MountainMornings

Since the weather has decided to oblige, Bob and I thought a Fall outing would be just the ticket for the Great Grands. First we drove to Cheekwood, a gorgeous botanical garden, but they were closed due to a private event. So we hemmed and hawed because anything worth doing would have to supply wheelchairs, and guess what? The Nashville Zoo has not only wheelchairs available, but electric scooters!

We only lost Great Grandpa Hudson once, near the flamboyance of flamingoes. But the normally elusive animals were putting on quite a show – gibbons flew through the air, baby meerkats frolicked next to our feet, and the Andean bears had decided it was time for a swim. Great Grandma Ada thought we should cap off our adventure with a visit to a food truck, and luckily for us Google came to the rescue.

Unfortunately, the Grilled Cheeserie truck was also at a private event, but we found the Cousins lobster roll truck in mere minutes!

It was a perfect outing. Needing a break from the non-stop coverage of Kavanaugh’s “righteous” anger, we also  needed to separate from social media maladies like supposed evangelical “Christians” becoming indignant about smearing a “good” man’s name. After all, patriarchy runs deep, it’s biblical. Remember Mary Magdalene?

“In one age after another her image was reinvented, from prostitute to sibyl to mystic to celibate nun to passive helpmate to feminist icon to the matriarch of divinity’s secret dynasty. How the past is remembered, how sexual desire is domesticated, how men and women negotiate their separate impulses; how power inevitably seeks sanctification, how tradition becomes authoritative, how revolutions are co-opted; how fallibility is reckoned with, and how sweet devotion can be made to serve violent domination—all these cultural questions helped shape the story of the woman who befriended Jesus of Nazareth.”
Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/who-was-mary-magdalene-119565482/#A1kBRpgIwYOqJUGc.99

In looking back, it turns out that this Jewish woman was NOT in fact a repentant prostitute, which was what I’d been told back in Sacred Heart School. In fact, there were many Marys alive during the time of Jesus. But Mary Magdalene was there at the crucifixion, and she was there at the apparent resurrection from the tomb. She was in fact an important disciple, someone who was loved and respected by all accounts. What would Jesus do today with Dr Christine Blasey Ford?

Jumping around in time like a WOMAN Time Lord in a souped-up TARDIS is taking the balcony view. You take a deep breath and look out over the crowded multitudes, summing up the past and trying to predict the future. Misogyny has had its place in history, and I believe we are about to rewrite the next chapter from a human point of view. Great Grandma Ada has always talked about her mother being alive when we mere humans first took flight on a North Carolina beach, and also seeing our first small steps on the Moon!

On the ride home last night, Ada mentioned friends of a friend who both had PhDs and quit their jobs to open an Egyptian food truck! I was trying to figure out how Egyptian food differs from Jewish food (pretty much not at all) while listening to the astonishment in Ada’s voice; like we women won the vote and Title IV and the ability to play Dr Who and now we want to cook…in a truck?