Travel Brochures

In the course of catching up on my mail yesterday, I found three travel brochures from the Tulane Alumni Association, all for trips this coming fall. “We’re not going on any of these, huh?” I asked my husband, I thought rhetorically. 

“Let me see,” he said. 

The tours are all in Europe, which is someplace we will be in the fall anyway, visiting our ex-patriate son. One is a tour of the Italian Lake District, one a cruise from France to Corsica, Italy, Greece and Turkey, and one a tour of the French Alps. I get these brochures from my alumni association on a regular basis, since they operate under the assumption that my degree from Tulane has made me rich. Interestingly enough, all the tours cost around the same amount. A lot.

“If the market goes up another 3 or 4 percent,” he says, “We can go.” 

The last time we went on an alumni tour, through LSU, not Tulane*, the stock market took a nose dive shortly after we paid our non-refundable deposit and crashed further, to its lowest point, while we were crossing the Drake passage. Even if it goes up another ten percent between now and March 26th, the day by which we need to make reservations to get the early discount, there is nothing to say it will stay that way. I don’t point this out to him, however. The man is offering to take me on a romantic trip of some kind. I’m not usually the kind of wife to bat my lashes and mutter “Whatever you say, dear”, but when I do, it’s at times like these.

I’m kind of leaning toward the “Village Life in the Italian Lake District”. It covers a smaller area, which means we will see it in more depth. I enjoyed our ten day tour of the British Isles last year, but we did spend a lot of time en route compared to time spent in the places we were visiting. That worked out well for me and my broken foot, but the odds are I’m not going to break anything else between now and then. Besides, if I am going to be around Mediterranean, as opposed to British, cooking, I need to get out and burn off some calories.

Since all of this is contingent on an improbable further increase in the Dow Jones, I guess I shouldn’t get my hopes up. I’m hanging on to the brochures, though. If nothing else, they have pretty pictures.

*Ours is a mixed marriage.

Lost and Lost

My brief stint of jury duty actually is providing me with several days worth of blog posts, just not about jury duty. While I was in the jury assembly room, we received several handouts: one about jury duty itself and others that were advertisements from places to eat lunch plus a map of the area. We were also able to get our parking garage tickets stamped, so as not to have to pay for parking. I folded up all my loose handouts in quarters so as to be able to fit them in my purse. Then I decided to take my garage ticket out of the unzipped outer compartment of my purse and put it in the zipped compartment on the other side. I laid the folded handouts on top of my coat on the next chair while I dealt with the parking ticket.

The problem was, I could not find the parking garage ticket. I ended up taking everything out of my purse while looking for it. “Everything” included several months worth of debit card receipts, three emery boards, about ten pens, (which was odd because I can never find a pen in my purse when I need one) a half empty pocket pack of Kleenex and no ticket. Several of the items I did find wound up on the floor, to be patiently picked up by a young man seated behind me.

Having run out of options, I decided to look among the folded handouts on the seat beside me, all the while thinking that surely I would not have been stupid enough to put the ticket in with them so that it could just fall out. The bad news is, I am that stupid. The good news is, it meant I found the ticket.

So, since jury duty was cut short, the first order of business Tuesday was cleaning out my purse. Since that was going to mean sorting papers into piles to file, shred, recycle and toss, I decided to go through my growing stack of mail at the same time. 

One of the items in the mail was from the government agency that deals with Medicare, telling me I can set up an account online to view my Medicare information, and including a temporary password. I’m not actually eligible for Medicare until June 1, but since I am on Social Security I have been automatically signed up and issued a card. Once my purse had been restored to its pristine condition, I decided to take care of the online sign up before I forgot. I needed my Medicare number, which was on my card, which I had of course filed in the “Health” folder in my file cabinet.

What was in the health folder turned out to be the booklet I received with the card, and a copy of the card, but not the card itself. I was able to use the number from the copy to sign up online, but I was worried about the missing card. I thought I may have given it to my husband to file in his folder of insurance information, but asking would mean letting my husband know I couldn’t find the card.

My husband has this ridiculous idea that I always lose things. In the 24 years we have been married, I have lost a few items, but who hasn’t? I lost my purse (but we both agree it was really stolen), my wallet twice (it was returned both times, once with the money in it, and anyway he only knows about one time), my car keys on a trip to South Carolina (but they were at the gas station when we stopped again on our way back) room keys twice, both unfortunately on that same trip to South Carolina, library books that turned out not to be lost as I discovered after I paid the library for them (they gave me a refund), a jacket, a nightgown, my prescription sunglasses and the first pair of cheap clip-ons I bought to replace them, the Palm Pilot he gave me for my birthday, and my passport. The Palm Pilot, as I had insisted all along, was in my car, not lost. When I took the car to a new carwash two years after I had replaced the Palm Pilot with my iPhone, they found it and left it in my cup holder for me. The passport was only missing for a few minutes in the Roman ruins at Bath before someone picked it up and found me by the picture. So really, that’s fewer than 24 things in 24 years. I don’t know where he gets this “always” from.

Still, I was having a Lucy and Desi moment when I finally had to ask John’s help with the Medicare card. He obligingly looked in the insurance folder, but found only the copy he got from his Office of Group Benefits showing they had seen the card. “You told me you put it in a safe place,” hubby grumbled.

It was the word “safe” that jogged my memory. I have a metal box, about the size of a shoebox, that I keep in my closet to hold important items. I’ve had it since I was in college, a leftover from a former roommate or boyfriend. There, right on top, was the Medicare card.

I thanked hubby profusely. Even though it was inadvertent, it was his use of the "safe" word* that led to my finding the card before my first act as a Medicare enrollee was to ask for a new card.

“Say what you will about my mother,” hubby reflected later, “She never lost her Medicare card.” I refrained from pointing out it wasn’t lost. It was in a safe place just like I said.

I do not lose things. 

*You saw what I did there.

A Conversation

Half of a conversation, anyway. As I was leaving the courthouse yesterday to head home after my shortest term of jury duty ever, I heard a man on a cellphone, apparently an attorney, having this conversation:

Attorney: I was told they had obtained a search warrant last week, but that it was never executed.

(Pause)

Attorney: Well then how did they get in your house?

(Pause)

Attorney: Did she sign a Consent to Search?

(Pause. Short sigh.)

Attorney: Well, that explains it then.

Wait! That's It?

This morning began my week of jury duty. Yesterday evening I began my preparations: making sure my jury summons was in my purse and my pocket knife was out, setting my alarm fifteen minutes earlier, and laying out an outfit that was comfortable but polished. My dark taupe chinos, white cashmere pullover, and denim jacket with a dragonfly brooch pinned to the lapel were supposed to indicate sufficient respect for the court while not irritating me all day long. 

When I arrived at the door, I ran into problems. I had to remove my belt, jewelry, and everything in my pockets and put them in a small box to be scanned along with my purse. I managed to set off alarms anyway and had to be hand scanned. Since I was wearing my raincoat on top of everything else, I had forgotten the brooch on my lapel, but more importantly, I realized two hours later, I had forgotten the ten metal buttons on the cuffs, pockets, and placket of the jacket itself. I made a mental note about tomorrow’s outfit: no belt, blazer with plastic buttons, keep my rings and watch in my purse until I go through security. 

The last time I had jury duty, it was in the old courthouse. The new courthouse opened in 2010. It has a first floor area called the Jury Management Office, with a reception area, a large Jury Assembly Room and a smaller room called the quiet room next door. A few hundred of us gathered in the Jury Assembly Room for orientation. The first order of business was a welcome from Judge Fields. The next order of business was a review of what qualifications were necessary to be a juror. One prospect who had not resided in the parish for a full year was excused. So were several full-time students and one person over the age of 70 who did not want to remain, although two other 70-somethings elected to stay. The next group to be dismissed were convicted felons, persons under indictment, persons with physical or mental impairments that would affect their ability to serve, and people with hardships. They were all called up at once so the rest of the group would not know which people fell in which group. That didn’t stop me from playing “guess the felon” with the man in the next seat. Four or five people got sent back to sit with the rest of us, so I guess their hardships didn’t pass muster.

Courthouse under construction in 2009

Rendering of the courthouse from 2009

After getting our parking tickets validated, we got to watch an educational video about jury service. Before showing it to us the jury coordinator told us that the video made reference to being able to wait in the public library, but they don’t allow jurors to do that anymore. According to her, a homeless woman who hangs out in the library had spent so much time watching the coordinator talk to jurors that one day she was able to convince all of them they were being sent home.  

I love that story. I don’t know if I believe that story, but I love that story.

Once the orientation was done, we still had about an hour before lunch. A movie was being shown in the main room, so I escaped to the quiet room with my Kindle. Around 11:45 we were called back to the main room.

“If I call your name, you may leave for lunch and return at 1:15,” the coordinator announced. She called several dozen names, none of which were mine. I hoped the next group wasn’t going to have to wait until 1:15 for our turn at lunch.

The next group, it turned out, was being thanked for their service and sent home for good. I listened as the coordinator reeled off a list of names, none of which was mine. Then I heard my first name, for the first time that day. When she started spelling my last name*, I realized that was it. I was done for the week. I was done for the next two years, actually, because one thing made clear in orientation was that no matter how short your service, if you got a summons and showed up, that counted just as much as serving the whole week.

So my week of jury service that was going to provide several blog posts is over, just like that. The thanks of a grateful nation, well, grateful city-parish, are mine, along with a promised twelve dollars plus mileage. “Must be nice,” said my husband, who had to stick it out for a whole two and a half days.

I don’t know. I’ve been called for jury duty three times and have yet to serve on a jury. I was looking forward to it, largely because I would not be allowed to listen to my husband discuss the local news for a whole week. 

Maybe it’s the way I was dressed?

*Nobody knows how to pronounce my last name. No two people in my family say it alike.

Turf Wars in New Orleans

Tuesday was Mardi Gras. Three years ago my friend D found out about a group that organizes bus tours from Baton Rouge to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. The bus leaves from our large mall and parks at Le Pavillion hotel, from which it is a two block walk to the parade route stands at Lafayette Square, across from Gallier Hall. Included in the package are tickets to the stands and a late buffet lunch at Le Pavillion. For the past two years, John and I have been going along with her. 

John grew up in New Orleans, so up until the year after Hurricane Katrina, we usually went to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. While his mother lived there, we stayed at her house the night before and went to the big potluck lunch at the house of a friend who lived just a few blocks off the uptown parade routes. For two years, we paraded ourselves as members of a small crew who owned a float in one of the truck parades. After Katrina, we began going to Lafayette for Mardi Gras instead. 

Since we had always been uptown for the parades, I had never seen the Zulu parade. From our vantage point near Napoleon and St. Charles, we could see the Rex parade and the truck parades. I had actually attended two Zulu balls back when I lived in New Orleans during my first marriage, but never seen the parade. I know there was always a lot of grumbling on the part of members of our Mardi Gras crew about our parade getting off to a late start because the Zulu parade kept holding up Rex. The truck parades follow the same route as Rex immediately after. Zulu starts off at another point, but uses the same route as Rex downtown, which means Rex can’t start until Zulu is out of their way.

The Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club is the outgrowth of of a Benevolent Aid Society, a group of theater goers called “The Tramps”, and the Mardi Gras culture of New Orleans. They first paraded as Zulu in 1909 and first used floats in 1915. As the story goes, many of the floats were sponsored by local bars and the parade had to stop at each of these bars and mingle with the drinkers, leading to the parade having a somewhat chaotic and unpredictable route. It wasn’t until 1968 that they began parading on St. Charles and Canal Streets. 

The Krewe of Rex is an older and more privileged organization. Rex was first organized and paraded in 1872, in honor of the visit of Russia’s Grand Duke Alexis Romanov. A song written for the Duke’s amusement, “If Ever I Cease to Love”, is the Rex theme song to this day and played by His Majesty’s Calliope, the last float of the parade. The first ball was held in 1873, presided over by the first Queen of Rex.

Aside from the obvious racial and social differences between the two groups, they also embody two different sides of Mardi Gras. Zulu is raucous and inclusive. You can pay your way onto a Zulu float. This year's Zulu parade took 3 and a half hours to pass the viewing stand where we were camped, more than long enough to leave everyone feeling “enough already”. So far as I know, no one stopped at bars, but there were a lot of floats, bands, and groups of other kinds, like the Buffalo Soldiers. Zulu projects the attitudes of “Yes, we do have all day” and “Join us up here, why don’t you.” The Zulu Mardi Gras is Mardi Gras of the people, by the people, and for the people. 

King Zulu 2012

The only way you can ride with Rex is to join Rex, and the only way you can join Rex is by birth or marriage. This year’s queen of Rex, or as they put it, Queen of Carnival, is Ella Monstead Bright, the great, great, great niece of the 1879 King Rex, William Mahle. Her cousin was queen last year. King Rex is always a rich old white guy distinguished member of the business community. The queen is a debutante. 

The insularity of New Orleans’ Mardi Gras krewes led to the formation of two super krewes, Endymion and Bacchus in the late 1960’s. Endymion parades the Saturday night before Mardi Gras and Bacchus on Sunday night. They are known for their innovations in float design and for selecting celebrities for the reigning monarch. Endymion and Bacchus represent new blood and new money, as opposed to Rex’s old blood and old money or Comus’ old blood and no money. Comus used to hold the last parade on Mardi Gras night but stopped in the 1990’s.

The Rex floats, while not as expensive or expansive as those of the newer super krewes, are beautiful to look at and always tell a story. This year, it was Ancient American Lore. Fifty years ago, it would have been “Indian Legends”. The Rex parade is Mardi Gras by the right people, of the right people, and for the tourists. In the minds of not only Rex, but those tourists and the citizens of  New Orleans and the surrounding area, the Rex parade is Mardi Gras.

Rex Float

For those of us with no blood and no money, there are the truck parades. Sponsored by the Elks Krewe of Orleanians and the Krewe of Crescent City, the truck parades comprise individual truck floats decorated and staffed by small krewes or social clubs, organized under one umbrella organization which purchases insurance, sets the rules for how floats are decorated and how riders are costumed, and otherwise keep things organized. The two oldest parades in Baton Rouge, the Southdowns and Spanish Town Mardi Gras parades, are truck parades. Like Zulu, they got longer and longer until the city-parish government finally set a limit to how many units each parade could have.

John and I spent two years riding in the Elks Krewe of Orleanians parade with a krewe that unfortunately collapsed the third year when most of the elderly members either retired or died. Being in the streets on Mardi Gras is fun; riding on a float is even better. I got a phenomenal rush of power watching all those people in the streets begging for the cheap plastic beads in my hands. It also gave us something to do with all the cheap plastic beads we collected from the parades leading up to Mardi Gras. My usual parade experience consists of trying to catch everything within reach and plotting long, hard deaths for the people who catch the beads that were headed for me, and then two hours later asking myself, “What am I going to do with this crap?” Turf wars are not just for the krewes.

So it was with trepidation that my husband noticed me perusing the “Ride with Zulu” link the other day. “Why are you reading that?” he asked. “I was just trying to figure out why the parade was so long. If you don’t have to be a member to ride, that may be why.”

He seemed content with my answer, but it only took me three years to get him to accompany me to Antarctica. New Orleans is a whole lot closer. I’m biding my time.

Making Tracks

If you go to this link, you can see a huge, searchable image of ancient elephant tracks laid across what is now a desert in the United Arab Emirates. They were made at least 6-8 million years ago, while the land was watered by a river, not the dry wasteland it is today.

According to Discover Magazine

There are many fossils of prehistoric elephants that show how their bodies evolved from smaller ancestors. But elephants are much more than just tusks and trunks. They have rich social lives, full of empathy, and their behaviours haven’t fossilised as well. We know that some elephants, like the mammoth and mastodon, spent some of their time in groups, thanks to the occasional trackways and mass graves.  But the Mleisa 1 site offers much clearer evidence.
Studying it wasn’t easy. The site is too massive to photograph from the ground, but the individual prints are too small to show up on satellite images. To accurately map the trackways, Nathan Craig from Pennsylvania State University attached a small pocket camera to a kite and snapped a set of overlapping images from above. He stitched the images together into a single large mosaic, which you can see on Gigapan. By calibrating the aerial mosaic with measurements taken on the ground, the team could study the herd’s footsteps from the air.

Wired.com also has an article on the elephant tracks.

One day, sometime around seven million years ago, a herd of bizarre, four-tusked elephants crossed the desert that stretched over what is now the United Arab Emirates. Thirteen of the behemoths plodded along together, perhaps moving towards one of the wide, slow rivers which nourished stands of trees in the otherwise the arid region. Sometime later, a solitary animal trudged across the herd’s path in another direction. We know all this because paleontologists have found the tracks of these massive animals.
Scientists were not the first people to wonder about the fossil footprints. The huge tracksite – which stretches over an area equivalent to seven soccer fields – had been a source of speculation among local Emirati people for years. Dinosaurs and even mythical giants were thought to have been responsible for the potholes. It wasn’t until the spring of 2001 that a resident of the area, Mubarak bin Rashid Al Mansouri, led researchers from the Abu Dhabi Islands Archaeological Survey to the immense fossil field.
Dinosaurs had not created the tracks. The snapshot of time represented by the trace fossils came from the Miocene, sometime between six and eight million years ago — all the gargantuan non-avian dinosaurs had died out over 60 million years previously. Based upon the geological context and what had been found in the area before, fossil elephants were quickly identified as the trackmakers. The site was named Mleisa 1.

If the world had had to wait for me to think of using kites to make aerial photographs of the tracks, it would have been waiting still. I think it’s the most creative use of a kite since Ben Franklin and his key.

It’s amazing what the tracks themselves can tell us about elephant behavior. Elephants travel in herds organized around a matriarch. When the males hit puberty, they set out on their own until they find another group to join. The lone tracks in this picture were made by such a male, not at the same time as those of the herd.

I’m grateful for the scientists who know how to give us these snapshots of long ago. Our lives are measured in decades rather than centuries, and we can’t run as fast as some of our fellow mammals, swim as well as fish or soar like birds, but thanks to the curiosity and inventiveness of some, we can look back over billions of years of history and see out for trillions of miles.

What could be cooler than that?

You Turkey

For the last half dozen years or so, we’ve been eating Thanksgiving dinner at the house of a friend. Christmas we spend at John’s sister’s house every three years or so. When we’re home, we are more likely to cook roast beef or pork than turkey.  So it has been several years since we’ve had a roast turkey in the house. Last week I woke up craving turkey, and since it was my turn to grocery shop anyway, I added turkey breast to the list.

I was actually able to find a fresh one (or possibly a previously frozen and then thawed one), which meant I was able to cook it for dinner. It was small, just under 6 pounds, but a 6 pound turkey breast is still a lot of turkey for two people.

Half of it I froze to use later in making chili blanco. A friend of mine substitutes turkey for the chicken and I’ve been wanting to try it. (Usually I substitute pork tenderloin for the chicken.) The ribs and breastbone of course went to make soup, one-third of which we had for a lunch, one-third of which is in the refrigerator for later this week, and  the last third of which is in the freezer for another time when we are not sick of turkey.

I made turkey hash for lunch today, and half of that is in the freezer. There is still a large chunk of turkey left.

So I’m thinking of turning it into a turkey pot pie casserole to donate to St. Anonymous, which keeps a freezer of casseroles to donate to those who are sick, just had babies, or are facing other family emergencies which interfere with cooking. I can find a disposable baking pan. What I can’t find is a recipe I like. The classic turkey pot pie recipes I find are made to cook in a ten inch pie pan with crust on top and bottom. The casserole recipes I can find either call for prepared biscuit mix toppings or seem extremely complex. I want to make something that tastes good, which rules out the recipes that are essentially “toss diced turkey together with one can of soup and two cans of mixed vegetables and top with biscuit mix.” The recipients are already under stress; they don’t need bad food on top of it all. On the other hand, my main criterion for a good recipe is that after one or two go-rounds, I should have it memorized. (IOW, the only thing written by Julia Child I have around my house is My Life in France).

I would just improvise, but I need to include instructions for baking time and temperature with the casserole and while I’m perfectly happy to improvise those when I cook for myself, I want to make sure I give other people reliable information.

Maybe I should just make some more turkey soup.