An eventful week

What a week of news. Where to start? Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. Spring brings new life amid the storms.

This week the kids were on spring break, so we took a short camping trip.  Thursday morning we drove into Natchez to explore this beautiful town on the coast of the Mississippi River. We parked near the river and walked into a “primitive” antique store with a reproduction Confederate officer uniform displayed by the door. The antique owner immediately accosted us, his only customers. He wasn’t nervous about our half dozen children roaming among his goods, because “primitive” antiques are already beat up. But he had a message for us.

Like a prophet of old, he spouted forth predictions of doom and destruction. Towns were destroyed, the floods are coming, darkness will cover the earth.


At first I was confused by his story. Then I realized he was talking about what he had seen on the news the night before – hundreds of tornadoes across northern Mississippi and Alabama. Suddenly I felt the hand of God on my shoulder. We were supposed to be camping outside of Birmingham, but at the last minute Wednesday morning, we had checked the weather and decided to head west instead. I can’t determine if tornadoes struck the campground where we were going to stay, but we would’ve been in for a sleepless night regardless. We have been known to be heedless of weather reports, but this time we are grateful we changed course.


The store owner also was concerned about the course of the Mississippi River. Flooding up north will cause flooding down south. His store may be standing in the river in a few weeks if the rains don’t abate. And he had predictions about the downfall of the economy and the bankruptcy of America. And once he found out my husband was in the military, he had forecasts for him, too, about dangers of becoming embroiled in Muslim politics. But he did not foretell the assassination of Osama bin Laden.


All of these surprises upstaged the long planned festivities surrounding the wedding of Prince William and now Duchess Kate and the beatification of John Paul II. Not to mention the celebration of Easter and the enjoyment of spring break in our own little corner of the world.


So a round-up of the week: First Easter, celebrated without extended family, a rarity for us, even though we live hundreds of miles from cousins and grandparents. But this summer will bring extended travels for us, so we opted to stay home and attend the Triduum masses in our parish here. We did join up Sunday afternoon with some other military families and the Polish priest from the Air Force Base, who reminds me of Blessed JP II, to celebrate a First Communion and the Resurrection with an appropriately rich feast. It was a joyful and sweet day.


I spent the next day prepping for my class on Don Quixote and Othello. All these little dips and dives into the classics for the class are only tantalizing bites of a rich main course, but I’m afraid my students have begun to feel overfull and are no longer indulging. Class ends this week. Hoping they at least are inspired to go back to these works, knowing they are loved by someone, and don’t accept with Mark Twain’s definition: “’Classic.’ A book which people praise and don’t read.” Meaning to collect and record some reading notes into coherent sentences.

A couple days later, we received confirmation of my husband’s orders. The move to Guam will take place this summer after all. More to come on this. If we get base housing, we will still live on a bay, so I won’t have to change the name of my blog. But that’s only if I don’t go crazy before we get there. I can’t even think about what we have to do to get ready. It will get done, but I’m putting off thinking about it for a couple more weeks.


On Wednesday we left for our scaled down camping trip, which was once going to be a weeklong trip to the Smokies, but because of kids qualifying for regional track meets and soccer tournaments, we decided to shorten it, eventually down to a two night trip to western Mississippi. While tornadoes destroyed the area we had picked as a second choice, we enjoyed clear, cool weather, the quick tour of Natchez, and a couple long hikes, the second marred only by a couple stops for the eight yr old to throw up. (She told us her stomach hurt, but we thought it was all the s’mores the night before.) My husband and I had been to Natchez once before for a friend’s wedding nearly 15 years ago, so part of the motivation to go there was to revisit a place of fond memory. Seemed a different place, of course. We had peeked into the antique store because we had always regretted not buying a framed manuscript page from a 17th century missal on our first visit there. And do you know, we found the store, amid the dozens of antique shoppes in Natchez, and a framed manuscript. The same? Authentic? We bought it nonetheless, so to us, the answers to those questions will be yes.



Perfect marshmellow




Alligator mississippiensis




Woodland pinkroot



Fraser Magnolia - huge

Watching for floods and gators.



Stanford Hall - site of a big party some years ago



Along the St. Catherine Creek

Happy hikers. Guess which one threw up?

When we returned home, after starting the first of multiple loads of laundry, I got online to check out the news. Watched videos of killer tornadoes until I was afraid to go to bed, remembering a recurrent dream I used to have as a child of tornadoes out my front door and tornadoes out my back door. So as a tonic, I watched videos of the royal wedding and read descriptions of all the hats and dresses. Did not love Pippa Middleton’s dress, although 84% of viewers did.


Yesterday’s news capped all: First the pope’s beatification. Several months ago, we thought about trying to go to Rome with some cousins with whom we went to Mother Teresa’s beatification in 2003. We priced out tickets to Roma. We discussed the option of spending our tax return on air fare. Then we decided that was improvident and spent it instead on recent car repairs. Would much rather have gone to Rome.


Photos like this one – our daughter who threw up on the hike is the baby under the E - might be worth a few thousand dollars.

In St. Peter's Square for Mother Teresa's beatification and JP II's 25th anniversary.

Then the death of Osama bin Laden. I fear retaliations and his elevation to martyr status.  Security is tight at the base. This morning I had to flash my ID about 10 times to go about my business at the gym and the commissary.  Bin Laden's body apparently has been buried at sea, but that is a story that seems to invite conspiracy theories. But I also am glad for all the United States, especially the military members, the SEALS, and the CIA operatives we know (okay, not many of the last, I admit) that they have this moment of triumph. Carry on.