new blog site

Am now posting at "blogfromlillie.blogspot.com"

It never occurred to me that I would still be blogging, and instead of creating new blog sites when I go back and forth from France, have decided to just TRY TO stick to one. Let me know if it doesn't work; lillie.crowley@gmail.com

best, lillie

yet another ecclesiastical rant (I suppose that's what one should call it...)

Okay, so I'm a "recovering" Texas Southern Baptist (the "recovering" part has meant a great deal of grief from some parts, actually, as it means I left the Texas Southern Baptist church...). I married into a serious Roman Catholic family; my father-in-law, whom I adored, was a Texas Baptist who became a Roman Catholic, so this is all complicated...

HOWEVER, there are actually problems.

Longstanding. I love the liturgy, but have some problems with the Catholic hierarchy...

and yesterday, I heard a story on All Things Considered (that liberal Left-Wing Dem station...) about a Roman Catholic woman in Arizona. She is 24 or 25 or so, mother of four, pregnant with her fifth child, 11 weeks pregnant. Is admitted to St. Joseph's Hospital, a Roman Catholic hospital in Phoenix, AZ, seriously ill. She was desperately ill, with heart failure (cause(s) and symptoms not explicit, other than the consensus that she was dying), and all doctors involved were of the opinion that (a) she was dying and (b) she MIGHT survive if (IF) she had an abortion and (c) both she and the baby were going to die IF she didn't have an abortion. The Roman Catholic nun on the staff, also the liaison with the local diocese, at the hospital gave approval to her medical staff for her to have an abortion, as both would die otherwise. So she had an abortion, and is evidently on the road to recovery, so she can (we assume) now tend to her four live children...

The bishop got wind of this, and what did he do? Notwithstanding all the allegations/admissions/convictions of pedophilia, etc., few followed even by de-frocking, and NOT A SINGLE ONE followed by excommunication...what does he do? he EXCOMMUNICATES the Roman Catholic nun who approved the abortion...

And Rand Paul is now the Republican nominee for Jim Bunning's seat in the U.S. Senate...go figure. Rand Paul thoroughly thumped the McConnell-anointed successor to Bunning, Trey Greyson. Like I said, go figure...

Cheers, Lillie

more random thoughts

I am actually not going to say anything here about the blow-out in the gulf of mexico...

some of the folks who were here on Saturday at the graduation gig (not sure there were any actual graduates involved this year...I don't ask these questions anymore, though)...it was pretty much a success, and the only reason I think I may actually do it again next year is because I got SO MANY compliments on the food and drink as well as the setting, etc. Unfortunately, the setting wasn't ideal this time, as it was not typical mid-May weather this time. It didn't rain, but it was too cold, too windy, etc. I had a seriously large number of very large potatoes to use with the potato guns, but nobody used them because it was too cold to do anything much outside. bummer. But what the **** does one do with 30+ pounds of potatoes?!? toss some of them, cook some of them, give some of them away...

Many thanks to Eula, as well as Gretchen and Charles Tremoulet, for helping out at the party. Lots of interesting people to talk to; I was unfortunately so tired from staying up so late cooking on Friday night that I confess I didn't enjoy it much. Evidently pretty much everybody else did, though. I did the planning, shopping, prep, and cooking; Eula did kitchen support (with compensation...); Phil and Martin did the yard work and set-up; Gretchen and Charles did a ton of the rest of the work; and Eula cleaned up everything that nobody else had afterward...

I will at least consider continuing the tradition, and I admit I enjoy a lot of it, but it's a LOT of work...and I also admit that I've become much better at it, so there...

I wish I had done our tax returns...

At least I don't feel so bad now; Elena Kagan is as short as I am now...

My new problems with my back and knees have me seriously worried...

It's even colder in the Dordogne right now than it is here...AND there's this problem with the volcano in Iceland...we may not actually be able to get to France in a couple of weeks...

Cheers, Lillie

food and parties

So yesterday was the fourth (fifth? third? sixth?) annual "graduation" party out here at the farm. I have lost count, and I am not at all certain that any of the graduate students who were here yesterday were actually graduates. I suspect not; but it has at any rate turned into a tradition (although I'm not sure how long it will last, as I am seriously TIRED!).

Evidently the food got a "10", or close to it, at any rate, although the weather did NOT. It was windy and cold, COLD. Not sure it got up to 60 degrees yesterday. And we couldn't put tablecloths on the serving tables, because of the wind. It was COLD.

Menu included but was not limited to:

Mint juleps

Pop

beer

wine

Smoked salmon rolls (rolled around goat cheese, EVOO, fresh ground pepper, chives) more or less invented by yours truly

Charred bell peppers (not green!), with VG mozzarella, red onion, served on romaine lettuce, with a vinaigrette containing anchovies as well as garlic.

Bruschetta topped with tomatoes briefly cooked in a great deal of EVOO that had a great deal of chopped garlic not cooked in it for very long, smeared or spread on the bread, topped with shaved Parmesan cheese

Country ham and sausage meatballs baked in brown sugar, vinegar, and Dijon mustard in it.

Roast chicken salad (?) actually supposed to be made from bar-b-qued turkey legs purchased (very good, I might add..) at the WIndmill Quick stop or whatever it is in Raisin, Tex, between Victoria and Goliad.

Roast pork (spiced with Chinese stuff, served with Wasabi Mayo), was not a huge hit, at least in the a limited group with no prejudices about either mayo or Wasabi. So there..

That's not all, but hey, it's late...

wisteria

First the really, REALLY good news...

ever since the first time I saw the wisteria blooming on that huge wall at Hampton Court (where Henry VIII wooed and seduced Anne Boleyn, et al.), I have wanted to see blooming wisteria at my house/on my house/on our fence, or whatever.

I think that first time may have been in 1983 maybe.

At any rate, almost as soon as we moved to the stone house on Cochran Road in 1984 (I think, and it seemed pretty much English, although Hampton Court was dark red VERY OLD brick), I have been trying to grow wisteria.

It is gorgeous when it is blooming, it smells good, and the plant is graceful. So I planted some "wisteria" at the base of the stone wall on Cochran by the patio. Turned out it wasn't actually wisteria; it was wygelia (wigelia?) something like that. although I had purchased the plant from a "reputable" garden center. It was (and probably still is) a lovely plant, though, with very nice flowers in the spring, which while they are not ACTUALLY wisteria flowers, are not really UNLIKE wisteria.

So then I planted actual wisteria plants both by the curved wall in the living room at that house (very near the Wygelia plant), and on the back, by the back bedroom. Despite all my best efforts, doing everything (EVERYTHING) anybody told me to do, NONE of these plants every bloomed. They did basically grow like weeds. Had to be cut back frequently, which I have on good authority is common.

But I gave up hope of ever having actual wisteria blossoms on my yard and/or land.

But last spring when we were doing work on the back yard in preparation for Sarah and Aaron's wedding, I got Clif Maehr to put in a wisteria vine up next to that fence, on a whim. And a MIRACLE occurred this past week: the ****** thing is BLOOMING! Amazing.

I suspect that I should not get used to it; the superstitious person inside me suspects that this will be the ONLY year the wretched plant will actually bloom.

I should take photos. Like tomorrow; it may not last...

Cheers, Lillie

Various rants

1. Airline travel. Volcanic ash...this is a natural event/"disaster" and one can't fault the governments and airlines for worrying about it. But how about if they quit assuming I'm a terrorist (late middle age American female, Ph.D., Caucasian, slightly disabled, usually carrying a computer, hard-to-remove shoes with custom-made industrial-strength inserts so I can actually walk without much difficulty, never, NEVER have set off an alarm, no arrests, much less criminal record, although a few tickets for speeding and failure-to-obey-stop-signs over 45 years of driving)? I ALWAYS get searched. My luggage ALWAYS gets searched. I am always thirsty, and now I can't carry anything liquid onto a plane. The latest insult is that on international flights I can no longer have my glass of Scotch before dinner without shelling out real money for it.

This summer I plan to take onto the plane, if, IF they will let me, a couple of those little bottles of Scotch you can purchase for an outrageous price (albeit less than they will charge me if I buy it from Delta) onto the plane is a Ziploc bag. Stay tuned.

2. The oil spill in the Gulf. Evidently BP is claiming today that they are not "responsible" for the spill, because the company (whoever it is) they outsourced something or other to is actually responsible for the failure of whatever it is that caused the explosion/blowout/whatever that resulted in the spill.

Give me a break. BP is the company that drilled/owned/whatever the well, and has been making buckets of money of late from this offshore drilling. As far as I'm concerned, BP is responsible for whoever or whatever company they outsource whatever to, and also for whatever results from same. The oil companies have gotten a free pass for far too long for whatever they did so we can have cheap oil/fuel here in the US. They can sue the company that screwed up if they want, but I'll bet they gave the contract to the company, whoever it is, who made the lowest bit, which they were able (probably/possibly) to do because they cut corners on safety issues. BP is ultimately responsible, as far as I'm concerned. And BP should be held responsible not only (NOT ONLY) for the damage done or inflicted, and clean-up of same, but also for lost wages and income of all those people put out of work by the damage from the spill. And they should be responsible not JUST for the cleanup, but also for whatever expense is incurred in restoring the marshes and wetlands that appear to be likely to be destroyed to viability.

Katrina was a natural disaster. All or most of the destruction in New Orleans was directly traceable to the Army Corps of Engineers. But problems in the delta and marshlands, etc., was NOT caused by the Corps of Engineers. This oil spill, however, and all the damage it will cause, is caused by negligence on the part of BP, and BP should be held accountable.

So there.

Cheers, Lillie

random thoughts on Derby Day

Weather is wretched for the Derby. Rain. Lots of it. We will probably go to a Derby party anyway. Sarah and Aaron are having a Derby Party for friends of theirs in NYC. Including mint juleps, etc. 14 people. Aaron evidently discovered a basketball game he had scheduled this morning, so Sarah is left to prepare for the gig. She phoned a couple of times, and commented that preparing for a party is a LOT of work. I allowed as how I am well aware of this. And I have yet another graduation party I'm working on right now, but that's not really as tough as the parties we used to do for seminar speakers. They were always, ALWAYS on Thursday evenings; I was working full-time; and we had two kids in school.

Some of these hats at the Derby are not just gaudy, but appalling. And if you are at Churchill Downs, you can pay $1,000 for a mint julep. I assume you get to keep the sterling silver julep cup. It's a fundraiser, of course.

I think BP should have to pay the ENTIRE cost associated with cleaning up this oil spill, and I mean ALL of it, including replacing income lost by all those fishermen down there in the Louisiana delta. There is blathering in the paper whining that the government should have done more. This disaster is totally different from the hurricane in N.O. The government was actually responsible (Corps of Engineers, folks!) for soooo much of the damage. That was a natural disaster aggravated by government incompetence. This disaster is caused by corporate incompetence and corporate greed.