Touching Base

Oh boy, the days just fly by and I never get to Fried Green Tomatoes anymore, though I often compose mini blog posts in my head, mostly while I'm driving.

The posts in my head are snippets about the new preacher at Circular who is working out very well, thank goodness (in last Sunday's sermon, Pete Seegar was likened to the old-time bibical psalmists. Well, of course, but I had never quite thought of it), but just now I have lukewarm enthusiasm for church as a regular thing -- couldn't I just read his blog?

They are snippets about the "campaign season" which I can hardly stand to turn in to. . . but still I had this reflexive feeling that I wanted to watch the party conventions.

And that leads to a snippet about living sans television, but that is a real quick snippet because it's hard to really know what we're missing because we're um, . . . missing it. All I know is that whenever I do get to see television I think "No, I really do not want this going in my house all the time."

I miss commercials. Annoying as they are, they are a bit of cultural lingo I miss being tuned into. Sometimes in the conversational swirl, I realize I've just been eliminated because I've dropped into the "we don't have cable so no TV reception" hole. But really, the only things I miss are The Olympics and The Oscars (and Masterpiece Theatre and Sunday morning news talk shows but now we're back to not wanting to go to church. . .)

For mindless diversion, we have Netflix and this summer we watched five seasons of a show that ran from 2006 - 2011 on BBC called Doc Martin. He was a surgeon in London but developed a phobia of blood, so now he's a GP in a small village in Cornwall. He's the stereotypical surgeon with no social skills, no bedside manner but he's in a small community where he really needs them. It's filmed in a lovely seaside location and has wonderful quirky characters. Now that we have run through all the episodes, we actually miss the people who populated the little village of Portwynne. We're looking for something else to love but haven't found it yet.

Here's a recent weaving project:

Using these particular colors was an assignment from my weaving study group -- and I made myself use yarns I already had so I dug into these novelty wools and mohairs -- I suddenly remembered these are not ideal for warp threads. Anyway, I'm not crazy about it, it looks very 1970s to me.Plus, it is too much wool for our Lowcountry winters.  I think I'll take it to GreenPeace and let it be the house scarf for anyone who needs one. It gets cold enough up there to appreciate it even if the colors are a bit blah.

And of course every other day I'm sure I have something totally original to share about Fred & Ethel.

This is My Chair

This is my chair

This is my couch

That is my bed

That is my bench

There is my chaise

There is my settee

Those are my footstools

Those are my rugs

Everywhere is my place to sleep

Perhaps you should just get a hotel room

          from I Could Pee on This and Other Poems by Cats

I'll try to check in here a little more often.

Our Pretty Church

There's a fellow in town photographing all the churches in Charleston. No small task in a place that calls itself "the Holy City". Go here to see his beautiful photos. I've directed the link to take you to our church first, but you can surf around and see seven or eight others that are all quite special. The collection grows and he's beginning to add churches from other places as well. I think he hopes to publish a book.

Ours is Circular Congregational Church and it was the founded by the early settlers in 1681 as the first non-Anglican  Church in Charleston. Because they weren't part of the Church of England they were looked down upon and considered "dissenters". Not to be encouraged, they weren't allowed to call themselves a church – only a "Meeting" and that's how the main avenue through downtown Charleston came to be known as Meeting Street – because it was the location of the Meeting House. This building is the church's third; built in 1890.

Circular started out and continues to be a denominational mishmash. In 1775, it was said to be "called either Presbyterian, Congregational, or Independent, sometimes by one of the names, sometimes by two of them and at other times by all three."

The Scottish immigrants who wanted a "truer" Presbyterian experience split off early on and formed First Scots Presbyterian down the street in 1731.

Another group left in 1817 and went around the corner to worship as Unitarians on Archdale St. And finally, the black memebers withdrew in 1867 and founded Plymouth Congregational Church. All of these are still active congregations.

Here is one of my favorite church pictures, taken by a member of the church sometime last year. It is our recently retired pastor, Bert Keller, weaving a newly baptised child "into the life of the congregation."  Even without seeing the architecture, this photo somehow gives a sense of the circle that is our worship space.