Guide to Giving to Beggers
I don’t see so many beggers in Pensacola, but I do see a lot of men sleeping rough; the warm temperate climate here attracts a lot of homeless. The churches provide hot breakfasts, sometimes, and there is a homeless shelter and long term transition facility downtown. Giving to beggers was a much bigger issue in Qatar and Kuwait, where the begging woman with the baby in the souks or the guy with the plastic bag full of urine and blood would accost me, and I always had half a feeling I was being scammed.
Today’s reading in Forward Day by Day puts it all in perspective:
THURSDAY, September 23
Luke 4:14-30. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.
Snow fell on me as I waited for a cab. A rumpled homeless man in a stocking cap and fingerless gloves asked me for money.
I like to know that anyone I give money to is worthy (which usually means working or actively looking for work) and I don’t want him spending the money on alcohol or drugs. So I donate through a church or community organization. Pastors usually encourage that kind of giving.
I gave the man twenty dollars because I’d just been to the ATM and had nothing smaller. He stared at me for a moment and stammered, “Ma’am? You meant to give me a dollar, didn’t you?” When I said no, he put his head back and began to yell, “Thaaaank you, Jesus!” over and over. He went to a nearby coffee shop and came out with a huge cookie and a cup of coffee, still singing out, “Thaaaank you, Jesus!”
What if a beggar misuses my money? That isn’t my business. Giving to a beggar is between me and God; what he does with the money is between the beggar and God. (2004)
Thank you, Jesus. 🙂
Cockroaches VS Drug-Resistant Bacteria
You have to know, I truly hate cockroaches. They give me the creeps. When I see one – and cockroaches are a part of life in Florida, even with a pest service – my knees feel weak, and I feel shaky, but I have to force myself to stomp on them and flush them away. Now, AOL News tells us cockroaches can help us fight serious infections, including the one I hate the most, MRSA. You can read the entire article by clicking on the blue type above.
(Sept. 7) — Cockroaches, the creepy critters reviled for invading kitchens the country over, might be modern medicine’s best option for fending off dangerous, drug-resistant bacterial infections.
British researchers at the University of Nottingham’s School of Veterinary Medicine and Science are behind the discovery, which entails harnessing molecules from the tissues of cockroaches and locusts to combat bacteria like E. coli and MRSA (drug-resistant staph infections).
Chemicals found in the brain and central nervous tissues of cockroaches are able to kill 90 percent of dangerous bacteria in lab-based tests.
The potent chemicals, found in the brain and central nervous tissues of the critters, are able to kill 90 percent of E. coli and MRSA in lab-based tests.
“Superbugs … have shown the ability to cause untreatable infections and have become a major threat in our fight against bacterial diseases,” Dr. Naveed Khan, who supervised the work of lead researcher Simon Lee, said in a press release. “Thus, there is a continuous need to find additional sources of novel anti-microbials to confront this menace.”
In a twist that’s an ironic upside to our own revulsion for roaches, it’s their “unsanitary and unhygienic environments,” Lee speculated, that spurred the critters to develop toxins against the bacteria.
You can read the rest of the original news article by clicking here.
Day One, Osceola, Arkansas
We start the day sadly, rushing around with last minute things and the Qatari Cat KNOWS what is going on and RUNS when I try to pick him up! He never does that. He is always such a good kitty, but when I caught him, he said “eh eh eh eh eh eh eh” to me; he told me clearly he does not want to go to the Kitty Hotel. When we got there, his suite was waiting, we put his special towel and his baby in the sleeping area and filled his dish with his food. Fresh water was already waiting. He was OK, a little miffed at us, but OK. The people at We Tuck ‘Em Inn were wonderful, and we know he will be spoiled rotten by the time we return.
Just as we hit Mobile, Alabama, Mobile was also hit with a huge rainstorm. Off to the right, we watched a truck on the freeway entry ramp skid and spin around, out of control. Just a minute later, we saw police and a wrecker trying to get another truck out of a deep ravine at the side of the freeway. It was a fearsome storm, and we were glad we were out of it.
We toodled up through Mississippi, in fact it felt like we spent most of our day in Mississippi, because we did. We were on a not-quite-freeway that cuts catty-corner across the state to Jackson. Most of the way it was two lanes in each direction, fairly fast, but every now and then would be an intersection with stoplights. Around noon we stopped . . . somewhere . . . to have a healthy meal, but my healthy boiled shrimp was surrounded with deep fried french fries, hush puppies and a mayonnais-y cole slaw, and AdventureMan had fried catfish. It may be fish, but it was fried, along with fries and hushpuppies. You can see a remnant of my meal, but AdventureMan at ALL of his!
This road was fascinating. Lots of big black Tundras and Denalis and pick-ups of all kinds, lots of farm equipment, a lamb in someone’s back yard and a truck full of cattle . . . I told AdventureMan that Mississippi is a lot like Kuwait:
Just out of Jackson, Mississippi, we stopped for gas:
Driving toward Memphis, we spot a good German town – Gluckstadt means lucky city:
We get through Memphis without a hitch, way faster than we expected, and we settle in Osceola, Arkansas, where the entire downtown ‘historical Osceola’ is full of empty stores with broken windows, falling down houses, even a large stone church – or library? where pigeons are now living. We did find some spots of beauty down near the river:
“Don’t open your door after dark!” our Indian hotel manager warned us and our eyes are big wondering if this is some kind of Stephen King thing and the harvest-corn-king roams around killing unwary tourists, but she followed it with “we have lots of mosquitos in these parts.” Indeed. I have several bites already to prove it.
Why People Give
An urgent message came out today asking us to help the homeless people in Pensacola – and there are a lot of them, thanks to the warm climate. With all the rain recently, sleeping rough has been doubly rough, and it has been made worse by a sudden humidity-moisture related surge in the mosquito population.
As I talked with AdventureMan about our donation, he laughed. I was in fund-raising for a while, and was unexpectedly good at it. One thing I learned, there are a lot of ways to persuade people to donate, and then again, sometimes people will donate and you haven’t a clue as to why they felt this urge to be generous.
AdventureMan laughed; he totally got it. I used to work with a homeless, a long time ago, so I have a soft spot where they are concerned. Mosquitos also love me, and I get these horrid great but huge itchy bumps any time I am anywhere near a mosquito, AdventureMan always says he keeps me nearby because they head straight for me and ignore him.
Of course we donated. Wet homeless people and mosquitos, it was a golden combination. If you would like to donate, too, you can, through the EscaRosa Coalition on the Homeless (Working to Eliminate Homelessness). They will hold an Annual Fundraiser on Saturday September 11th from 7pm – 11pm at The Garden Center.
Welcome Home Dinner and Empress Rice Recipe
We had a dinner yesterday, to welcome AdventureMan home, and just to gather together friends and family in the area to have a good time.
AdventureMan stuns me with his ability to transfer all those time zones with no effect. He slept through every night, no problems. Amazing resilience. He also bought a great big watermelon, and made juice from it – delicious!
The Happy Baby is now big enough for a high chair. A high chair is a really good thing now, because he has started crawling, and he is really, really fast, especially when he is going after a cat!
Now that he is crawling and jumping and going to school, his little baby fat is turning into muscle:
(Sorry if this one is a little fuzzy, but he is jumping so fast I can’t get a clear photo)
Following traditional Middle Eastern / Southern customs, we had way too much food:
Including several long time favorites, one of which was Autumn Plum Torte:
One old favorite I am making again (I lost the recipe for a while) is Empress Rice. This recipe is so easy, so rich, so so good:
Empress Rice
1 large onion, chopped
1/4 cup butter
2 cups rice, raw
2 cans consomme
1 Tablespoon soy sauce
1 cup sliced mushrooms, drained
2 cups grated sharp cheddar cheese
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
Set oven for 325°F / 160°C
Saute onion in butter until golden brown. Brown raw rice with onion, then add all the rest of the ingredients. (How easy is that??) Grease a 3 quart/litre casserole, cover, and bake in oven for 1 hour and a half, or until liquid is absorbed. 8 – 10 servings.
(I did not make this with mushrooms, because our son doesn’t like mushrooms, but mushrooms make it richer. For church suppers, I sometimes add in some sausage, like smoked turkey sausage, or some chicken chunks.)
Some of the things I served I have shared with you before:
Autumn Plum Torte
Cauliflower Salad
Soused Apple Cake
Rotkohl
It was a great gathering, lots of stories exchanged, lots of laughing, and sweet little Happy Baby went to sleep just as lunch was served, freeing his parents to relax and enjoy a couple hours of socializing. 🙂 My old friend in Germany slipped into my kitchen and functioned as my second right hand; I actually enjoyed having her help because it’s like she knew what I needed before I knew I needed it. We could hardly believe so much time had passed when our last guests left; time just flew by, the sign of a truly memorable gathering.
Cats in Cages
For four months now, since we moved here, AdventureMan and I have been looking for a good cat hotel for the Qatari Cat. When we are away for short times, our son and his wife look in on QC, making sure he is well fed, well loved, etc. but if we are going anywhere for a longer time . . . we don’t want to burden a family with two working adults, a baby and three cats of their own.
Seeking a good cat boarding facility in Pensacola has been daunting. The very best one we found prior to today had a separate, quiet floor where the cats were boarded, but the cages were sterile. There was one cat, who looked just like QC, and the veterinary technician said he was a BAD CAT, and poked her finger in at him and told him he was a bad cat. They had great dog facilities, play times, etc. Cats were . . . chopped liver
And that has been our experience, desperately looking around Pensacola for a GOOD place to leave QC. We have visited so many places, veterinarians, grooming places – cats in steel cages. One place had larger steel cages, but cats in dark, damp, smelly rooms, cats warehoused in the same dank, dirty place with DOGS, cats in steel cages, looking miserable. Honestly, how can we travel? We can’t leave QC alone too long; he gets really depressed and stops eating and stops taking care of himself. And visiting all these boarding facilities was just depressing. We would walk out with a pit in our stomach.
Today, we passed one place – it looked cute. AdventureMan said “you run in and see if they board cats” (it looked like a dog place). I walked in, and there were three women grooming dogs, and it was quiet. The dogs all looked really happy. No, they don’t board cats yet, not yet, because they want to do it right, had I ever heard of cat condos?
Yes! Yes! Like the Kitty Ritz in Kuwait, a place that understands cats, understands their need for security, for privacy in their litter, for some variety and some stimulation under controlled circumstances. We loved the Kitty Ritz, and we loved the cat hotel we used to take our cat to in Germany, where they had kitty condos and a cage full of mice that kept the cats fascinated for hours. Our cat loved to go there! They even knew how to give her insulin shots twice a day.
So we went looking, one last time, and we found what we were looking for, at Village Groomers and We Tuck ‘Em Inn in Pace, less than half an hour from our house.
The place is CLEAN. Orderly. The cat dorms are roomy, one room for sleeping and observing, another room with litter and food. Each cat has his or her own drawer with his or her name on it with special foods and cat toys and blankets – anything from home to help the cat be content and secure.
We reserved an upper dorm for Qatari Cat. It gives us so much peace of mind knowing he will be well taken care of.
Rainbow to the Rescue in Pensacola
This post is about an amazing blessing. You won’t think it is a blessing at first, you will think it borders on disaster, but stop. Think about it.
Late this afternoon, our contractor friend was in putting bars in the guest suite that people can use to help navigate around, help lift themselves off the toilet, etc. We were busy looking for a stud for the shower bars when it started raining.
“That’s raining pretty hard.” he said.
“It rains like that all the time,” I said blithely.
But it really was coming down, and it wasn’t just for a few minutes, it poured, and it kept pouring. The lightning was really close and we heard a loud CRACK! and then BANG and the power transformer on the post near my house was hit, but my power must come from somewhere else because, by the Grace of God, we didn’t lose power.
“Oh no! This has never happened before!” I exclaimed as I saw water seeping in the guest suite where we were working. (This has been cleaned up a little bit for this family blog.)
I thought it was coming in under the French doors, but when I grabbed the old towels for soaking up purposes, I saw that there was more . . . coming from under the walls! Horrors! I was almost stopped still in my tracks – there aren’t enough towels in Pensacola to handle the amount of water seeping in!
“This is a task for Rainbow!” my contractor said, and ran for his truck, to exchange it for his Rainbow truck (he is both a contractor and a Rainbow franchise operator).
While Dave was gone, his assistant, Bobby, used their wet vac to get as much water up as he could, dumping the full tank several times out the window as we struggled. Finally, the rain slowed, and we could mop up the remaining wetness. He started a fan.
Dave came back with the big Rainbow truck and an intimidating amount of equipment. Now I will go into a parenthetical gripe about men and their toys. The biggest part of me is incredibly grateful to have this resourceful man who helps us with our construction and renovation needs, and then is there, like Superman, to the rescue, when disaster strikes. Another part of me wishes he didn’t have that excited gleam in his eye. My problem is his challenge – he loves the adrenalin.
Honestly, it’s only a small part, and mostly it’s because I wish I didn’t have any problem at all. Dave has a meter that shows where water is still sitting in the grout between the tiles, and how it has soaked the baseboards and begun to creep up the sheet rock. He explains how in Florida, where the humidity is so high, the sheet rock can’t always dry out fast enough to avoid mold formation, and that even though it eventually may dry on its own, the mold can survive until the next moisture hits. Oh aarrgh!
Hours later, we have huge fans running, and we have dry air in oscilations being wafted into our walls to insure they dry thoroughly, but not too much. We have machines taking readings. Our insurance company says we are doing all the right things and the adjuster will come by on Monday or Tuesday.
This was supposed to be a quiet Saturday night. If it had been a normal quiet Saturday night, we might have been upstairs, watching some TV, listening to the lightening and not worrying too much about it. We would have gotten up in the morning and gone to church. We might not have even known our guest suite was flooded for days!
So honestly, I feel blessed. I am blessed that if this disaster had to happen, I had people with me who knew exactly what to do, and did it.
As they left, the Gulf Power people were out fixing the exploding power transformer, and I thought how many heroes there are on this earth, people who do their job under the worst circumstances, people who leave their families to serve because there are jobs that must be done.
God bless you, all of you, health workers, police, firemen, electricians, plumbers, emergency services, soldiers and sailors and airmen – all who sacrifice and serve. May you sleep well at night, and may God bless you and your families who support you.
I had a disaster, but I was surrounded by every resource I needed to deal with it. Thanks be to God.
If you have a disaster, and you live in the greater Pensacola area, I can recommend:
Rainbow International Restoration Services
David Murphy
O: 850-994-4411
Cell: 850-281-0232
Panhandle Politicians
One of the things I liked best about living in Kuwait was the lively press. When the press has freedom – and freedom is always relative – people have to be more careful about what they do. Here, on a daily basis, the Pensacola News Journal has a crime section where they run crime news AND they list the daily felony arrests – who, what and where. I love it that they name names.
When I opened the paper this week, I thought I was back in Kuwait. There is a race for an open seat in the House of Representatives, and one candidate has just been arrested for trafficking drugs. Another candidate and his wife were videotaped sneaking out and stealing their opponent’s campaign signs. LLLOOOLLL. This is hilarious:
People think there are such huge differences between our countries. . . and yet we breed the same politicians, the religious fundamentalists, the ‘get-rich-quicks-by-lining-my-pockets’ kind of guys, the developers . . . it’s almost as if when you run for office, there has to be something wrong with you. It’s a sad day for democracy when these are our candidates. What a difference technology is making – it can help keep us honest.
Grumpy Wednesdays
I always get up grumpy on Wednesdays these days. My early water-aerobics class at the Y helps my mood, but when I get home, I have the dreaded cat litter to take care of. Thursday is garbage pick up, so Wednesdays I dump out all the old litter, wash out the litter box, dry it and refill it. I gather up the garbage from all over the house, put it in the can, move the can to the curb and then it’s picked up on Thursdays.
I think it took me all of 30 minutes.
I probably grumped about it about three hours, until I had it done. It occurred to me that I was letting a very small (but unpleasant) amount of time totally spoil my outlook. Literally, doing the job, doing the job well – takes minutes. Why do I grump about something so small?
Cleaning out cat litter is not a pleasant task. When I was pregnant, AdventureMan took over the job, because cat litter can hold parasites harmful to babies. Thirty years later, AdventureMan looked at me speculatively, his eyes all squinted up, and said “Isn’t the risk to your pregnancy about over by now?”
LLOOLL!
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. 🙂
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