Fat Tuesday

Fat Tuesday - I invested several time away from my workspace this mid-day and night time, which is why tonight’s content have been late.

The celebration was Hot cake Meal, an yearly occurrence at our place of worship and an Anglican custom on Shrove Wednesday. Aspect of the custom (at least at our church) is that the men prepare the hot cakes, so I smelled like fat smoking and had to be thoroughly detoxified after investing four time planning, planning, and washing up after all those hot cakes.

Our place of worship is little and outdated, and the viewers at supper was created up mostly of individuals over 58. This was real even though many of them were actually Methodists and Baptists from other chapels in our little non-urban team. Going to Hot cake Meal at the Episcopal Church seems to be a unusual doll from a far away previous, when Episcopalians — associates of what was once known as the “Church of Virginia”, again before flexibility — were the spiritual nobility in the Earth.

One of the beautiful functions of our Hot cake Meal is a little attire that performs conventional “Old Time” songs while individuals eat. Tonight’s team provided two instruments and a mess, with one of the guitar players performing. While I was in the cooking area planning I observed “Amazing Grace”, “Long Dark-colored Veil”, “Tennesee Waltz”, “The Old Durable Cross”, “Rocky Top”, “Good Ol’ Hill Dew” (or whatever that tune about Dad Bill’s still is called), and several other preferred, most of them viewers needs. Some individuals even got up and clapped their arms and fingers and stomped a little bit.

Notice that the musicians’ collection was not what is normally associated with hidebound narrow-minded bigoted Honest in the non-urban Southern region, as thought by the town literati who make the well-known generalizations of nation individuals that town persons and outsiders take to be the facts of the matter. There were songs about God and God, but also songs about really like, and cheatin’, and tequila, and temptations.

The songs were about the challenging business of being completely people, with all its wealth and complexness and ambivalence. They just occurred to be introduced in an cosmetic type that is derogated by the lifestyle at huge.

All this, plus hot cakes, website cash, and applesauce! What more could anyone want?

The conventional non-urban Virginian milieu is so different from my other lifestyle that it’s challenging to explain. My profession as an “Islamophobe” — which includes analysis and composing targeted at English-speaking individuals all over the community, journeys to European countries, and all those other effete perceptive actions — does not really overlap with what went on in that great smoky parish area today. Nobody in that area would have an idea about the Counterjihad, even if they realized about my part in it.

Yet these are my individuals. This is house. This is why I do what I do.

This is what I deal with for.