, a kind Christ Church parishoner shows us where the star is – painted with more gold, shining brightly just over the horizon in the dome of Christ Church. It is beautiful, subtle, and it makes me happy to know that one star is special.
In this photo, you can see the hanging lamp that obscured my view of the star during the sermon, and you can see a slightly brighter star in the center of the lower dome:
A little closer, and the star shines even more brightly:
Fresh Market Opens In Pensacola
People have been excited ever since the announcement was made that Fresh Markets was opening a store in Pensacola. Although it is one of the smaller Fresh Markets, if there is anything carried by Fresh Market that is not in Pensacola, and you want it, they can bring it in for you. 🙂
It’s a wonderful shopping experience. Think about it – we live like kings, better than the nobility of medieval Europe. We have indoor plumbing (if you’ve ever had to use an outhouse in a cold country like Alaska, you will have a greater appreciation for indoor plumbing all your life), we have hot water, we have heat and air conditioning, we have more than enough clothing for any season. We live so high on the hog as to be wasteful and oblivious to our own wastefulness. Oops, I digress.
We have access to abundant fresh food. Even without Fresh Market, we have markets with clean, fresh vegetables, fresh sanitary meats and poultry, and goods in – and out – of season.
What is the height of luxury? Service. Beautiful displays. People who know their product and talk about it lovingly. It’s kind of like Disney does groceries; it’s a lot of fantasy, and probably a level of goods that goes beyond need into just-a-little-over-the-top, but isn’t it the nature of being a human to be looking for something novel and just a little better than the product you loved last week?
Fresh Market is a little like the Food Market at Herrod’s or Selfridges in London, all these little boutique-y spaces, with people who seem to love what they are doing and are happy to be of service. Publix does it well; Fresh Market takes it to a whole new level.
The Flower Market:
Gift Baskets:
Fresh Veg Displays (artichokes!)
What catches the eyes:
There is a very large section dedicated to quick foods – sandwiches made to order, prepared soups, salads, pizzas, cheeses, cold cuts, and deli items with lots of salads. We particularly loved the seafood display, and AdventureMan was mesmerized by the dessert selections.
All in all, Fresh Market makes grocery shopping less of a chore and more of a little vacation. For the best experience, get there on a week-day, or at opening – 0900 – on the week-end, so you don’t have to fight for parking in a crowded parking lot shared with the new Marshall’s, Ulta, Stein Mart, etc.
Second Day of the New Year
The first day of our New Year was a lot of fun – we had little Q overnight, so after breakfast he and I walked to a near by park while AdventureMan cooked up a big pot of Turkey Gumbo, accompanied by a salad that had apples and cranberries and a fabulous Roquefort dressing, our son and his wife came for lunch and picked up their son, and then we had a free afternoon. I started a new quilt, a complicated quilt, one that takes a lot of planning and a lot of cutting before I can even stitch the very first piece.
Then last night we watched District 9, a movie we had seen before. I always find it troubling, and I know I shouldn’t watch a movie like that which stirs me up, before I go to bed.
So today is the first normal day of the new year, I hit the pool for aqua aerobics and then I come home to do some more cutting for the quilt. I’ve been cutting all day. I still have more cutting to do. Aarrgh.
The good news is – it is my choice. I want to do more quilts, I want to make time. I want to do all the small work that goes into a truly grand quilt. It’s just tedious when you are in the middle of the preparation stages, and the light today is not bright, it is dark.
Maybe better light tomorrow. I am working with wonderful colors; colors of the desert and colors of the Arabian Gulf. 🙂
Sunset at the End of the Year
I saved these for the last, for the last day of the year (where did it GO ??????) because I love sunsets even more than I love sunrises 🙂 No, these are not taken over the Arabian Gulf, but over the Wakulla Springs, as the sun sets in the cold dark days of winter time:
Happy New Year, Kuwait and Qatar!
It’s just about time! Happy New Year to all our friends in Kuwait and Qatar!
May God bless you and your families abundantly in the coming year 🙂
“Watch Out For those Christians”
AdventureMan and I knowingly make bad choices every now an then, and Chow Time is one of them. We haven’t been for months, ever since the nearby Mediterranean Plus shut its doors because of the competition from Chow Time, it broke our hearts. But today, AdventureMan just had a hankering for Chow Time, and it’s fresh oyster day, so we went.
We had hit the early service at our church, 0800, so we had been home, changed, AdventureMan hit the garden and I hit the Christmas decor, taking it all down, which I do superstitiously since my Chinese friend told me the way I come into the new year is the way I will spend my new year, so you need to have everything done, EVERYTHING, so that your new year will be prosperous and easy and not full of tasks left undone. You have to have your bills all paid and money in your pocket and a clean clean and organized house.
Oh aaarrgh. It’s a lot of pressure to get it all done by New Year’s Eve. But we had accomplished a lot by noonish, and AdventureMan was hungry – STARVING! I like Chow Time, too, because you can have whatever you want, in the amount you want it. I like tiny bites of bad things, and I try to make myself focus on eating good things.
So I am thinking about my strategy when I see an older woman with a walker, the kind with a seat in it, so she has her plate on the seat and she is very carefully and sedately making her way along the buffet stations, but there are well-dressed crowds of people politely pushing in front of her, all around her. These are no-make-up, long skirt, long hair kinds of people, and they are all sitting together in very nice clothes at several tables in one area, and unbidden, the thought comes to me “Oh! Watch out for those Christians!”
And then I have to laugh, because of course, I am one of THEM. We all think we are so good in our own way, but don’t get between these Christians and the buffet, or, even if you are elderly and pushing your plate on a walker, you might get run-over by these good Christian folk!
I am telling you this, knowing that I have my own weakness. I can be perfectly polite at a buffet, I can patiently allow others to push in front, or rush to get all the crab legs – I’m not going to starve. I think of our Kuwaiti friend who would jokingly tell his wife “have you never seen food before?” He told us it was something Kuwaiti parents would say to their children, teaching them to be polite.
My weakness is airports, airplanes, air travel. Partly it comes from growing up in Europe, where even if seats were assigned, everyone just rushed on the plane and sat where they wanted. It was hilarious, but if you are from a culture where people think seat assignment means something, it is also kind of frustrating. If you didn’t edge your way onto the plane, you got a rotten seat, like the middle seat, where you have to sit stiffly so your shoulders don’t bump someone else’s.
These days it is even worse. Even if you have an assigned seat, with all the people afraid to pay a baggage charge, they are heaving these hefty bags on board, and overhead space is first-come, first served. Those late on the plane have difficulty finding a place in the overhead bins.
So here is the dilemma. Not even a dilemma, we all KNOW what the right answer is. Do you politely let others go ahead? Do we courteously allow those who are disabled, or accompanied by young children, or having trouble walking, do we courteously allow them to board first, with no grumbling?
I still remember being Platinum, getting to board first, getting frequent upgrades, getting all the perks . . . being treated “special.” It’s kind of addictive, being treated as if you are special.
I contrast that with what we KNOW to be true, that the first will be last, and that those who serve others, who wait upon others, who allow others to be preferred – those are the ones who will inherit the kingdom of heaven.
So as I sit in our little booth at Chow Time, I wonder if I show the face of Christ by my behavior, and I cringe a little at all the instincts in me that still want to be first. Even if I step back and allow the lady with the walker to go ahead, I still have my failures in other areas of my life, areas where I step up rather than step back. Food for a new year’s resolution . . . .
Birding at St. Mark’s National Wildlife Refuge
Some mornings, I am astonished at how wonderful it is to live in a place where we have the luxury to set aside wide tracts of lands to preserve our natural heritage. St. Mark’s National Wildlife Refuge evokes that response in me. It’s even more astonishing that because a couple years ago I bought a lifetime Senior Pass, getting into the national parks is free – for the rest of my life. What a great country we live in. 🙂
It is a cold and frosty morning as we load up to head out to St. Marks for some serious bird watching and photographing. Serious, that is, for AdventureMan, who actually does birding trips with other serious birders. I am a bird-appreciator, as in I know what a cardinal is, and a blue jay. I can pretty well recognize a buzzard. Hey, show me a painting and I can probably tell you who painted it, but birds . . . not so much.
I love being outdoors in Florida on a wonderful clear cool day with fabulous conditions for taking photos. I love just wandering along some of the birding trails and seeing what we can see. It’s an amazing place; in some of the areas where we stopped to wander, it reminded me of places we like to go in Africa, of Zambia, of Namibia, of Botswana . . . some of the habitat is so alike, I can almost hear those tectonic plates creaking apart, drifting, and wonder how much of the flora is directly related to African flora.
We had these in Tunisia; we called them Prickly Pear, and the Tunisians used them for borders to separate their lands. They also made jam with the prickly pears, and they skinned the leaves and fried up the meat from inside the thick prickly pear leaves. I think what a great border they would make in Pensacola, but a very unfriendly border. Good for keeping away thieves and burglers, but not very attractive, and not very welcoming . . . but very very African:
Some fishermen, probably setting some crab traps near the shore:
The St. Mark’s lighthouse:
Every now and then you have a lucky moment, and I happened to shoot this heron just as he had a wiggling sparkly fish in his beak, just before he swallowed it. I admit it, I wasn’t trying. If I had been trying, I could never have gotten it just at the right moment:
Some very clever park person went around and made all the deer crossing signs into Rudolph signs, LOL!
The park is full of very serious-faced people carrying HUGE lenses on cameras attached to seriously sturdy tripods, lenses meant to capture the details of the pinfeathers, cameras to document a rare sighting. These people don’t talk about ducks, they talk about Merganzers and Koots, and the rarely seen such-and-such, and I just listen and keep my mouth shut while my head spins.
For me, it’s enough to see these wonderful creatures, free of fear, safe in their migrations. It’s enough to have a cool day, a great day for walking, and NO mosquitos. It’s a great day for my kind of birding, which is very non-serious to be sure.
Wakulla Springs Boat Trip
At Wakulla Springs, everything is separate. Like the entrance fee goes to the State. The Wakulla Lodge is run by some corporation with a state contract, I am guessing, and the Wakulla Boat Rides are another separately run concession. If you are staying at the Lodge, or booked for the lunch buffet at the Lodge, you get into the Edward Ball Wakulla Springs State Park for free, instead of paying the $6/vehicle entrance fee.
The boat trip is half the fun. On hot days in the park, you can swim right in the same spring as the manatees, but on chilly winter days – take the boat trip. We took the boat trip twice, it is so much fun, and because we love the late afternoon light. I will share my photos of some of what we saw on the hour long trip below; warning you that trying to get a shot of an underwater manatee is not such an easy thing to do. You may have to use a little imagination to see the manatee 🙂 but I swear, it is there.
These are leathery buzzards, wintering in Wakulla Springs:
Great Blue Heron:
Little ducks called Koots:
Sunning Gator:
Close up of Gator skin:
Close up Gator head – he was so cold he didn’t even care about the boat being near, he just wanted to soak up as much sun as he could before it set:
Wakulla Springs Cypress:
The Wakulla Springs Lodge from the Springs:
Old fashioned swimming platform:
Buzzards roosting:
Turtle soaking up some sun:
Anhinga drying out his wings:
Merganzer Duck – don’t you love his helmeted head?
OK, there it is, the Manatee, otherwise known as a sea cow, a siren, and a sea slug – about the size of a small whale or a very large shark:
The Black Bean in Wakulla Springs and Tallahassee, FL
So we’ve arrived in Wakulla, to be received rudely at the hotel, turned away until the 3:00 pm check-in, the restaurant closed as we were trying to check in, and there is a part of every human being that wonders if this is going to be the story of our trip.
And then, to save the day, we find The Black Bean.
We drove to the nearby crossroads, where I saw a sign to a restaurant to which we did not go, but we turned left, up 363 and saw an all-day breakfast buffet place with a sign saying “Pork Fat is Where It’s At” (no, no, it’s true, how could I make that up?) and I am praying “Please Lord, find us someplace else, please Lord” and we keep going. AdventureMan says “should I turn around?” and I see a sign just a little up and say “let’s go up there and turn around if it’s nothing.”
As we get closer, we see a big sign for Jerry’s Bait Shop and my heart sinks. But as we turn in to turn around, we see the sign for The Black Bean Cuban Food, and my prayer is answered. Yes!
As it turns out, this is not the REAL Black Bean, which is in Tallahassee, but this is the Black Bean Express, their outpost, for people on the run, going down to St. Marks to go birding, heading out in their boats, etc. The menu is almost the same, just a few things less.
We both ordered the same thing, which we never do, but the Habanero Pork BBQ just sounded so good, and oh, man, it was. It was SO good. We didn’t know how much sandwich there was going to be, we could have shared one, but no, we didn’t know, and we ordered the fabulous black bean soup, too, and we couldn’t eat it all.
This is one of the owners, who fixed these fabulous sandwiches. He told us about their breakfasts, so we decided to come back the next day, but when we came back the next day, they were not open and we saw on the sign that the breakfast is only Friday, Saturday and Sunday at the Black Bean Express.
We went back around lunch and had their grilled chicken wrap, which – smarter now – we split, and we also split a red beans. You can read more about them HERE. We met the other owner (the are married to one another) and as we ate, we decided that rather than enjoy another perfectly uninteresting dinner at the Lodge, we would bet another sandwich, and split it for dinner along with some trail mix and water we already had with us.
The Black Bean saved the day. The food was so good; we even stopped for breakfast on our way out toward Tallahassee, having the biscuit sandwiches. I never knew Cuban food could be SO good, so tasty. It was fast, convenient, close to the Lodge, and very tasty. Let’s see, pay a lot more money for uninspired food at Wakulla Lodge, or pick up something at The Black Bean . . . . ? I don’t have to give it two seconds thought! Life is too short! It’s a Wakulla Red R! (Michelin Red R’s are given for good local foods at reasonable prices)
In the adjoining bait shop; a huge box full of live crickets, eeeeeeek!
And a guard dog, Zorah:
Here is how to get to The Black Bean Express, in Wakulla Springs. There is another, larger Black Bean in Tallahassee:
Wakulla Springs Lodge: Attitude Matters
AdventureMan and I just had a grand adventure, a trip to Edward Ball Wakulla Springs State Park, where we stayed at the Wakulla Springs Lodge for a couple nights.
I think we mentioned we lived in Florida before, a while back, at which time we came to dislike the commercial Florida intensely – think DisneyWorld and Orlando and schlock-filled shops with T-shirts “3 for $10!” It’s not that I dislike Disney, I grew up with Disney, and Bambi and Peter Pan and Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella. They’re a lot of fun.
But have you been to DisneyWorld recently? Have you paid those prices? And if you want to park there, or stay there, or eat there – it is horrendous! Advertised as family friendly, but a death-knell on a family budget.
There is so much MORE to Florida, some wonderful places. Wakulla Springs is one of our favorites, and not far from another favorite, Appalachicola, home of world famous oysters, fresh out of the Gulf (Gulf of Mexico, :-), for my other Gulf friends) We used to stay at Wakulla Springs while we were living in Kuwait and Qatar, and traveling to the USA to catch some time with our son, at FSU in Tallahassee.
After our drive down, we show up at the counter . . . and the receptionist barely looks at us. She doesn’t get up. She doesn’t have a name tag on; she is wearing a FAMU sweatsuit. We give our names, and she doesn’t say anything to us, just dials a number and talks to someone and then, finally, looks at us and says “we don’t have anything ready. Check-in isn’t until 3:00 o’clock.”
Welcome to Wakulla Springs Lodge. I was speechless. I couldn’t imagine how someone could be so rude! So unwelcoming! We are guests, here to spend our money, and this is how our time in Wakulla begins?
It’s all about attitude. I could feel my temper rising. On the other hand, what good would it do to get angry? Am I going to make a difference in how this young woman welcomes her customer, or am I going to make her day worse than it already is? Sometimes it’s just poor training. Sometimes someone is just having a bad day. Sometimes it’s disgust with corporate management, and this may have been a little of all of the above.
We decided to go to lunch, and the doors closed just as we got there. Wakulla Springs is on a different time zone, and the restaurant is closed!
We were so happy to be going, and now we are having second thoughts. We decide we had better go find something to eat – have you noticed it is easier to be down or angry when you are hungry? Really, really hungry? 😉 We drove to the crossroads that had a few eating places, about half of them closed. There was one I thought “oh please, please, don’t let that be the only one open” and encouraged AdventureMan to drive on, just a little further.
What we discovered will be the next entry 🙂
This is the Wakulla Lodge fireplace:
Edward Ball brought in artisans from Italy to paint the beamed ceiling in the lobby; it is truly lovely:
Later, I sat in the lobby with a cup of coffee, waiting for my boat trip, and a wedding party came in to rehearse for the big day. The mother of the groom had to walk away, trying to staunch the tears, as the pianist practiced “Here Comes the Bride.” I had to cry a little along with her; I LOVE weddings 🙂
The lobby is spacious and light and beautiful. There is a gift shop and ice cream bar at one end of the lobby, and a restaurant at the other end:
These boat trips last about an hour and tell you a lot about the history and wildlife of Wakulla Springs. They are a lot of fun:
The first night, we had a truly indifferent meal in the Wakulla Lodge Restaurant, made bearable by the cheerful and professional waitress, Brittany, who had to tell us that they were totally out of their famous navy bean soup, and also out of the salad we wanted to order.
“We’ve been inundated!” she cried. “The lunch crowd wiped us out!” She was so cheerfully honest we couldn’t help but be cheerful right back. That’s the magic in good customer service.
While the meal was mediocre, Brittany sparkled as she served, and turned what might have been a real downer into just a less-than-memorable meal, we’ve had a few of those now and then, no big deal. With a lesser waitress, it might have been horrible.
All in all, customer service was notable in its imbalance at Wakulla Springs Lodge. Brittany, in the Dining Room, was a star. JJ, a part-timer at the desk, was another star. Our bathroom floor in our room was not clean, but the staff was gracious and eager to please. The ice-cream bar attendant was overworked and grouchy. (Honestly! How can you serve ice cream and be a grouch???)
There is so much potential at Wakulla Springs Lodge. They have this fabulous location, a huge spring where water pumps out thousands of gallons per day, where manatees and wildlife congregate, where movies have been filmed, where serious birders come to “twitch” (check off birds seen), with these fun boat trips, natural attractions, lovely sized rooms, and it just needs some polish to be a seriously first-class destination.
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