Into The Great Wide Open, Day 2
Bozeman to East Glacier
Nice breakfast, then back to Walmart looking for a couple more layers; it is cold. We’re on the road to East Glacier Park by 0900, with the luxury of time to talk and catch up.
The major topic, as it will remain throughout the trip, is demographics. Many of the businesses we have interacted with don’t have enough people working for them. It is a constant topic. Hotels aren’t renting out all their rooms; they can’t get them cleaned and serviced fast enough. Restaurants have to limit the number of people, they don’t have the staff to cook and serve the meals. Many restaurants are closed altogether, with signs saying “we will re-open when we can find people to work.”
Some people feel very hostile about this. I believe it has to do with demographics, and my age group is greatly complicit. For years people have worked well beyond retirement age, not just out of need, although that has driven some, but also because they loved working. COVID changed a lot of that. COVID made having a lot of public contact more risky. People who might still be working have retired, decided to live on less and to enjoy life more. OK, Boomer, you have that right.
COVID also impacts on young families, what mother or father of a young child wants to take a job which could expose their vulnerable children to the ravages of COVID? And, who is going to take care of the children? COVID had made parents reluctant to use child care centers, and child care centers are nearly non-existent because caretakers are also vulnerable, physically and financially.
In Bozeman, there are a lot of people happy to work outdoors. Not so many willing to work in the service industry. Some believe that the end of federal employment subsidies will make a difference. I imagine it will, for those with the fewest choices, but will not make the difference people expect. Is not one of our inalienable rights the right to protect our own health and that of our children? Montana, like Florida, has a governor who does not allow mask mandates. To me, that is insanity. We know masks plus social distancing work to lower the rates of transmission. Why would we not choose this rational, proven formula which works?
AdventureMan and I wore masks in public places. We also spent a lot of time in wide open spaces where there were few people. That was part of the whole point of choosing Montana and Wyoming.
It is also raining, and rain is a big topic of conversation. Montanans tells us they are thankful for this rain, there is been a huge drought which has been hard on the cows and hard on the crops. The rain dampens the forests, and helps the fire fighters.
Because the roads are nearly empty and we are driving kind of fast, we also have a long raucous discussion of embarrassing speeding tickets we have earned over the years.
My most embarrassing traffic ticket was presented to me by a German policeman who delivered it to my house. He gives me a photo. I am sitting in the front seat, driving my Volvo with a big smile, and chatting with my cousin, who is visiting me. It is taken just outside Heidelberg, in a notorious speed trap. I am well over the speed-limit, and oblivious. When the policeman sits down on the couch I have been working on re-upholstering, the leg falls off and he jumps up very embarrassed and apologetic, which saves me from a very uncomfortable lecture. He delivers the fine, I accept and sign, and he is too embarrassed at “breaking” my couch to even scold me or warn me not to do it again. It was a hefty fine, but I am an expat, and I was thankful just to pay the fine.
A couple hours into our drive, we come to Townsend, a town we didn’t know we were going to like as much as we did. It started with a restroom in a gas station which was also a town True Value Hardware store. The restroom was beautiful and very clean, and the store was wonderful, with really cool useful things. They had barrels of nails and screws and farm items we could not begin to identify. People stopped in to pick up what they needed, but also to exchange news of what was going on in Townsend.
We decided to take a look around, and liked the neatness of the place, some old houses, some new. AdventureMan spotted a bakery, his weakness, and found a parking spot.
I laughed. “Do you see where you have parked?” I kidded him, and he saw that he had parked in front of the Quilt shop, and it was open. Sometimes fate just works that way.
The quilt shop was full of wonderful fabrics. I restrained myself; my suitcase capacity is limited, but I allowed myself a little, and a James Lee Burke novel from the used book shelves in the back that I had read before but knew I would love reading again. I could see that this shop was also a great Townsend gathering place, and a good place to learn what is going on with your neighbors. We really liked Townsend, and we liked that almost every town and city we visited in Montana had a bookshop.
We arrived in Augusta around lunch time, and found a place we couldn’t resist. There was a horse carrier out front. Inside, yep, were real cowboys who kept their cowboy hats on while they ate lunch, and one of them ordered GIZZARDS. I had a crispy chicken salad, which was really pretty good, and AdventureMan had a Ham and cheese sandwich with salad, also pretty good. It was a welcome surprise to find more salads and more vegetables in Montana than we have found on previous trips.
The entire restaurant is decorated with antlers, mostly from elk, but maybe a Moose and some smaller deer, too. What I liked, in addition to the very courteous service to people who clearly “aren’t from around here” was that they had tiny bottles on every table with fresh wildflowers, a nice touch in a very masculine restaurant.
Many times I might ask people if I can take their photos, but I didn’t ask the cowboys and I didn’t take their photo. They did not seem to be people who would like to be thought of as local color, and I did not want to offend them.
Montana has a lot of long rural stretches.
We arrived at Traveler’s Rest and our cabin was ready. We’ve stayed here before and really love that the owners built these cabins themselves. They are beautifully crafted, and well thought out. This time we are staying in the cabin they call Two Medicine (also one of our favorite drives) which is in the back. All the cabins are somewhat together, but the porches all face in different directions, and none looks on each other’s porch or into another’s windows. There are poplar trees between and amongst the cabins, and a wind which blows through them and makes the leaves quiver and whisper. They have metal roofs, so when it rains, you can hear the drops hit the roof.
We unpack, and drive to the East Glacier Trading Post for fresh milk for our breakfast and for my coffee. It is half a mile down the road, and full of just about anything you could need, and some fun stuff you don’t need but can’t resist. In front of the store is the first time we see the notice that masking is required on Blackfeet Nation property, and what is really cool is that there is a box of masks on a table in front of the store free for people who do not have masks to use. The Glacier Trading Post also sells ice cream, and ice cream cones.
We take a quick drive on Two Medicine Drive to the lake.
We also take a quick hike to Running Eagle Falls, greatly reduced from when we visited them in the Spring, a year and a half ago. Then, they were double in height. I just love the story of Running Eagle, and it’s a quick, easy hike.
For dinner Friday night, we choose Serranos, a Mexican restaurant that wasn’t there the last time we stayed in East Glacier. We both ordered Devil’s Stew – WOW. It was mostly pork, stewed in some fiery concoction. I had a bowl, AdventureMan ordered a cup but got a bowl, and he also ordered a tostada. The stew was out of this world, although we are usually a little cautious about eating fiery dishes near to bedtime, oh well. (LOL yes, we suffered, but it was worth it.) We ended up with boxes, and the waitress, who was inexperienced but very kind and a very good server, gave us an extra bag of fresh hot taco chips to take with us.
It’s little things that people remember. I remember that waitress, and how attentive she was, and how caring, even though she told us she was new on the job.
Out in the Great Wide Open: Montana and Wyoming Day 1
Our first major trip since the beginning of COVID had an ambiguous start. AdventureMan and I over prepare, we always do. So the day before we are scheduled to leave for Montana, Wyoming and Idaho, we are actually pretty relaxed. We are all packed – actually packed, and then re-evaluated when the weather suddenly turned from the high 90’s to much lower, and we scrambled to add some cold weather gear to the mix. We are enjoying some down time when AdventureMan calls from his office to mine – “Hey, we just got a letter from Viking you need to look at.”
AdventureMan is a big picture kind of guy. He gets right away that our trip in May 2022 is being cancelled. I capture the details – that we either apply the money we have paid in full to a future trip or we call immediately to tell them we want a full refund. This is the second time we have had this particular trip cancel and we look at each other and agree that two cancellations are enough.
There is an incentive to putting the money forward – a 10% reduction in the cost of the trip. We already have another trip booked with them, but for less money, so we wanted to keep it clean. We needed to call right away, because the deadline was during the middle of this trip which we are about to take, and our lack of internet connections in the remote locations we seek could prevent us from getting our refund. AdventureMan got right on it, the representative answered, encouraged us to book the trip again (we declined) and worked it out so that our refund will arrive shortly.
Crisis averted. Don’t you hate it when things happen at the last minute?
The following morning we were up at 0345 and Patrick, our taxi driver, arrived exactly on the dot of 4:15. For me, it was a scramble. Morning feeding of the two indoor cats and the one outdoor cat is my responsibility, plus getting dressed. I scrambled. I was finished just in time, we got to the airport, checked in and went through security. No problems, except I forgot I had my Fitbit on and had to be searched.
One other problem. For this trip I had really tried to manage with a carry on bag, which preparing for two weeks is problematic. I had really thought things through, had clothes with multiple purposes, got it all in the one bag and my purse – and then they wouldn’t let me take the bag on board, they valet’ed it. I have a large handbag, large enough for my computer and meds and rental car paperwork, so all was well, but it was annoying to follow all the rules and then not to be able to take it with me. We call this a first world problem – in the greater scheme of things, it was small stuff.
Our first flight was to Charlotte, and there was some passenger having a problem about wearing the masks over both mouth and nose, and about whether the female flight attendant had the authority to require full coverage. No problem, they had a big male flight safety monitor who explained his choices to him – cover, or get off the flight.
The Federal Aviation Administration has had more than 4200 reports of unruly passengers since the beginning of 2021. More than 3000 of these reports were due to refusals to wear masks, in spite of clear guidance from every airline that this is a mandate.
We were close to where the flight attendants were chatting during take-off, laughing that a man would refuse to believe a woman had the authority to instruct him to wear a mask. Welcome to 2021.
In Charlotte, we had just enough time to stop at the Farmer’s Market and pick us sandwiches and chips for the next leg of the flight. There were huge lines at all the other places, for Biscuits and Eggs, for McDonalds, for Starbucks. The second flight also departed on time. We don’t take these blessings for granted.
We arrived in Bozeman on time, 50 degrees F. outside and raining. We were delighted. There have been forest fires sending waves of particulate matter towards Bozeman for weeks, and now the winds have shifted, and the rain has helped tamp down the pollution. Again, we feel blessed.
AdventureMan had to wait for his bag so I went to pick up the rental car. Things got weird. Not in a hard way, just in an unusual way. There was no one at my rental agency’s counter, but there was a sign to check in with another rental agency. There was no line, so I checked in. The guy offered me an upgrade for a pittance to a Rav4, a car we really like anyway. Then he handed me the keys and told me how to return it when we were done.
“Wait!” I said. “Don’t we have to sign a rental contract and talk about filling the tank and stuff?”
“Our printer isn’t working,” he stated, and I didn’t believe him for a heartbeat. “I can send you an e-mail copy if you wish” and yes, I so wished. I had my own copy of the initial agreement, but it was for a different kind of car. I’m glad I had it with me because the entire two weeks we drove this rental car, I never received a copy of the new rental agreement. A couple hours after I returned the car, I received the updated rental agreement.
But the car was a beautiful turquoise blue, and close enough to the cars we drive to be easy, even better than AdventureMan’s 2010 version. It was an easy drive to our hotel, the Spring Hill Inn, which had our room waiting for us, a large, serene and quiet room, close to everything. Then off to the nearby Walmart, our usual Bozeman outfitter, for what we call car foods, and insect repellant (which we never had to use) and other small items of convenience.
There is a lot of construction going on in Bozeman, and we are told by many we talk with that the problem is trying to find an affordable place to live in Bozeman. Outside our window, we can see new housing going up, and we can also see the solution the construction workers have found to deal with the housing affordability problem.
We parked downtown when we found a place that looked wonderful and had a smoker out front, but it turned out to be a fine food purveyor, not a restaurant. We asked her for a recommendation, and she said ‘You have to go to the Rocking R” so we did. The Rocking R is actually a bar, a great cowboy bar, and the restaurant is called Hail Mary. We both had elk burgers – hey, we’re in Bozeman – and they were delicious. I think mine was called something like the Outlaw, and my beer was a Maverick Mary; it tasted good and because I don’t drink much, half a beer and I was buzzed. I also had roasted shaved brussel sprouts to salve my conscience. We had a great time. We are happy just to be back in Bozeman.
We had time to take a walk along the main street – woo hooo, lots of fun stores, a rug store for AdventureMan and a book store for me.
We couldn’t ask for a better first day. No delays, no negative events. Hardest part of the day was trying to keep myself awake until 8 p.m.
Intlxpatr Celebrates 15 Years of Blogging
How could I miss my own blogaversary?
Fifteen Years! Whoda thunk it?
Remember when we all got started? 2005? 2006? I was reading blogs like Waiter Rant, Jewaira’s Boutique, Hilaliyya, Fonzi – and the lively Kuwait blogging scene inspired me to take a chance.
I’m not a big risk taker. My style is more uner-the-radar. The Kuwait bloggers welcomed me in, provided lively and stimulating feedback, we encouraged one another and we never looked back.
All these years later, I’m astonished to find I am still blogging. I remember a lengthy conversation in one of the comments sections about why we blog. I am still convinced that we blog because . . . that is what we are wired to do. We cannot other.
So really, I have an excuse for missing the exact day – September 6th – of my blog’s beginning.
I’ve been traveling. I bought a new computer, and you know those steep learning curves . . . I learned that when you buy a new computer, you no longer have compatible card readers with which to upload your photographs. If I’ve taken a photo with my iPhone, I can AirDrop it to my photo files, but anything taken with a camera to a SanDisk is just (pardon my language) SOL.
I also discovered that my good friends at Amazon don’t always tell me the truth about compatibility, so even though I bought an Apple gizmo that promised me to work with my new computer, it did not; it never even had the possibility. Go figure.
As a hint to what is coming, instead of Champagne, or Vouvray, or Sancerre, or a fine Bordeaux, this year we are going to have some refreshing, delicious Flathead Cherry Juice.
Thank you for coming by, thank you for your faithfulness and support these fifteen years and thank you for your encouragement. Thank you for reading, and for commenting, whether online or behind the scenes. Thank you for following. You, and our conversations, are what keep me going. Many thanks.
People Who Smell Like People
I’ve just finished a run and I’m lying flat on the floor under the ceiling fan to cool down. This little Alaska girl is not wired for running in heat and humidity; I run on a running trampoline between the air conditioning outlet and the ceiling fan.
As I lie on the ground, hot and sweaty, the cats can’t get enough of me. Uhtred in particular, loves body smells. When we go on vacation, AdventureMan leaves dirty underclothes to keep him from getting too lonesome. To Uhtred, my sweat seems to be like some rare purfume; he is rolling and bumping on me, purring, kneading, clearly out of his mind with delight.
I find myself thinking back to the days in the early 1960’s when we moved to Germany. The war had been over for years, but it was still a post-war country, where we couldn’t eat ice-cream because there were brucellosus outbreaks among cow herds. And people smelled differently.
Our first housing was in a hotel on a busy street with a street car, and we learned to take the street car everywhere. For a young teen, it was a world of freedom. But people . . . smelled. We could smell their perspiration. The women didn’t shave and neither men nor women washed or dry cleaned their clothes as often as we did.
As a girl, our culture taught us that we were never to have any smell other than shampoo, soap or a light perfume. As teen-agers, we had an utter horror of perspiration, or any other kind of personal odor.
We got used to it. At some point, we just accepted the difference. It was just a part of riding the streetcar, or shopping, the people smelled like people. We didn’t even think about it.
Years later, we found ourselves living in Tunisia, and once again, people smelled like people. We noticed, but we understood and accepted that it wasn’t right or wrong, it was just a difference.
Now, there are times when I miss Tunisia, I miss Zambia, I miss people who smell like people. It also occurs to me that we Americans may also not alway be so hygienic in the future, where world-class fires destroy huge portions of large states, where water is increasingly scarce, where hurricanes destroy electrical delivery systems and pumping systems. We may not wash our clothes as often, we may wear our clothes longer between washes, we may bathe less frequently – and we may smell like people.
Discovering My Neighborhood
We have a renovation coming up which will require that we relocate for ten days to two weeks while the workers are completing a project we have long awaited. It’s not that easy these days to schedule projects; we ordered our new windows in March and they were installed in July! It’s a supply chain issue, a demand issue and a finding people to do the job issue. We are so happy; the company we wanted made the best proposal, we accepted immediately and scheduled. Our timeframe is months out, but we are on the schedule and we can live with that.
Hoping to find someplace nearby where we could stay, my first choice was the beach. On VRBO, where I found an amazing mansion on Napoleon Street in New Orleans, steps away from Magazine street, I found the perfect place at Portofino, at really great price. When I showed it to AdventureMan, he looked sad. He said of course, if I really wanted to do that, we could but it also meant battling two bridges twice a day to come back home to feed and take care of the cats. Oh. Yeh.
Can you see why this would grab my heart? I could see myself sitting on the balcony, sipping my coffee, maybe even watching the Blue Angels fly by on a Tuesday morning practice. Ahhhhhh . . . . . And did I mention, the price was right?
So I started researching places near us where cat-care would be easy, and, sigh, yes, AdventurMan you were right, we can keep an eye on the work going on, too.
I was astonished at the quantity and quality of short-term rentals available in our neighborhood. Smart young people are buying up properties, even very small properties, fixing them up and maintaining them as Airbnb or VRBO rentals.
The first two I looked at were little cabins on the Bayou – darling places, but for the length of time we needed, maybe a little too small. The first one advertises on VRBO at $54/night.
This next one is also VRBO, on the Bayou, and starting at $67 per night:
These both look immaculate, and so new you can almost smell the fresh paint.
Then I started looking at airbnb. My daughter-in-law has had great luck with them, and they seem to have more variety in our neighborhood.
This house has beautiful spaces at $159/night.
This house has a beautiful location and lots of space at $210/night.
This rental was only $93/night, and allowed pets, but not on the furniture.
This one has a lovely location at $125/night.
Privacy. Convenience. Space. These are great options for people like us who just need a temporary place, and also for travelers seeking less of a tourist experience and more of a real life neighborhood experience.
Stream Julia Childs Season One
I am so blessed. Late in life, AdventureMan has discovered he loves to cook.
I always thought I was a good-enough cook, but another military wife and I would joke that after preparing thousands of meals on demand, to meet the needs of a picky but not very discerning family, our skills devolved to a more survival meal production than anything that could be considered fine dining.
When my son would come home from school and smell a dessert, he would say “Oh, are we having company for dinner?”
Not so AdventureMan.
Right now he is binge watching Julia Childs on Amazon Prime. It starts with her very first show, and it is both charming and hilarious, as she goes on and on about these new coated pans (teflon introduced around then.)
Tonight he fixed us a Salad Compose´with salmon and grilled asparagus, red peppers, purple potatoes, snow peas and garlic, and green beans. Very Mediterranean, and oh, so delicious.
You Can Now Binge-Watch Every Single Episode of The French Chef with Julia Child
AP/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK
If you’ve always dreamed of cooking along with Julia Child, now’s your chance! The French Chef is streaming on Prime and PBS.
Julia Child wasn’t the first TV chef, but she’s certainly the most memorable.
Her iconic cooking show, The French Chef, was taped live. It dominated the televisions of home cooks from 1963 through 1973 and taught many a viewer how to cook like the French do. With her down-to-earth personality, Julia made dishes we could hardly pronounce—like beef bourguignon, bouillabaisse and coq au vin—seem doable.
She’s always with us in our hearts, thanks to her quick kitchen wit. Now, she’s back on our screens, thanks to PBS!
How to Stream The French Chef
In mid-March of 2019, PBS launched its PBS Living service, which includes classic cooking shows. PBS Living is an add-on service that you can access through your PBS membership, but you can also access it through Amazon Prime Video.
To access through Amazon Prime Video
To watch on Amazon Prime Video, you have to be a Prime member. You can sign up for a free trial for 30 days, after which it’s $12.99 per month. Then, join PBS Living, which is a paid opt-in channel for Prime subscribers. You can enroll in a free trial for 7 days, after which the cost is $2.99 per month. In addition to The French Chef, you’ll be able to access episodes of other iconic shows, including This Old House and Antiques Roadshow.
Don’t miss these timeless cooking lessons from Julia Child.
How to Watch Julia Child—Without Paying Extra
If neither of the above options works for you, you can still enjoy Julia Child on PBS via the free Julia Child Video Collection, consisting of full-length episodes of select Julia Child programming (including some early The French Chef episodes) as well as shorter interviews, behind-the-scenes clips and other snippets.
You can also catch reruns of all of Julia Child’s best French Chef episodes with celebrity chef commentary during Dishing with Julia Child!Must-Make Recipes Inspired by Julia Child
Before the Blog: Arrival in Kuwait
After three years in Doha, AdventureMan transferred to Kuwait to take on a new position. I followed, spending a couple months dealing with a variety of authorities to get permission to take my cat, known as the Qatari cat in the blog, his real name was Pete.
When our Morgaine died, AdventureMan said “No more cats!” but six months later, on a plane back from our son’s wedding, I told him I needed a cat. He worked long, hard hours, and loved what he was doing. I loved that he loved what he was doing, and I was lonely in our huge house, just me, rattling around like a little pea in a big pod. Because he loves me, he agreed, and as soon as we got back to Doha, I went to the vet and found Pete. I brought him home. Pete didn’t love me to start with – he loved AdventureMan. When AdventureMan would leave for work, Pete would howl in anguish. Slowly, slowly while he came to find me an acceptable substitute, he always loved AdventureMan the best.
So I was trying to do everything I could to guarantee Pete would travel with us to Kuwait. Travel was complicated by an outbreak of Bird Flu. While it didn’t affect people traveling on Qatar Air with falcons (birds!) it seemed to complicate travel for cats. AdventureMan came back a few days ahead and I told him of my frustration – I had a veterinary certificate, I had been assured by the airlines that Pete would travel with us but every person gave me a different answer. He got involved, and the day before we travelled, he got a firm “yes.”
We’ve lived in the MIddle East for years. We know “yes” isn’t always yes. We got to the airport early, to check in, to make sure everything went smoothly. It didn’t. The woman at the check-in desk said “No,” Pete couldn’t travel because of the bird flu. I said “we have him on the reservation!” and the woman said “He’s just a cat. Don’t you know they have many cats in Kuwait?” AdventureMan got involved, invoked the name of the high poohbah he had dealt with and got permission from. After many a phone call, and almost at the very last minute, Pete was allowed to fly.
I use this image of Magic Kingdom because flying into Kuwait from Doha was flying into a whole new world. You might think all Gulf Arab countries are alike, but you would be very wrong. Kuwait and Qatar have many interrelationships, many of the same families, but the culture was very different.
AdventureMan had reserved a limo – not what you are thinking. Not a big fancy car, but a sort of beat-up big car that could handle all our luggage and the cat, and would be waiting for us. Coming into Kuwait, getting a residence visa, getting to the limo was easy. What happened next was unexpected, and part of why we chose this kind of life.
The beloved Emir of Kuwait had died, and we arrived on the day of the coronation of his son. Important people from all over the Gulf and from many other countries were attending this event. It didn’t affect our arrival at the Kuwait Airport, because there is a special VIP terminal for important people. Getting out of the airport, however, was unbelievably complicated as cavalcade after cavalcade of important people stopped traffic so they could be rushed to the events surrounding the coronation. Just as we were about to turn onto the road to Fintas, where we were to live, we were cut off by a big sand-colored official SUV with six men hanging on the outside in desert fatigue uniforms carrying automatic rifles. These were not friendly looking guys, in fact it was a little bit terrifying.
And this was part of the magic of Kuwait, the contrasts and the unpredictability. First rule, you never never mess with the police (and there seemed to be several different kinds of police.)
When I had flown to Kuwait to look at housing, they showed me one apartment and many many villas. The villas were huge, two or three had their own indoor swimming pools, two had elevators. I chose the apartment, which had more square footage than the house we live in now.
I loved living in this eyrie, with it’s huge view over the Arab Gulf.
Scenes in Al Fintas
AdventureMan would never go out on our balcony. We would watch other high rises going up and know that the concrete was poured at night, but it was still very hot, the concrete often had more sand than was good, and many of these buildings are built at sea level. Like the collapsing buildings in Miami, we often had salt water in our underground parking garage. I had thought I could care for the apartment on my own, but the seals on the windows could not keep out the sand, and every day the tile floors were gritty with it. I couldn’t keep up. I was lucky to find a wonderful woman to help me; she also helped me understand many of the realities for expat-labor in Kuwait.
Some of the labor practices were horrifying. Kuwait and very modern laws and standards. Kuwait also has a system called “Wasta” which sort of translates to “who you know/who has influence” and depending on your “wasta” the standards may or may not have been maintained. Also, the fine, ever-present air-born sand creates engineering and maintenance difficulties that we can barely imagine.
We came to admire the laborers very much. They had a hard life. Most were sending everything they could back to families in their own countries, mostly to feed their families and to educate their children. Some were badly treated, some did not have jobs. You get used to thinking in a different way. We had regular beggers, men who waited outside our favorite restaurants knowing we would give them our bag full of food on our way back to the car. There were, of course, scammers, but most who asked for food or money were grateful, in a dignified way, for anything we could share. These men are building a fish trap – there is a way in, but no way out. It was fascinating to watch it being built.
In the late 1960’s, early 1970’s, Kuwait monitored their best male students, and sent these young men to study in different countries. Many went to the US and UK, and being young men, found themselves the kind of adventerous wives who would dare to marry a dashing foreigner and go to live with them in their country. (That is a topic for a whole other blog entry!)
I was fortunate to be friends with many of these women, who in turn introduced me to Kuwaiti women. These were all very fine women, a lot of fun, educated and skilled and sophisticated. It thrilled my heart to be an aging woman who still had so much to learn, and was blessed with these spirited mentors.
Below is a refrigerated water supply tower, put on the street by a generous and religious person to bless those who do not have access to cool water. You see them everywhere. I hope our country never becomes so desertified that we need to install these. I always loved that they are so joyful, so exuberantly creative. They are not only functional, they came in many different sizes, styles and shapes, and they always made me smile. This is what I call giving cheerfully!
Kuwait was often beautiful. Below is a window called meshrabiyya, it provides light; it also provides privacy for the viewer. Many buildings in Kuwait incorporate homages to earlier architectural traditions.
“Regrets, I have a few . . . ” Mostly I don’t wear a lot of jewelry, mostly just earrings I pick up on my travels. My son was getting married; I offered to help the bride with bridesmaids gifts and a Kuwaiti woman guided me to the old gold souk where a jeweler made these necklaces for me, raw emeralds and pearls. I did not get one for myself. I wish I had! You could find real treasures, original and nothing less than 18K and real gems. The workmanship was exquisite.
One of the great joys for us was the Magreb (sunset) call to prayer. Everywhere in Kuwait there were mosques on almost every block. At sunset, each would have a call to prayer. They started seconds apart, so there was a sort of lovely cacaphony of sound, voices raised praising God and reminding everyone to worship and praise. We would watch the light change as the sun set and listen to this marvelous sound.
So many mosques! So like Pensacola! Some were small and simple, some larger and ornate and a few gigantic mosques. I think of Kuwait early in the morning when one church, I think the downtown Presbyterian church, has a carillon concert. It’s not the call to prayer, but it’s the same idea, calling our hearts to be thankful for our creation.
And now, my favorite haunt in Kuwait, the Mubarakiyya. Mubarak is blessing, and the Mubarakiyya was a blessing to me. This is where we would go for the best dates (the dates you eat, and entire street of date vendors), cottons and fabrics for our stitching and clothing (no Macy’s in Kuwait), and for some of the best eating in Kuwait. The stalls and kitchens were miniscule, most had outdoor seating, and the food was FRESH. Our friend Mohammed said that the reason the tea was so good (the large brass pot sitting on a heater at our table) was that they never washed the pot, so it had an aged tannin flavor, LOL. We would eat Kuwaiti shrimp, mezze, and oh, the freshly baked bread. We would take our visiting experts to this souk, a place they might never otherwise experience, and thrill their hearts with the sights and sounds and smells.
I didn’t always have a great view, and driving home one night alone in the middle of a sandstorm is one of lifes most adrenalin filled moments. You can’t see, and you can’t breathe.
I will end this with a big smile. Near the Kuwaiti airport was a store that sold electric palm trees. AdventureMan told me that he’s always wanted one and threatened to buy one to bring back and put in our yard in Edmonds, or Pensacola. Horrified, I just let it slide, and it never happened . . .
Florence Nightengale Made a Difference
Today, in addition to the readings from the Old Testament, New Testament and Gospels, the Lectionary celebrates Florence Nightingale. I had no idea how influential this woman-ahead-of-her-times was in making hospitals safer places in which to treat our wounded and sick. She observed, studied and documented sanitary practices and how changing small things – like changing the linens on beds between patients, clean latrines – could make a big difference. She brought order out of chaos, truly a Godly woman.
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE
NURSE, RENEWER OF SOCIETY (12 AUGUST 1910)
The commemoration of Florence Nightingale is controversial. On the one hand, she doubted or denied many of the central articles of the Creed. On the other hand, she believed in God and devoted her life to His service as she understood it.
She was born in Florence on 12 May 1820 of upper-class English parents travelling through Italy, and named for her native city. (“Florence” was not an accepted first name at the time. Her sister was born in Naples and named “Parthenope,” the Greek name for that city.) Florence was reared in the Unitarian Church, but later joined the Church of England.
In her diary, an entry shortly before her seventeenth birthday reads: “On February 7th, 1837, God spoke to me and called me to his service.” She did not know what the service would be, and therefore decided that she must remain single, so as to have no encumbrances and be ready for anything. With this in mind, she rejected a proposal of marriage from a young man whom she dearly loved. She suffered from “trances” or “dreaming” spells, in which she would lose consciousness for several minutes or longer, and be unaware when she recovered that time had passed. (Could this be a form of petit mal epilepsy? No biographer of hers that I have read uses the word.) She found the knowledge that she was subject to such spells terrifying, and feared that they meant that she was unworthy of her calling, particularly since she did not hear the voice of God again for many years. In the spring of 1844 she came to believe that her calling was to nurse the sick. In 1850 her family sent her on a tour of Egypt for her health. Some extracts from her diary follow:
March 7. God called me in the morning and asked me would I do good for Him, for Him alone without the reputation.
March 9. During half an hour I had by myself in my cabin, settled the question with God.
April 1. Not able to go out but wished God to have it all His own way. I like Him to do exactly as He likes without even telling me the reason.
May 12. Today I am thirty–the age Christ began his mission.
Now no more childish things. No more love. No more marriage. Now Lord let me think only of Thy Will, what Thou willest me to do. Oh Lord Thy Will, Thy Will.
June 10. The Lord spoke to me; he said, Give five minutes every hour to the thought of Me. Coudst thou but love Me as Lizzie loves her husband, how happy wouldst thou be.” But Lizzie does not give five minutes every hour to the thought of her husband, she thinks of him every minute, spontaneously.
Florence decided that she must train to be a nurse. Her family was horrified. In her day, nursing was done mostly by disabled army veterans or by women with no other means of support. It was common for nurses of either sex to be drunk on the job most of the time, and they had no training at all. It was common practice never to wash or change the sheets on a bed, not even when a patient died and his bed was given to a new patient. Florence was told to go to Kaiserswerth, Germany, to learn and train with the Lutheran order of Deaconesses who were running a hospital there. Back in England again, she used the influence of Sidney Herbert, a family friend and Member of Parliament, to be appointed supervisor of a sanatorium in London. Under her able guidance, it turned from a chamber of horrors into a model hospital. The innovations introduced by Miss Nightingale were, for their day, little short of revolutionary. She demanded, and got, a system of dumb-waiters that enabled food to be sent directly to every floor, so that nurses did not exhaust themselves carrying trays up numerous flights of stairs. She also invented and had installed a system of call bells by which a patient could ring from his bed and the bell would sound in the corridor, with a valve attached to the bell which opened when the bell rang, and remained open so that the nurse could see who had rung. “Without a system of this kind,” she wrote, “a nurse is converted to a pair of legs.”
While working in the poorer districts of London, Miss Nightingale encountered a Roman Catholic priest, Henry Edward Manning (later Cardinal Manning), who was working among the poor of London. She was impressed by the assistance he gave to many who had nowhere else to turn, and they became friends for life. She was greatly attracted by Roman Catholicism, but rejected much of its theology, and so reluctantly decided against joining it.
Then war broke out in the Crimea (in Russia, on the north edge of the Black Sea), and Sir Sidney Herbert, now Secretary of War, obtained permission for Florence to lead a group of 38 nurses there. Of these, 10 were Roman Catholic nuns, 14 were Anglican nuns, and the remaining 14 were “of no particular religion, unless one counts the worship of Bacchus.” They found conditions appalling. Blankets were rotting in warehouses while the men did without, because no one had issued the proper forms for their distribution. The lavatories in the hospitals had no running water, and the latrines were tubs to be emptied by hand. But no one emptied them, since official regulations did not specify which department was responsible for doing so. The result was that the hospital had a foul stench that could be smelled for some distance outside its walls. Far more men were dying in hospitals of infection than of wounds. The chief concern of many of the Army doctors was that the nurses might usurp some of their authority. Florence gradually managed to win the doctors and other authorities over, and to reform hospital procedures, with spectacular results. Once the medical situation had ceased to be an acute problem, she turned her attention to other aspects of the soldiers’ welfare. For example, most of them squandered all their pay on drink. She noted that there was no trustworthy way for them to send money home to their families, and she set up facilities for them to do so. First, she undertook to send money home herself for any soldier in the hospital that wanted it sent, and the soldiers brought in about 1000 pounds a month. She asked the authorities to set up an official service to do this, and they refused. By appealing to Queen Victoria herself, she overcame opposition to the idea, and the men sent home 71,000 pounds sterling in less than six months. She established with her own money a reading-room with tables for writing letters, and the men used it enthusiastically. She imported four schoolmasters to give lectures, and the halls were filled to overflowing. All this was done despite opposition from officers who said, “The men are hopeless brutes. You cannot expect anything from them.”
At night, she would often patrol the wards, carrying a dim lamp, to make sure that all was well and no one was in need of help. She became famous as “the Lady with the Lamp.”
In April 1856 the war was over, and by mid-July the hospital was emptied and her work in Crimea over. She returned to England a national hero, with a great welcome prepared for her; but she slipped into the country unnoticed and went to a convent that had supplied some of her nurses. There, she spent the day in prayer before coming out to face the public and beginning to lobby Parliament for suitable legislation. She wrote pamphlet after pamphlet, pointing out by pie charts, for example, that the major cause of deaths in the Army was not wounds caused by enemy action but disease caused by lack of proper sanitation. She is perhaps the first person to use pie charts and similar graphic devices to convey statistical information. She obtained the formation of an Army Medical Staff Corps and a Sanitary Commission to oversee military health conditions.
Throughout these efforts, she relied on the help of Sidney Herbert, insisting that he must work hard and long to get the legislation she needed through Parliament. When he protested that she was asking too much, she would not listen. His health broke, and he died in August 1861. Florence prayed God to raise him from the dead, explaining that she needed him for the job. When God failed to comply, her faith was badly shaken. She wrote a book called, Suggestions for Thought: An Address to the Artisans of England, in which she explained that God was less of a Person and more of a Cosmic Force than is generally supposed by Christians. (But note that she was working on this book before Sir Sidney died, and one cannot call it simply a response to his death.) Advance copies were given to a few friends, such as John Stuart Mill, who praised it highly. However, it was never published (I have not seen it, and neither the Library of Congress nor the National library of Medicine has a copy, nor any other library in the United States that I have been able to learn of), since Florence kept revising it — arguably, because her beliefs on the nature of God were simply not internally consistent. Eventually, it seems, God spoke to her again and said, “You are here to carry out my program. I am not here to carry out yours.” She wrote in her diary, “I must remember that God is not my private secretary.”
Before his death, Sir Sidney had gotten her involved in Indian affairs. She served on the Indian Sanitary Commission. In May 1859, she decided that there were insufficient data available in England on conditions in the Indian Army, and she wrote to 200 military stations there, asking for copies of all regulations and all documents relating to the health and sanitary administration of the army. The reports that came back filled two vans. She read them all and summarized them for the Report of the Commission. Her conclusion was that the death toll from disease in the Indian Army was appallingly high (69 out of 1000 annually), and that this was largely due, not to the climate, but to lack of sanitation, and that preventive measures included sanitation not just for army posts but for neighboring villages and, in the long run, for all of India.
She was a friend of General Charles George Gordon, who captured the British imagination when he and his troops were beseiged at Khartoum in the Sudan, and finally captured and killed. After his death, Florence wrote to a friend that suffering, disappointment, and lack of success are the tribute which it is the soul’s greatest privilege to present to God. In Gordon’s death, she wrote, we see “the triumph of failure, the triumph of the Cross. With him, all is well.”
She met the scholar Benjamin Jowett, who was translating Plato into English. They became fast friends, and she contributed to the translation. She also began an anthology of mystical writings, called “Notes from Devotional Authors of the Middle Ages, Collected, Chosen, and Freely Translated by Florence Nightingale.” It was her contention that mystical prayer is not just for monks and nuns, but should form a part of the every-day life of ordinary persons.
Under the strain of ceaseless overwork, her own health broke, and she was an invalid for the latter half of her life. On Christmas Day when she was sixty-five, she wrote: “Today, O Lord, let me dedicate this crumbling old woman to thee. Behold the handmaid of the Lord. I was thy handmaid as a girl. Since then, I have backslid.” She wrote a manual called Notes for Nurses, and a set of instructions for the matron in charge of training nurses, emphasizing the importance for a nurse of a schedule of daily prayer. A few years before her death, she was the first woman to receive the Order of Merit from the British government. She died at ninety, and, by her directions, her tombstone read simply, “F.N. 1820-1910”.
Florence Nightingale died on 13 August 1910, and is commemorated on this day on the Lutheran Calendar. The Episcopal calendar commemorates Jeremy Taylor on 13 August, and accordingly has shifted the commemoration of Nightingale to 18 May. I am not sure of the significance of this date, but it is the date (or nearly) of the opening of the Nightingale Training School for Nurses in 1860. [Note: the current date in the Episcopal Church for her commemoration is 12 Aug.]
by James Kiefer
Salmon Piccata; Reward for a Long Week
As we sat down for dinner last night, I reminded AdventureMan that when he retired (maybe the second or third or fourth time) he said he wanted to learn to cook seafood, maybe he’d like to take a class.
All on his own, with recipes from the Barefoot Contessa, the Pioneer Woman, Southern Living, the Pensacola News Journal, how-to videos on YouTube and all kinds of other internet sources, his dream has been realized. Not only can he cook seafood, but he does it really well.
Last night was the end of a long week; a week with the grandchildren, a week of continuing organization and efforts for upgrades to the house that give us pleasure, a week of errands in preparation for an upcoming trip and the normal duties of every day life. As a special treat, AdventureMan volunteered to make a Salmon Piccata, which I adore, and he also roasted green beans and tiny potatoes in oil and garlic, and put together a beautiful green salad.
To top it all off, he found a gorgeous Sancerre to go with it. I can’t drink a lot of wine any more, not just due to being diabetic, but also because as I age, I seem to be developing a smidgeon of better judgement. If I can only drink a little, I want it to be something I like a lot. AdventureMan has found the perfect formula; for every really good bottle of wine we buy, he writes a check for an equivalent amount to the Salvation Army, to feed, house and care for the poor. It may not work for everybody, but it works for us.
Sometimes happiness is looking back and seeing how far you’ve come. Sometimes being content is finding joy in the everyday incremental refinements we make in life. A man who will create a magical dinner on a hot summer’s day when I am exhausted is my kind of guy.
Tales from Before the Blog
Tonight we were eating Indian food, and talking about some of the truly great Indian restaurants where we had eaten in Doha. Our two favorite had separate veg and meat sections, and one, The Garden, even had them on two separate floors. The other, the Welcome, was a wonderful place, a place I would never dare to take my mother but a place we often went with friends. Once, we took another couple we liked, and we started with chots and dosas, and then ordered entrees. When the bill came, AdventureMan picked up and the other man objected – but only momentarily; AdventureMan showed him the total bill was 44 Qatari Dinar – somewhere around ten dollars.
Both The Welcome restaurant and the Garden were torn down to make way for a grand new walking street going down to the Souq al Waqif. We never saw prices like that again, or that kind of Indian-comfort-food-at-low-prices.
One story led to another.
“Take Her! Take Her!”
AdventureMan preceded me to Doha; I stayed behind and packed out, found new renters for our apartment, sold my car and arranged for my diabetic cat to fly with me to Doha.
When I got to Doha, I showed the veterinary papers showing Morgaine had the veterinary papers in order, but, as it turned out, I had not requested permission from the Qatar Department of Animal Health to bring in my cat, so I would have to leave her until I got permission. I discussed this politely with the customs official, a young soldier, and then I started pulling out my packets of syringes and vials of insulin, and I explained to him that she needed X amount of insulin injected at such and such a time, two times a day.
He looked at me in utter horror and said “Take her! Take her!” and I didn’t wait a single second but got everything back in my bag and walked out as fast as I could with my unpermitted cat. Things were easier then; there were always men with carts eager to take all your bags, so all I had to do was grab the cat and run.
“She’ll Have to Sign a Waiver”
No sooner had I arrived in Doha than a car showed up at my villa, a car I hadn’t requested nor chosen, but I guess the car I was meant to have. I had to learn to think in a whole new way. It was a really good thing I had the car because Operation Enduring Freedom was breaking out, and I knew I might not see my husband again for a while. He took an hour off the day after I arrived to show me where two grocery stores were; the one near us for the basics, and the French Carrefour, across town, but worth the drive.
But the company was horrified I wasn’t leaving. “We’ll pay your passage!” they said. “You can go anywhere! You don’t want to stay here, war is breaking out.”
I had just gotten to Doha. I was settling in. I had my abaya and scarf from our time in Saudi Arabia, and I knew the way to the airport; I could walk if I had to. My niece, Little Diamond, was coming to stay with me. We both spoke some Arabic, she spoke more than I did. I wasn’t afraid, and I didn’t want to leave.
“She’ll have to sign a waiver,” they told AdventureMan. I signed the waiver.
There were some dangers. While the USA and allies were gearing up to help the Kuwaitis take back Kuwait from the Iraqis, not everyone was on board. We learned to alter our body language, to walk and speak quietly, not to draw any attention to ourselves. We did our shopping calmly and efficiently. Even so, on occasion there was an occasional shop clerk who might ignore me and refuse to wait on me, but those occasions were rare, and the occasions of great hospitality from local citizens were many.
The day the war started, my sweet cat died. She had problems breathing early in the day, so I took her to the vet. Going to the Vet in Doha was not like any going-to-the-vet I’ve ever experienced before; you go, you sign in, you sit, if there is a chair left, and you wait your turn. It doesn’t matter how sick your animal is. It was chaos. Many people got very emotional and wanted to be taken out of turn. When I got to see the vet, who was always very kind, he gave her a shot and said “Now she will feel better.” I told him I thought she was close to the end, and he said maybe or maybe not. I took her home.
About three hours later she came and lay next to me quietly and I knew she was saying goodbye. She started gasping again, so I put her n her cage and drove as quickly as I could to the vet, but it was Friday afternoon, the day everything closes for mid-day prayer, he was closed, and could not be reached. By the time I got home, she was dead.
So the war is starting, my cat has died and I am not in a rational place. AdventureMan called and my niece talked to him. I think she told him the cat had died and I thought there was a chance it might just be a fit and she might come back to life, which was true. AdventureMan came home, I don’t know how he did it, but he did, and we drove out to the desert and buried our cat. He brought me back home and went back to the base and I didn’t see him for a while, except on television; as the CNN reporter stood in front of a sign at the press center on base, my husband sauntered behind him and gave me a wave. We still laugh about how he took a break to bury our cat just when war was about to break out, but managed to get back in time for the opening. He showed up when it mattered.
Welcome to Doha.
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