Our marriage is cross-cultural. I am of the North, my husband is Southern. I learned to make decent cornbread, thanks to his grandmother who shared the secret of the cast-iron skillet, but I never mastered biscuits.
When he retired, AdventureMan went on a quest to make the perfect Southern Biscuit. He researched recipes. He tried recipes. He found an almost perfect recipe and worked with it, tweaking an ingredient here, an amount there. One day, with great glee, he made the perfect biscuit.
Part of the secret, once again, is a cast-iron frying pan.
The biggest part of the secret is butter. Lots of butter.
He was up early this morning, making biscuits for the family. The biscuits have buttery crusted bottom, and they melt in your mouth. One batch is enough for each of us to have one, and the rest we share with our family, nearby.
He texts our son that he just made biscuits, asks if they want some. Within seconds, the response comes “YES, please!”
It’s not just biscuits! For Valentine’s Day, it was Pasta Carbonara. For Thanksgiving, it was Smoked Salmon Fettuccine. He is skilled with duck, and sauces, and with steak. He has found his Secret Superpower, and he is a happy man.
Today’s readings from The Lectionary feature this puzzling story:
John 7:53-8:11
53Then each of them went home, 81while Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. 2Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him and he sat down and began to teach them. 3The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery; and making her stand before all of them, 4they said to him, ‘Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery.5Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?’ 6They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. 7When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, ‘Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.’ 8And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground.*9When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. 10Jesus straightened up and said to her, ‘Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?’ 11She said, ‘No one, sir.’* And Jesus said, ‘Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.’]]*
“What’s so puzzling?” you might ask.
So many things.
What did Jesus write on the ground?
If women had been present, would still no stone have been thrown?
What did he write on the ground the second time, as the men gathered to stone the woman slipped away, one by one?
Why do women get punished so severely for sexual acts when Jesus was so forgiving? I get that families like to be sure who the father is, providing for babies born to a woman, but it seems to me that women are judged by an unequal scale, and I don’t find justification for that in scripture. I fine it illuminating that while Jesus never dealt with homosexuality, or abortion (that is recorded), he was gentle with this woman caught in the very act of adultery.
The morning readings often provide food for thought as the day works its way out.
Most of the time, in our lives, “important” days are barely recognized. Valentine’s Day is no exception. I needed to do my daily swim/water aerobics and prepare for a meeting at my house; my husband was busy with taxes, the grandchildren, his own gym-time. Even lunch, our daily date, was a take-out thing, and then he helped me move all the cat equipment – litter, food, water dishes, their carpet – into a room they couldn’t get out of. They are smart cats, and persistent. They can open some doors, but not others.
As he was heading out the door to pick up the grandkids and take them to the park as my group started arriving, I thanked him. “I don’t need a card or flowers,” I said, “helping move the cat litter is True Love.”
I cleaned up when the meeting was over. I was at my limit. I had semi-planned to pull some shrimp out and do a simple shrimp pasta, but by the time I had everything washed up, all the chairs put back, all the meeting things put away and the cat accessories back in the cat room, I was wiped out. My husband found me lying down. He’s, too, was exhausted – playing with a ten year old and six year old will do that to you.
We know it is flirting with disaster, but we decide to try a simple restaurant nearby, not a romantic restaurant, to see if we can get in. It’s Valentine’s Day, one of the major dining-out holidays in the world. We are in luck, it is early enough that we can snag a table, relax, have a satisfying dinner together and head home.
Once home, I gave him his card and he surprised me! He had sought, and found, on the internet, a cup I had owned, and treasured, and used with joy, for several years until, inevitably, it fell on the hard tile floor and smashed into a thousand un-mendable pieces. I mourned the loss of that cup. All these years later – more than twenty-five – he had found it, and bought it for me. I told him I planned to actually use it, not put it on a shelf, that life is short. He gave me a measured look and said “it’s the most expensive coffee cup you will ever use.”
LOL
Life is short. I have all I need, and more. I know what matters. I don’t need a card, or flowers, or even a new coffee cup. I have a husband who will bring me lunch when I am approaching being overwhelmed by a time-crunch, who will help me move the cat litter, who will take care of the grandchildren all by himself when I have other responsibilities, and who will secretly search out an old treasure, and present it to me with delight, because he knows what it will mean to me.
I know what true love looks like. I’m going to use this cup.
CDC says STD cases in U.S. rose to record high in 2018 as funding lags
THOMSON REUTERS
Oct 8th 2019 3:19PM
Budget cuts at the state and local level resulting in staff reductions, clinic closures, less screening and patient follow-up has accounted for the increased disease rates, in addition to decreased condom use, health officials said.
“The resurgence of syphilis, and particularly congenital syphilis, is not an arbitrary event, but rather a symptom of a deteriorating public health infrastructure and lack of access to health care,” Gail Bolan, the CDC’s director of STD Prevention, said in the report.
Antibiotics can cure chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis, but many people fail to get screened and treated for the diseases.
The CDC’s annual STD prevention budget decreased in purchasing power by 40% from 2003 to 2018, according to data released by the National Coalition of STD Directors, an association of local health officials. The CDC’s financial data was first consolidated into the U.s. Health and Human Services financial reports in 2003.
Half of STD cases occur in people between the ages of 15 and 24 years old and can lead to health complications including infertility and increased risk of contracting HIV.
In 2018, the CDC received reports of nearly 1.8 million cases of chlamydia, some 580,000 cases of gonorrhea and more than 115,000 cases of syphilis. Of the 1,306 cases of congenital syphilis in 2018, 78 resulted in stillbirths and 16 in infant death.
(Reporting by Gabriella Borter in New York; Editing by Frank McGurty and Bill Berkrot)
My comment: This is what happens when we rely on “abstinence” and fail to fund Planned Parenthood AND other community sources of reliable information for young people. Oh yes, it would be so nice if teen-agers and young adults went to their parents for advice on keeping sex safe – is that what YOU did? What teenager does??
Teenagers and sex go hand in hand, young adults and sex go hand in hand. If we want to prevent STD’s, we have to give them accurate information as to what they are and how they can be prevented.
Do I sound exasperated????
Some of the things out there these days are increasingly drug-resistant. It is a DISGRACE that we are not preparing our children for the realities of the world, preparing them to live responsible lives and funding sources of accurate information (and yes, even birth control products) to keep them SAFE.
I lived through the 70’s and the ’80’s and as I have watched the young of our generation grow to maturity, I have had hope for a different kind of world. I believed I saw it coming, a new way of thinking, where women had equality, where all people had respect regardless of skin shade. I suspected it would be slow, but the dinosaurs my age and older would die off, leaving the more enlightened young people in charge.
When Obama was elected, I danced for joy. I saw it as a sign – a man of color elected President of the United States! To me, he embodied what our nation was established to attain. Freedom. Liberty. Justice for ALL. Equal opportunity.
This morning, AdventureMan and I were talking; as I was leaving his office I tweaked his photos by mere centimeters. They had shifted and were just a little crooked.
“I hope you don’t mind,” I said (and I had already done it.)
(Barely perceptible pause, but a pause none the less) “Oh no, my dear.”
We both broke out laughing. Sometimes people who have been married for a long time lie to each other in such a way, to be polite, not to rock the boat, but at the same time letting the other person know exactly how you feel about something.
That barely imperceptible pause had meaning. Nothing was something.
When you are a teen-age girl, there are a lot of things you tell yourself when trying to figure out what to do.
“Really, nothing happened . . . .”
“I wasn’t supposed to be at that party”
Maybe I shouldn’t have worn that bathing-suit. Maybe it was my fault”
“I know Mom and Dad would back me, but they would also be really pissed.”
“Do I want to be known as ‘that girl?'”
Maybe you talk to your friends. Most girls won’t talk to their parents, unless it is really severe and you can’t hide it.
I now – I worked with rape victims for two years at a Rape Crisis line. We listened. We offered information. We listened. We offered to go with them if they wanted to tell someone, like the police. We educated – police, hospital workers, first responders, parents. We listened. We went to court with the victims who chose to file charges. We listened.
The bravest woman I ever met was in Doha. I had agreed to meet with her when her mother told me she had been assaulted. She had been offered a ride home, the guy was the big brother of a school friend, driving her and her sister home. Instead, he and his friend drove deep into the desert, forced the girl out of the car and told her to co-operate and they would leave her little sister alone.
She negotiated. She wouldn’t do all that they tried to force her to do. Then they took her home.
She talked to a couple friends, who told her she needed to tell her parents because it had happened before, and could happen again. The young girls were like prey to these guys.
She went to the police, she named names. They were arrested, and when she saw them in the line-up, she told the police she needed for them to take off their clothes so she could tell for sure that it was them. She knew it was them. She also knew that they were from a good family and that nothing serious was going to happen to them no matter what the charges, but she wanted a moment where she could humiliate them in some small way for the way she had been abused and mistreated.
It was one of those unequal power moments, but she used what little power she had.
“I wanted to get this on the record,” she told me, “I wanted to make sure that when they go to get married, that their names will be on the record, and if not, people in Doha have long memories. Who will want to marry their daughters to these men?”
She was 16.
Her family suffered. Her father was heart-broken that he had brought his family to Doha and that he had, as he saw it, failed to protect his daughter. The family left Doha soon thereafter.
I still honor that girl, her courage, her wisdom, her dry-eyed willingness to speak out.
And I believe Dr. Ford. I believe she kept it to herself, maybe sharing a little with close friends. She was terrified and she was 15. She carried it for a long time. For most rape victims, like my 16 year old friend, the sexual violation pales in comparison to the violation of personal boundaries and the fear that you may not survive. You are in shock. You often blame yourself. You want to move on, and you don’t want to be known as “that girl that got raped.” She was younger than Kavanaugh, less powerful, a teen-ager.
President Trump, you are just an ignorant oaf. You think you are something, but you are nothing. It’s not like women are assaulted and men aren’t. A thousand Catholic boys can tell you differently, and they feel the same shame as female victims feel. I hope everyone in America reads your ignorant, hateful, smarmy tweet and see the horror in having you as a President.
A local school district is using “abstinence only” as it’s sex-ed class guidance. Has abstinence, among any population, ever worked? Give our hormone-ridden teens some information, please! Tell them that if they are going to have sex, how to use a condom, and explain a wide variety of contraceptives which will prevent an unwanted pregnancy. How many teens do you know who are ready to become parents? Teens are greatly at the mercy of their bodies, teach them to use their bodies responsibly.
It’s not just teen-agers in the US.
One recent fact I read recently is not included in this article; one of the greatest increases in STD’s in our population is among adults 55 and older, and people in retirement homes and nursing homes. We need to get these grown-ups some sex-ed, too!
“All it takes is a simple STD test and antibiotic treatment to prevent this enormous heartach,” said Gail Bolan, director of CDC’s Division of STD Prevention, of STDs that are passed from mother to child (AFP Photo/BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI)
More
Washington (AFP) – Sexually transmitted diseases surged to a record high in the United States last year, with more than two million cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis nationwide, officials said Tuesday.
This was “the highest number ever,” said the annual Sexually Transmitted Disease Surveillance Report released today by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Most of the new cases — 1.6 million in 2016 — involved chlamydia, a bacterial infection that affects both men and women.
Gonorrhea also increased among men and women last year, but the steepest rise was among men (22 percent), said the report.
Nationwide, gonorrhea cases reached 470,000, with a large share of new gonorrhea cases among men who have sex with men.
These trends are “particularly alarming” because of the growing threat of gonorrhea becoming resistant to the last recommended treatment, according to the CDC report.
Syphilis cases numbered 28,000, a rate that increased nearly 18 percent from 2015 to 2016.
Most cases of syphilis occur among men — mainly gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men.
But women too saw a 36 percent increase in rates of syphilis.
There were more than 600 cases of syphilis among newborns — known as congenital syphilis — a 28 percent increase in a single year.
These syphilis cases led to “more than 40 deaths and severe health complications among newborns,” said the report.
“Every baby born with syphilis represents a tragic systems failure,” said Gail Bolan, director of CDC’s Division of STD Prevention.
“All it takes is a simple STD test and antibiotic treatment to prevent this enormous heartache and help assure a healthy start for the next generation of Americans.”
Experts say despite growing concerns about antibiotic resistance, these three STDs can all be cured with antibiotic treatment.
If left untreated, however, they can lead to infertility, life-threatening ectopic pregnancy, stillbirth in infants, and increased risk for HIV transmission.
“Increases in STDs are a clear warning of a growing threat,” said Jonathan Mermin, director of CDC’s National Center for HIV/AIDS, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention.
“STDs are a persistent enemy, growing in number, and outpacing our ability to respond.”
In the last post, I told you AdventureMan and I are not very good about staying on track with a tour. Sometimes there is too much information, and too much time at a location about which I care little. VIgeland Park was just the opposite, for both AdventureMan and I. Vigeland Park was so extraordinary it made us want to come back to Oslo and to walk the streets and visit all the public art we can, and spend a lot more time with these lovely, terrifying, amazing sculptures.
This gutsy sculptor told the city of Oslo that he would do a series of sculptures for free if the city would pay for materials, provide a location, and provide help for the project. After lengthy debate, astonishingly, the city agreed. Vigeland created the statues, the park was completed and Oslo had a cultural treasure.
Vigeland’s sculptures deal with mankind, in all glory and in all despair, in all conditions. I will show you one of my favorites, because I am one of three sisters, and what I read into this statue is sisterhood:
Can you see why I like this statue? You can read so much into his statuary. If I were teaching high school art, I would put out a series of photos of his sculptures and ask each student to choose one and to write about what he or she sees in the sculpture.
There are mothers and fathers with their children:
What do you see? Some saw a man, overwhelmed, careless as he handled his children. I saw a metaphorical balancing act, and don’t children alway find their fathers the most fun because of the risks they take?
Some saw joy in this mother racing with her child. What do you see?
This column centers the exhibit. It is full of people and children, surrounded by people, men and women, all nude, all naked spiritually and open for our observation and interpretation:
This park is incredibly popular. I would love to go back when there aren’t a lot of people. This is a park where you can spend a lot of time speculating.
This is a separate pavilion with depictions of the stages of a life, and the transitions back and forth from the “other world” to this world.
I struggle with this series below – I’ve only shown two. It is a woman with a dragon – or is it a demon? Is she fighting with it, or dancing with it? And in the last picture, is he embracing her? Is he devouring her?
These sculptures are like a good book, you can think about them for a long time, and at different times in your life you may come to understand them in different ways.
When I got home from my volunteer job yesterday, I chatted with AdventureMan while I puttered in the kitchen, and asked where we were going for lunch – it was his turn to choose. It was hard to hear him, for some reason he was hanging out in the entry hall around the corner. He asked where I was and I told him I was in the kitchen.
“Let’s get going,” I said, as our grandson needs to be picked up when he gets out of school.
“Ahhhhhk! I can’t stand it! I can’t wait!” he said. “Please come here!”
He was still in the hallway, looking out the window, so I looked out the window and he told me I was cold, and getting colder.
I turned around, confused, and then I saw them – perfect, long stemmed white roses, surrounded only with white baby’s breath, oh, it’s a combination that always makes my heart flutter.
” . . . . ” (That’s me, not knowing what to say, stunned.
“But it’s not my birthday!”
He had a doctors appointment in the morning, and is doing well. So well, he had one of those epiphanies, when you are happy and you know it (LOL, clap your hands!) (It’s a children’s song “If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands (clap clap) . . . )
He’s happy. I’m happy. We had a sweet lunch together at one of our favorite eateries. Life is sweet.
When the EPIC Book Club met this month, we were discussing Paula McLain’s Circling the Sun. Several of us had enjoyed her book about Ernest Hemingway, The Paris Wife, and had thought this one, about the famous early aviator, would be another great book. I was so impressed with The Paris Wife that I immediately read Hemingway’s The Movable Feast, his novel about the same period of time, and loved the way the books “danced together”. I think good historical fiction needs to stick to known facts.
It was a lively discussion; Beryl Markham was an unusual woman in an unusual culture in a time of transition. She grew up in Kenya as the British were beginning to colonize just after the first world war. Her mother abandoned the family, taking her frailer younger brother and leaving her, with no explanation. Some other woman moved in with her father; Beryl greatly raised herself with the indigenous people. Her father loved her, but was distant. He was first and foremost a horse breeder, and Beryl worked closely with him in breeding and training the horses.
She made a disastrous first marriage, leaving it to pursue a certificate – the first ever for a woman – as a horse trainer. She was spectacularly good at it, and worse (when it comes to the opinion of other women) she looked terrific in riding breeches. Men liked her. She liked men. She was not particular about boundaries, like marriage to other people or being the consort of her good friend, Karen Blixen. Later, she set records as one of the earliest female aviators.
It was also a time when women had few options, and most of the options required a man to take care of her. Beryl Markham had skills, and had more options.
So as we are discussing her behavior, which could be self-defeating and self-destructive, we discussed it in the context of Kenyan colonial society. Then one of the EPIC members mentioned that the same behaviors in the very church where we meet have been the spice of Pensacola gossip for more than a couple centuries; that people don’t change much. We were laughing, and another member mentioned being forbidden to read Peyton Place, many years ago when it was a banned book, and his wrestling coach told him “All the world is Peyton Place.”
I think of all the places I’ve lived and I am inclined to agree.
Here There and Everywhere 