What Were We Thinking?
We really needed to visit Atlanta; old friends opened a restaurant and we wanted to encourage and applaud their dream come true. When we chose the dates, we didn’t realize it was going to be the coldest days in Atlanta – ever.
As we arrived, I said “Is that what I think it is?” and AdventureMan said “I think it’s from some factory, or blowing off some truck.”
No. No, AdventureMan, you don’t know snow. This was flurry. It’s too tiny to be sleet, it’s just flurry, but I’m really glad we are getting to our hotel quickly. Fortunately for us, the entire very cold time we were there, during their record-breaking cold, it was too cold to snow. We escaped as the temperatures started rising to return to Pensacola.
Zambia: “What is it like where you live?”
Today the church prays for the diocese of Lusaka, and I smile as I pray for my Zambian friends. We have stayed in Lusaka several times, and visited schools and clinics in remote parts of Zambia. Zambia is an amazing country – something like 70 different peoples and languages, and training in all the schools to help them learn how to live together.
One young Zambian told us that when they come into contact, it is normal to feel strange; the “other” doesn’t speak the same dialect, may be a traditional enemy, is just different, uncomfortable. They are trained to ask “What is it like where you live?” and to listen to the response.
I have used that phrase so many times; it is so useful. When you listen to an “other” talk about his or her life, you connect. You find similarities, and differences, and you learn the joys and challenges of this different life. It is a wonderful question. I used it the first time in Zambia, at a dinner with a lot of people we didn’t know. The woman next to me seemed stuffy, but sometimes that can be shy, so I asked “What is it like where you are from?” and she looked at me with concern and said, very sharply, “What do you mean?” I said “what is your life like, tell me about what you do in a day?” and she said “That is a very odd question!” but she went on to tell me about her life, her country house and her passion for riding. By the end, we were having a great conversation.
May God bless you richly, Zambia. May your peoples live together in God’s peace!
Drilling Down
It’s my favorite time of the year, and there is just so much to do. Cooler temperatures give me energy! As I am making my morning coffee (as opposed to my mid-morning coffee, or my after-lunch coffee or that regrettable late afternoon coffee) I noticed a ray of sunshine coming in obliquely from a new direction, illuminating how dusty my lower cupboards had gotten. While the coffee brews, I grab the spray and paper towels and quickly wipe down the streaked, dusty doors, hoping no one else has noticed their grime. There are even a couple stray Pete-hairs, which make me sad. I still miss that sweet cat. I wonder where his spirit roams?
It’s the time of year for cleaning-out and re-organizing, and when you are a quilter, you have a lot to re-organize. I have shelves and bins of fabrics, shelves of books and patterns, shelves of cut pieces and threads, shelves of quilts ready to be assembled. January is such a great month for getting rid of things that just bog me down and collect dust. There are a few things I am sentimental about, but for the most part, I love the free-ness of clearing out the expendable.
And, with all the juices of renewal flowing, AdventureMan and I are planning one of our wonderful road trips. I used to do all the planning; AdventureMan might give some input but for the most part, he was focused on his job and I took care of travel plans, reservations, funding, etc. Now he has more time, we call back and forth from office to office about hotel websites, Google Maps, travel time. I create the data base and print out the segments, he helps with things to do and see and hotels and side trips. At first, it was a real adjustment for me, having input, but now it’s made things a lot more fun.
I didn’t used to print out segments, not once I got my smart phone, but to our horror, we discovered there are still places in this great United States where (gasp!) there is no coverage! When you have to make tricky road connections, it helps to have directions, and a hand held map. I put together folders, and we can just throw pieces away as they are accomplished. Our trips are more like missions, but a lot more fun.
We don’t do bucket lists, or not so much, but we do try to scratch an itch. There are places I haven’t seen, experiences I haven’t had. We’re alike in that way, AdventureMan and I. We love our road trips, as much for the unexpected blessings as for the planned ones. At dinner last night, I told him that about the worst experience I could remember was finding myself in a camp on the Busanga Plains in Zambia; it was about a week too early, it was still soaked with the receding flooding, game was scarce and it was very very hot. Mosquitos were everywhere, and I was covered with bites. At the same time, I have had better, less memorable experiences. You have to have the odd bad experience to help you understand just how good some of the good ones have been.
I had to do this photo because these below $2/gallon gas prices are such an unexpected delight:
And I had a moment when I thought my heart would stop as our nearly 5 year old “baby” stood up on the high bar at gymnastics!
So January is rushing by.
The Rains in Africa
There are times – it doesn’t matter where I am, but it’s usually a grocery store. Kuwait. Qatar. Pensacola – they all have this elevator music, music you barely notice, until you find yourself unconsciously belting out “I miss the rains in Africa . . . .”
I love that song. We’ve visited many African countries, and occasionally just before or after the rainy season. When the drops of rain hit the dry earth, there is a scent like no other, an earthy, clean perfume smell.
MIT scientists have worked out the source of that intoxicating scent – tiny bubbles.
Earthy, Post-Rain Smell Explained by MIT Scientists
By Jim Algar, Tech Times | January 18, 11:22 PM
Researcher create slow-motion video of “champagne bubble” effect to show the origin of the familiar after-rain smell. Raindrops can release aerosols from the ground into the air as they hit, researchers find.
(Photo : MIT)
Researchers say they’ve used high-speed photography to show the origin of the familiar earthy, sweet smell that lingers in the air following a rainstorm.
Scientists call that aroma petrichor, and have long ascribed it to chemicals and oils in soil released as aerosols when raindrops hit the ground.
Now researchers at MIT say they’ve created super-slow-motion footage to demonstrate how that “rain smell” moves from the ground into the air.
“It’s a very common phenomenon, and it was intriguing to us that no one had observed this mechanism before,” says professor of mechanical engineering Cullen R. Buie.
“Rain happens every day — it’s raining now, somewhere in the world,” he says.
When a raindrop impacts a porous surface, the researchers found, it traps tiny bubbles of air that then shoot upwards like the bubbles in a glass of champagne, ultimately bursting out of the raindrop in a fizz of aerosols.
Those aerosols contain aromatic elements that can be released by light rainfall and spread by winds, they say.
More aerosols are produced by light or moderate rainfall than during heavy rainfall, which is why the familiar petrichor odor is more commonly apparent after a light shower, they add.
“Heavy rain [has a high] impact speed, which means there’s not enough time to make bubbles inside the droplet,” says postdoctoral researcher Youngsoo Joung.
The scientists filmed raindrops falling on a variety of surfaces, including 16 kinds of soil and 12 engineered materials.
Identifying a mechanism for raindrop-induced generation of aerosols may help to explain how some kinds of soil-based diseases are spread, Joung says.
“Until now, people didn’t know that aerosols could be generated from raindrops on soil,” he says. “This finding should be a good reference for future work, illuminating microbes and chemicals existing inside soil and other natural materials, and how they can be delivered in the environment, and possibly to humans.”
The MIT scientists are conducting further experiments with surfaces containing soil bacteria and pathogens, including E. coli, to see if rainfall and its aerosol-generating mechanism can spread them.
“Aerosols in the air certainly could be resulting from this phenomenon,” Buie says. “Maybe it’s not rain, but just a sprinkler system that could lead to dispersal of contaminants in the soil, for perhaps a wider area than you’d normally expect.”
The results of the MIT study have been published in the journal Nature Communications.
Thanksgiving at the Sunset Inn
Back in Panama City for our annual gathering with our sweet daughter-in-law’s family, we check in at the Sunset Inn on a glorious day in late November. The view that greets us thrills our hearts:
There aren’t too many people staying at the beach, go figure, it’s Thanksgiving and families are gathering, but this is a GREAT time to be here. We have a full kitchen, so I can still roast my garlic-broccoli, make my Mom’s Cranberry Salad and make the topping for the Soused Apple Cake all while having the door wide open and listening to the waves roaring to the shore. This is one of my happiest places on earth.
These small surf boards give a lot of pleasure on smaller waves:
I thought I was back in Kuwait, overlooking the family park in Fintas:
I can see things slipping a little at the Sunset Inn, carpets not being replaced, linens getting thinner from so many washings, small repairs not being made – and I know our days there are numbered. Sigh. What they can’t replace in the personal character of the management – I can run down and beg a couple pieces of tinfoil to cover my broccoli; it is their motel, they manage it personally. There are countless soulless condos and motel rooms in Panama City Beach, but only one Sunset Inn.
Vic’s Touchdown Cafe Near RaceTrack, LA
We’re headed home again, but the day has dawned shrouded in a thick Halloween-y fog drifting up off the bayous and covering the low lying roads. We get on a fast road, and decide to have breakfast, hoping the fog will break.
We exit almost as soon as we got on the road, headed South on a road heading toward the Gulf, looking for something that is not fast food. And there it is, on the left, we just passed it, so we circle back for breakfast at Vic’s, Breakfast Lunch Dinner.
As it turns out, I believe the real name is Vic’s Touchdown Cafe. The interior is full of sports trophies, banners, team memorabilia, and stuffed deer heads. There are other customers, eating breakfast, chatting with a man whom I believe is probably Vic. We ordered breakfast off the plastic menu table mats, and settled back to listen and learn.
People in Louisiana are hospitable, and kind. They asked us questions, shared some local lore and when I asked Vic if he had any milk, he opened a little bottle of milk just for me and put it on the table so I could have milk in my coffee. I was impressed, but I get the impression he thought it was just good manners. My kind of place.
I didn’t take photos of the food; it might have spoiled the mood. It was traditional breakfast; eggs, bacon, biscuit and AdventureMan had hash browns. It was all good, even the coffee, and even better because it was not fast good. This was a great stop.
By the time we had finished, the fog had lifted and we had clear sailing all the way back to Pensacola 🙂
Natural Beauty at Pointe-Aux-Chenes
Pointe-Aux-Chenes was probably one of the most beautiful drives on our trip. You start off driving along a small canal, and you’re going to need your smart phone or a map to make the right turns to get to this isolated location.
We had read there was an wildlife observation point at the Pointe-Aux-Chenes Nature Refuge, but we looked and looked and never found it. Never mind, there was so much to see.
As you go south, and you get closer and closer to the Gulf, houses go up on stilts.
This is still very much a fishing community:
Is this a mistake? A misunderstanding? The area is called Pointe-Aux-Chenes, Oak Pointe, but this sign refers to the tribe as Pointe-Aux-Chiens, Dog Point Indians. Hmmmm.
It is so hard to capture anything that looks like a dolphin, even though at sundown, the place was full of dolphin – or porpoises, I am not sure I know the difference. Even though I didn’t get a good shot, it was a glorious place to be at that very moment.
Can you see the eagles perched in the distant trees?
For a moment, I thought I was in the Camargue with it’s wild ponies, but a local man said he thought these belonged to someone and just cropped on this salty grass at the end of the road.
So many beautiful things to see in one spot!
Big Mike’s BBQ in Houma, LA
Where do you eat in Houma, Louisiana? Just about everyone we asked started with Big Mike’s, so after our swamp tour, we gave it a try.
The place was packed. There are menus near the door; you look at the menus, you go to the counter, you place your order and they give you a number which you place on your table and someone brings your meals to you. The smell is divine.
This is cane sugar country, so of course, the sweet tea is cane-sugar sweet:
Several different seating areas in Mike’s:
The chicken with corn on the cob and jambalaya – delicious!
Pulled pork:
Big Mike’s has it’s own BBQ sauce, rubbing spices, t-shirts, etc>
From Lake Charles to Houma, Louisiana And Bon Creole
Another wonderful day to travel Southern Louisiana and the lowlands. We stop at one of our favorite places, Saint Martin’s Lake.
Near the factory burning cane, I see an old abandoned house. There are a lot of old abandoned houses on the backroads of Louisiana; rich pickings for series like HBO’s True Detectives.
The air was so clear you could see every atom of smoke as this factory burned off chaff grinding cane into cane sugar syrup:
Just in time for lunch, we hit New Iberia, where my friend Dave Robicheaux hangs out. Last time we were here, we went to a wonderful Place, Bon Creole, but we remembered it was hard to find. Even with my smart phone, we drive right past it, and have to go around the block and look again. This is not a place that makes itself KNOWN; you have to know where it is, and you have to really want to find it, LOL!
The interior is a hunter’s dream.
At the table near us, a group of local women are sitting and one is holding court, saying “You never know about so-and-so; she is so SECRETIVE!” and I am thinking that she would call me secretive, too, that I would be very careful about telling anything about myself that she could be spreading to all her friends – and everyone else in the Bon Creole who cared to listen.
Thank God, our food is ready, and I start with my gumbo, thick with shimp. Oops, I forgot, the gumbo comes with potato salad.
And more grilled shrimp – this time on my green salad. So many shrimp I couldn’t eat them all!
Poor AdventureMan! “Why didn’t I just order a 6″ Overstuffed Oyster Po’Boy???” These oysters were the old fashioned kind, fresh, dipped in corn meal and deep fried, just the way he likes them, but no, no, he couldn’t eat them all. I had one, and there were still many left, so many fabulous oysters!
As we were leaving, we stopped two residents who were leaving and asked them if we could get to Highway 90 by continuing down the road we were on, and they offered to let us follow them to Franklin. Franklin is like 25 miles down the road, imagine. They were willing to be so gracious to perfect strangers. We gratefully declined, and used their instructions and our smart phone to get us over to 90, en route to Morgan City and Houma.
Holly Beach and Hackberry, Louisiana
AdventureMan knows how to thrill my heart, and just down the road, we find Holly Beach.
“Do you want to walk on the beach?” he asks slyly. He knows the answer to that question will always be “YES!!”
Holly Beach is not Pensacola Beach. I don’t see a single restaurant, not a single hotel. I don’t see sugar white sand. The sand here is golden grey, and the beach is littered – with SEASHELLS! So many wonderful seashells! I could stay here for a long time!
LOL, it’s also an Alaska kind of beach!
On our way into Lake Charles, we make a stop at Brown’s Market, in Hackberry, Louisiana, for a list of items, and they had every item on our list. It is a great little stop, and has clean restrooms, too 🙂
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