Fall Break

Sarah and Iain didn't have school last week, so Wednesday afternoon the dog went to the dog hotel and that evening we drove to Cloudland Canyon. We had expected to have to pick up the keys from the after hours key box, but someone was in the office, and while we were there we were able to buy some firewood. After we got to the cabin, a quick supper of grilled cheese sandwiches. Sarah and Iain and I played Apples to Apples, and Tom cut some kindling from our newly-purchased firewood. He said the wood wasn't dry enough to burn and proposed putting the kindling in the microwave. Sarah and I didn't think this was a good idea but he did it anyway. Although it may have been damp, it did catch fire in the microwave, suggesting that this is not an optimal way to dry kindling. (Continuing our series of Problems with Appliances: see here and here and here.) So he put it in the oven instead, along with a couple of the logs, and baked it for a while, uneventfully.

Thursday we went to the Tennessee Aquarium. We looked for the leafy seadragons but couldn't find them. Tom asked someone and was told that they had all died of old age and they don't have any anymore; they do still have weedy seadragons, but they are not as unbelievably outrageous as the leafy ones. We reminisced about the time - when Caroline was young - that she was splashed by a duck in the Delta Country exhibit; a new, higher barrier now prevents drenched children, unless parents with good upper body strength and poor judgment lift them up and drop them into the fake bayou. We saw Oscar, the sea turtle that survived an encounter with a power boat that damaged his shell and amputated his back legs, but is doing fine in the all-you-can-eat environment at the aquarium. We spent a long time watching the river otters, who exited the pond at exactly the same time onto opposite ends of the ledge, no doubt a provision in the otters' contract, that they did not have to swim around constantly for the entertainment of visitors. I didn't remember seeing mossy frogs before this visit, but maybe they were there and I just missed them in the display; another example of either the effectiveness of natural selection or the Creator's sense of humor.

We had lunch at Big River Grille. As we were being shown to our table, there was a glimpse of CNN on the TV over the bar, with the report that Qaddafi was dead. Our order was slow coming, so every few minutes I would head back to the bar to try to find out what had happened, but on CNN they didn't seem to know, only that Al Arabiya had reported that Qaddafi was dead. Someone being interviewed who was saying that this was 2011 was the Arab world's 1989.

Later that afternoon we walked up the street to a used bookstore and on the way I asked Sarah if she remembered the time we took the ride in the horse-drawn carriage; she didn't remember the carriage ride, but she remembered the Dalmatian that was sleeping on the seat next to the carriage driver. We got back to our cabin and Iain and I played frisbee outside. That night we tried to build a fire, but in spite of having been baked in the oven, the wood still wouldn't burn. Friday, we walked around on the east rim of Cloudland Canyon, and down to the first waterfall, but got home in time for Iain to drop by Morningside and visit with some of his former teachers. It was followed by a busy weekend - Iain started confirmation, Sarah and I made a dress for her to wear in the Little 5 Points Halloween parade, and Caroline came home for her improv class.

We had a good time, in spite of the fire in the microwave oven but no fire in the fireplace, but probably the memory that will stick with me of this trip is hearing Tom say, as we were being shown to our table on Thursday at lunch, "Qaddafi is dead."

Yesterday, in the New York Times, there was a story about the leader of the transitional government in Libya announcing that the revolution is over, and it's time to build the new Libya. The story ends with a quote from a woman in Benghazi, celebrating with a crowd in the recently renamed Victory Square, telling the reporter, "This is the greatest day of our lives."

Revolutions don't come with guarantees, and no one knows what the future will hold for Libya, but a future without a mad dictator must be preferable even with all its uncertainties to a past where that's all there was.