Lift Up Your Hearts!

A friend of mine once lamented that at her church Mother's Day received more attention than Easter.  I'm sure most churches do better than that, but I'm equally sure that in many churches, at least in the United States, yesterday received more honor as Mother's Day than as Pentecost.  We celebrated both, making the Christian festival primary, but not disdaining the secular celebration.  I like the way our rector mitigates the other problem with Mother's Day celebrations, the pain they cause women suffering from infertility, by asking to stand first all great-grandmothers, then all grandmothers, then all mothers, then all daughters, till all the women of the congregation are standing, and all the men of the church pray for us.  Still, the main focus was Pentecost, and we even had a baptism to go with it.  We sang a lively and appropriate anthem by Pepper Choplin called Fill-a Me Up! for two services, though we sneaked out of the second service after the anthem to get in a few minutes of our Sunday school class.  Unfortunately, the anthem is sung after the sermon; good as the sermon was, I'd happily have skipped the second hearing to have attended more of the class, but the memory is still too strong of one occasion in which the normally long-winded preacher (in a different church) drastically and inexplicably cut short his sermon.  We didn't want to risk not returning in time. (More)

As my father would say, we were sloppin' up culture like a hawg yesterday.  (I believe the reference was to a L'il Abner comic strip, although it may have been Pogo.)  It all started when the Orlando Magic (local basketball team) advanced to the playoffs, thereby causing a parking problem for the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra concert since the Bob Carr Auditorium and the O-rena (it keeps changing its name based on sponsorship, so since I can't keep track of it I generally call it by its original appellation) share parking facilities.

In order to help alleviate the problem, the OPO delayed its concert by half an hour.  We figured that still wasn't going to be good enough, since one never knows how long a basketball game is going to last, so we decided to expand the evening. (More)

The end month of Porter's recent gig was very stressful, with lots of pressure and 80+ hour work weeks.  My father often said that his favorite Bible quotation was "And it came to pass...."  This, too, has passed at last, and we have survived.  Many thanks to those of you who upheld Porter in your prayers.

If anyone wants a measure of how stressful the time was, I need only say that he has spent several days recently working on replacing a neighbor's roof, and some of you remember that two years ago—after replacing ours—he said he'd never, ever do that again. But this is how he chooses to relax these days, finding the physical work a delightful change.

So, onward!  Two days in Roanoke, then who knows?  It's always an adventure. 

When I was in Pittsburgh, we bought some dried pineapple at Trader Joe's, and it was very, very good!  Thus when I saw the same at my local health food store, I snapped it up.  Did I say it was the same?  Not.  Even thought the label did not mention added sugar, this pineapple must have been sweetened, as is the dried pineapple I can buy at the grocery store.  Yuck.  I couldn't eat it, so I cooked it with some dried apricots to make a fruit topping for my breafast muesli.

Not to be defeated, however, I set about making my own dried pineapple out of canned pieces (rings work best) heated in a low-temperature oven.  Voila!  Wonderful!  Delicious!  The only trouble is that a can of pineapple shrinks to something so small—and so tasty—one could easily devour an entire batch in one sitting.  (One didn't, but it was a close thing.)

The acoustics in our house are such that the sound from the television is loudest in every room except the one in which the TV resides.  Perhaps that is not literally true, but to those trying to work or sleep while someone else watches television, it certainly seems that way.  Hence our joy when Porter's "thank you award" came from IBM:  a set of wireless headphones.

Fortunately, there was no need to understand in detail the instructions, which contained several gems.

This wireless headphone is worked based on optical-electricity transition.

Well, of course.  What else would it be worked based on?

As dictated, unedited, while Mom, Dad, and Noah were napping.

There was a bear.  And then he started hunting.  Then the bear found a fox.  And the fox started scratching the bear.  And the bear could not beat the fox.  The fox started wildly jumping and kicking and swinging its tail around wildly. (More)

That's what we did this morning.  We arrived at the Pittsburgh Zoo with a crab and left with a jellyfish, but in between Jonathan was a perfect little boy, just the right age to delight in all the exhibits.  He could identify many of the fish as well as the animals, and explained to me—thanks to a Magic Schoolbus book that's currently one of his favorites—that the clownfish can live inside the sea anemone because it's covered with mucus which protects it from the anemone's sting.

Noah, on the other hand, could take or leave the animals.  What fascinated him was everything mechanical:   the big power cords at the entrance, the lights along the walkway, a child-proof outlet cover (which he promptly removed, then replaced when asked), emergency exit doors, a machine that made bubbles, and anything else with buttons, cords, switches, lights, or moving parts.  This is the same child who won't talk, but eloquently asks me several times a day if he can record his voice on my computer.  What he really wants to do is plug the headphone and microphone cords into the computer.  The headset was one of the first things he helped me unpack, and he grinned delightedly when he discovered the plugs, then pointed to the computer, which, incidentally, was still closed up and anonymous-looking.  He quickly found the jacks, and needed only a little guidance to make sure the plugs were going in straight.  (To be truthful, that was my paranoia; he could have done it all on his own, but I was a little nervous.)  One lesson in pink-to-red, black-to-green was sufficient; he's done it correctly ever since.  First thing this morning he came excitedly into my room, big grin on his face, running straight to...Grandma?  No, Grandma's computer.

I accept the challenge from Liz; the subject intrigues me.  What things are always found in your refrigerator?   I'll skip the "normal" (milk, eggs, ketchup) and list ten items that are nearly always in stock but might make our refrigerator unique, at least in combination. (More)

Last year when we went to Switzerland we tried several new Swiss dishes, but somehow missed raclette.  To make up for it, this trip we ate raclette four times, and lest you think we tired of it, we were inspired to purchase our own raclette set.

I call it our Swiss souvenir, though in point of fact I bought it from Amazon.com, in order to get one that didn't need a power and plug converter, and to save carrying it home.  Although this is a Swiss appliance (manufactured, alas, in China), it appears to have been super-sized for the American market:  the little pans are perhaps twice the size I was expecting.

Friday night we had our first raclette party, and though there are some modifications I would make next time, it went well.  I found raclette cheese at Whole Foods, but it was French raclette cheese, which may explain why it was softer and not quite as flavorful as that which we ate in Switzerland.  No matter; we spiced it up with the raclette spice and seasoned sea salt that did make the journey from Basel to Florida in my suitcase.

The cool thing about raclette is that, like fondue, it is a community cooking experience.  There's a bit of preparation involved, but the actual cooking is done by the guests as you all converse companionably around the dinner table.  Each person places a slice of cheese in his little pan and sets it under the grill to heat.  When the cheese is melted and bubbly, he  scrapes it out onto small, boiled potatoes (okay, so that part of the cooking is done in advance), seasons the mixture, and then digs in.  Accompaniments are traditionally pickled onions and cornichons.  (We substituted baby dills for the latter.)  One of our Swiss hosts cooked bulgoki on the top part of the grill, which was delicious.  I wasn't that ambitious, but did use the top of the grill to cook marinated green beans and mushrooms.

Dessert, of course, was Swiss chocolate.

Happy Palm Sunday, one and all!  The choir sang for two services today, so we had double the fun.  Those of you who live up north are really missing a treat—real, whole palm branches, and all the better if you whacked yours off one of the palms in your backyard last night, as we did.  :)  We started the service outdoors, and then the whole congregation processed around the church singing All Glory, Laud and Honor (Episcopal Hymnal chorus/verse version), led by the rector with his guitar, and through some miracle and a little help from modern technology we were actually together and in the same key as the piano and organ when we entered the church.

The rest of the service was good, though not quite what I would have liked.  I prefer Palm Sunday to be Palm Sunday, but often, as it was today, it is celebrated as Palm/Passion Sunday, because so many people don't attend the midweek Holy Week services.  Doing that, you pass from the Triumphal Entry to the Resurrection without having passed through the Last Supper, Gesthemene, and the Crucifixion, which is a rather significant omission.  So we give Palm Sunday short shrift as a concession to the reality of modern living.  Sigh.  But it was good, anyway, and although the framework was the same in both services, they were different enough to keep the second from feeling like a repeat:  one was Rite I, the other Rite II, and there were even two different sermons.

I hope your experiences today were as good! 

One of the strangest and most difficult aspects of interacting with other people is discovering those areas which you consider to be so basic, so foundational, so obvious that you don't even think about them—until you run up against someone for whom they are not basic, and maybe not even important.

For me one of those givens is that you don't take food from a common dish and then put it back, and if your hands touch something on a common plate you take it, even if you didn't mean to.  Thus I find it particularly unnerving to watch at church potlucks, or <shudder> restaurant buffet bars, as folks violate those maxims repeatedly and egregiously, with no consideration for those behind them in line.  I'm not speaking particularly of children here; the adults are just as likely, sometimes more so, to be the offenders.

This raises two questions:  Is this really a matter of fundamental hygiene and common courtesy, or merely a particular, culture-specific custom?  I do hope not the latter, or I may have to stop eating away from home.

and

What are the habits that seem perfectly normal and natural to me, yet cause in others the stomach-turning reaction I experienced this morning?

Since—ta da!—we expect our fourth grandchild in October , and since choosing a baby's name has an aura of sacrament in the Daley household, and since others have already begun making positive suggestions, I hereby offer an article on baby names not to use.

Ancestry.com's Bad Baby Names on the Brain features the book, Bad Baby Names: The Worst True Names Parents Saddled Their Kids With—And Now You Can Too!  I don't know if the article is open to the public or requires a subscription; in case of the latter, I present just a few of the 2,000 or so names, culled from census data, that I would rather not use when speaking of our newest grandchild:  Title Page, Magenta Flamingo, Ghoul Nipple, Mann Pigg, Mary A. Belcher, Deuteronomy Temple, Hell Grimes, Lucifer Carmendo, Sandwich Green, Mayo Head, Tuna Fish, Fanny Pack, Major Nutt, Warren Peace.  Some people have no imagination; names like Octavio and Quintin clearly indicate birth order (though the one present-day Octavio I know is an only child; go figure), but the authors also found, as first names, "every number from one to twenty, by tens to a hundred, and thousand, million, billion, and infinity."  I know our Puritan ancestors were fond of naming their children after virtues (Love, Prudence, Patience, Charity, Endurance), and sometimes after circumstances associated with their lives (Fear, Wrestling), but who would name a child Lust, Wrath, Greed, Avarice, Envy, Sloth, Wrath, or Pride?

Take a moment and be thankful for your parents' wisdom.  Even if you've always hated your name, you now know it could have been much, much worse. 

I've known the Agony of Defeat often enough when it comes to the sport of e-mail balancing, but today I glory in a victory:  My Inbox is empty.

That's rare enough, but not enough to merit a blog post.  Although it seems to balloon to over 100 e-mails with unconscionable ease, and sad to say even 300 if I blink, I can usually whack it down to manageable size, even briefly zero, with a little sustained effort.  And some cheating. (More)

I had hoped to bring you video of tonight's launch of the space shuttle Endeavour.  Night launches are rare and beautiful.  However, although Endeavour had a successful launch, my view was completely obscured by a generally-overcast sky.  So my best view was the same as yours:  that provided by the television cameras.  Only I'll bet none of you were actually up at this hour watching.  I wouldn't have awakened just to see it on TV, but any launch is worth seeing, and even the chance of a night launch is worth arising for.

It was almost worth getting up to see another phenomenon:  twilight at 2 a.m.  The clouds were low and reflected back so much city light that I could have been excused for thinking I'd wandered into the Land of the Midnight Sun...were it not for the 62-degree temperature.

As Janet has mentioned (in her comment on My Lenten Disciplines), nothing sends me to sleep faster than staring at the television set:  broadcast show, DVD movie, or even a Teaching Company lecture that I'm particularly interested in seeing, it matters not.  There's something about the experience that triggers the sleep reflex in me.  Oddly, it's a particularly pleasant sleep, too—perhaps it hearkens back to childhood days of drifting off to the incomprehensible yet comforting sound of adult voices.  Thus I couldn't help noticing when two consecutive comics (Baldo and Hi and Lois) in my morning routine hit that nerve.