Alison M. and the Deathly Hallows.

Brother Andy and his lovely daughter, Alison, stopped by at the conclusion of their college tour last weekend. Andy and Ali visited Emory, Wake Forest, Elon, Furman, Duke, UNC, and UVa, then spent the night in the Boro (which is about half-way between Charlottesville and Tampa). Ali's a smart gal, you see; and she has choices. I'm fairly sure she's never made anything but an "A" in any class she's taken, and her S.A.T. scores got her an invite to apply to all sorts of schools, including Yale. Yeah, yeah, but more impressive still...


...is that she proudly sports earrings inspired by Harry's Potter's "Deathly Hallows".

Fun with Food.

Friday and Saturday the local National Guard Armory building was home to a "Pack-a-Thon" sponsored by Colleton County based charitable organization Haiti Under God. Teams of 17 people per team trekked to the armory to assemble ready-to-boil "one pot meal" bags consisting of rice, soy, vitamins and veggies, and pack them into Haiti-bound crates. St. Jude's team was one of six teams at the Saturday Noon to Two shift.

First, we had to get orientated. The crowed gathered just past some already assembled boxes to learn the procedure. Lots of kind souls showed up to share in the fun. In addition to the people to assemble and pack the food, each team had to pony-up more than a thousand dollars to pay for the shipping and other costs associated with getting it to the people in Haiti who need it.

There are Methodists in this madness! Newly elected Walterboro City Councilman Bobby Bonds and his family joined other members from his church to help out. Note the hair-nets. Bobby probably didn't mind it so much, but son Jack looks a little less enthralled by this sartorially un-splendid, but necessary, accessory...

...but St. Jude's Susan McConnell and Tom Lohr know how to rock a hair-net!

Then the fun begins. Boxes are assembled; labels applied to bags; bins of rice, soy, vitamin and veggies are brought to the tables; scoops of the various ingredients are dumped into funnels and into bags, sealed, and weighed; the bags are packed into boxes, which are marked by table and facility where the packing is done;

the boxes are weighed, taped shut, and loaded onto pallets; the pallets are sealed up and fork-lifted onto a truck to be sent to port; where they will be shipped to Port Au Prince, Haiti.

At the end, we all said a prayer over one of the crates, and let the next shift take over.

Sounds like a lot of work, doesn't it? Maybe it was, but it was also a lot of fun. Can't wait to do it again next year. Take a look at the action in the little clip below:

The Air that I Breathe.

This article's from the Post and Courier got me thinking about the Hollies' song.



They sure sounded better than they looked!1970's Neil Diamond called the lead singer and wants his hair back.


Come to think of it, present day Neil Diamond called 1970's Neil Diamond and wants his hair back. Me? I just want decent air to breathe (okay, and maybe my 1970's hair!).

Mr. Magoo.

One of the things about getting, you know, older that is not all that great is you don't see so well. I've had bifocals for about four years now, but I've only recently started to wear them. Trees, as it happens, have leaves. I knew this instinctively, of course, and I have memories of leaves; however, I've only recently been reacquainted with leaves on account of the glasses. No more Magoo for SuperDave.

Harry Potter, Ecclesiastes, and Mushrooms.

"There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens". I've quoted from Ecclesiastes before, and I probably will again. What's got me going on the circle of life this time is Harry Potter and mushrooms. Lady Di and I caught the last Harry Potter on Saturday night (I know, all the real Potter-philes caught it at the Thursday/Friday Midnight show, but I had to work). I loved it, as I knew I would; but I was sad, as I knew I would be. I've read all the books at least twice, and I've seen all the movies more than that (except the last one, which I'd only seen once), so I knew that it had to end and I knew how it would end.

Still, endings are are sad, even if, as Semisonic said a decade ago, "Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end".

World Changers.

When the Israelites cried out for help in Egypt, God sent them Moses; when a local family with a rotten roof and no way to pay to fix it needed help, God sent them 15 teenage kids and three adult chaperons from a couple of churches in North Carolina. The World Changers arrived in the Boro on Tuesday. This crew is spending a good chunk of their Summer vacation camping out in a school gym at night, and battling a heat index of about 124 degrees to strip off the old shingles, replace the rotten wood, and begin to put on new tar paper and shingles on a house in the Boro during the day. The least we could do is feed them.

My church, St. Jude's, has a long tradition of Community Outreach. I've posted our Thanksgiving Feast, and our "Whale of a Sale". Jim, Doug, Lady Di, Gale, Kim and her daughter, and I got lunch going today. We got an assist from Nick Martin, at left, packing apples.


Lady Di resembles neither a Packer nor a (w)rapper, but today, she was both.


After we got the lunches packed up, we left the safe confines of St. Jude's, and headed for the work site.


Jim doled out the food and drinks to a grateful bunch.

We only spent an hour or so for our part. These cool customers don't get off for a few more hours. Thank you, World Changers!

Killer Tunes.

I was jamming to some Pop music on Sirius Radio the other day, and tuned in to a catchy tune. It was "Pumped Up Kicks" by Foster the People. It even had whistling. Now, a tune with whistling has got to be good clean fun, right? Uh, not exactly. I looked up the lyrics and the song is about a kid that goes on a killing spree. This is not a new phenomenon: Warren Zevon did it in the 1970's with "Excitable Boy"; The Talking Heads did it in the 1980's with "Psycho Killer"; Pearl Jam did it in the 90's with "Jeremy". Oh, well, like they say, "Guns don't kill people; songs about guns kill people". Sumpin' like that...

Schadenfreude.

I'll admit it: sometimes I take pleasure in other peoples' misfortune. The German word for it is schadenfreude. I'm not proud of it, but I take some solace in knowing I have lots of company. Don't believe it? How do you explain the success of these guys? My most recent jolt of schadenfreude came this weekend on the Interstate. I was cruising down I-26, just loving life, when this high dollar black Lexus zipped in front of me, and sped into the distance. I've been known to exceed the legal speed limit on occasion; consequently, I do not always see the S.C.H.P. as my friends, but on this day I was rooting for the Troopers to catch this dude. About a half hour later, to my glee, I saw the Lexus pulled over by a County Sheriff's deputy. And balance in the universe was restored.

There's Always Room for Cello.

Friday Lady Di and I trekked to North Charleston to see David Gray in concert. We've been to three shows at the North Charleston Performing Arts Center: Indigo Girls, Celtic Women and this one. Compare this to the shows I saw with my kids: AC/DC, Tom Petty, My Chemical Romance, Green Day. Hmm. Seems I'm trending Adult Contemporary of late. No matter. David Gray was great. I knew of Gray's circa 2000 hit "Babylon", but have only been following his recent music from Sirius/XM's "Coffee House". I knew Gray's voice would be sonorous, but I was very pleasantly surprised at how good his band was. There were guitars- acoustic, electric, steel and bass, piano, drums, bass violin, and, surprisingly, a cello. The music blended quite nicely into a genre defying blend of pop/rock/folk/electric/jazz. Whatever it was, it was good. The music was excellent. The songs were well written and well sung. The lighting highlighted the songs. The narratives between songs were even interesting. Gray, it seems, is British. This was not a problem. In fact, he seemed to be representing the "cool" sect of Great Britain. In case you've forgotten, here's his first hit:

Monster!

I was pulling weeds at La Maison Jaune over the weekend, and I ran into this monster. It looked sorta like a flea, but this sucker was as big as a small cat (which reminded me of a David Bowie song, reflected in the second clip below).

It had a really long spiked tail, too!
Here's my trophy weed at left. It took me ages to get around that rootball and pull it up. I shot it with a silver bullet and ran a stake through it, just to be sure it wasn't coming back.





(My mom, by the way, was not a David Bowie fan, and that song left her a bit cold. Ah, well, what are you gonna do?).