Happy Easter!

Wesołego Alleluja!  Wishing you and your family a joyous holiday.

Our Easter basket, blessed this afternoon (minus a yellow chick that would sneak into the photo!)

Just in time!

For a stretch in my childhood, our Easter celebrations always included a lamb cake.  Did yours?

Nowadays, I find it surprising that one can't just go to Walmart and pick up one of these molds... I mean, even a purely secular celebration usually involves some sort of baby-animal imagery, right?  Is the American public so allergic to religious allusions that stores can't market even the vaguest "Lamb of God" reference?  While I've seen $100 molds at antique shops, I've yet to find a brand-new version on the shelves of a national retail chain.

(Alternatively, it may be that lamb cakes-- like butter molded in the shape of a lamb-- are specific to Polish or Eastern European traditions, and I never noticed because I grew up in a heavily ethnic suburb?  For example, I once thought that everyone went to church on Holy Saturday for the blessing of Easter baskets, and learned only in adulthood that this is a uniquely Polish-American practice...)

Anyway, I went online.  And yesterday-- just in time-- our lamb mold arrived! 

The brand is Nordic Ware.  We'll be baking soon, so I'll tell you how it goes!

...Oh yes, and at the last moment I'd added this Christmasy bundt mold (also by Nordic Ware) to my order:

It's meant to substitute for a constructed gingerbread house.  Online reviews claim that, despite all of those intricate crevices, the cake just slides right out-- so eventually, we'll see.

Our Lady of Prompt Succor

[Photo: Roman Catholic Saints]

Our visit to the Old Ursuline Convent at New Orleans has interested me in the city's patroness!  NOLA Catholics credit Mary, Our Lady of Prompt Succor, with delivering the Ursuline convent from fire in 1812 and saving the city from British capture in 1815.  I hear that she also was invoked in Katrina's aftermath...  If you like, you can read more of her story at the website of her National Shrine, as well as at Roman Catholic Saints (which also posts a litany in her honor).

"Sweetheart"
[Photo: Ursuline Academy]

Museum labels at the convent also tell of a small plaster statue, known as "Sweetheart,"that played an important role in Our Lady's intercession.  For more detail, please see the Ursuline Academy website (scroll down to "Sweetheart Statue").

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Although it's nothing in comparison with citywide disaster, this matter has me praying for some resolution, ASAP!  (Of course, waiting is supposed to help me develop the virtue of patience, etc.-- but we're still on pins and needles here.)

Help me to expand my perspective!  Are there any intentions that you'd like me to include in my prayers for "Prompt Succor"?  Please let me know in the comment box.

In which I weigh in on a crucial matter

Back from New Orleans.  And so...  who offers the better beignet, Cafe du Monde or Cafe Beignet?  (I'm told that this is a French-Quarter controversy-- and there's no need to convince me of its importance!  Why on earth would I trivialize donuts and cafe au lait?)

Despite warm feelings for Cafe du Monde, which (back in 2005) was almost our first stop after a night stranded in the Houston airport, I have to admit that... oh yes, I prefer Cafe Beignet!  The beignets are larger, more pillowy, less chewy.  Also, the atmosphere of the Royal Street location is far more tranquil and "cafe-like" than Du Monde's long lines, crowded tables, and rushed service.

I offer this review with confidence, having sampled both products at different times of day, different days of the week, etc....!  Time to "weigh in," in another sense.

PS:  While it isn't part of the beignet scene, I wanted to further comment that, in my opinion, Royal Blend Coffee and Tea doesn't live up to its online hype.  That "elegant" courtyard is ill-kept (cigarette butts, dead leaves, general shabbiness) and, at the time of my visit, crowded.  Inside, it was a standard hole-in-the-wall coffeehouse, with a decent French roast and muffins wrapped in plastic.  No chicory coffee, to my disappointment...  While I'd planned to sit and read for a while, in the end I stayed for only ten minutes.

PPS:  Yes, this is the sort of thing that I think about!  Sigh.

Obama, take note

Currently in New Orleans (for an academic conference), my husband and I toured the old Ursuline convent in the French Quarter, where we saw, framed on the wall, a letter from Thomas Jefferson to the Ursuline community.  Dated May 15, 1804, the document sought to reassure the nuns that the Louisiana Purchase would result in neither the disruption of their school nor the confiscation of their residence:


"The principles of the constitution and government of the United States are a sure guarantee to you that it [your convent] will be preserved to you sacred and inviolate, and that your institution will be permitted to govern itself according to its own voluntary rules without undue interference from the civil authority."


How far today's politicians have strayed from such promises...!

All in The Plan

For about a week or so, my husband has been ending our evening prayers with this supplication:  "Lord, whatever happens next with my job, please let it be the right thing for Rae and my girls."  (Isn't he sweet?)

We're in a rough spot.  Sort of.

My husband teaches for the Department of Defense. However, he isn't a tenured GS employee, but a "Title 10"-- a civilian employment category that allows for layoffs as necessary (or convenient).  Due to military contraction and the budget crisis, last year the college laid off two civilian professors from his department; this year already it announced that a number of additional intended layoffs had been blocked at the eleventh hour; and everyone expects the departure of more civilians in 2014, when (as luck would have it) my husband's contract will be up for renewal.

Plus, there's sequestration.  Most likely he'll be furloughed one day a week, beginning in April.  While I'll love to have him home, it will mean 20% less income for our family.

Anticipating this, he applied for another academic job-- and landed an interview!  It took place last week.... The position is at a small, conservative, Catholic liberal arts college.  Teaching there would be a dream-come-true for him, and I love the idea of raising our daughters in such a wholesome environment!

But now, we have to wait.  (Due to many factors, it will be Easter before we hear of the Catholic college's decision.)  Wait, hope, and trust that we'll land where we were meant to be... even if that means just staying where we are.

I can't possibly know God's will for our family; I know what I'd like it to be, but that may not be what I think is best for us, and best for these two colleges.  So far all of the bumps and obstacles in our lives have pushed us toward some greater good, so we'll be trying very hard to trust that, whatever happens... if he doesn't get this possible job, or if he loses his present employment... it's all in The Plan.

A Modest Post

Interesting-- today my blog roll juxtaposes two very different posts addressing the sexualization of the female body.  St. Louis Catholic discusses the meaning of modesty (and the crucial role of prudence therein), with a comments section that continues the skirt v. pants debate; while Tween Us fills me in on the marketing of lingerie-- yes, lingerie!-- to pre-adolescents.  (And, much as my toddler girls exhaust me at times, right now I just want them to stay at ages 1 and 2 forever.)

My first reaction?   That I might be a lot more worried about ladies in slacks if I hadn't just read about eleven-year-olds in padded bras...!

My second reaction?   ...That (trite observation) these are interdependent issues.  We women are all unduly pressured to present ourselves as "sexual," and sadly pre-teen girls are also receiving-- and internalizing-- these messages.   Yay Feminism, huh?  (Actually, the early feminists would be fuming!)

Third (and still more trite)?  The female body is such a lightening rod for debate! Always.

But... interesting discussions, don't you agree?  Especially when read together.



And btw, while I think that skirts are lovely and feminine, I live in jeans.  Mom jeans.