Thoughts for the day

[loneleeb3]

My family lives in Charleston. There are ladies att he market that have carried down the tradition of making beautiful baskets out of sweet grass.
They sit there and holler back at one another in gullah. There is also geechee(sp) which I think is a local dialect of the gullah language.
It's really a trip to sit and listen to that.

[Shakesthecoffecan]

I was just in line at Subway and the woman behind me was ordering and the woman behind the counter was flying thru the choices of cheese. One of them was "White American". 

[CellarDweller]

I was just in line at Subway and the woman behind me was ordering and the woman behind the counter was flying thru the choices of cheese. One of them was "White American". 

You've never heard of White American Cheese?

There are two kinds of American cheese.

[Shakesthecoffecan]

So Friday night I got to see one of my all time favorite musical groups in concert: ZZ Top.

We had tickets on the main floor, third row, it was perfect. The music was not too loud, the crowd not too big and by the end of the show we were 10 feet away from them, so stylish and effortless in their playing.

Then Saturday I go by the office and see the ad for the Sunday paper announcing our open houses. The one I had signed up for was completely wrong. Wrong house and everything and it was too late to change it. They managed to get a "Cancelled" banner across it, but no way to get the right one in. The poor sellers are facing forclosure so I went ahead and did it anyway.

Two sets of people showed up from the signs and balloons. One set was neighbors and the other was an elderly couple with sever osteoporosis. They had been looking at the house next door that was for sale and wanted to compare it to this one. They told me they had a house AND a farm they would have to sell before they bought anything and the wife was so sentimentally attached to the farm she had been paying taxes on it for 10 years. I did not see anything working out on it.

So I mention this to the seller as I am leaving and he wants to know all about them, wants to go see what they might have and trade houses with them. I cannot see how that would work, as their loan is not assumable. Plus, I don't know who these people are, they didn't sign the sign in sheet and I don't feellike staking out the AARP meeting.

[Lumière]

Hey Truman! 

[Kelda]

The story my father told me was that his paternal grandmother told him this happened three yers prior to her marriage.

The sun grew dark one day and the next morning it did not rise. The only conclusion they could reach was that the end of the world had arrived and they went to the church house. They stayed there for three days as it filled up, people begging to be let it.

On the fourth day the sun began to return and they all drifted home and got back to their daily routines.

I knew she has been married in 1886, that would have made this event in 1883, and I knew what happened then, on this day in fact. The eruption of Krakatoa in Indonesia, it blocked out the sun all over the world. My great grandmother witnessed it and never knew what it was.

Wow, thats really interesting..and like Meryl says a great family story. How did you come to find out what it was? To think of 116 years ago them thiinking it was the end of the world...

[Penthesilea]

Wow, thats really interesting..and like Meryl says a great family story. How did you come to find out what it was? To think of 116 years ago them thiinking it was the end of the world...

Yeah, I also loved the story (even if I didn't comment).

them thiinking it was the end of the world...

Strange at first, eh? But then you get into thinking: they had no telephone, radio, no exposure to science (which was on an altogether different level anyway) and scientific thinking - but lots of priests and preachers of all kinds, and so on.
This makes it better understandable - theoretically.

But what brings understanding and empathy truly home for me is the complete eclipse we witnessed a couple of years ago. Remember that one?

We knew (more or less) everything about it beforehand, we had followed TV and newspaper reports, we were prepared with specific foils for our eyes, and so on. At the day of the event I was at my friends' house. We followed the reports from England, where people were gathered on an open field. It was indeed creepy to see the crowd and the reporter disappear into darkness right before our eyes, and we laughed when they returned. Motto: ok, the sun came back in England, thus it will come back for us, too. Of course, it was only a joke, but still.

A few minutes later the eclipse reached our area. We were on the terrace. It got not only dark, but also quiet. Very quiet, everything was silent, really everything. The birds were silent, no cars, no phones, no radio, no chatting from neighbours, no barking dogs - nothing. We only spoke in hushed tones together, if at all (like everybody else within a hundred kilometers, lol). It was darker than we had expected. And damn, it was reverential, but also a bit creepy.

If we well-informed know-it-alls found it creepy, what else should people hundreds of years ago have felt but utter horror?

[Meryl]

If we well-informed know-it-alls found it creepy, what else should people hundreds of years ago have felt but utter horror?

Very true, Chrissi!  It's easy to chuckle at the primitive tribes in the movies when they tremble during an eclipse, but something as enormous as the sun being extinguished is nothing anyone can take lightly.  In a similar vein, a few years ago I was staying in a country home's guest house in Virginia while I did a job there.  We were far from city lights, and the road was blocked by forested land.  At night it was so dark you couldn't see your hand in front of your face, and it was totally quiet.  I felt completely isolated, and I could see why all the superstitious tales about The Forest had sprung up in ancient and medieval times.  It seemed that anything could have been lurking in those woods, and I felt very uneasy and vulnerable, being a city girl all these years. 

[Shakesthecoffecan]

Wow, thats really interesting..and like Meryl says a great family story. How did you come to find out what it was? To think of 116 years ago them thiinking it was the end of the world...

It all sort of clicked in my head, I had read about the explosion not long before and knew when she and my great grandfather were married, so when my father said it was three years before that I knew it was in 1883. I was like OMG< that was Krakatoa! And I proceeded to tell him about it and he took it in politely but probably thought I was upstaging him. 

[Shakesthecoffecan]

And perhaps we've never got much further than that, when you hear people cry and carry on about the President of a country wanting to exterminate the old people......