favorites and memories
Moses and the Lamb yesterday; today, Moses leading the children of Israel through the Red Sea. Happiness is one thing and another, as "Winter to Spring" in this morning's Poem.a.Day reminded me. It was one thing then, or one person in mind, this morning it's a pint of Gulf Coast oysters, ten or a dozen on Nabisco's new whole grain Saltines. Each oyster with a different touch, fresh and best with just salt no cracker, one in cocktail sauce with horseradish, one with fresh horseradish, couple with Tabasco, most with the pepper & vinegar that reminds me of The Walrus and The Carpenter, their trickery enticing the younger oysters from the sea and before you know it, with bread & butter, pepper & vinegar, They'd eaten every one. Some folks don't like reading about my raw oysters on crackers for breakfast, so I'll add that Saturday breakfast also included a beautifully ripe avocado.
See, one happiness leads to another, and the avocado takes me back to January 1958. A newly commissioned Ensign, 22 years old, I'd been active duty Navy since July 1957. Now commissioned but late while the Navy examined my heart issues, I'd missed my next school, so was TDY to a Navy command in Newport, RI until the next class date. It hadn't occurred to me that, now an officer, I'd need some cash because the Navy wasn't going to feed me free like they did when I was an OCSA (E-2) at Officer Candidate School, and I'd arrived with no money for the month, well, maybe $50. So I'd found a grocery store walking distance from the BOQ (they did room me for free), where I walked and bought one avocado for 69¢ every day, and a small jar of Hellmann's mayo to last me the month. Bit of blue cheese to make a salad dressing for the avocado. Coffee for breakfast, avocado for lunch, coffee for supper.
We'd never had avocado at home when I was growing up, in fact, I'd never even seen one until I started dating Linda at age 17 and had avocado at the Peters' home, where I'd acquired a taste for it.
Except for what I've reported here before - - the (to me!) senior officer Navy, Lieutenant Adair at the BOQ, newly stationed at the same command as my TDY, befriending me, taking me out for dinner one evening (I had oysters Rockefeller), selling me his Naval Academy sword and Navy overcoat, and lending me his red 1955 Buick Century 4-door hardtop for a week while he went home to collect his wife and family and move them to Newport - - my memory is that I had nothing to eat that whole month except an avocado with blue cheese mayo every single day. The snow, cold, and bitter wind coming off the Atlantic Ocean.
Which takes me on. Yesterday my next copy of The New Yorker magazine arrived and I've begun perusing. Good cartoons, though I'm not to the end, haven't seen them all. Read several articles, one about an Afghan who came to the US and Canada, is involved in a production about Afghanistan in which he had to come up with humor, Afghan jokes - - mind, because Episcopalians are so pure, I do not use foul language or tell dirty jokes here on +Time, this is one Habib told
that caught my eye, so I'll just copy-and-paste it, along with the sketch of his likeness.
An article about animals' instinctive ability to navigate was fascinating, as I watch the osprey cam at Boulder County Fairgrounds, Colorado https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpZX8-6_pBI The resident female, "mom" the loyalists call her, is back, "dad" didn't make it back from migration, so a new male is helping rebuild the nest. The chat crew thinks he's new to courting, as apparently he's not triggered the female's hormones by bring her a fish. Anyway, watching this nest for some years because I have associated friends, I'm fascinated every year, their fishing in the adjacent pond, the eggs, hatchlings, fledging, growing up to adult size, flying freely, then suddenly one instant in the fall flying off never to return. Without ever having been there, they fly south, a journey of several weeks, to the right place for their winter migration. In a couple of years, some may return to the area for summer season, back and forth, and after a few years themselves start nesting in the area. This season I'm hoping will be a good year for this osprey couple and their young. No point in getting sentimental about the old "dad" bird, this is nature looking after self.
Equally fascinating is another article in this edition of The New Yorker, titled "Past Imperfect" is about Professor Elizabeth Loftus and what in her brilliant life and career she has done and discovered about human memory, the workings of our minds in shaping memories, changing, shifting recollections of events and nonevents. Intriguing to me because I've fiddled and fussed and meddled and messed with my own mind to stir a nonevent that I brought up into a solid memory. The mind is smart and powerful, but you can fool it and retrain it if you put your mind to it. You can create a memory, work on it, and polish it to where you believe it and enjoy it even though you know damn well it ain't so. Tried it and it works.
This morning we're at the church while Linda decorates the outside Cross with spring flowers for Easter Day tomorrow. This is something she started doing the years at our church in Pennsylvania, brought to Trinity, Apalachicola starting Easter 1985.
Beauty, magnificence: a gift, art and a blessing.
From 32401 on Holy Saturday.
Happy Easter & PTL
T+
Thanks: The New Yorker, April 5, 2021