Where We Are in the World

It is one of those mornings where I'll record some thoughts and see if I observe any connections.  Even if I don't, random thoughts are interesting too.

--This morning in an article in The Washington Post I saw a picture of the four Supreme Court justices who are female.  They are a diverse group, in terms of age, in terms of ethnicity, in terms of race, in terms of religion.  I feel so fortunate to have lived this long to see this diversity, even if I don't always agree with decisions from the Supreme Court.

--I find myself thinking about how hot the oceans are--breaking records for 10 months in a row.  If you want to see some charts, these are the ones that haunt my dreams (and yes, I've been having apocalyptic dreams about storms coming and relentless floods).  

--After apocalyptic dreams, I wake up so happy that we sold our house in South Florida.  My spouse continues to complain about how cold, damp, dark, and windy it is here, but in terms of climate change, it's about as safe a place as we could afford.  In terms of political chaos, I feel the same way.  The passages from the Gospel of Mark (chapter 14), which I've been reading for Holy Week sermon prep, resonate in ways they always have, that warning about seeing cultural collapse and the need to flee to the mountains.

--This line came to me yesterday morning; it's not much of a line, but I want to record it:  Meanwhile, the sea simmers

--I think about the lines I created last week, lines about needles.  I'm thinking about slender things like needles and lines on a graph, things slender enough to disappear, but can stab you when you least expect it.

--I'm also thinking about a conversation I had with a colleague at Spartanburg Methodist College yesterday; we were talking about our frustrations with research papers.  She has students write about a place or location that shaped them, and then they do some research on that place.  I really like that idea.

--I also like the idea of bringing in quilts to knot and having students devise a research project around that process.  They could research quilts or Lutheran World Relief or the places where the quilts are going.

--I've been thinking about what I want students to spend time thinking about, which is what they value, what they want to be as humans, not as parts of the capitalist experience.  

--I've also been thinking about where we are in the life of the planet, who we are in history.  I've been thinking of living history projects.  I've been thinking of journals, like the one that Dorothy Wordsworth kept, that have been important.  Could I devise writing projects that have students record the minutiae of their days and then look at what it all means?

--I love the idea of having them do a creative project and then have them write a process kind of essay, a meta/how I created this kind of paper.  I want to believe that there's less chance of cheating this way, but I could be sadly mistaken.

--It is great to feel inspired about teaching again.  My colleagues have such cool ideas.  But then again, I've been lucky to have always had colleagues with cool ideas.