My friend Heather's family was very, very traditional Catholics and ignored a lot of the Vatican II stuff, such as covering your head. More than once I gave her crap for wearing a doily on her head.

Hooray, Grace!

Msbelle, I hope this is a big turning point for you and Mac.

I just caught up after a week of vacation! I've been working in northern Michigan for 15 summers and never had time to be a tourist, so I spent the past week doing just that. I have some photos up on FB, and some on Flickr. I'll link once I get more on Flickr.

Zen, if there is a Heaven, I hope that the first person to greet Teddy is Mary Jo K. Because she's the one with the most right to judge whether he's conducted the rest of his life in a manner that satisfies the wrong done her.

(My money is on her being satisfied, if you look at how much he cleaned up his act and went on to really work for matters of the general good of the country with political skill and influence.)

Yay, Grace!

I thought the funeral was quite beautiful, and I think Ted more than made up for the mistakes of his youth, even as awful as they were.

I think it is the wrong way to look at it. The good he did is the good he did. The bad he did is the bad he did. If there is an afterlife then I hope there is forgiveness, but I doubt it is some sort of netting. I don't believe in an afterlife at all, but I especially don't believe in Anubis weighing your heart against a feather - even if he has been turned into St. Peter. If there is some sort of grace, I suspect it is more mysterious and beautiful than that.

I do believe in an afterlife, and I also believe that being truly sorry for your sins or mistakes is what truly matters.

Now that August is almost over, San Francisco is allowing us some summery weather. It's hot!

I'm remembering that when we got to the tail end of summer in Florida there were nights when my Mom just didn't feel like cooking and she'd go to the deli counter and get a huge array of delicious meats and cheeses and breads and we'd have a huge sandwich bar set up on the dining room table for dinner.

And, of course, we'd also have meals towards the end of summer that featured sweet corn and big beefsteak tomatoes.

What are you memories of traditional family meals late in summer? Gazpacho? Lark's tongue in aspic?

Happy birthday to meara and Jen! That's a damn good double whammy.

::sips Arnold Palmer and watches dragonflies flitting around in the mid morning sun::

Traditional family meals in late summer - well, when we had "family meals", it was when I was small, so Portland: hot until October-ish.

Picnics with home-made potato salad and macaroni salad (with tiny shrimp!) and my grandmother's PERFECT coleslaw. Hot dogs on the barbeque. Crayfish from the Tualatin River (behind the house). Home-made smoked salmon (my grandfather and my uncle would fish for the salmon, then bring it home and smoke it). Corn on the cob. Grandma's sauerkraut (she was a BIG home-canner/jelly-maker).

And the desserts. Blackberry cobbler, strawberry-rhubarb pie, hand-cranked ice cream.

The salmon and the salads were my favorites. :)

Crawfish.

What are you memories of traditional family meals late in summer?

Huh.

Being Jamaican, we don't have those. Never really thought about food that way.