Posted on 12/24/2004 8:51:48 AM PST by Mo1
To: Restaurant Review
I had the pleasure of dining at a new bistro the other evening. Located near the toxic waste dump on County Road 39, the Roadkill Cafe serves good fresh food at sensible prices. I say fresh, because the entree was twitching when our waitress brought it to the table.
I recommend the Armadillo in Aspic highly. It was a tangy concoction, encased en gelatin, with a decorative tableau of veggies that spelled out "Hildebeast Go Home" in the center. .
Suckerfish soup, served with every main course was a delight, and so filling that I advise you to avoid the temptation of having too much of the hot, home baked focaccia bread brought to the table. .
The staff pride themselves on making sure that every guest is comfortable, and the head waitress, a lovely lass named "palo" sees that no person goes home without having had a good time. She says that she also does weddings and bar mitzvahs, and I can see why.
Specials every night, and appetizer portions of the entrees make this a diamond in the rough. .
Drinks and portions are generous, so bring an appetite. .
Better yet, bring a crowd, they have plenty of room. .
Jacques visits each restaurant in disguise and always pays the check to avoid any conflict of interest.)
175 posted on 09/11/2001 8:08:16 AM EDT by persecutor (Roadkill Cafe, by Jacques Strappe)
Wow...stay high and dry up there, CB.
Losing the faith in France
By Robert Pigott
Religious affairs correspondent, France
As secularisation takes an increasingly firm hold over French society, Catholic congregations are disappearing and the country's ageing priests are dying.
Father Andre Bouzou moves through the market in Montcuq - a picturesque place amid vineyards and sunflower fields in the Lot valley in south-west France - with the easy familiarity of a man confident of his welcome.
The way Fr Bouzou picks his way between the stalls selling duck confit and local honey, kissing some of the stall holders and ruffling their children's hair, makes it seem that the Church still occupies a central role in people's lives.
But priests are scarce in the Lot valley now, so scarce that Fr Bouzou has no fewer than 40 churches to look after. It would be a virtually impossible task, but for the fact that many of them have almost no congregation.
There are just a handful of worshippers for Fr Bouzou's mass at St Laurent Lolmie.
Outside, the little churchyard is crowded with the tombs of past generations of the faithful. Inside are just the former mayor (baptised in this church 84 years ago), two elderly women and three nuns.
They can all remember when every church like this had its own priest.
Times gone by
One of the nuns tells me that the pews are now empty because of materialism and the breakdown in community life, but Fr Bouzou blames people's aversion to belonging.
"They're prepared to take part," he says, "but they don't want to belong to an institution."
Fr Bouzou, who is 63 and has the faded good looks of a former film star, is younger than most priests in the Cahors diocese. The average age is 68.
For decades, the Church in France has been living on borrowed time, relying on a body of priests whose average age has steadily increased. That time has suddenly run out.
Recent research suggests that French priests have become so old that half of them will die in the next eight years.
At Puy L'Eveque, Michel Cambon is Fr Bouzou's nearest fellow priest. He is the only one who seems really angry about the crisis.
As we walk among the dilapidated tombs in the churchyard with their fallen crosses and mournful statuary, the church bells clang balefully.
Fr Cambon - who has more than 30 churches to look after - says his elderly congregation is dying out so rapidly that in 10 years there may be no church in Puy L'Eveque at all.
Priests used to have higher status in French society... they were considered respectable and significant
Fr Lucien Lachieze-Rey
"People kept saying it would be all right," says Fr Cambon, "but they're about to be proved wrong. My fear is that the Roman Catholic Church will disappear altogether in France. That's the path we're on."
For French seminaries it is a well-trodden path. Only 150 men completed their training as priests last year, for the whole of France.
In the library at Toulouse Seminary, Fr Lucien Lachieze-Rey pushes ancient wooden stairs into place with a squeal of un-oiled wheels, and searches for a book to illustrate the point. He says ordination seems less attractive to young people now.
"Priests used to have higher status in French society," he says. "They were considered respectable and significant. Now, like teachers and engineers, they don't have the respect they used to."
Global recruitment
The Church has sought a solution in the African countries, to which it took Christianity more than a century ago.
Almost 30 priests from former French colonies such as Senegal, Gambia and Ivory Coast are in the diocese.
Fr Anatole Kere sees himself as a missionary, bringing the faith back to a post-Christian country.
The evening I met him he was sitting amid the faded grandeur of the presbytery at Fumel, giggling infectiously as he prepared two young couples for the baptism of their children.
At home, in Burkina Faso, Fr Kere might preach to 5,000 people. Here he will often find just five in church.
He is mystified that the faith that so enthuses Africans is all but ignored in France. He blames the material wealth of French people.
"It gives people the sense of having a refuge," he says. "They become uninterested in spiritual things. They don't seem to realise the dangers in neglecting the spiritual side of man."
In demand
Fr Bouzou takes a wedding service at Montlauzun on a sunny Saturday. This couple were lucky. More and more weddings are conducted by lay people. So are funerals, and even baptisms.
Some priests support a movement called Focalari, a broad-based, un-dogmatic approach to Christianity aimed particularly at the young, in the hope of bringing people back to church.
But many others support an even more radical idea, in open defiance of the Pope's strict edict: an end to compulsory celibacy and even the ordination of women.
The wedding party unfolds under a huge chestnut tree in a field behind the church. Someone has tied paper streamers to the lower branches. A four-piece band is playing and the bride dances with two children at the same time.
Fr Bouzou mingles for a few moments, then, unnoticed, disappears.
There is a wedding in St Cyprien, mass later on at Montcuq, and the funeral of an old friend in Lascabanes.
From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Thursday, 6 January, 2005 at 1100 GMT on BBC Radio 4. Please check the programme schedules for World Service transmission times.
There's a serious shortage of great, good news out there, Resty.
Aubenas was in Iraq working on stories about women candidates in the forthcoming elections and was seeking to meet refugees from Falluja, the main guerrilla stronghold invaded by US-Iraqi forces in November, said the chairman of Liberation, Serge July...
Government officials speaking on condition of anonymity said Aubenas may have been kidnapped, wounded, killed or arrested in error by US or Iraqi forces.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1385281,00.html
This from AP via Yahoo.
A check of American units to see if she had been detained in the area was fruitless, Johnson said in Iraq.
"The units in those areas involved have said they are not holding her," Johnson said. "So I do not believe she is in the custody of any multinational force units."
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=540&e=6&u=/ap/20050107/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_reporter_missing_3
The point I am making is that what Europe receives and the US receives is edited!
US
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
Europe
http://www.guardian.co.uk/0,6961,,00.html
I saw it on the US site and before I could set up to post the storie it was gone on my Yahoo home page http://my.yahoo.com/ under BBCNews
so I gone to the main page and got it and this morning it was totally removed!
I had the title so I could do a web search!
elsewise there is no record in the US about this story!
OMG today I'm tempted. Even city buses are stuck today. David got a ride into work with a Courier driver that recognized him from picking up courier envelopes from our office. He also said, the huge transport trucks (18 wheelers) were all on the side of the road chaining up. It's unbelievable. I got ready for work and then got unready.
That's a good article resty and I agree the media NEVER gives us reports of anything good being done. HOWEVER, I do have some question regarding Saudi Arabia. Al Quadia would like to see the Royal Family removed and it made an Islamic Theocracy.
Not sure what you're talking about But ... HOWDY YA'LL
Whiny, wimpy, Western (North) wimmin.
The four w's................
:-)
Don't snivel.......No whining either.....
I won't
Besides .. Carly's doing enough of that for everything
Oh Gawd I hate winter time when they are cooped up in this house
Mebbe they should go build a snowman.
Can't .. no snow here
Just days and days and days of rain
Until today .. I haven't seen the sun all week
a mudman?
Then I have to scrub the house again when they muddy it up
Thanks for the memory. That was one of my favorite posts, although I forgot it was done on 9/11....little did we know roughly 30 minutes later.
I will post some more reviews when the muse visits, and some Winter Carnival posts for those into frollicking on the tundra!
It would give Mike something to do as well......
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