in the open space: God & culture

Enter another world through the looking glass... (photo: mine) Last year was our first visit to the Maryland Renaissance Festival in Annapolis, and we enjoyed it enough to return again this year. The Festival runs annually on weekends in August through October and recreates an "English Tudor village" full of shops, food, stage entertainment and events (like caber tossing and jousting) on about 25 acres of hilly wooded area. According to the Festival's site , it has "more than 1,300 participants and 280,000 guests per season." Because we'd been before, this year was less about trying to see it all and more about enjoying the things we enjoyed last year and catching a few things we hadn't before. Like last year, I particularly enjoyed the folks who dressed for the event: a highlander with his cell phone (photo: mine) revelry and fun (photo: mine) folks carried around mugs and steins to enjoy the various brews (photo: mine) these ...

Well, we survived Hurricane Irene here in the DC Metro with little damage to our neighborhood in the Alexandria area. If you're curious as to what it was like around these parts, here's a selection from the  tweets and Facebook posts I made in the last 24 hours or so. If not, feel free to skip this post, heh.

Heh. For what it's worth, Facebook and Twitter were the only ways I could communicate with friends and family for a little while after the quake as my cell service failed and I couldn't make calls or send texts. We've now added those media forms as our family's fallback for communicating during disasters.

And I just tweeted yesterday how relieved I was that Jim Cantore wasn't anywhere near DC, heh.

mine Today, the DC Metro region was shaken by 5.8 magnitude quake centered just to the southwest of the Capital. The kids and I were in a parking lot approaching our truck when it started to rock like someone was jumping on it and the ground started to tilt back and forth under our feet. My husband said his third floor office in DC was shaken very intensely. I was in Fresno and felt the San Francisco quake of 1989, but this felt much stronger. But all is well. There are few reports of damage, and the only damage we had were a few knocked over picture frames, a tipped angel and another that lost a few parts when she fell from her comrades.

It's been awhile since there's been a post on this blog, but there's a good reason: We bought a house closer to D.C. and have spent the last few months moving ourselves into it and making it our home. While an exhausting, all-consuming and sometimes stressful process (what move isn't?), it has also been somewhat freeing--especially in going through and giving away a bunch of stuff that we had accumlated but don't need or don't use. And while it was sad to leave friends and a space we knew well, we were reminded of the gift and joy of being a family; one of my kids commented how wonderful it is that "we get to take each other with us no matter where we live." Amen.

Aliens  copyrighted by 20th Century Fox, via  flixster.com I know I've used this metaphor befor e , but today I fancied myself the Private Jenette Vasquez of yard work. Though instead of a flame thrower, I wielded a leaf blower. And instead of toothy and drooling aliens, I slayed moldy leaves.  And, to the tell the truth, 15 minutes into the task, I actually would have preferred the flame thrower.  And the aliens.

Today, my husband and I took the kids to the Maryland Renaissance Festival in Annapolis. It was beautiful weather, wonderfully bad-for-you food (fish and chips, yum), and great entertainment. We got there just in time for a jousting competition--these guys (and gals!) actually go at each other with long wooden sticks upon galloping horses, heh: Here's a close up the above photo--note the broken tip of the lance against the knight's armor: Another jousting shot: Two little girls dressed in renaissance garb: A wall of wooden shields at a shop where we bought our son a wooden sword: And "Kathryn Parr" and "Thomas Seymour" who hosted the joust (and yes, I felt very geeky knowing who those two actually were in history, heh): Compared to the other renaissance festivals we've been to, this one was by far the largest. There were a gazillion shops and eateries, a plethora of folks who dressed the parts, and great entertainment. It was interestin...

While Summer may be desperately trying to hang on in these parts (it’s forecast to be over 90F today), Fall is irrevocably here. I know, because the calendar tells me this is the first full day of the season. And in honor of its arrival, here are 10 things I love about it: 1. I can finally open the windows and crank Pavarotti. His tenor is too big for enclosed spaces. 2. The feel of the sun on my blue jeans and favorite T-shirts. 3. The patchwork-quilt color of the trees. I know, I know. A few weeks later I’ll be complaining about all those leaves on my yard, but I’ll enjoy them while they are hanging pretty. 4. And when those leaves finally do fall, I’ll be able to see the big blue, wide sky again. 5. Snuggling under the extra blanket on the bed. And the couch. 6. Watching the wind blow the leaves out of my yard so I don’t have to. 7. The smell of wood burning in fireplaces. 8. Soups. Lots of soup. And fresh bread. 9. Breaking out the knitting needles. 10. How the tilt of the earth br...

Today, we spent the afternoon with friends in D.C. and here are a few things I noticed at some places we visited for the first time as well as some places we'd already been: At the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum, the actual SpaceShipOne , "the first privately developed and piloted vehicle to reach space." At the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (the rotunda pictured above) we saw the Hope Diamond, which, seriously, just wasn't as impressive as I thought it would be. But obviously everyone else thought it was because I couldn't get close enough to take a decent picture. I actually find a giant ancestor of the sloth (below) much, much more impressive--look at those hands! For some reason, I find this creature much more scary than the T-Rex. Shudder. In the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden, we walked past Roxy Paine's Graft , a stainless steel metal sculpture of a tree. I could have looked at this thing for hours. It was mesmerizing, l...

Remembering friends and others who lost loved ones nine years ago. (Image: mine, from the Newseum in Washington, D.C.)

Ever wonder if the network of tunnels, storage areas and stairwells underneath the museums depicted in Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian actually exists? I did—and now I know. When it came out, my family enjoyed the film for more than one reason. While we liked the story itself (though perhaps not as much as the first film ), we loved how this one takes place in our own backyard. Well, not literally: The film actually takes place in several of the Smithsonian museums on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.— which we visit frequently as we live in the DC Metro area . One of the things that intrigued me most about the film was whether or not those networks of storage areas and tunnels in which Larry and his friends and enemies adventure were real. This week, Smithsonian sponsored an “Ask a curator” day on Twitter, so I asked about the tunnels — and they answered : Actually we sort of do. There is a tunnel that connects Arts & Industries (closed) the Castle, @ freers...