Headless Horseman at Pensacola Ballet
Today is a day to make the heart joyful. Yesterday, we had thunder and lightning, so much that my water aerobics class was cancelled and I made that drive for nothing. Even when the sun came out, hours later, there was so much water soaked into the ground, the evaporation made it feel hotter than it really was.
The best part of the whole day was knowing we were headed to the opening of the Ballet Pensacola Season last night.
Who knew when we came to Pensacola that there would be so many fun things to do? And that we would have the time to try them all? Pensacola has an Opera, a Symphony, many many parades, some kind of fest, normally featuring seafood and/or art, and sometimes also the sugar white sands, wine and/or rock bands almost every month, AND the Ballet Pensacola.
Nothing about the Ballet Pensacola is ordinary. Ballet Pensacola has a husband wife team, artistic director Richard Steinart and his wife Christine Duhon, the ballet mistress, who also does the costumes. Her costumes are often spectacular. Lance Brannon does the sets which are are often minimalist and always wonderfully creative. You know public arts are almost totally public and community supported, you know they must have a tricky budget to work with but the sets and costumes are wondrous to behold.
We were debating whether The Headless Horseman would be a good ballet for our four year old grandson. AdventureMan thought it might be scary. There is a witch, a wonderfully convincing witch. There is a guy with no head. There is a skeleton horse. I countered that he sees worse on his cartoons with Spiderman and BatMan and whoever those heroes are that “Assemble!” The Headless Horseman is a lot of fun; it even looks like the dancers are having a lot of fun with it, and of course, there is this incredible skeleton. We leave our evenings at Pensacola Ballet delighted.
One of the things we love about the ballets this team creates is that it isn’t easy to get most men to love ballet, but many of the ballets they do have appeal to men – The Matrix, Dracula – they are not dainty ballets, but strong, dramatic ballets. In addition, they are, as I said, a lot of fun. When we offer up tickets we can’t use to our son and his wife, they jump at the chance. I want to make Nutcracker an annual event, but I recognize that if I want grandchildren who will love the dance, I will be likely to take them to some of this stronger stuff. We already have an extra ticket for Ali Baba, coming up in the Spring, so our grandson can come with us.
It was still warm when we left the theatre, but this morning it is like we are living in a different place.
The air conditioner is OFF! The windows are open! Fresh clean air is flowing through the house, the sun is shining without wilting anything, and, thanks to yesterday’s rain, the entire world looks fresh and clean and welcoming! The fun times begin in Pensacola, the cooler weather has arrived!
The Fishing Hole; Elegance on Brent
We were actually just turning around to head back to another restaurant for lunch when we saw the Fishing Hole and decided, as we often do, arbitrarily and spontaneously, to give it a try. We used to drive our son crazy that way (not intentionally) by saying “Hey, we are heading for X” and then part way there, changing our minds. He would yell “No Bait and Switch!” (even as a teenager, he was lawyerly) and we would reluctantly go where we had planned. Now, without supervision, we can do as we wish.
(Our son has actually confided that now, as a grown-up, he and his family occasionally do the same thing.)
The Fishing Hole is on Brent. For those of you not from around Pensacola, Brent is a thoroughfare. It’s not an uptown kind of street.
From the outside, The Fishing Hole looks like a fast food place. It has items painted on the inside window, and it looks small.
When we walked in, we were blown away immediately. We walked into a beautiful bistro-style space and were greeted by wait staff dressed in black, with classic long white aprons, very European. They ushered us into the dining room, which has deep red walls above white wainscoting, with spare design elements on the walls – again, very French in feel, and elegant. The tables are all a deep colored wood, comfortable wooden chairs, and spacious.
The first thing I saw on the menu was a shrimp and crab chowder, of which I ordered a cup. This is a very large “cup” and is served with a little pitcher of sherry, which you can add to your own taste. It was purely fabulous. I would go back again just for that signature chowder.
I also ordered the fish tacos, which were very fresh tasting, very delicious and healthy:
AdventureMan had the Oyster Sandwich, which was equally delicious. He also ordered hushpuppies and oh my word, those hushpuppies were perfect.
Because my fish tacos were so healthy, we decided to split an order of peach pie. When it arrived, we almost fell over. It was beautiful, and it was also huge. The taste was spectacular; it had a crust made of graham cracker and toasted walnuts, and it added a unique and wonderful texture and flavor to an already delicious peach pie. As you can see, the presentation is beautiful.
From that startling entrance into unexpected elegance, to our departure, this was a delightful experience. The wait staff is eager to please, willing to explain the menu and answer questions. The service was impeccable. The food was fabulous. We can’t wait to go back.
They have a FaceBook page; check to see which nights they are open for dinner, and make a reservation. The word is getting around, and this place is packed for dinner.
15 Brent Ln
Pensacola, Florida
(850) 912-6664
10:00am – 8:00pm
Cactus Cantina in Pensacola
The service was excellent at the new Cactus Cantina, located just across from the airport in the old Verona’s restaurant location. The parking lot was packed and the restaurant was hoppin’! The menu has most of the standard Mexican dishes, and the feel is sort of chain restaurant.
The food on the other hand, was a wonderful surprise. I ordered Carne Asada, and when it came, it was ginormous, huge, but it was a lot of very good, lean steak and a LOT of grilled onions and peppers, and there was so much that I took half home and still felt stuffed.
The guacamole was expensive, but there must have been three cups of it, and it was very very good, served in a molcajete, and full of nice chunks of avocado. We also took about two thirds of the guacamole home, there was so much.
This is the interior of the Cactus Cantina:
This is the guacamole:
My carne asada:
AdventureMan’s tamale combination:
Sides with carne asada:
On the whole, not bad at all. There are a lot of Mexican restaurants in the area, and this is another one, a very good one, but nothing that raises it high above the crowd.
Our Own Little OctoberFest
It sounded like so much fun when I was 15 and living in Germany, going to a beer fest, drinking beer, sitting in the big fest tents and laughing and drinking and eating wursts and listening to the ooompah band. By the time I was 18 and graduating, I’d been to a fest or two, and was pretty much over it. I’d probably seen a fest or two and a beer or two too many. AdventureMan and I were trying to remember the last beer fest we had been do and we think it was the year we were married (LOL, a LONG time ago) with his military unit.
But . . . it must the the changing light. When I saw Wursts in the commissary, I bought a pack (we NEVER eat wursts, but . . . it’s October. Could not resist . . . )
I mixed up a very strong curry sauce, using the last of some Kashmiri curry I had brought back with me from Kuwait on my last trip, and we each savored our lone curry wursts with a brotchen. Our own little OctoberFest 😉
The Fresh Breath of Fall and Bicycling in the Water
Our grandson is back in swimming lessons, and I have to admit, it is one of my favorite things to do with him. I get to pick him up at school and get him ready, then shower him down and take him home. During all that we have the most amazing conversations, and we laugh a lot, too. Yesterday he did something new, something he called “bicycling in the water” that we used to call “treading.” He had never done it before, and he was good at it. There are days when you are greatly blessed, if you only have the eyes to see it.
AdventureMan and I are having too much fun! We are in the midst of planning two smaller trips, and one larger trip. We call back and forth from office to office – “Have you looked at this place? It gets great reviews!” or “You could book that motel where I stayed when I went there with the birding group!”
The first trip we will take will be in conjunction with a conference AdventureMan will attend, and then we will head on into the southwestern wilds of Louisiana, tracking the Cajun Nature Trail, ending up in Houma after several days. We love knockin’ around with our binos and cameras on the backroads, love the moodiness of James Burke Country, True Detectives, the pure idiosyncratic nature of southern Louisiana.
The next trip will be in the other direction, back to a birding area through which the birds travel south when winter sets in.
The third – back to France! Wooo HOOOOOO!
Fall is kicking in in Pensacola, AdventureMan is out mulching and trimming up the garden, taking out a summerload of weeds, and I am grinning at a lowering utility bill. Even a few degrees difference make a giant reduction in the need for the A/C. I am smiling more; the humidity is lifting and I can feel cool temperatures around the corner. My favorite time of the year!
ISIS War Against Women
I was told – by Saudi women, Qatari women and Palestinian women of faith, that Allah wants women to be educated. The first wife of Muhammed was a businesswoman and a prominent leader in her time. Perhaps the ISIS extremists need to spend a little more time reading the Qu’ran and hadith.
From today’s AOL News/ Huffpost
BAGHDAD (AP) — Militants with the Islamic State group tortured and then publicly killed a human rights lawyer in the Iraqi city of Mosul after their self-proclaimed religious court ruled that she had abandoned Islam, the U.N. mission in Iraq said Thursday.
Gunmen with the group’s newly declared police force seized Samira Salih al-Nuaimi last week in a northeastern district of the Mosul while she was home with her husband and three children, two people with direct knowledge of the incident told The Associated Press on Thursday. Al-Nuaimi was taken to a secret location. After about five days, the family was called by the morgue to retrieve her corpse, which bore signs of torture, the two people said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of fears for their safety.
According to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq, her arrest was allegedly connected to Facebook messages she posted that were critical of the militants’ destruction of religious sites in Mosul. A statement by the U.N. on Thursday added that al-Nuaimi was tried in a so-called “Sharia court” for apostasy, after which she was tortured for five days before the militants sentenced her to “public execution.” Her Facebook page appears to have been removed since her death.
“By torturing and executing a female human rights’ lawyer and activist, defending in particular the civil and human rights of her fellow citizens in Mosul, ISIL continues to attest to its infamous nature, combining hatred, nihilism and savagery, as well as its total disregard of human decency,” Nickolay Mladenov, the U.N. envoy to Iraq, said in a statement, referring to the group by an acronym. The statement did not say how she was killed.
Among Muslim hard-liners, apostasy is thought to be not just conversion from Islam to another faith, but also committing actions that they believe are so against the faith that one is considered to have abandoned Islam.
Mosul is the largest city held by the Islamic State group in the self-declared “caliphate” it has carved out, bridging northern and eastern Syria with northern Iraq. Since overrunning the once-diverse city in June, the group has forced religious minorities to convert to Islam, pay special taxes or die, causing tens of thousands to flee. The militants have enforced a strict dress code on women, going so far as to veil the faces of female mannequins in store fronts.
In August, the group destroyed a number of historic landmarks in the town, including several mosques and shrines, claiming they promote idolatry and depart from principles of Islam.
Al-Nuaimi’s death is the latest in a string of attacks by the militant group to silence female activists and politicians. In July in the nearby town of Sderat, militants broke into the house of a female candidate in the last provincial council elections, killed her and abducted her husband, the U.N. said. On the same day, another female politician was abducted from her home in eastern Mosul; she remains missing.
Hanaa Edwer, a prominent Iraqi human rights activist, said at least five female political activists have been killed in recent weeks by the Islamic State group in Mosul, including al-Nuaimi, who Edwer said was also running for a seat on the provincial council.
“But it is not just women being targeted,” Edwer said. “They will kill anyone with a voice. It is terrifying.”
The Gulf Center for Human Rights said Wednesday that al-Nuaimi had worked on detainee rights and poverty. The Bahrain-based rights organization said her death “is solely motivated by her peaceful and legitimate human rights work, in particular defending the civil and human rights of her fellow citizens in Mosul.”
The Islamic State extremists’ blitz eventually prompted the United State to launch airstrikes last month, to aid Kurdish forces and protect religious minorities in Iraq.
This week, the U.S. and five allied Arab states expanded the aerial campaign into Syria, where the militant group is battling President Bashar Assad’s forces as well as Western-backed rebels. Despite making gains in some of the country’s more isolated areas, where airstrikes have paved the way for successful ground operations by Kurdish and Iraqi forces, the cities of Mosul and Fallujah remain major strongholds of the group, which has buried itself among large civilian populations.
The militant group recently killed 40 Iraq soldiers and captured 68 near Fallujah and then paraded their captives through the city in a show of brawn.
Nearly a dozen countries have also provided weapons and training to Kurdish peshmerga fighters, who were strained after months of battling the jihadi group.
In other developments Thursday, German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen visited northern Iraq for talks with Kurdish leaders about the fight against Islamic State extremists and Berlin’s efforts to help with arms deliveries.
Thursday also marked the start of German arms deliveries to the semi-autonomous Kurdish region, with the ultimate goal of supplying 10,000 Kurdish fighters with some 70 million euros ($90 million) worth of equipment.
“We are involved with relief shipments and the airlift, but we know that this is not sufficient,” said von der Leyen. “Much more is needed to get these (millions of people) through the winter.”
___
Associated Press writer David Rising in Berlin and Bram Janssen in Irbil and an Associated Press reporter in Mosul contributed to this report.
1984, A Question of Irony, and a Brief Discussion of Privacy
From yesterday’s USA Today, a very brief article in the USA Round Up:
Alaska: Fairbanks
The number of security cameras in Alaska schools is going up. The Fairbanks Daily News-Mirror reported video cameras are being installed in Fairbanks middle and elementary schools and it’s part of a statewide trend aimed at making schools safer.
As I raised our son, I was – well, most of the time – an attentive parent. I would listen, and when necessary, I would correct. It’s a mother’s job to help her children navigate the pitfalls of life, and to have a tool-box full of resources with which to cope.
Perhaps I did my job too well. Our son became a lawyer, and he is very particular about the things I say, especially when I use a term incorrectly, such as irony.
Here is what Wikipedia says irony is:
event characterized by an incongruity, or contrast, between what the expectations of a situation are and what is really the case, with a third element, that defines that what is really the case is ironic because of the situation that led to it.
I am about to use the term “irony” correctly. 🙂
When I read the above article, I remembered the horror of Orwell’s 1984, the book, and then the movie. The movie was terrifying, the presence of cameras everywhere, hidden, not hidden, just knowing they were everywhere and everything you did could be monitored.
The irony comes in that here we are, with cameras everywhere, and we are glad for it. The irony is that our society has slipped so far from its ideal that we cannot trust our neighbor to behave him or herself, and we protect ourself by placing cameras so as to encourage people to behave.
I am not so sure that our moral codes have ever worked well; I think it seems to be the nature of humanity to claim a moral code, but not to adhere strictly to it. I think of people who talk about the safety of the ’50’s, but I don’t believe that safety was truly that safe. I think children disappeared. I think wives were beaten, women raped. I think robberies and assaults happened, and I think the law was more lax than it is today.
But it is an irony, IMHO, that we welcome cameras today as a low-cost policing of ourselves, our neighbors, and those we fear will hurt us or take our property. We trust ourselves and one another so little that we are increasingly installing cameras. We’ve been considering installing them through our home security company; we have motion detectors, cameras are just the next upgrade. Have we exchanged a high value on privacy for a heightened perceived need for protection of life and property?
ECUA Water/Sewer “Averaging” in Pensacola
My third year in Pensacola, I got a huge shock. My water/sewage bill jumped, jumped horribly. I knew we had used a lot of water in October and November of the previous year, because we had installed some new landscaping in October which needed watering in, but I had no idea why EVERY month my bill was so high.
Then the fourth year, the bill came and it was so low, I called and said “I think there has been a mistake.” I didn’t want to be getting a huge bill the next month to rectify the mistake. The wonderful customer service woman asked me if I didn’t know about “averaging.” No. I’m new. I don’t know about averaging, and I have never heard anyone talk about it.
She explained that in November, December and January, they average water use and then use it to estimate the sewage bill for the entire year, since they can’t separate water used for watering lawns and water used that goes into sewage. Most people, she explained, turn off their outside water around November. Evidently, horrified by my huge bills resulting from watering in the landscaping, I had been extremely careful in the last year, and was greatly blessed with much smaller water bills.
As it turns out, it’s not just new people who don’t know about “averaging.” There are a lot of people who have lived here their entire lives who don’t know about it either. Last year, aware of averaging, I watched for the announcement, which wasn’t really an announcement. In the ECUA newsletter, buried deep in one of the columns, was a mention that averaging would begin in November, depending on your billing, on or around the middle of November.
You can call ECUA Customer Service (850-476-0480) and find out close to when your meter is checked in November – for you, that is when averaging starts. Averaging runs November – December – January and measures how much water you use and uses that to compute your sewerage amount. If you are careful about your water use in those three months, you will lower your water bill for the entire year.
“Pesto; The Quiche of the ’80’s”
It’s still hot, hitting the nineties, but something is changing. You can see it in the angle of the sunlight, especially at sun rise and sun set, the directions have changed, the angles have changed, and the colors are richer.
Time to harvest the basil. This is not my garden, nor my basket, nor my garden, but the resemblance is uncanny, and this is a great photo for illustrative purposes.
We grow a lot of basil, pots and pots of basil. After early church, I hit the pots with my garden shears. I trim off all the little flowers on top (I’ve been doing this all summer, but I never seem to keep on top of it) and then I trim back the branches, laden with basil. I have an entire basket full of Genovese, which, after picking off the leaves, washing them and spinning them dry, come to 12 cups of basil.
Doesn’t everything go better with a little pesto? I love to smear a little on my BLT’s, I love to pop a spoonful into a soup, and oh my holy tomato, basil pesto on pasta, to die for. I know what I want to do, but I want to be sure I get proportions right, so I go to The Silver Palate Cookbook, it came out years and years ago and has a lot of basic but really really good recipes. So, how old is this cookbook? When I was looking at the Pesto page, there was a box that said “Pesto – the quiche of the ’80’s” or something like that which implied pesto was the newest, most wonderful thing – in the ’80’s.
“????” I thought.
Isn’t pesto one of those classics? Maybe it’s because we frequented Italian restaurants when I was going to high school in Germany, but I remember pesto. It’s not like quiche (which, by the way, is my grandson’s favorite thing), it’s no passing trend, pesto is classico!
I made all the batches with garlic, lots of garlic, about triple what the recipe calls for, and I roasted it before I tossed it in. One batch I made with almonds, one batch with sunflower seeds and the last batch with my all time favorite, walnuts. I labeled little snack bags, put globs of pesto in them, sealed them up, put them all in one big gallon sized plastic bag and sealed that up and put the whole lot in the freezer, to pull on on those days when I need a pop of flavor and a taste of the long hot summer.
Here is my variation on the Silver Palate recipe:
Basil Genovese Pesto
4 cups basil, packed, washed, dried in salad spinner (or whatever) still fresh and green
8 – 12 cloves garlic, peeled, roasted
2/3 cup really good olive oil
some salt and some pepper. The best thing is coarsely ground salt and coarsely ground pepper that you’ve ground yourself.
about 1/2 cup nuts. Pine nuts are classic, as are walnuts, but pesto is one of those dishes with a lot of variation based on what God’s great earth hath provided. I don’t even measure the nuts, just eyeball it. I used walnuts, almonds, and sunflower seeds in separate batches.
In a nice large food processor, put in nuts, garlic, salt, pepper, oil and then pack in 4 cups of basil. Process until you have a gritty ball. You won’t be able to see any leaves, but you will be able to see specks of white. Spoon into freezer containers in usable amounts and freeze.
Bonefish Grill in Pensacola for Saturday Lunch
Not a lot going on at Bonefish Grill on 12th Avenue in Pensacola, near the airport, at least at lunch time. We’ve been here on week-end nights when the wait is an hour or more for a table, but today, the place is almost empty.
We are seated, and service is, as always at Bonefish, superb. Some establishments really know how to train and how to maintain their high levels, and no one can ever fault Bonefish on service.
We went for appetizers and salads. Our son introduced us to Bang Bang Shrimp when Bonefish first opened, and it has been a big favorite ever since:
I had the Caesar Salad with grilled salmon – yummy, but not the best in town.
Adventure Man had the house salad, which he said was delicious, but a little boring.
Since we had filled up on Bang Bang Shrimp, we both had salad to take home with us. What is not to love about Bonefish packaging 🙂 just a nice little extra touch.
We were frankly disappointed. We had been happy to discover Bonefish open at lunch, but disappointed at the limited menu selections, and the lackluster appearance of the restaurant. There was another issue. Sometimes in Florida, in some stores you will smell a smell that I can only describe as “these floors were washed with dirty water.” AdventureMan does not smell it, but it is so loathsome to me that it spoils my shopping, and, in this case, my meal. There was a very faint smell of that not-quite-clean smell, and it distracted me.
As mentioned, the service was, as ever, superb but we won’t be hurrying back any time soon.
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