We stood out in the garage and swayed with the wind this afternoon. When we began comparing radar, because that’s romance to us apparently, we found a dark red blob bearing down on us from the west and another coming down from the north.
Web stuff today. Working on a site for someone, which is coming along nicely, thank you for asking, and on my own stuff. I added four pages to the War Eagle Moments blog. Just click the little buttons at the bottom, there, and you can see all the neat Auburn stories from our many recent adventures.
Then the cat said stop.
And so I did, for a while.
Grilled steaks tonight. We had some New York Strips just dying to be eaten, so we obliged them. We’d picked them up from the meat lab some time back for $13. We also had okra, fresh from yesterday’s farmers’ market on campus and right off the farm.
I did not take a picture of the okra, because okra is shy. But the eggplant, now that’s a vegetable that loves the camera:
The eggplant, I’ve just learned, was once thought to be a love potion. In Europe it was once believed to cause insanity.
Okra, for its part, is thought to originate in Ethiopia, and came to the Caribbean and the U.S. in the 1700s, probably brought by slaves from West Africa, and was introduced to Western Europe soon after.
If anyone ever tells you that you don’t know where that food came from, now you can set them straight.
But I digress. There was a lot of pressure on this meal. The Yankee said if she botched the okra again — she’s just learning to make it, and it is a delicate thing — that she was retiring. No one wants this; okra is awesome. The first time she made it was quite good. And then there was too much salt. The next time far too much pepper. And then back to too much salt again.
Tonight the okra was fresh and crisp and just right.
Fifteen easy miles — I coasted on tired legs today — the last four racing home a thunderstorm. I was heading east, rounded a big 90-degree turn to face a big, dark, lightning belching cloud looming to the south. Which was great, because that was the way I needed to go.
So pedal harder, to a red light, onto a road with traffic, and then a long downhill into the light which shall not ever be green. And then back up the last hill to home. I was within sight of my road when the serious raindrops started, so I did just make it back in time.
And I did web site stuff for most of the rest of the day. First here and then on a site I’m doing for an organization and then also the LOMO blog. I’m mostly behind on everything, but I’ll catch up eventually, or it will somehow become prioritized and the least important things will be conveniently overlooked. That is the way of it sometimes.
It was discussed openly and in whispers, over the phone and in the church pews. When it was brought up at school, the curious were quickly shushed. Eventually, the whole thing got pushed aside by other concerns, a bit of nastiness better forgotten, or judged never to have occurred at all.
So it is a rumor, then.
But Madison Phillips says it is true. He says that he and his mother, Annette Singleton, both black, were turned away from a church shelter by a white woman on the afternoon of April 27, the day of the tornadoes. And within hours, Ms. Singleton and two of Madison’s young friends, who had been huddling with him in his house within yards of that church, were dead.
That’s horrible.
There is little agreement about what happened, or whether it happened at all, and the full truth may never be known. Madison says he did not recognize the woman. The only other witness, an older man who is known around town for his frequent run-ins with the law and fondness for alcohol, is saying that he did not see the situation firsthand, but only talked to Madison’s mother as she was coming and going.
So, clearly, this is grounded in solid evidence, unimpeachable by the highest tribunal of fair men and women.
But Madison’s story has stayed consistent, prompting a nagging, uneasy question about what kinds of things are possible, still possible, in a small Southern town.
Assertion does not equal evidence. They’re unfamiliar with this notion in the newsroom, it seems. It goes on for a while, delving in stuff the author doesn’t really care about, but he finally gets back to the important part.
There is a nearly unanimous conviction among blacks here that the incident described by Madison Phillips not only could happen here, but did. Yet there is little vocal outrage.
The whole story goes on like this, trading in speculation, fully admitting that no one knows the answer, only that everyone in town might be racist. There’s a restaurant named Rebel Queen, after all.
One man has an alternative theory.
“Nobody hardly knew her,” said Theodore Branch, 74, who has been the city’s only black council member for 36 years. “If you live here and everybody knows you, it’s a different situation.”
So naturally you don’t hear from him again. What he’s talking about, though:
Ms. Singleton, who was 46, was relatively new to town. She went to church 45 minutes to the southeast in Birmingham. The two boys who died with her, Jonathan and Justin Doss, ages 12 and 10, were from a poor white family who lived in an apartment complex on the outskirts of Cordova, where Madison and his mother had lived until recently.
That’s the 18th paragraph in the story, where the race of the other two victims in a story evoking racism finally landed. Eighteenth. In the business we call that buried.
I leave you with Atticus Rominger, a former reporter with an award-winning pedigree. And, sadly, that’s about the only way you’ll see those storm stories in the media again.
Just for fun:
If I taught public speaking classes I would show this at the beginning of every semester. Somehow, he did not get the nomination.
We’ll wake up in New Jersey tomorrow, so this is just to put a bow on the last of a great trip with nice people. There are a few pictures, a video, three panoramas and an interactive 3D photograph below.
Some people say this is the best beach in Bermuda. Tobacco Beach, was named by survivors of the famous Sea Venture after they discovered tobacco growing here. The snorkeling is said to be terrific. The cliff faces are limestone.
One of the neat things about my father-in-law is the stuff he stores in his head. If he isn’t make a joke he’s trying to teach you something. I wonder what he’s telling her here:
Our waiters for the trip, Delroy and Mario. They were quite good:
On this, the last day of the cruise, we had what the crew called a “lavish” brunch. They understand the definition of this word. It was ridiculous; it was divine. Whenever you have a chocolate fountain for breakfast you are living right.
We watched an ice carving demonstration yesterday. The guy just chopped up a block by hand into a screeching, striking eagle. After he finished people came up to take pictures of the sculpture. And then a woman stepped on a piece of ice, fell, knocked over a toddler and almost started a big fight by grown women. Remember, friends, ice is slippery. And watch your children.
Anyway, this was also at the brunch, and that’s a sculpture with utility:
Some panoramas I’ve shot the last few days, click to see the full image.
Want to see how a big ship leaves port? Four casting lines, a guy on the back pushing for all he’s worth and port-side thrusters.
And, finally, I’ve fooled myself into thinking that I’ve just about figured out the Photosynth software. Here’s an interactive, 3D view of the lovely Horseshoe Bay.
Miss it already.
Tomorrow we’ll be back in the States, and then late in the evening we’ll be back home.
Remember: we’re doing a two-day tour of Manhattan over the course of four days on the blog. The first part of Day One was yesterday, and is found in the previous post. This is, as the title indicates, the first part of Day Two. Day One’s finale is tomorrow, and we’ll wrap up Day Two on Friday. Clear?
Every time we’re in Manhattan we stop to visit St. Patrick’s. Beautiful church. I tried to do a pan-around photo with a free app I downloaded, but I’m still trying to figure it out. I thought I’d nailed it, when looking in the phone, but on the monitor it was full of flaws. So here you go. Also, search around and you’ll find plenty of other mentions of this beautiful church elsewhere on this site.
We also hit The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which we visited only briefly. Just about the time I found the sections I’d like to see it was time to go. Next time, perhaps. Meanwhile, men in armor:
We walked by here at lunch time. I didn’t have the heart to tell all these New Yorkers that chickens don’t really chirp all that much.
Yesterday we checked off an item from Wendy’s list, which was to get a hot dog from a street vendor. Our friend who is from Brooklyn, says street vendors are for tourists. We needed to go here:
And I love everything about the place. I had the depression special, two dogs and a drink for under five bucks. I had the papaya juice, because that’s the name of the place and also because we had a little communication mix up. I was looking for the condiments and he wanted a drink order. But, as a general rule, you can always order the thing similar to the name of a restaurant.
Get the onions on the hot dog. Definitely.
We visited St. Thomas in Manhattan for a service that marks the Eve of the Ascension. St. Thomas is beautiful. And — perhaps an audiophile can discuss this at length — I believe there is such a thing as a perfect acoustic. If St. Thomas doesn’t have it you’d be hard-pressed to find somewhere with a better sound. This is a clip of a small men’s choir singing Bach. There were maybe a dozen men, but they filled their sound filled the entire church.
The picture was taken with the iPhone, the audio was recorded on the sly with a free app called Recorder. This was the first time I’d ever been in a church wearing shorts.
The Yankee got in trouble, though. She got caught trying to record a little of the singing and a priest pointed at her. Very sternly.
The second part of Day One will be here tomorrow. The rest of Day Two, including another museum, a moment of drama and more.
