St. Bernard State Park, Braithwaite, Louisiana
Meanwhile Judah sent the young goat by his friend the Adullamite (Hirah) in order to get his pledge back from the woman, but he did not find her. He asked the men who lived there, “Where is the shrine prostitute who was beside the road at Enaim?” “There hasn’t been any shrine prostitute here.”… So he went back to Judah… ~ Genesis 38:20-22a I find myself wondering why Judah sent his friend to redeem his things. Why didn’t he go himself? Was he ashamed? Afraid of getting caught? Did he feel his hypocritical reputation as a supposedly godly man in jeopardy? Did you notice that Hirah was asking about a shrine prostitute? In the Bible, there are two types of prostitutes – women who sold themselves to make a living, and shrine or temple prostitutes (which could be male or female) whose services were said to be offerings to pagan fertility gods. Also, temple prostitutes were more highly thought of than ‘regular’ ones. So not only did Judah think he slept with a woman who made her living sleeping with various men, he thought her connected with idolatry (making her “more acceptable”), and if so, apparently actually going to a temple dedicated to a Canaanite god, most likely Baal or Asherah. Judah gets deeper and deeper into sin the further along we go, and the story’s not reached its conclusion yet. Are we not the same way? Once we start down a path of sin, we find each step more and more acceptable, as we continue to take steps further and further away from God and into the world. Or we’re afraid of non-believers discovering our hypocrisy. And yet, God loves us, forgives us and calls us back to His side again!
I’m doubling up on my dates again because there wasn’t much to say about Tuesday.
Our brains needed rest from the day before, plus it rained and was very cool all Monday night and all day Tuesday. We did blogging and reservation research. We also made cheater sweet and sour pork for dinner. I have a fantastic recipe for sweet and sour (submitted to Green Elementary School for a cookbook they put together by a woman named Susan Yu), but our son gave Blaine a jar of sweet and sour sauce from Aldi for Christmas, so we decided to give it a try. First though, the pork has to be made. You marinate it in eggs, soy sauce, salt and cornstarch, then roll the pieces in more cornstarch and normally, we’d deep fry it. However, since we’ve been having so much success with the air fryer, I decided to give it a try. It didn’t go quite as well as I’d hoped. Just air frying wasn’t good, although part of that was because my four tester pieces didn’t have any oil on them. The next few pieces, I brushed with vegetable oil before I air fried. That worked a bit better, but still not right. For the third test, I baked them for a few minutes, took them out, brushed ‘em with oil and air fried at 425⁰ for about two minutes to crisp them up, just like if I’d deep fried them. Much better! And healthier and much less mess to clean up! I also made a batch of fried rice, which is always good. And the Aldi sauce was good too. Still not as good as my homemade original, but a close second. The meat’s always the most time consuming, so I always make extra and put some in the freezer. Then the next time or two, it’s super simple! If you make it to the end of this post, you’ll find the original recipe.
Wednesday is an entirely different story.
New Orleans hosts the National WWII Museum. When we looked it up, some people said you could visit it in 2-3 hours. They may have walked briskly through it and maybe taken in one of their movies in that time, but there is absolutely no way they saw the museum! We were there eight hours (with a quick 15-20 minute break for lunch in the Jeep) and although we saw all the exhibits, we didn’t take in all we could’ve. By the end, especially the last hour or so, we were on information overload and just couldn’t take in the battles that went on in the Pacific theater.
When I got home – well actually two days later – I put our pictures into my laptop and discovered we’d take over 250 pictures (I think Blaine took six 😊) – mostly of information! You can breathe a sigh of relief that I’m not making time to put all those in (I know Blaine is!). You’ll have to Google, or come to New Orleans and take at least two days to go through this incredible place.
What I’ll do instead is look through them and try to give you a brief outline, and add a FEW pictures.
I think when most of us think of WWII, we think of things like Pearl Harbor, D-Day, the Holocaust, Nazi Germany, the atom bomb, and maybe Midway (because they made a movie about it). And if you’re old enough, you’ll remember rationing as a way to help the war effort.
In July 1941 FDR, some 4 months before Pearl Harbor, imposed economic sanctions on Japan, due to their invasion of China.
What we never really put together is the fact that war had been raging for years in Europe before President FDR (after the pleadings of British Prime Minister Churchill) initiated his Lend-Lease Act in January, 1941 which allowed us to supply them with weapons and equipment, without going to war.
While Hitler was busy invading Europe, Emperor Hirohito was wreaking havoc in Asia and the Pacific Ocean. Another war that Americans didn’t really care about at the time.
The American people knew what was going on in the world, but for years, they didn’t believe we should get involved. Everything was too far removed from us. They were slowly coming around when Pearl Harbor happened on December 7, 1941, “A day that will live in infamy!” (FDR).
And with that, Japan declared war on the United States of America with intentions of invading us beginning with our West Coast and making their way across until we surrendered to them. Once Japan (Emperor Hirohito – April 1901 – December 1989) declared war, suddenly it was open season on the US as Germany (Adolf Hitler – April 1889 – April, 1945) and Italy (Benito Mussolini – July 1883-April 1945) joined them. We were about to be invaded from both the Atlantic and Pacific. These three main countries and their leaders made up the Axis powers.
We suddenly found ourselves in allegiance with two other main countries in what became known as the Allied powers – the Soviet Union (Joseph Stalin – December, 1878 – March, 1953) the US (Franklin D. Roosevelt – January, 1882 – April, 1945) and the United Kingdom (Winston Churchill – November, 1874 – January, 1965). When FDR passed away in April, 1945, the war was still raging with Japan, and Harry Truman (May, 1884 – December, 1972) as vice-president, inherited all the Presidential responsibilities.
Germany surrendered May 7, 1945, but Japan didn’t surrender until after Truman made the decision to drop atom bombs on Hiroshima (August 6, 1945) and Nagasaki (August 9, 1945). Japan surrendered September 2, 1945.
We learned about some of the 16.2 million men and women (30% of our male population 15 years and older) who served valiantly. Great stories of heroism! We learned about many of the battles – and there were many. We learned about the gruesome cruelty of the three men in the Axis. We saw wonderful pictures of men and women overseas. We saw horrific pictures. We learned about how Americans came together and performed astounding feats here at home to help with the war effort. It’s little wonder journalist, Tom Brokaw chose to call them “The Greatest Generation”.
And we paid a little extra and watched a 4-D movie about the war that was narrated and produced by Tom Hanks. It took over 500 people, five years to complete it. So wonderfully done! Sometimes we jumped in our seats as explosions went off and bright lights flashed. Sometimes we felt like we were right there as tanks rumbled by and our seats vibrated. And at times the scenes were moving, bringing tears to our eyes. It was here that we learned that over 65 million soldiers and civilians worldwide died in about fifteen years during these attempted grabs for power.
I had grand ideas for how to put this post together, but as I worked on it, I discovered that my idea was just too time consuming. I wanted to organize our pictures by date to show how we battled on both fronts at the same time. Plus, I eventually realized that most people who happen upon this post, really wouldn’t care about all that effort.
Now that you know the gist of it, here are a few pictures (a few more than I originally expected to put in, but less than half of them) we took:
Even though neither of us knew much about Pearl Harbor,
it was a very moving experience.
Look how easy it was to carry a “tank”!
It’s like a Macy’s balloon!
His company did a lot for the war effort and for racial relations.
Too bad his strides in racial relations didn’t hold up in America after the war. . .
Dinner was a short walk to a place called Cochon Butcher. We had Cubana sandwiches (I know, not very New Orleans-zy), with sides of gumbo and jambalaya. Everything was excellent!
Tomorrow we’ll rest our minds. And yours.