Into the Light

ST. MICHAEL AND ALL ANGELS

I hated gym class. Skinny, uncoordinated and myopic, I knew that whatever activity they dreamed up, I wasn't going to be good at it. Some things, like crab soccer and pillow polo, were okay, because they really didn't require much skill. But I dreaded anything where some kids, invariably the jocks, got to pick teams, because I was certain to be damn near last, and with good reason.

None of us kids was particularly athletic, although at least one of my sisters played softball on a real team and was apparently popular to acquire a non-derogatory nickname from the P.E. teacher. I was afforded no such cool moniker; instead, one of the other kid's dads who was brought in as a guest teacher said I "wrestled like a girl". I find that interesting because I don't think mud wrestling was popular yet, so I don't know upon what experience he based his assessment.

But I guess I was lucky; I didn't go to the school in Decatur, Ala., where the teacher invented a game called "smear the queer" in which a single student is singled out to be slogged by volleyballs by the entire rest of the class.

Seems kind of shocking that only happened about twelve years ago. Would we tolerate such a thing now? Apparently, we would. In the past few weeks, no fewer than three high school boys committed suicide after enduring sustained torment at the hands of their peers.

Seth

Seth Walsh, 13, of Tehachapie, California, hanged himself from a tree on September 19th. He was found alive and placed on life support, but died a few days later. Despite a program to prevent such abuse and a principal whose principal boasts of her degree in child counseling, investigators were told by Seth's peers that he had been the victim of sustained bullying. They determined, however, that no crime had been committed and no charges were filed.

Asher

Asher Brown, an eighth-grader from Houston, shot himself in the head last week. His parents say they have complained repeatedly to the school, by phone and in person, about the four classmates made hassling Asher a full-time job for the past eighteen months, simulating gay sex acts on him in gym class and making fun of his inexpensive clothes. Administrators say they were never told about the bullying.

Billy

Billy Lucas, from Indiana, never told anybody he was gay, but his classmates apparently decided that for him. Administrators claim he was "happy and well-adjusted", but yet classmates tell a different story which should be getting sadly familiar by now. His family found him in their barn where he had hanged himself.

One could ask what the hell is going on in these schools that there could be so much opportunity for kids to lash out at one another unchecked by a teacher or other adult. Maybe all the budget cuts have made it impossible to know who's doing what to who. I would like to hear from those who work in schools: Do you see kids like Billy, Asher and Seth? What is done about it?

Roy

I have to wonder, however, how many teachers and coaches and parents think such behavior is normal (et tu, Darwin?) and thus allow it continue or even encourage it. You know, it'll make a man out of you. And if this was limited to a few embarrassing moments in gym class, it might be survivable. But I shared with you in a former post the case of Roy Jones, a seventeen-month-old boy who died from a beating he got from his mother's boyfriend, because he "acted like a girl". I liked that ABC called him a baby, even though technically he isn't, because it emphasizes the mania in our culture around gender roles and the lengths to which people will go to make sure the traditional ones are enforced, even at an age where a kid doesn't even know what they mean or whether he or she is exhibiting them or not.

Tyler

Today's story was the proverbial straw. News is spreading tonight about the case of Tyler Clementi, a first-year Rutgers student from Ridgewood, N.J. and classical violinist. Tyler had either told his roommate he was gay or at least it was suspected, because when he asked for a few hours of privacy, a webcam was left running to record his romantic time with a male visitor while the roommate provided a running commentary on Twitter as well as a video feed on the Internet. Confronted with this invasion, the shy student was so distraught that he lept from the George Washington Bridge to his death.

I do not know all the facts of all these cases. I don't know these boys' mental health histories or to what degree either parents or administrators were forthcoming in what they told the media and the police. What I do know is that our kids learn what they know about what it means to be male, female, gay, straight or somewhere in between from us. From what we say, how we act, and how we treat people.

34,000 Americans commit suicide every year, and -- among young people -- every suicide is shadowed by 100-200 unsuccesful attempts. LGBT youth are four times more likely to commit or attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers. I don't believe that is due to some genetic trait: I think it's because growing up is hard enough without being told repeatedly by peers, trusted adults and the media that there's something abnormal about you.

If it outrages or saddens you that so many young lives have been diminished or snuffed out, than know this: These are just a handful of extreme cases... this goes on all the time, in varying degrees, in every school in this country because some kids don't live up to other people's expectations of how they should dress, talk or throw a ball.

Teachers, look out for the Trevors and the Billys. Think about the words you use and understand the difference between good-natured teasing and outright terror. Maybe you could be the one adult that they can count on if things rough. Parents, you can't expect the school to teach your kids that it's not okay to treat people this way; they need to hear it from you. And maybe you should let them read the stories about these boys: Seth, Asher, Billy, Tyler, and poor little Roy, so that they see what it does to them inside.

I was lucky to have enough of a support system to reach adulthood and understand that people who act this way are saying more about themselves and their own insecurities than they are about you. In college I started lifting weights, finally finding an athletic activity that I didn't need great hand-eye coordination to accomplish. Current deadlift, 300 lb, thankyouverymuch, and I no longer feel like a victim. Most of the time.

On October 17th, friends and I are participating in Out of the Darkness, a Community Walk to benefit the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. If you are in a position to contribute anything to help this worthy cause, please visit this link. It would be much appreciated. If you would like to know more about anti-bullying, LGBT youth and suicide prevention, please visit the links below:

• www.afsp.org - American Society for Suicide Prevention
• thetrevorproject.org - Hotline and other resources for LGBT Youth
• thinkb4youspeak.org - Discourages use of anti-gay language and verbal bullying
• truthwinsout.org - Fighting anti-gay lies and the ex-gay myth
• matthewshepard.org - Parents of a murdered gay teen founded this rights and education group

On the Shoulders of Giants

Richard Rolle (1349), Walter Hilton (1396) and Margery Kempe (%1440) - Mystics

It's hard for me to know where to go with this blog sometimes, especially when I surround myself with people who can say the things I believe so much more compellingly than I can.

Telling Secrets: The path to hope

Jesus Loves Me, This I Know

This was started a while ago and got lost in the shuffle

Charles Chapman Grafton - Bishop & Ecumenist (1912)

JERSEY CITY

For the past ten years, gay and lesbian organizations in and around Jersey City have staged their own Pride festival on the last weekend in August. This nicely brackets the summer and allows them to avoid competing with the statewide celebration in Asbury Park and the original commemoration of the Stonewall riots in New York, both of which take place in June.

A seventeen-month-old Long Island boy was beaten to death by his mother's boyfriend because he "acted like a girl". Tinky-Winky aside, do we really expect a toddler to be aware of rigid gender roles, much less adhere to them??

This event centers around three blocks or so of Exchange Place, a street that ends at the Hudson River in the heart of the city's financial district. As the surrounding office towers are mostly abandoned on weekends, the streets can be closed with a minimum of disruption, and there's plenty of parking to be had. For the first time, this year's celebration also included a short parade from City Hall a little bit further inland.

Several organizations of the Episcopal Church have taken part in these events at various times. The OASIS, the LGBT ministry of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark, has sponsored a table where area parishes are invited to give out information and meet community members. This year the OASIS, as well as the NYC-area chapter of the its national equivalent (Integrity) and the Episcopal Response to AIDS all shared the time and expense for this outreach. It also gave us the opportunity to discuss plans for some future collaboration.

What none of us had really given much thought to was the possibility of any conflict. Surely we were past this; our immediate area has become pretty comfortable with LGBT issues, with the majority of the population even supporting marriage equality even if the governor and legislature do not agree.

So I was somewhat surprised when -- dispatched to the pharmacy for twine and duct tape to keep our rented canopy grounded against the fresh breeze coming off the river -- I saw a handful of people with placards and a bullhorn organizing themselves on a street corner a block or so from the festivities.

Truth be told, they've been there before. They showed up several years ago and walked up and down the sidewalks on the perimeter of the event using a bullhorn to bray their various threats of hellfire and damnation at the passing crowd. After a quick ecumenical "Situation Room" discussion, the various church groups responded in a way that we knew would probably infuriate them, but could not be labeled as combative or even really acknowledging their hateful rhetoric: We followed the same path up and down the street, just INSIDE the event, and sang hymns, loudly. Hymns such as "Jesus Loves Me, This I Know", "God Loves All the Little Children" and so forth, in an effort to counter their efforts.

Don't leave home without it!

The only problem is, we quickly discovered that we didn't collectively know much beyond the first verse of anything, and in some cases the Methodists knew one version that might be different than what the Episcopalians or Lutherans remembered. Thus was born one of my bright ideas, that -- as is typical -- gets immediately forgotten until the next time it would come in pretty darn handy. I had made up my mind that I would put together a handful of common, public-domain hymns that suited the occasion and have copies of the lyrics ready to facilitate the singing.

Then, for the next few years, the protesters didn't come, and I forgot about it. But I can see that -- maybe as a hallmark of the progress we've made with the general public mindset -- this event is back on their radar. And apparently, once they figured out where the church tables were, they parked on the nearest corner and kept the commentary up all afternoon. Interestingly, there were two "groups" of them this year... the hellfire gang were joined by one or two people from a more "compassionate" crowd: they represented an "ex-gay ministry" ... something the American Psychological Association and most other credible witnesses describe as pointless and more likely harmful. When it was that guy's turn with the bullhorn he kept telling us how we didn't have to be this way, we could change like him, etc. I recently met a young man who endured eight years of this "therapy" only to realize that sexual orientation is not something that can be "cured", and luckily today he is learning to celebrate and live into the identity he is meant to have.

One event-goer was apparently either prepared or resourceful, because he appeared with a sign that said "I'm with stupid" and an arrow and followed the protesters up and down the street.

Truth be told, with a few exceptions nobody was really paying very much attention to them, and everyone -- even the cops -- were getting annoyed with the bullhorn after a while. We were too busy networking and trying to keep our tent from blowing away to "gracefully engage" them, let alone regale them with ecumenical hymnody.

As the afternoon wore on, the commentary got more random and dejected, wandering between taxes, the speaker's kids and Lady Gaga. I'm not really sure what they were trying to accomplish, but I don't think they won over any supporters, and the tone was in stark contrast to the merriment going on all around them. Nobody present seemed to be experiencing the shame and misery they kept insisting are part and parcel to same-sex attraction.

Would that everybody would be so lucky. In the weeks since, news (and by news I mean blogs and the independent press, since these stories never seem to make the papers) broke of yet another teenager who committed suicide after enduring years of bullying. This follows on the heels of another case, this one in Minnesota, in which the mother reports she had been asking the school to intervene for years. They are hardly alone, as a recent survey by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network shows that nearly nine out of ten LGBT teens endure harassment at school.

Does anybody else find it ironic that supposed Christians, trying to portray themselves as "compassionate", would come to a LGBT event and preach conversion to a crowd that is apparently pretty much okay with its sexual identity? The underlying message is, of course, that to be LGBT is to be somehow broken or "less-than", and unfortunately, despite logic, experience and the advice of medical experts, this message continues to imbrue our young people's collective consciousness, courtesy of trusted role-models including preachers, teachers and coaches, and apparently with the tacit approval of parents and other community leaders who refused to stick out their necks when this was pointed out as a problem.

And this abuse does not always wait until a child reaches the age where (s)he even knows what sexual identity is, let alone aware that his or her mannerisms, speech or clothing might be advertising it. In a heartbreaking story this summer that didn't seem to make it past the Huffington Post, a seventeen-month-old Long Island boy was beaten to death by his mother's boyfriend because he "acted like a girl". Seventeen months old. Tinky-Winky aside, do we really expect a toddler to be aware of rigid gender roles, much less adhere to them??

These are sobering reminders of how much work remains to be done, and they stand in sharp contrast to the joyous community gathering I witnessed. I can only hope that -- whatever it was they were trying to accomplish -- the protesters couldn't help but notice that what they were witnessing was not a depraved orgy, nor a gathering of unhappy deviants crying out for help. It was ordinary folks of all persuasions, enjoying the freedom to be who they were and love whom they love. Even if they didn't get to hear us sing.

An Embarassment of Riches

Philander Chase - Bishop (1852)

Our house is a mess. I don't mean it's dirty; people who know us don't have to wonder who is Oscar and who is Felix, but neither of us has the time or patience to go around doing the white glove test. We manage to keep it sanitary and -- especially after an alarming episode of Hoarders -- we guiltily nudge ourselves into action to disperse recyclables, junk mail and obsolescent electronics to prevent it from devolving into a complete Collyer Brothers situation.

I'm referring more to all the little things about it that I want to fix. The kitchen floor is worn to the point where it never looks clean, the dining room did not come out the color I wanted and the curtains remain on a Certain Party's ironing pile despite a number of hints, subtle and otherwise. The shutters out front were not the right wood for outside and are now coming apart at the seams, literally. Nobody's sure exactly how it is that the furnace continues to function when I think it enjoyed a former life as a boiler on the Mauretania before coming into our employ.

Everywhere I look, I see mismatched, unraveling or scuffed beyond repair. There's never enough time, and there's never enough money, to make it look the way it does in my head. I looked back at old blog posts to see when we got the giant captain's bed (I immediately nicknamed it "the tree fort") thinking we'd get the mattress to fit it the next month. It was Lent, and we're still on the old, too-small mattress.

As I am sure is the case with just about anybody, no matter how much money comes in, there always seems to be someone, or something, that is clamoring for a piece of the pie. We are both lucky to have full-time jobs, me for long enough to have some of the benefits that new entrants to the job market may never see. But that does not make me any less worried about there being enough to get by on during those golden years, which suddenly don't seem so far away.

But by nature of the fact that I'm sitting in a room that doesn't leak, using a computer, had a healthy dinner, and don't have to share either of those items with anybody, I've already got more than 99% of the world's population beat. And if you're reading this, in all likelihood, so do you.

In the midst of my frustration that my little patch of the American dream is not blooming as rapidly as I might like, I was humbled by a beautifully written reminder by my friend, the Rev. Elizabeth Kaeton, that my priorities are just a shade off when I fuss about such things. Not that I should need to be told: the headlines and statistics are a daily grim reminder of the suffering that people endure every day. What touched me was the way she articulated her appreciation for something as simple as twilight, which is free for the taking, but yet goes unnoticed by me and every fool who is too busy finding fault with our charmed lives to appreciate all the gifts that surround us.

Telling Secrets: The Universe of the Anawim

One Man's Family

ST. CROIX

Today was our final stop, St. Croix, in the U.S. Virgin Islands.  Technically American turf, St. Croix is a bit of an anomaly due to its rich history. At various times it was occupied by Spain, France, Britain, Denmark and even the Knights of Malta, each of which left their mark with place names, architecture and other reminders.

Driving on St. Croix is on the left, which confuses Americans who think they are "home", especially since most of the vehicles have the driver's seat on the left where we're used to it.  We were told that the government tried to change it after the U.S. took over, but the residents couldn't get used to it and it caused too many accidents.   

St. George Village Botanical Garden

Without a plan for the day, I signed onto one of the ship's excursions with two members of our group, which included three stops:

The first was the St. George Village Botanical Garden.  Located on a former sugar plantation, the garden is a rich oasis of plant and animal life, explained to us by a knowledgeable guide as we strolled around the grounds.  Among the more curious finds were giant caterpillars who only feed on a particular type of tree, and a 15th-century Danish worker's grave.

Lawaetz Family Museum

Next, following a drive through the forested interior of the island, we visited the Lawaetz Family Museum, the homestead of a Danish farmer who moved to St. Croix in the 1890s and raised a large family there.  The house is still much as they left it (the family still owns it and assembles there for Christmas Eve), with childhood pictures and household implements neatly in their places, including the giant wooden bed that was patriarch Carl's first big purchase when he secured a good job.  


Our guide for this tour was a transplanted New Yorker who moved to St. Croix several years ago with the intention of writing a novel, a work that is still in progress.

Rainbow Beach

The final stop was at Rainbow Beach, a picturesque spot with an open-air bar and grill as well as a stand where you could rent jet-skis and other equipment.  We could see our ship in the distance down the beach as we took in our last round of fruity drinks before heading back to reality in the morning.


More photos from St. Croix

Hold On to Your Hat

Bernard of Clairvaux - Abbot, Theologian & Poet (1153)

ST. MAARTEN

This morning we arrived at Phillipsburg, St. Maarten, the only of our cruise stops to which I have been before.  In 2000 I was on a cruise on the Norwegian Sky that called here, and in 1998, my family rented a condominium on the island's southern coast for a week.

Much of my focus on St. Maarten centers around the airport.  On our way to our first visit, a combination of ineptitude and lack of information on the part of US AIr led to our being stranded in San Juan's airport. Both the ticket counter of US Air and our connecting carrier LIAT were abandoned at 3 in the afternoon, and when I finally roused a young woman by shouting "hello!" through the open doorway into the office, she half-listened to my story and then said casually, "All the flights are full.  You come back tomorrow night."

In those pre-9/11 days I was a little more, um, assertive with airline people than I would be now, and my family unanimously elected me to make it clear to US Air that spending over 24 hours of our vacation in this airport was not an acceptable option.  There were a bunch of sightseeing companies with planes for hire right there in the terminal, with tanned pilot types standing around doing nothing, so I asked the ticket agent why one of them could not bring us the short distance to St. Maarten.

"Oh, it's very expensive," she said dismissively.

I went for broke.  "Not for ME, it won't be. I already paid to get THERE, not HERE, and at this point I don't care if you have to BUY the plane.  Go ask somebody."

Apparently realizing at that point I was not going to give up, she shuffled off to make some phone calls, probably interrupting several more naps and finally speaking to the airline's headquarters in Virginia before returning with the pretty startling news that they could -- in fact -- pay one of these planes to get us to our destination, leaving within the hour.  I was pretty proud of myself, until I saw the plane:

Mom, Dad and our pilot with the Air Culebra Piper Aztec we
flew from San Juan to St. Maarten in 1998

This thing had none of the stuff I associate with planes.  There were no walkway or even stairs to get into it: you trotted across the tarmac, stepped on the wing and dropped right into your seat. There was no aisle, no bathroom, and no flight attendant.  And even if there had been one, there was no beer for him to grab if he decided he'd had enough of us and made a break for it.


Once my parents and sisters were settled in, the only seat left for me was right inside that open door, i.e. that normally reserved for the co-pilot! 

"Don't touch anything!" my sister stage-whispered from the third (and last) row.  Yeah, not a problem.  My experience skippering one of these puppies was limited to the Microsoft variety, and I was not about to try to change that now, even in the highly unlikely event that it was offered.  I contented myself with alternatively holding on for dear life and taking pictures to the degree that I could.  Our pilot pointed out Culebra, the small island in between Puerto Rico and St. Maarten where he lived, and then -- asking if I wanted a photo -- tilted the plane to get the wing out of the shot.  Um, thanks!

Now, I'll say this.  If you had asked me under different circumstances if I wanted to go up in a plane the size of a Volkswagen Microbus, I would have most likely laughed at you over my shoulder as I hurried back towards the sane people.  But when that plane was the only thing standing between me and a night on a drab gray chair trying to drown out 24 screens of CNN, I didn't think twice about it, and I don't think anybody in the family did either.  And -- having done so -- I can tell you it was an awesome ride, especially being able to look right out the front as we approached St. Maarten and landed again.

Air France A340 about to land.  Thanks to Gina for this shot.

The Princess Juliana International Airport is on the Dutch half of St. Maarten (the French spell it St. Martin), and its single runway begins just a dozen yards or so from the famous Maho Beach, where planespotters delight in the jets thundering close overhead as they  are about to land.  Supposedly people used to also hang on the fence when an airliner was getting ready to talk off (the prevailing wind is normally such so that flights take off and land with their backs to the beach) and then allowed the accelerating engines to blow them backwards towards the water, but now there are signs warning against such activity.

There are bars at either end of the beach with the flight timetables posted and radios tuned to the conversation between jets and the tower. We had intended to spend some time there today, but we ended up only being able to pass by it.  Friends from our cruise got to enjoy it, however, and shared some of their photos with me.

Instead, a Certain Party -- who does not beach -- and I contented ourselves with crepes at a sidewalk cafe in Marigot, on the French side.  But next time I'm bringing my earplugs and making a day of it.

You Have Arrived... Maybe

ANTIGUA

Today was a little more low-energy.  Not long after we docked at St. John, Antigua, the heretofore tranquil sky opened up and we had quite a rainstorm. One of the interesting things about the tropics is the abruptness with which the weather can change.  We literally saw the rain coming towards us like a curtain, and -- briefly -- it was raining at one end of the ship but not the other.  We had experienced the same thing on our day at sea on Monday:  A sudden squall drove us off the deck, but by the time we reached the elevators amidships, the sun had returned.


In this case, we again had only a short while to wait, and then Bobby, Amanda and I walked ashore, through the prerequisite cluster of shops and kiosks that seem to greet you at virtually every Caribbean pier, and for a short walk around the town of St. John as the sun dried things off. 

St. John's Cathedral, Antigua

Plainly visible from the ship is the imposing facade of St. John's Anglican Cathedral, and that was one thing I hoped to see.  However, upon arrival we discovered that -- due to a structural problem that came to light last year -- the church is closed until further notice.  We took a handful of pictures and headed back towards the pier, not finding much else in the town to explore.

A short while later, we had hired a cab and were headed towards a beach one of our fellow passengers had mentioned.  "Towards" it being the operating word, because we are not sure that the beach we eventually visited was the same one we had requested.  Having cleared the city limits and meandered for a half-hour or so through the countryside, our driver left the main drag for a bumpy driveway, past a salt pond, and coincidentally (?) ran into a handful of people he knew standing in this barren spot.  At his direction, we somewhat doubtfully trudged a short way further on the road and discovered what was in fact a beautiful, but sparsely populated, beach, as well as a small but elegant looking bungalow resort.

Coco Beach Resort, Antigua

Since the driver was apparently willing to wait with his friends while we enjoyed the beach, we were not about to complain.  We had no proof this was not in fact where we had asked to go, although Bobby had seen pictures of the place on the shipboard TV and it looked considerably more developed than what we saw before us.  And there was nothing wrong with the location, which we think was called Coco Beach, when the one we had been looking for was Coco Bay.  Looking at a map later, I believe there was in fact a much larger resort by that name a short distance away.


As is often the case with foreign travel, one finds oneself at the generally benevolent mercy of the local tourist machine.  Unless you do a lot of homework and come across as knowing exactly what you want and what it should cost, there is always a slight haze of doubt that you are getting the best deal as opposed to something that has been engineered to create the illusion of same for the profit or convenience of others.

Nevertheless, we enjoyed ourselves, and when we returned to the taxi at the appointed time, we found that our driver had calculated enough time get us back to the ship (always a concern, because -- unless you are on one of the excursions organized by the cruise line -- if you miss the boat, you're on your own to get either home or to the next port).

Lunch With Herod's Mom

William Porcher DuBose - Priest & Theologian (1918)

ST. LUCIA

Today's port-of-call was St. Lucia.  A little more than a hundred miles from Barbados, it allowed the Serenade of the Seas to chug along at a leisurely pace while we slept.

Herod explains how bananas grow

St. Lucia is mountainous and a large swath of its interior is relatively unspoiled.  Today I took a tour with several parties in our cruisecritic.com "family", again researched by one of them in advance.  Our guide, Herod, restricts the tour to ten people, which meant minimal waiting and plenty of flexibility to stop when something looked interesting and ask questions.

We had more exposure to the local people today than in Barbados, where we spent most of the day on a boat.  As we twisted through the forests and towns, men and women would wait patiently at the  roadside offering handicrafts, fresh fruit and (in several cases) the opportunity to get cozy with large snakes.  The sales pitches were not aggressive or frequent enough to be really annoying, and I expect our guide -- who does this every day -- knew who could be trusted.  

Among the things we saw were coconut and banana groves (with the opportunity to sample fresh fruit right off the tree), an ancient volcano which still emits sulphur-ripe steam, and a small waterfall surrounded by lush vegetation teeming with birds and butterflies.

But the highlight for me was when Herod announced that he was taking us to his house, where his mom had prepared lunch.

Anybody who knows me will roll their eyes at this; all you do is mention food and you immediately have my attention.  However, I loved this idea.  I know folks who will seek out familiar brands wherever they go instead of chancing some culinary misadventure, and the McDonald's and T.G.I. Fridays' folks have capitalized on this from Reykjavík to Dubai.  But I don't know of a better way to experience a place than to go to someone's home and share food with them that they prepared.

Lunch with Herod's Mom

Herod's mom was warm and gracious, and their house has a big terrace with a splendid view of one of the Pitons, the twin conical lava domes for which St. Lucia is famous.  We were treated to a buffet of curried chicken, fried codfish, rice and beans, plantains, and various other goodies.  


After lunch, we took a water taxi to a remote resort, situated between the two Pitons, to spend an hour or so on the beach.  We shared this space with just a handful of other tourists, and so were able to take in the rugged beauty of the place in peace.  Having gotten more than my share of sun the night before, I commandeered a chaise lounge under a canopy of overhanging sea grape and just took it all in.

Our return trip was accomplished by speedboat, much to the delight of the youngest members of our party.  Somehow these two pre-teen girls ended up right up in the bows, and every time the boat crested a wave, they would be literally tossed airborne, only to thump back down onto the (thankfully cushioned) seat.  They screamed and laughed all the way back to Castries, where the boat deposited us veritably at the ship's doorstep.

Tonight was formal-dress on board.  This is the subject of consternation for some, while others -- like me -- enjoy it on the rare occasions that I am required to dress up.  On some lines (Cunard transatlantic in particular) you will still be politely turned away from the dining room without a jacket, but In the Caribbean on most of today's mass-market ships, the dress code is more of a suggestion than a rule, and we saw people wearing everything from black tie to tank tops as we headed to dinner. 

Everyone in our party made an effort to comply without going crazy buying new gear which we would not have much future use.   I own a tux, for the simple reason that it was de rigueur aboard the Queen Mary 2 and I scored a sweet deal on one when we were preparing for that ship's maiden transatlantic crossing to New York in 2004.  It dawned on my last week that I should probably try the darn thing on and make sure I could still get in it, since it hasn't seen the light of day since Emily's wedding a few years ago.  Thankfully, I have neither packed on enough muscle or fat to require any alterations. 

At Barbara's request, we posed in various groups on the swank glass staircase in the ship's lobby, sporting our finery while the Company photographers snapped away.  These souvenir photos are mind-bendingly expensive, but it's part of the experience, so -- as many times as we say we're not going to do it -- we always end up buying at least a few.  Barbara had special reasons for wanting to document this trip, so for that purpose it was worth having the professional shots done.

The dinner was wonderful, and the Serenade's classic double-height dining room complete with a ceremonial staircase provided an elegant backdrop for our fellow passengers in their fancy duds.  But -- if I had to choose -- I'd still take that lunch under the Pitons, served up with a smile by Herod's mom.