Saturday, April 08, 2006

CNN is Everywhere

Gary Tuchmann on CNN is in Marietta, Georgia today. He just mentioned having been in Reno County, Kansas, a week and a half ago covering the tornadoes and fires. Nothing gets your attention quite like hearing about where you live on CNN. I didn't even know they were here. CNN really is everywhere.

MCC Sale


Greg and I went to the Mennonite Relief Sale tonight. We ate at the German buffet and both nearly made ourselves sick. We had verenike, borcht and bohne berrogi. I also had some zwiebach and Greg had cherry moos.

It rained most of the day and it was windy and cold tonight. But, it didn't seem to hurt their crowds too much. It's a pretty devoted group. They had us come in the building and go upstairs, then walk around the top of it and back down on the other side. I'm sure they were trying to keep from having people out in the rain. But it stopped about 4:30.



I bought some New Year's cookies to bring home. But at the moment I'm still stuffed. I, at least, had the good sense to get a small bowl of borcht. But, I had two bohne berrogi, which is about double what one person should consume. And did I mention both Greg and I ate pecan pie? It's hard to resist all that food that's prepared by real people, not machines. And, the people who prepare it do so with wonderful intention, which I'm convinced impacts the food also.

Oddly enough, I'd heard of very few of these things until I moved to Kansas. I'm not even going to try and explain them, but if you google them you'll get an idea. Some of them sound really disgusting, but somehow when they're made my little Mennonite ladies and served at the Kansas State Fairgrounds en masse it works. I don't know why, it just does.

Tomorrow they will have the quilt auction, which brings in lots of money. Some of those quilts go for thousands of dollars.

The churches work on this sale all year long. They raise tons of money for hunger relief all over the world. It's an amazing operation. They seem to think of everything.

One of my favorite spots is what they call the "Quilter's Corner," where they have fabric and quilt blocks and books and that sort of thing. They also have a little section devoted to hand crocheted items and linens. I always come home with some and tonight was no exception. I noticed tonight in my bag they had a little flyer asking people to remember them when cleaning out their sewing rooms and said they had raised $75,000 over the last 10 years.

They have a variety of things - something for everyone. I guess in some areas Mennonites are pretty radical, but the groups here are fabulous. The MCC sale gets widespread support from the entire community.