What I Did This Past Week

Flew to Virginia
Took Emz to an allergy specialist and found out she isn't allergic to anything. Har har.
Bought a car for Emily.
Talked with my sister Rebecca.
Went to the most amazing quilt/fabric store not far from my sister's. It would not be safe for me to live so close to such a store.
Drove with Emz to Guys Mills, PA, on the hilliest road I can remember, over at least six summits over 3000 feet, and then on miles of Interstate 79.
Taught Emz the Oregon girl how to pump her own gas.
Stayed at Faith Builders Educational Programs, which is kind of like a junior college.
Got a tour of FBEP, which is like getting lost, as it's an old renovated high school with about 4 sprawling levels and a bit too much like finding your way from one concourse to another at Washington-Dulles.
(Which I did, twice, via a shuttle bus, escalators up, escalators down, a shuttle train, more escalators, many turned corners, and more escalators.)
Spoke to 187 women on these subjects: Designed To Be a Woman, Finding God In The Ordinary, and Calm Down, It'll Be Ok--Mothering Through the Stages.
Sweated bullets through my first two talks because Emily was back in our apartment at FB, sick as a dog and I thought if she gets this close to doing her talk to the girls, and then can't, I will just expire of disappointment.
Hugged Marie Mullet, who Understood, when she told me she had just called Emz and she can do her talk after all.
Kicked back after the retreat and then spoke to the FB student girls about Coverings, Capes, and Calculus, and enjoyed hearing their stories and perspectives.
Enjoyed having Barb the SIL spend the night with us when she couldn't go home after the retreat because her town was flooded out coming and going.
Went to chapel briefly and then drove a few hours to Barb's house, after the waters subsided.
Drove from Barb's to my sister's in Virginia.
Tried to talk about The Future to Emily, who hates talking about The Future.
Had a late-night chat in the dark with Jason the interesting nephew.
Talked with the sister some more.
Flew to Portland.
Waited for a ride with Michael and Verna the neighbors who just had a baby and needed to take the six visiting sisters to the airport.
Watched people and wondered why a well-paid pilot would buy his pre-trip food at Wendy's. He got a small chili and a cheap hamburger. And then he blew his nose hard in his napkin and put his stuff in the trash and left.
Which I hope to do soon, minus the nose-blowing part.

Hi

Survived my three talks today and Em survived her one despite great difficulties. Good times with the daughter, the sister-in-law (Barb) who showed up, the organizers, the relatives who surprised me by showing up, and lots more people.
One more talk coming up, to the girls students at Faith Builders Educational Programs, a Mennonite kind-of junior college. My talk is titled Coverings, Capes, and Calculus, on combining these divergent things of course.
We were going to stop at Barb's house tomorrow but you can't get in or out of her town because of floods. So she's spending the night here with us.

Hi, this is Jenny posting for mom. Mom is feeling very stressed (or so it seems) because she's going somewhere tomorrow and she just realized how much she still had to get done. She has my sympathy. The reason I'm writing this post is mom's hand hurts and she's also busy. Oh, and
mom's going to Virginia to visit Aunt Rebecca then to Guys Mills, Pennsylvania to speak at a ladies retreat. My mother has a very busy life as you can probably see.Anyway I hope mom can type her own post next time because I'm awful at typing.



Quote of the day:
"Wilton? He doesn't live here any more. He's dead."
--Ben talking to some guy on the phone who asked for Wilton.--

Today's column. . .

. . . is about our trip to Savannah, of course, and its lessons on permanence and ambition.

Here it is.

Update on "Sam"

I posted a couple of weeks ago about the CSD decision regarding the little guy that our friends Dennis and Arlene have had as part of their family since he was two days old. The committee decided he should go to an uncle who is raising little "Sam"'s half-brother.

The uncle and his live-in lady came for a visit, and were very surprised to see how bonded Sam was with his foster family. It looked very hopeful that they might change their minds and leave him with Dennis and Arlene.

And then an ill wind blew in in the form of the uncle's adoption worker, who really put pressure on him that he needs to go through with this, that if he doesn't, Sam will always wonder why his brother was adopted by the uncle and he wasn't, and other such logic that Arlene knows is hogwash because she herself was adopted.

So they veered in that direction, and this week Sam was flown to his new home. To complicate things, Dennis and Arlene had been told they could accompany him, so they bought plane tickets, and then the caseworker changed her mind, and they couldn't go after all, and were left holding the bag with expensive non-refundable tickets.

We are all just sick inside about all of this.

Back in the day, we would pray for the persecuted Christians in Russia who had their children taken away by the state, and somehow we had this delusion that this could never happen here.

The final papers won't be signed for months, probably, so we can all still pray for a miracle and for the hot needles of conscience to induce the uncle to change his mind and stand up to the caseworker.

But little Sam has already been traumatized, and before this he was one of those few kids in the foster care system who hadn't endured any trauma.

"But maybe Sam is supposed to be like Joseph, who was taken from his home and God had a plan to work it all out," someone told me.

Well, maybe so, but I'm holding out for a miracle.

We live in a broken world, that's for sure.

Transposed Memory Syndrome?

So last night at the supper table we were reminiscing about one era of Paul's teaching career, and I recalled the time "Jim" and "Amanda" were caught being too cozy in a windowless back room at school, and all the things that happened after that.

Paul said, "It was NOT Amanda! It was Jane."

I'm sure he was right, and that was kind of frightening, to think I had transposed these girls in my head, and the innocent Amanda was saddled with something she had never committed.

Which makes me wonder, how many of us are stuck in other people's heads in "memories" of things we never did.

And how many other memories of mine have had the original characters replaced with someone else?

Told Ya

See, I had good reason to rave about Mrs. Wilkes' Boarding House.

The President decided to eat there today.

Details here and here.

Thanks to Frieda for the info.

Food and other matters

We left Savannah this morning, headed for home via Jacksonville, Denver, and Portland. Partway to Jacksonville we stopped and briefly toured a plantation, only it wasn't a traditional cotton plantation with a long lane lined with live oaks and a columned house at the end. Instead, it was like a huge park with massive live oaks scattered all over, and a normal farmhouse after you had walked for half a mile. And they had grown rice, not cotton, since that was better suited to all the swamplands. But it was still very labor-intensive, and the family lived a typical genteel lifestyle while 350 slaves worked themselves to death in the rice fields.

Like so many pursuits in the South, things went gangbusters for a while and then it all dwindled down to nothing. After the Civil War they grew less and less rice because the labor costs made it less profitable. Meanwhile the family had trouble producing enough surviving heirs to pass the land down to who also had the gumption to make it a profitable venture. Finally it was down to 3 siblings who started a dairy farm. The brother died and the spinster sisters kept it going through the Depression on into the 40s but then they were forced out of business by all the new government regulations for processing milk.

That all makes me wonder if years from now somebody will give tours of the Kropf-Knox-Smucker house and talk about the glory days of grass seed and how it all came to nothing with changing markets and government regulations. I don't think lack of heirs will be a problem, though.

Back to our trip: in Tampa Paul, who is great at sniffing out bargains, asked if the plane to Denver is overbooked. Yes, it is, and within minutes we were bumped off and given vouchers that will take us home tomorrow, the Lord willing, and that put us up in a nice Florida-style motel, and that will pay for future flights in such amounts as to almost pay for our trip to Savannah.

Need I say that Paul is happy?

Now I need to talk about food in the South.

At a gas station today I peeked in the stainless steel kettles that in northern climes would hold soup and instead I found whole in-the-shell peanuts swimming in hot water. I should have tried them I guess but I had no clue how to eat them. Do you eat the shell and all? Plus they're kind of gross-looking, to be honest.

We went out for supper at a seafood place in Savannah one night and bought the "everything" plate, with hush puppies, oysters, shrimp, fish, Brunwick stew, and more. That was a nice taste of local seafood.

Then we asked the host with the missing tooth about uniquely Southern food and his eyes lit up and he said we have to go to Mrs. Wilkes, we really have to.

Before I tell you about Mrs. Wilkes, let me say that Paula Deen is all over Savannah. Books, restaurants, brochures, billboards, kitchen supply stores. I'm sure Paula is very nice and her cooking show is interesting and her food is good, but I felt a bit reactionary toward all the hoopla.

So, in contrast, Mrs. Wilkes. First I figured it was a cute take on Melanie Wilkes of Gone With the Wind. Wrong. Mrs. Wilkes was the real name of a determined woman who took over a boarding house in the historical district many years ago. Every day she cooked up a huge dinner and fed the men in her boarding house--think Millie in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. Slowly this turned into a daily dinner for whoever showed up at 11:00.

Mrs. Wilkes kept this up until she finally handed the operation over to her granddaughter, who was close to 60 years old. She runs it today with the help of her sons and a bunch of staff.

So we decided to try it, and for Paul's nephew Randy the entrepreneur who has ideas for a Mennonite restaurant, this might be the way to go.

About half an hour before 11:00 a crowd of us gathered around the front door. It was very hard to find. Right next to it is a big splashy old 3-story house with two curved stairways out front, but the Lord was not in the wind, so to speak. Looking around we saw a tiny sign by the street: "Mrs. Wilkes." And then on the wall next to the big house was a small faded sign: "Welcome to the Wilkes.'"

At 11:00 the doors opened and we were swept into a basement with four or five tables set for 9 or 10 each. We filled the tables family-style and as soon as we were seated, the host led in a prayer of thanks. And then we attacked the vast variety of white bowls arrayed on the table in front of us.

There was fried chicken, barbecued pork, macaroni and cheese, creamed corn, green beans, black-eyed peas, lima beans, rice, mashed potatoes, gravy, biscuits, cornbread, beef stew, cucumber salad, collard greens, cooked cabbage, chicken and dumplings, fried rice with sausage, rutabagas, sweet potatoes, potato salad, and probably more that I can't recall.

With sweet tea, of course. And banana pudding and blueberry cobbler for dessert.

The expected protocol for manners was passing stuff around at first, but after that you reached for whatever you wanted, and if you couldn't reach you asked for it, and someone handed it to you straight across the table.

We weren't encouraged to linger but were told to take our own dishes to the kitchen on our way out. We each paid a set fee at the door while the staff rapidly cleared and re-set the tables for the next batch of customers. We were told that they keep serving in batches like this until everyone waiting by the door has eaten.

Striking, isn't it? With this unorthodox approach and no self-promotion (one of the big gourmet magazines once wanted to do an article on the restaurant, and Mrs. Wilkes said they could as long as they didn't say exactly where it was located) they've become the place that people say you just have to go to.

There's a lesson there, too, if we are still out looking for lessons.

And a note on sweet tea. A story on Southern food in a tourist magazine told me that the idea of "unsweetened tea" is a travesty. Tea isn't proper tea unless it's iced and very very sweet. Well, I get headaches on too much sugar, and straight sweet tea reminds me of drinking pancake syrup. So I try to mix it half and half, or better yet 1/3 sweet and 2/3 unsweetened. That combination, with lots of ice, is in my mind perfection.

Quote of the Day:
"Huh? You want hot tea, ma'am? You want sweet tea? Huh? Half??"
--a young waiter who couldn't understand my special recipe for tea. Thankfully he was an exception

Hicks at the Hilton

Paul found rooms for us at the Hilton DeSoto in the historical district. A 25th anniversary calls for rooms at the Hilton, I think, although Paul got them via Priceline so it wasn't that much of a splurge.

It is very interesting, staying at the Hilton. The main lobby is huge, all columns and swooping furniture and enormous crystal chandeliers and gracious concierges. Our room on the sixth floor is nice, elegant but not opulent.

The best part of the hotel is the location, as we can walk almost anywhere we want to go.

But we're concluding that on a normal basis a fancy hotel actually doesn't work as well for us as a mid-range chain motel. For instance--breakfast. A lot of Super-8 type places will serve a free breakfast including waffles, fruit, muffins, whatever, with free coffee any time. Thankfully there's a coffeepot with little packets of coffee in our room, but the coffee in the lobby is all Starbucks, and the breakfast buffet starts at $11.95.

We decided to find a grocery store and buy breakfast and lunch food, so out toward Tybee Island we found a Publix and bought fruit, cheese, and so on. Then we had the dilemma of walking through the Hilton lobby and up the elevator with both rattly grocery bags and dignity, and it was obviously going to be one or the other.

So I took off my coat and draped it over my arm and the bags, and Paul did something similar, and everyone was happy.

We arrived at 2:00 in the morning on Monday and were sound asleep at 10:30 when there was a loud knock at the door and a sharp announcement--"Housekeeping!" I staggered to the door and opened it and squinted at the maid standing there. "Do you need anything?" she asked. No we didn't, we had barely arrived. Ok, fine, and she left. Then I wondered, what exactly does Housekeeping do? Come in and make the bed while you're brushing your teeth? Since then I've learned that "Housekeeping" replaces any towels and cups you want replaced, but not much else.

If you live in the country you always forget that in cities you have to pay for parking, and Paul was appalled to find out that that convenient parking in the parking garage cost $13 a day. So he has this elaborate system worked out where every night he parks close by, since you don't have to feed the meters from 5 pm to 8 am, and then a few minutes before 8 each morning he rushes out and moves the car a few blocks away where he can park for free. Rushing out at 7:50 isn't exactly what makes for a relaxing vacation activity, but it beats paying for parking. When he drops me off and goes to re-park the car, the young valets always come running. No no, thanks anyway, we won't need your services. Smile. Especially since valet parking is a shocking $17 a day.

Then there's laundry. There are no facilities on site, and all they offer is send-out dry cleaning. If you've been gone from home a little too long and need to wash socks, it's either do a load in the bathtub or drive out of the historical district a long way and find a laundromat.

Which is what we did. But first we had the dignity dilemma again. I had a full laundry bag the size of a pillowcase that I needed to transport out and in. "Put it in a suitcase," said Paul, so I did. And we looked like two ordinary tourists rolling our suitcase through the lobby.

So yes, sometimes I feel like a hick at the Hilton, and sometimes I feel like Eloise, zipping up and down the elevator and marching past the concierge like I'm right at home. This experience is kind of like mocha cheesecake, where a small amount once in a while is just perfect, but too much too often would not be a good idea.

And I really really hope we got the room cheaply enough that we're not making Paris Hilton any richer by staying here.

Quote of the Day:
"We at the Hilton Savannah DeSoto are committed to serving you in every way possible. We think you will agree that our extensive services and facilities, coupled with a friendly dedicated staff, will truly make you feel at home."
--the welcome letter in the Hilton brochure

Savannah History

In 1733 the king of England sent a Mr. Oglethorpe to America to found a new colony, one that would be a refuge and opportunity for the poor and unfortunate. Oglethorpe found a spot on the Savannah River that looked promising thanks to a bluff rising above the miles of lowlands all around.

We must remind ourselves here not to measure such terms as "bluff" and "high ground" by Oregon terms.

So that's what they did, with a few twists that were unique to this colony. First, they decided that no one was to monopolize the area and get rich at the expense of everyone else, so no one was allowed to own more than 500 acres of land, and Oglethorpe himself was never paid for all the work he did getting the settlement going.

Also, slavery was outlawed, but this was sort of ignored as the years went by.

Then, they laid out a plan for the town, beginning with 23 "squares" and working out from there. The result is a historic area that is amazingly beautiful. Every few blocks in any direction the street splits left and right, and up ahead is a small park a bit smaller than a city block. Brick paths cross it, park benches sit around it [think Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump; we saw where that scene was filmed], a statue or monument is in the center of each square, and live oaks dripping with moss stand all around and are interspersed with grass and magnolia trees just starting to bloom and rhododendrons.

We've been eating our lunches in the squares and watching squirrels and people--kids in school uniforms, business people in suits, moms with kids in strollers. Today I was fascinated by a cluster of black grandmas with rattly grocery bags by one park bench. Such an animated conversation in the most astonishingly satisfying Southern accent you ever heard, and every time a black grandma came through the square, she stopped and joined the conversation. Then along came a tall, successful-looking black guy in a business suit, talking on a Blackberry and looking like he had places to go and the means to get there. I wondered, how does this work--do the grandmas embarrass him in the same way that I don't always want to be associated with every Mennonite I meet in town, if you get my drift, especially if they talk too loud and stuff. Well, the going-places guy stopped and kissed the one grandma with the dreadful red-dyed hair on the cheek, and he smiled and had a nice chat with her, and I thought Awwwwwww.

Oh yeah, history. Ok, well, cotton became king and down along the riverfront where Oglethorpe first landed they built a mile of 5-story brick buildings, one against another, that became the Wall Street of the South, only it was all about cotton. The "factors" did the buying and selling on the top three floors. The cotton was ginned on the second floor then dropped down to the bottom level, which opened out onto the riverfront, and there it was baled and trundled out to the ships.

Many of these buildings are still there, and the quantity of cotton that must have moved through there is hard to imagine.

However, the land got cottoned out, and the Civil War came, and some years after that the boll weevil, and now the buildings are law offices and tourist attractions--candy shops and t-shirt vendors and other pursuits far removed from the glory days of cotton.

I think there's a lesson there, if we're on the lookout for lessons.

In the 1970s someone had a vision for the restoration of the historic district. In fact I think it was the main character of Midnight In the Garden of Good and Evil, a book I'll have to read now that I've been where it all happened. This guy restored some 50 buildings himself and worked at getting the city to develop the whole area with some uniformity. It was a brilliant move.

Today, you can stay at the Hilton and make daily forays by foot to old churches and old houses and cool little shops and wonderful little restaurants, more than you could take in in a month. If you get tired of walking you can hop on a bus for free.

Speaking of the Hilton, I'm starting to feel like Eloise, but that is another subject for another day.