Gratuitous Domestic Posting (TM) - Weekend Roundup

As I noted last Thursday, the whole family went down to Shrine Mont this weekend for our annual church retreat. This was our first time there.

Some impressions and recollections in no particular order:

- I really liked this place. For one thing, I felt curiously like I had come back to a very familiar haunt, even though I'd never been before. Shrine Mont is an old resort, originally built in the 1870's and picked up by the Diocese in the 20's, tucked up in the foothills on the Alleghany side of the Shenandoah Valley. The feel of the place - the old buildings, the slight shabbiness, the relatively primative guest accomodations, and the topography, brought back vivid recollections of my days in law school not that much farther down the Valley.

- For another thing, this was about the most kid-friendly place you could imagine, the perfect location for simply letting them off the leash for a while and not paying too much attention where they got to. All told, there were probably 50 or so kids ranging in age from two to twelve - they swarmed and streamed and played about on the lawn and buildings all day long and well into the evening with only minimal supervision, the sort of thing we used to take for granted in my day but which is becoming much more rare.

- As a matter of fact, the Llama-ettes spent the vast majority of their time down at the pond, fishing and hunting for salamanders. All three of them caught the angling bug something fierce, using their "Barbie" rods, with bobbers and earthworm-baited hooks, to catch bluegill and bass. There was a guy there, a fanatical bass fisherman, who every year sets up at the edge of the pond and helps the kids - teaching them how to cast, baiting hooks, retrieving the fish, etc., with infinite patience and goodwill. He also took pictures of every kid who made a catch and then (as a suprise), laid out blown up copies of those pics in the dining hall on Sunday afternoon for the kids to take home. He told me that the Llama-ettes, between them, probably caught more fish than he'd ever seen, a testiment to the maniac way they have of throwing themselves into things.

- Yes, I fished, too. And yes, I used one of the Barbi rods, not having anything else. And yes, in addition to looking silly, it's the very devil to try and set a hook with a two and a half foot rod. And no, I wasn't the only dad borrowing his kid's toy fishing gear. Next year, I plan to take my own equipment, and perhaps to let the gels try out somewhat larger rods themselves.

- Most of the time, the adults sat around on the porch of the main building, swilling wine and chatting. (That's what Palies do bestest!) Our parish has its own make-shift brass band that serenaded us at cocktail time with such old-fashioned favorites as "A Bicycle Built For Two" and "The Band Played On". I remarked to somebody that I felt I should have a straw boater on.

- There was a talent show Saturday night with over 30 acts entered. Despite the fact that it was well past their bedtime, the eight and six year olds, plus one of their friends, got up on stage and belted out a number they knew from school. Later, I was congratulating our church's talent coordinator for the impressive showing we had made. (We are part of a two-church parish and the other church routinely wipes our eye in the talent show). Both of us must have been pretty far gone by then because what she remembers me doing was volunteering for next year's show. It appears that I am now trapped.

- The one sore spot of the weekend came when I found myself (to my horror) in a late-evening political discussion about Iraq. The folks I was talking to were mushy Left-Center types and while they said we never should have gone in, they also agreed that we had no choice but to succeed. But the alarming thing was their recipe for bringing peace to the entire Middle East and ending the terror war against the United States tomorrow: Require Israel to pull back to its 1967 borders and fully recognize the right of the Palestinian State to exist. Frankly, this appalled me: here were a pair of intelligent, generally progressive guys blaming all of the region's woes on the JOOOOOOOOOOOS. I had thought this kind of thinking was generally confined to the fringes (of both parties).

- Finally, all concerns about snake-handling and other outbursts of religious enthusiasm proved completely unfounded. It's true that we celebrated Eucharist in an open-air shrine (hence the name) on Sunday morning, but I wound up sitting at the back and couldn't really hear anything anyway.

All in all, a very good time. And we are definitely making plans to return every year.