Paradigm shifts: message to Shelley McKay

Well, today I discovered that Kate has been reading my blogs in Prague (yes, I did intend the rhyme). When I first started writing them, I think I realized quickly that I was probably writing them for Cindy. But there is a problem there: Cindy doesn't know how to get into this blogspot, so she only reads what I print out for her. Then I found out that Kate is reading them.

So I need to consider changing the tone and content of my blogs to meet up with a different, or at least, augmented audience.

Kate, there have been so many times this Winter (what there was of it) and Spring that I wished I could share something with you. Last Saturday afternoon, your mother and I had been working in the yard in the afternoon and were tired and hot and filled with the good feeling of accomplishment and exercise. The brotherhood of dirty fingernails. Adam and Eve, Part ? We were sitting on the patio, listening to A Prairie Home Companion from the River Center in Columbus, Georgia. The whole program was acclimated to this region. I turned to your mother and asked her if she wanted a cocktail. She looked at me and gave me an affirmative answer.

So I went into the kitchen and found the barest amount of the necessary ingredients to make a small shaker-full of the penultimate hot weather cocktail: the mojito. I brought them out and shook them up and poured them. If I had only had enough ingredients to prepare the necessary amount and someone to grill spare ribs for me, and you and maybe even a few assorted cousins were there, everything would have been perfect. Actually, a little fried seafood (fried shrimp and/or sauteed bay scallops and scallions on rice, ala Barbara Jean's in St. Simons) would have been good too.

I have to insert this aside for you. I bought a cookbook from Barbara Jean's when we were there in early April. I had to. There was a special dish I tried with bay scallops and scallions on rice which was the supreme culinary goodness of the entire trip. I had to buy the book. I have to make that dish. I have to try it again. Categorical imperative (sic?). No mexican food or silver patron can match that. Paula Deen's shrimp and grits, as good as it is, couldn't match up. On and on and on and on, etc.

It would have been my pleasure to share that with you.

But you were in Prague and it will be very difficult for you to acclimate yourself to living in Georgia. Even with a goodly amount of mojitos, spareribs, seafood, barbecue and collards.

Its time to be a little philosophical about this. In the last twelve months you have had quite an experience. You got to see England and Scotland and pretend to be as British as you should be able to manage, given your ethnic background. Then you got to share a room with a German Exchange student, which should have told you that living with Americans isn't all that bad. Then you got to explore a European city thoroughly over several months and meet some people from other parts of the globe. I wanted you to broaden yourself and I think you have. I want you to see and appreciate a big world and not feel imprisoned by your birth surroundings. But you need to consider everything clinically and emotionally and appreciate the wonder of the whole world, even in little Griffin, Georgia. You have many choices. Don't feel limited when you are young. There will be enough time for limits when you get old.

Be an artist and look for the beauty in all things. The spirit of God is there in all of His creation. When you were baptised, we all promised to work so that you could see that. And we had faith that God would do so too. I have no doubts, even in the face of doubt.