Getting Out, About and Even Some Orchestra

Getting around this weekend while simultaneously avoiding the St. Petersburg Grand Prix was the strategy but the race’s buzz reached us even while we were blocks away. We had planned to anchor out at the Manatee River but rain and thunderstorms were forecasted so we stayed tucked in our Bayboro anchorage. Also, Jake planned to work on Sunday at the Grand Prix in food service. However, the written instructions clearly dictated that servers wear black pants, black shoes, a black button-up, collared shirt and a black tie. He had not one single required item. We poked around Goodwill for an hour and walked out with shorts for Randall, Tammy and Lily but nothing for the harder-to-fit Jake. Saturday, we hauled several bags of laundry down to the laundry-mat, eying the clouds a little anxiously. We dinghied back to the boat with our freshly folded laundry as the sprinkles started to fall and had some lunch as the boat rocked in the wind and rain. The sun came out afterwards so we walked downtown for some Sushi at Rollbati and another flight of beer at Ale and Witch. We turned in early but Jake returned downtown to take in a Sublime cover band performing at Janus Landing. Sunday, we all walked back downtown to the Florida Holocaust Museum. Some of the collection is focused on the life of a young poet, Hannah Senash. Hannah was a Hungarian teen who fled the war for an kibbutz in Palestine where she started writing poetry. From the safety of the Jewish encampment, she began to have serious misgivings about leaving her mother alone in Hungary. When Hungary joined forces with Germany, she volunteered for a special unit being put together by the British army to aid British soldiers caught behind the lines and to make contact with resistance fighters. She joined up and parachuted behind the lines with the very small unit of Jewish teens. They were unable to complete their first mission and struck out to make contact with the Hungarian resistance. However, she was soon caught be the Germans who beat her severely trying to obtain information. She would not divulge any information even when they took her mother prisoner to better coerce her. She was ultimatley charged with treason and shot. Her poetry has, now, a haunting effect of one who struggled in writing both with the separation from her family, her dangerous decision to join the troops and even her final poem written from her prison cell with a clear resignation to her imminent death. The museum also has one of the notorious railway cars used to transport the Jewish victims to their awful fate. It sits there empty and unthreatening, a little smaller than you have pictured it. You have to stand at its open doors and picture the press of bodies, see the German guns pointed and ready and imagine this terrible point. The mothers comforting the children. The men grimly discussing rumors.

Lastly, we took in a free concert at St. Peter Cathedral. It was a Requiem put on by the St. Petersburg Choral performers and Orchestra. Beautiful but the Latin just makes it too mysterious. We sit there wondering what the heck is being said. We would have probably enjoyed a Sublime cover band more but Lily needs the exposure to culture, we figure. She was excited to attend, listened politely for about thirty minutes and then became pretty absorbed in her drawing book. I was kicking myself for not bringing my drawing book.
We plan to hit a couple more museums this week. We are so lucky to have a guest pass for multiple museums from the Gallegos of T Maru and we are using it!!