Wednesday ramble
The Osprey nest in Boulder Fairgrounds, Colorado is back on camera, and I love being able to tune in again. There are three chicks, recently hatched. I haven't looked today.
No, I've been watching this morning. The father arrived with a fish, which the mother tore to tiny bits and fed two of the chicks. The third one hasn't moved and seems to be dead.
Every day is new and different, and today is the same. One of many favorite breakfasts, a sandwich made with extra thin whole wheat bread toasted, spread thick with Victoria's Last Bite chicken salad we buy at Grocery Outlet. But then I opened the cheese drawer thinking to add a slice of cheese for a change and what's there but a package of what can most generously only be described as a cheese-like food-type product labeled American Cheese.
It must have come into existence as Velveeta, which in my memory first came packaged in a wooden box. Seems to me it was an answer to wartime food rationing, like the brick of white lard or whatever it was dumped into bowls of which it was my job to empty and mix mix mix a package of deep orange coloring to make it look like butter. It was dubbed oleomargarine, now beautified as margarine, but which we shortened oleo.
It wasn't real food, and in recent years has been reported by nutritionists and others as not healthy, all I needed permanently to switch back to real butter. I mean, as the prayer says, My friends, life is short ...
So that.
The other evening I arrived home to hear that Malinda wasn't interested but Kristen wanted The Restaurant Experience for supper. We started out for a semi-Cajun place here at the beach called something like (oh WTH, I can't remember the name of it), only to find it's closed on Monday. Other options opened and we settled on Stinky's in spite of the twenty or so mile drive, deciding enroute, Kristen driving, that she and I would share The Log, which is their specialty of 36 oysters spread out on a long slice of tree trunk. Six are fried and thirty are baked in various ways, all good. Dessert, for them key lime pie, for me, black coffee and a taste of their pie. When Frank and I used to go to Stinky's, their best dessert was a pecan pie with chopped pecans all through the filling instead of half pecans decorating the top. Frank said it was almost as good as his mom's pecan pie. Don't know why Stinky's dropped that. Also don't know why they no longer offer "Stinky's Stew" at lunchtime.
Last evening, 8th grade graduation for Holy Nativity Episcopal School and returned to mind my very own final time at graduation as their chaplain and religion & ethics teacher, must have been 2007. I stopped because the job as priest at StThomas had turned full-time. That last graduation was for me a deeply emotional experience that each graduation since then has brought back somewhat. At graduation I used to give each graduate a pocket prayer coin, first couple years each made individually by a friend in Apalachicola then, when he moved on, ordered online. Life moves on though, doesn't it, and new adventures happen out of thin air when least expected, and here we are.
What's to do here at Breakfast Point, PCB? Watch new houses go up. They are nice, and seem well built, but the place is not as interesting looking as Sweet Bay, where there's a variety of house styles, and where their closeness to the sidewalk gives the sense of a close-knit old fashioned city block neighborhood.
Mind still wandering, see. That brings to mind the rectory of a Pennsylvania parish we visited when we were "candidating" for a parish after I graduated seminary and was ordained priest. I don't remember the town or church name, and probably wouldn't tell it if I did. But it was in a city where houses and other structures were built right up against the sidewalk. The rectory was right up next to the church, and, as I recall, was even entered from the church (and there may have been a separate entry from the tiny fenced backyard, but it was forty years ago and I don't recall). On the street side was a window looking out on the sidewalk. It was not uncommon for the priest or a member of his family to come downstairs mornings to discover that some transient had slid the window open, come in, and was asleep on the living room sofa.
That was a church of very kind people, every congregation is different and this one was very high church and all blue-collar folks, and the bishop was concerned it would not be a good fit but sent me to visit anyway. And it turned out unfortunate that, when they came to our home parish to hear me preach, I was serving the chalice and spilt the entire cup of port wine down the ruffly white blouse of the woman who was senior warden and head of the search committee. So, we went on to be called by a very different parish that was obviously a good fit for all of us, both sides; but which I ultimately declined their call when my mother told me that the pulpit and altar at Trinity Church, Apalachicola was open. For many reasons for all of us, it was tearing, even searing, but necessary to leave Harrisburg and its nearness to Washington where I still had connections and was working some while the parish ministry was unpaid voluntary and quite demanding. From the parish in, well that one was Mount Joy, Pennsylvania, it would have been a too-easy drive down to Washington; but it was a good time of life to make a total break, and that's what all of us did.
The new culture we stepped into was an adventure to be mused another time. For instance, Tass coming home from her first day in 7th grade and telling her mother, Mom! they don't speak English.
RSF&PTL
TW+
No, I've been watching this morning. The father arrived with a fish, which the mother tore to tiny bits and fed two of the chicks. The third one hasn't moved and seems to be dead.
Every day is new and different, and today is the same. One of many favorite breakfasts, a sandwich made with extra thin whole wheat bread toasted, spread thick with Victoria's Last Bite chicken salad we buy at Grocery Outlet. But then I opened the cheese drawer thinking to add a slice of cheese for a change and what's there but a package of what can most generously only be described as a cheese-like food-type product labeled American Cheese.
It must have come into existence as Velveeta, which in my memory first came packaged in a wooden box. Seems to me it was an answer to wartime food rationing, like the brick of white lard or whatever it was dumped into bowls of which it was my job to empty and mix mix mix a package of deep orange coloring to make it look like butter. It was dubbed oleomargarine, now beautified as margarine, but which we shortened oleo.
It wasn't real food, and in recent years has been reported by nutritionists and others as not healthy, all I needed permanently to switch back to real butter. I mean, as the prayer says, My friends, life is short ...
So that.
The other evening I arrived home to hear that Malinda wasn't interested but Kristen wanted The Restaurant Experience for supper. We started out for a semi-Cajun place here at the beach called something like (oh WTH, I can't remember the name of it), only to find it's closed on Monday. Other options opened and we settled on Stinky's in spite of the twenty or so mile drive, deciding enroute, Kristen driving, that she and I would share The Log, which is their specialty of 36 oysters spread out on a long slice of tree trunk. Six are fried and thirty are baked in various ways, all good. Dessert, for them key lime pie, for me, black coffee and a taste of their pie. When Frank and I used to go to Stinky's, their best dessert was a pecan pie with chopped pecans all through the filling instead of half pecans decorating the top. Frank said it was almost as good as his mom's pecan pie. Don't know why Stinky's dropped that. Also don't know why they no longer offer "Stinky's Stew" at lunchtime.
Last evening, 8th grade graduation for Holy Nativity Episcopal School and returned to mind my very own final time at graduation as their chaplain and religion & ethics teacher, must have been 2007. I stopped because the job as priest at StThomas had turned full-time. That last graduation was for me a deeply emotional experience that each graduation since then has brought back somewhat. At graduation I used to give each graduate a pocket prayer coin, first couple years each made individually by a friend in Apalachicola then, when he moved on, ordered online. Life moves on though, doesn't it, and new adventures happen out of thin air when least expected, and here we are.
What's to do here at Breakfast Point, PCB? Watch new houses go up. They are nice, and seem well built, but the place is not as interesting looking as Sweet Bay, where there's a variety of house styles, and where their closeness to the sidewalk gives the sense of a close-knit old fashioned city block neighborhood.
Mind still wandering, see. That brings to mind the rectory of a Pennsylvania parish we visited when we were "candidating" for a parish after I graduated seminary and was ordained priest. I don't remember the town or church name, and probably wouldn't tell it if I did. But it was in a city where houses and other structures were built right up against the sidewalk. The rectory was right up next to the church, and, as I recall, was even entered from the church (and there may have been a separate entry from the tiny fenced backyard, but it was forty years ago and I don't recall). On the street side was a window looking out on the sidewalk. It was not uncommon for the priest or a member of his family to come downstairs mornings to discover that some transient had slid the window open, come in, and was asleep on the living room sofa.
That was a church of very kind people, every congregation is different and this one was very high church and all blue-collar folks, and the bishop was concerned it would not be a good fit but sent me to visit anyway. And it turned out unfortunate that, when they came to our home parish to hear me preach, I was serving the chalice and spilt the entire cup of port wine down the ruffly white blouse of the woman who was senior warden and head of the search committee. So, we went on to be called by a very different parish that was obviously a good fit for all of us, both sides; but which I ultimately declined their call when my mother told me that the pulpit and altar at Trinity Church, Apalachicola was open. For many reasons for all of us, it was tearing, even searing, but necessary to leave Harrisburg and its nearness to Washington where I still had connections and was working some while the parish ministry was unpaid voluntary and quite demanding. From the parish in, well that one was Mount Joy, Pennsylvania, it would have been a too-easy drive down to Washington; but it was a good time of life to make a total break, and that's what all of us did.
The new culture we stepped into was an adventure to be mused another time. For instance, Tass coming home from her first day in 7th grade and telling her mother, Mom! they don't speak English.
RSF&PTL
TW+