La Réunion

This is one of a series of murals at Dallas Union Station. It features the utopian community, La Réunion. [And here.] The verse is from one of their hymns, and reads:

O liberte sois notre guide
Fraternite sois notre soeur
Vivant en paix sois votre eyeux
Nous benirons Le Createur.

[Oh liberty, be thou our guide
And brotherhood our sister (?!) be
Living in peace beneath thine eyes
We praise our God eternally.]

No, that is not a transliteration. I took poetic license. I suspect that "soeur" [sister] was originally "coeur" [heart], because otherwise it makes too little sense, even for something French. And "eyeux" seems obviously misspelled to me. I think the artist who made this did not speak French, nor did those who proofread his/her work.

It’s OK; I’m only twitching a little. Not so much that you’d notice.

Please note the enormous black twister that features prominently, and the barn flying up into the air. “Surrender, Dorothy...”

Reunion Arena is named after these colonists, and Reunion Tower, which is part of the Hyatt Regency Hotel and is that thing that looks like a lollipop or microphone which you see in stylized silhouettes of Dallas. Like the Space Needle, only not as cool.

Following the excellent advice on Unclutterer, I tidied my inbox yesterday. Took a bit longer than the 10 minutes they suggested it might. Fancy that!

In the world of knitting, I added 4” to Juno Regina and am half done; I have 21” of the middle portion complete, and I spit-spliced a second ball of yarn just before going to bed. Still loving the project. Still mentally singing “Pioneer children sang as they walked and walked and walked and walked” while I knit.

Some of you were asking about my new calling at church. Yesterday I was sustained as the Visiting Teaching Coordinator, which is similar to what I was doing in my old ward as a Visiting Teaching Supervisor, but now I will be receiving reports from all the Supervisors and passing them on to our new [as in sustained last week] Relief Society President.

And yes, this confirms the impression that I had several months ago, which I also did not fully disclose, that I would be working in Relief Society. It is the sort of calling that I like best: important, and if done well, essentially invisible. And it is going to absorb much of what I laughingly call my free time, at least until the RS president and I are fully trained. There will be additional meetings for me to attend, and every so often we will have to reassign pairs of sisters and tweak their routes.

Visiting teaching is how the work of Relief Society gets done, how the casseroles get delivered when somebody has a baby or surgery or a death in the family, how the struggling soul is strengthened. Some of my dearest friends in my old stake are women who taught me, or whom I’ve taught. I have a deep and abiding testimony of visiting teaching, and I’m glad that Heaven and the bishop took me seriously when I said I was in this ward to work.

[I may be nibbling gently on the edges of those words in a few weeks, but right now I am touched and thankful.]

There was no bending-of-the-Sabbath yesterday. The lid stayed on the paint bucket, the brushes stayed dry, the walls are yet to be TSP’d. First, we [OK, I] need to spackle. I have the putty knife, but no spackle.

Instead, Firstborn came over [in her painting clothes] for a nice visit. I made insalata Caprese to take to the break-the-fast, or to eat at home if we needed to chat longer. [Sometimes we just get going and can’t stop ourselves.] I sliced up six or seven Roma tomatoes and laid them out on a piece of parchment. Then I cut each marinated button of mozzarella into thirds and topped the tomato slices. Then I spooned the olive oil marinade over all of them and put them into the fridge.

So we talked, and we laughed, and we cried, and it was past time for the break-the-fast and she said, “OK, now I’m hungry for those tomatoes.”



This is all that is left. Good, honest, simple food, prepared with love.



I gave her a walking tour of Ravelry. She did the same for me on Facebook. Good times.