A Visit to Husk

     Durelle has a first cousin who lives in northern California. From time to time they like to make road trips, often to the east coast. Yesterday they dropped into Charleston for a visit and to play tourist. Cindy was off, so she could play driver and tour guide. They did a short tour of a few iconic, touristy spot and ended up back at Husk.

     In a town full of really outstanding restaurants Husk stands out as one of the very best. The James Beard Award winning chef, Sean Brock, is the guy in charge. You can count on classic southern fare with a little innovation. At our table the entrees ranged from a corn-meal breaded, fried catfish to a surprisingly tasty and tender octopus. Guess who tried the octopus, and, no, it did not taste anything like calamari. I was greatly surprised to order a German white wine and get one with a screw cap. It was a nice summery wine, however. 
     It was nice to get out of the house with good friends. Pam and Jay were very pleased with their lodging at the King Charles Inn.

Hurricane Florence

     We decided not to evacuate ahead of hurricane Florence. We were partially packed and ready to go if necessary, Since joining a million person cavalcade departing the coastal areas on roads that can't even handle a rush hour would be a major hassle in its own right, we wanted to be sure that it was necessary. It is true that the SCDOT made all lanes of I-26 into westbound lanes, but that only helped part of the problem. We would be taking 78 to Augusta.
     The three scourges of a hurricane are the winds, the rainfall and, for coastal areas, the storm surge. We had to consider all three. In reverse order, the storm surge is the most predictable. The storm surge is a large wave that is pushed by the wind ahead of the storm as it travels over the ocean. When it comes ashore its height is added to the state of the tide at that time. This combined height can be calculated fairly precisely as can the geography of the creeks, tributaries, rivers and bays along the coast. Our portion of Hanahan is far enough inland that prior storm surges had not reached us, and the predictions for this time were equally reassuring. Similarly, we have had major (>10 inches) rain events in each of the last three years without any local flooding.
     The remaining wild card was the wind. Even if we stayed dry, I did not want to stay around for any roof-ripping gusts. The track predictions said it would come ashore near Wilmington, NC. It did, and it missed the geographic prediction of five days and 1500 miles before by two miles! By then it was a Cat 1 hurricane, soon to be a tropical storm. It turned southwest and then west passing 50 miles north of Charleston. Since the southwest quadrant of such a storm is the least threatening, we would have a comfortable margin.
     I must say that Durelle, Cindy and I spent a couple of days looking at the possible scenarios and decided that, as long as it looked like the wind here would be manageable, we should be fine sitting tight. 
     The center of the storm is now a hundred  miles onshore and heading up and around Virginia, so it appears we made the right decision. May we always be so lucky.

Tony Zotos...New Great Grandson

   
     Well, here he is, our first great grandson! That's big sister, Madeleine, doing the honors. Some details are still uncertain as Anthony was born in Sydney, AU on the other side of the international dateline...14th or 15th? I think he was 8 pounds and 21 inches. That picture shows two of our three great grandchildren. Thirteen year old Brielle is in the 8th grade in NH. Mother, Melissa, and Dad, Illia are the proud parents.
     There is the same age difference between them as with our pair, Cindy and Mark. Be prepared for big sister/little brother clashes. Another novelty would be if he were born on the 14th. BOTH my folks and Durelle's parents were married on 14Sep1935 in MA and ME respectively.

Care Package

     Few of you remember the original Care Packages, but they were boxes of goodies that brightened the day wherever and whenever they arrived. In 1945, the newly formed CARE (then the Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe) initiated a program to send food relief to Europe, where large numbers of people were at risk of starvation in the wake of World War II. The organization obtained permission from the United States government to send U.S. Army surplus "10-in-1" food parcels to Europe. The "10-in-1" parcels had been prepared for an invasion of Japan, which never transpired. Americans were given the opportunity to purchase a CARE Package for 10 dollars to send to friends or relatives in Europe. Packages were guaranteed to arrive within four months. Even when a donor did not know an address of a beneficiary, CARE would find that person using the last address known. The CARE package thus became a "missing person" service in the chaos following World War II.

The content of a CARE Package in West Germany 1948

The first CARE Packages contained:

• one pound (450 g) of beef in broth
• one pound (450 g) of steak and kidneys
• 8 ounces (230 g) of liver loaf
• 8 ounces (230 g) of corned beef
• 12 ounces (340 g) of luncheon loaf (like Spam)
• 8 ounces (230 g) of bacon
• two pounds (910 g) of margarine
• one pound (450 g) of lard
• one pound (450 g) of fruit preserves
• one pound (450 g) of honey
• one pound (450 g) of raisins
• one pound (450 g) of chocolate
• two pounds (910 g) of sugar
• 8 ounces (230 g) of powdered eggs
• two pounds (910 g) of whole-milk powder
• two pounds (910 g) of coffee

Later CARE Packages included food for different cultural diets as well as non-food items including tools, blankets, school supplies, and medicine.

     Now that you've had your history lesson, today we received a wonderful Care Package. There was no Spam, but a wonderful hunk of Salami and cheese that will be tried soon. The gift goes a long way to soften the edges of discomfort caused by our not sitting on the edge of Penobscot Bay for the summer. Here's a shot of the package from Morse's Sauerkraut. 

      Many thanks to Dick and Eleanor Roth and Bernie and Ann Dunn.

We're still here

     Would you believe that we got a phone call today...and it wasn't from my favorite blogstalker...that said, "You haven't posted a blog in a month. Are you OK?" Hey, does the fact that I haven't been generating any blogworthy material work as an excuse? I thought not
     We have visited four Independent/Assisted Living Facilities. We have one to go that won't be ready to show until the first week of October. To use Durelle's vernacular, the leader in the clubhouse is Daniel Pointe. The new one that we have to check in a month is: Atria.
     Our magnolia tree is a spring bloomer. This year, because of the wet warm summer, I guess, we are still getting blossoms. Cindy took a picture of one of the buds with a very nice sunset in the background.

     So, we're still here, doing our gentle thing; making plans for change. As a matter of fact, tomorrow we are going to one of those facilities for a seminar on "Change".