How’s your bracket looking today??
Just a quick couple of notes about retirements and things to
do this weekend…. not necessarily related
As we are all well aware, the first colonists from England
arrived on St. Clements Island on March 25th, 1634. They got us started to where we are today (a
bit gratuitous, but you get the drift).
So every year there are celebrations held to commemorate that event,
this year marking the 379th anniversary of "Maryland Day" Locally, Historic St. Mary’s City will hold
their annual program tomorrow, with kid stuff to do (kites, etc.,), sites to visit, and there are a
couple of concerts in the Brick Chapel at noon and two thirty (by the a cappela
chorus from the college), all woven around the ceremony at one. That will feature speeches (Keynote from Prof.
Cheryl La Roche (U of Md) on “looking past big stories in history”) and the bestowing
of this year’s Cross Bottony award recognizing outstanding achievements on
behalf of Historic St. Mary’s City. The
awardee will be Larry Leak, a long time friend and supporter of the Museum and
who also serves on the Historic St. Mary’s City Commission. As you (hopefully) remember last year’s
award was to MFO. At the end of the ceremonies,
fourth (?) graders from each County of Maryland will brandish their County’s
flag. That is really fun to see. City opens at ten, and admission to the city
is free, so you can also visit the Dove, the Plantation, and so forth.
Then on Monday, there will be more celebrations at the St.
Clements Island Museum down on Colton’s point (in the famous 7th!!). They always do it on the “real” Maryland day
(the 25th). Their keynote
speaker is Julia King, who is always worth driving to hear. She’ll be speaking about Thomas Gerard. Come and find out about him. They start at eleven.
MFO and I will attend both.
If you can you should come and see these special local festivals, they
are unique.
RETIREMENTS
Went to a retirement dinner last night for a friend who is
retiring from the Government job he occupied for a long time, mostly on the F-18
program in its various guises. I worked
with him for years here, and fortunately we have remained in touch fairly
often. He is a fountain of knowledge and
experience on cars, HVAC, and other “homeowner” related problems which we all
endure, so we have lots to talk about. Anyway it was held “on base” at
the Officer’s Club, now known as the River’s Edge. Pretty nice venue for that sort of
thing. It was really nice to see so many
of the people I used to work with, and have a chance to say hi and catch up a
bit. That is what I really miss in
retirement. Since most of them were around
when the Bottom Feeder was formulating a lot of them said: “you’re going to
write this up, aren’t you?”. Well, sort
of. We were gathered after all, to
recognize the (immense) contributions of the retiree, and help him into his well
deserved retirement. So food was not the
focus, and was just part of the evening.
Knowing what the situation was, one would expect relatively well
prepared “institutional” food. I mean
that in not a critical way, just a descriptor.
When you signed up to attend you had to choose either beef, pork, or
fish. So expectations were that you
would get exactly that, along with some starch and a vegetable. And, not surprisingly, that is exactly what
was served. MFO had a piece of salmon, I
had prime rib, and I think by the time they got to our table, the pork was
gone. Wouldn’t say it was all hot, but
certainly not cold. Taste was okay, the
beef did have flavor and wasn’t riddled with fat. Service was accomplished by the ladies that
have been there as long as I can remember.
They did serve salads to the ladies first, but then it was all the fish, all
the beef, and all pork without regard to gender.
So, for those of you who asked, it was fine. It's all about expectations.
And as I said the evening was really fun, Mr. Organizer did a
great job, the speeches (from some very important people) were short and to the point. And even though the
honoree is sometimes given to lengthy oratory, he made a very nice and touching
speech. One more good guy in the ranks
of the retired!!
TASTE
And concurrently with Maryland Day, tomorrow is also the "Taste of
Solomon’s" their annual food festival.
You buy tickets ($4) and then trade them for grub at participating
outlets.. (CD Café; Ruddy Duck; Bistro Belle Maison; and Lotus Kitchen to name
a few (of the 15) more interesting ones (IMHO)). It’s a chance to taste some of the food you
may not normally indulge in (yes, the sentence ended with a preposition, deal
with it). And not one is a chain. There is a little writeup in the Enterprise’s
insert “Weekend” about it. See that for
more details. Interestingly to the
Feeder, they also quote the owner of Boomerang’s talking about people getting a
chance to try their local establishments where the “food is made from scratch,
instead of the corporate chains dominating St. Mary’s County”. At the end another quote from the owner of Back
Creek Bistro (nee Vincenzo’s) “We get St. Mary’s customers also. The folks over there, most of the restaurants
in St. Mary’s are corporate, national chains.
Not to criticize them….”.
Granted, only two people with vested interest in promoting
their own places, but nice image of St. Mary’s, eh?. I hope they realize that while we are being
assaulted with the box stores there are still plenty of great independent restaurants
to choose from..where you can
DFD
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