Thinking About

A Country Moving Forward: More Gratitude, Less Attitude

/ Ally Bean / 19 Comments

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way, 

When sorrows like sea billows roll; 

Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say, 

It is well, it is well with my soul.

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Yesterday was a rainy, cold Monday.  I spent the day inside, not doing much of anything.

Lost in contemplation.

Humming the hymn that I’d heard on Friday while watching the funeral in Charleston for Rev. Clementa Pinckney.

Remembering my Southern church lady aunt who used to hum that particular hymn while tidying up around her home.

Which, really, is what I should have been doing.

My plan for the day had been to use the time to weed the garden.  Our vacation travels followed by a busy week of getting back into daily routines had given the weeds a chance to take over.

Not pretty.

But instead of jumping into any activity at all, I found myself thinking about how proud I am of this country for moving forward in a peaceful way on social issues that impact everyone.

Somehow.

I realize that people are whining and opining all over the place on FB and cable news outlets, but when you get down to it, this country in pretty damned amazing.

The change process worked, both on a national judicial level and on a state executive level.

Homophobia and racism, spotlighted last week like they were, are now officially acknowledged as behaviors that do not help make our country strong.

Hate never does.

It really is that simple.  We’ve moved forward.  Hallelujah!

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Do not be afraid of the hate surfacing. Backlash is an inevitable side effect of progress. Cruelty is simply fear’s death knell. Carry on.

~ Glennon Doyle Melton

We Went To Nashville, Y’all

/ Ally Bean / 25 Comments

Like just about every post that I write about our travels…

Zen-Den was in [fill in the blank] for work and I decided to join him.

In this case he was in Nashville, TN, aka Music City USA.  So I flew down there for a goof-off weekend in a city that is cheerful and easy to navigate.

Nashville is fun, y’all.  Here are the highlights of our Weekend.

::  We went to the Parthenon.

Built for Tennessee’s 1897 Centennial Exposition, this building has INCREDIBLE detail, a small art museum in the basement featuring regional American landscape art, and is located in a large, somewhat uncared for, city park.

I learned how little I know about Greek mythology while here, y’all.

::  We went to a fancy part of town called Green Hills.

There we wandered around a mall, and adjacent lifestyle center, that had many of the same stores that we have here, BUT they were twice as large with FRIENDLY sales help.  As much as I don’t usually enjoy shopping, this I liked.

I bought a Coach purse, y’all.

::  We went to the Country Music Hall of Fame.

This museum was amazing.  FASCINATING.  Curated to tell, entertain and engage everyone with music, videos, instruments, album covers, photographs, costumes, interactive displays and tasteful decor, we enjoyed this museum more than we thought that we would.

I saw Elvis’s gold Cadillac, y’all.

::  We ate at Ted’s Montana Grill.

This is a chain restaurant, owned by Ted Turner, that features beef and buffalo, along with salads and fish and milkshakes.  The restaurant was beautifully decorated in a 1970s steak-house style with lots of dark wood and shiny brass.  The food was DELICIOUS and the service was attentive.

I ate a bison burger– and I washed my hands with Boraxo powdered soap, y’all.

::  And finally, the answer to the question that everyone asks when you go to Nashville: Yes, we went to the Grand Ole Opry.

It was GREAT. We saw lots of older performers who we’d never heard of [Connie Smith?], but eventually, as the evening progressed, we saw performers who we knew, like Vince Gill and Pure Prairie League.  Then, in true Opry fashion, two superstars stopped by the Opry on a whim– and the crowd went crazy.

I saw Tricia Yearwood AND her husband, Garth Brooks, perform together, y’all.

My Neighborhood: Not Much Of A Story, But The News Is Good

/ Ally Bean / 24 Comments

The economy has perked up around here and with it, the real estate market.  House sales are beginning to happen faster.  That is, houses are on the market for weeks now, instead of for months & months.

Neighbors who are selling their homes are sprucing up what they have, meaning that our street has looked exceptionally nice this spring.  And with the subsequent home sales, we have new younger, active neighbors.

This is a good thing, huh?

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I’m seeing lots of these now.

~ • ~

I realized the foregoing as I was driving, very slowly, the long way home through our subdivision.  It dawned on me that as well as being outside on the move, many of our new neighbors are driving new cars.  Perhaps I’m overly aware of this sort of thing because I drive a 12 y.o. car, but I was kind of amazed.

~ • ~

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I’m not seeing any of these.

~ • ~

The cars that I noticed weren’t fancy and/or sporty.  They were Fords or Toyotas or Hyundais, usually trucks or mini-vans or SUVs, middle of the line, practical.  But they were bright + shiny + new.

So that’s what’s up around here.  Not too exciting from a blog story-telling point of view, but encouraging from a midwest homeowners point of view.  Of which I am one.

You gotta take the happy where you find it, eh?

We Went To Washington, D.C.

/ Ally Bean / 28 Comments

ZEN-DEN NEEDED TO be in D.C. for his work, so we wrapped a couple of days around his business travel– and went to Washington, D.C. for a fast little vacay.

We figure that it must have been 15+ years since we’d been there together, which surprised us.  At one point, Z-D’s job in the midwest took him to D.C. about half of the year, so I’d meet him there on the weekends.

D.C. was our favorite vacation playground.

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Cherry blossoms were past their prime, but tulips were everywhere.  I snapped these photos at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel.

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FROM A TOURIST’S point of view much has changed for the better in D.C.

What amazed us was how much cleaner, easier, prettier, friendlier the city has become.  No snarly people [I’m looking at you, Boston] or people with superior attitudes [I’m looking at you, NYC].

Instead, hotel employees, nice.  Cabbies, pleasant.  Museum employees, helpful.  Restaurant wait staff, attentive.  TSA, patient.

Who would have thought that while the jackweasels in the U.S. Congress can’t agree on which way is up, the rest of Washington is buzzing along like cooperative little bees making honey while the flowers grow?

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I took all of these tulip photos with Zen-Den’s iPhone, which is something that I’ve never done before.

# # #

WHILE MOST OF our time in D.C. was taken up with business events, we did manage to do a few things.

  • We had a delicious lunch at the Omni Shoreham Hotel, which is a gorgeous old-fashioned hotel in Adams Morgan that you may remember from scenes in The Pelican Brief.
  • We rode the metro which made me feel like a young twenty-something fresh out of college, assuming I’d end up in a big east coast city.  [That didn’t happen, now did it?]
  • We went to the National Gallery of Art, toured it, then ate lunch in the cafeteria in the basement by the waterfall because… well, that’s what we do when we’re in D.C. together.
  • We wandered around the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden which was pretty even if we were a week late for the cherry blossoms.
  • We saw the Navy Yard, the Watergate Complex and Rock Creek Park from a taxi.
  • And while waiting at Reagan National Airport for our flight home, we saw an Honor Flight of WWII & Korea veterans arriving in D.C.  At their gate a live jazz quartet playing pop standards from the 1940s & 1950s met the group, while a crowd gathered round and applauded.

# # # 

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While the flowers were glorious, these iPhone photos don’t do them justice. Next time I’ll bring my real camera with me. 🙂

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IT’S BEEN A long time since I’ve been anywhere that I felt as comfortable as I did on this Washington D.C. trip.  We’re both ready to return soon.

Next time I’d like to focus on seeing more of the presidential and war monuments;  take in a few more museums;  perhaps go to a concert;  and breakfast each morning on fresh east coast bagels with a schmear & a coffee regular.

How have I lived without them?