Music Week Begins

It has been a week:  a week of getting ready for our first overnight house guests in this house, a week of attending to tasks we've been waiting to get to for too long, a week of moving furniture, a week of buying furniture, a week of sore muscles and a sprained finger, a week of moving tools back to the shed, a week of cleaning, a week of going back and forth to Lowe's.  Music Week at Lutheridge begins today, and I think we're ready.

Our house guests arrived last night, South Florida friends that we haven't seen since we moved two years ago.  We sat outside and chatted while the sun set.  One of them will be at Music Week, the reason for the trip, and one of them will explore area waterfalls and take pictures.  My spouse, too, will be at Music Week, as will my parents who are staying in camp lodging.  I will be the support and logistics team:  buying food, driving the car/golf cart, keeping an eye on the weather.

We've been planning this week for a long time, and I'm hoping it all works out.  Our Music Week participants will have a very full schedule, so it should be fine.  I've been thinking about how long it's been since we had house guests.  We used to have people come and stay with us for a week, but that was pre-Covid.  I feel like I've forgotten how to use these hosting muscles, but happily, it's coming back.  It helps not to have to plan activities.

And of course, my regular life activities will still be happening:  the seminary class that I'm taking, the online classes that I'm teaching, and the quilt group at the local Lutheran church.  But it will be a good week, full of friends old and new, family, and music.  It's just what I yearned for when I used to live much further away.

Viewing the Apocalypse

Last night, after a long day of trying to pull the house together for our Music Week guests that arrive today, we settled in to watch The Last of Us.  I got the whole first season on DVD from the public library.  I hesitated to start watching the series because I was worried that we would stay up all night watching all the episodes.

I needn't have worried.  It was good, I guess.  But when the first episode ended, I decided not to watch the next one.  I want to keep watching, I think.  But as with so many TV series, I had heard such good reviews and felt a bit underwhelmed when I finally watched it.

I felt the same way about Station Eleven, where I didn't even finish the first episode.  This morning I wondered if perhaps my tastes are changing--am I no longer in the mood for a good apocalypse?  No, I still like the idea of apocalyptic story lines.  Do I no longer have the attention span for a series as opposed to a movie?  I don't think so.  Hmm.

As I watched the first episode yesterday, I thought about the quick beginning of most apocalyptic scenarios.  The world is normal, and then suddenly everyone is attacking everyone and burning up the city and there are soldiers trying to keep order.  

I suspect the end of the world will be a much slower event.  I remember some electrifying emotions at the beginning of the pandemic, as I kept track of rising numbers, at first writing them down on an envelope that I still have somewhere.  I remember thinking about how I've been waiting for this moment, that moment when the new disease, the new weapon, the new war comes.  And it has all unspooled in a much slower way than I expected.  We've had a disease that inspired a quick response in terms of vaccine development.  It's still unspooling, but even with no vaccine, the mortality rate is not nearly as high as the diseases that are often imagined for apocalyptic scenarios.

Similarly, the war in Ukraine has been less apocalyptic than I was expecting, although I'm sure that Ukrainians would disagree.  And I do realize we may not have gotten to the end of the world part of the war yet.

I'm also thinking of watching Cold Mountain a few weeks ago, an apocalypse of a different sort, the war begins rather suddenly, but then the end of the world just grinds on and on.  I remember the scene where the Civil War soldier shows up at the home of an older woman along the way.  She has herbs drying in her cozy cottage, and she rubs a salve into his wounds which seems to heal him much more quickly than he had been healing.  I thought, I need that recipe!

On Independence Day, my neighborhood friend and I briefly talked about politics before moving on to more pleasant topics.  I said that I dreaded the bad times that I thought might be coming, but that I had advantages that others wouldn't have (like a house that is paid for and money in the bank and my skin color and my older age), that I thought we would be safe in our corner of the mountains.  My friend said, "If anything happens to Social Security, I'm not sure what will happen."  I am not eligible to collect those benefits yet, but at this point in the life of our nation, I'm inclined to start collecting at the first minute I am eligible.

All of my reading and viewing should remind me that it's almost impossible to plan for an apocalypse.  It will almost always unspool in ways we don't expect.  Still, it's impossible for my brain to stop planning--which may explain my love of the genre.

Clay and Creativity on Independence Day

Yesterday was a very strange Independence Day, a day where we went to Lowe's late in the afternoon looking for the ever elusive pieces of the plumbing that my spouse is trying to construct.  Were we successful?  I have no idea, because our afternoon was going that badly.

When I look back on this year's Independence Day, I want to remember my morning.  I went over to the house of my dearest neighborhood friend to play with clay.  She had clay that needed to be used up, and I had ideas.  She also has glazes and a kiln--and an outdoor picnic table.  

We sat in the cool morning air, along with another friend of hers, and made all sorts of creations.  We all made pieces for a windchime (or 2 or 3).  We cut all sorts of shapes out of the clay and added all sorts of embellishments.  I have a vision for some small pieces that I can add to the yard, pieces with indentations that will also serve as mini bird baths.

I loved having my hands in cool clay, talking about art and process with friends, not talking about the state of the nation (we all know it's bad, and we all know the work that lies ahead--AND we know the need for creativity and self-care). I loved having an idea for what I wanted to create, but heading in new directions as the clay suggested.  I love that I am making one of a kind pieces.

I also delivered the mail to campers yesterday, also a treat.  Each area is decorated for the 4th, some with more handmade verve than others.  I love that the campers have friends and family who are sending them all kinds of mail and e-mail messages for me to deliver.  I love riding the golf cart in the summer sun.

We did not go to see the fireworks, although I did hear them later.  A bigger treat for me:  waking up close to midnight and NOT hearing any fireworks going off.  In South Florida, regardless of which neighborhood we lived in, there would be booms and bangs all night.

I like these reminders, in clay, in pine cones, in ribbons, and rocks, in found objects and manufactured ones, that the country has always been a cobbled together creation, in all its glorious messiness.  It gives me a strange hope for the future.

Independence Day on a Tilting Planet

It's a strange year to be celebrating Independence Day, to be thinking about the founding of the country and what it means for the future.  And it's not just citizens of the U.S. doing that.  The world seems to have tilted in the past two years, and I think we're all still in a tilting world, and it's unclear where we'll end up.  More liberty or less?  It's not just the U.S. voting on these ideas.  The Supreme Court has weighed in, and I think that the founders would be aghast at giving a President so much power.  The founders had seen the problems with having a king, and they wanted to avoid that.

I have spent time thinking about humans during past times of hardship:  life in communist Russia/Europe, people trying to survive the U.S. Civil War, all the ways that life unraveled during the long, slow collapse of the Roman empire, among others.

When my brain spirals that direction, I try to remind myself of the times when humans have rallied, worked hard, left the planet a better place than they found it, or at least left their little part of the planet a better place.  I'm thinking of the Civil Rights movement and all the movement for human rights that it birthed.  I'm thinking of those founders of the U.S. who signed their names to a document that was treason, in the eyes of their government.  They pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.  Each July 4, I think about my own life, my own beliefs.  To what would I pledge my life, my fortune, and my sacred honor?

Most days I'm just trying to fly under the radar of all the powers and principalities that would keep me in bondage, in fear, in slavery of all sorts.  I'm trying to take care of friends and loved ones and my immediate community.

I can't resist posting this picture of me and my dad, dressed up as colonist and British soldier, standing in front of a painting of British soldiers:

I have always been amazed that the rowdy colonists could pull off this defeat of the greatest empire in the world at the time. I don't think it's only that they were fighting on their home territory that helped them win. Plenty of people fight to defend their homes and don't win.

Each day I try to prepare for whatever the future may require of me.  My apocalyptic brain thinks it might be a grim scenario, but perhaps it will be wonderful.  The other night, my spouse and I spent a delightful hour imagining what we would do if we bought the lottery and convinced Lenoir-Rhyne University to sell the campus of the Columbia seminary to us.

In this time of political elections, let me close this way:  I've always told my students that they should plan what they would do in leadership positions, because they may very well find themselves there some day, and it might be sooner than they think. I tell them about Nelson Mandela, and that the reason that he was prepared to be president of South Africa was that he spent all that time in jail (more years than most of my students have been alive) planning for what he would do if he took over the country. He didn't nurse anger or bitterness. No, he planned, along with his compatriots, who were jailed with them.

Then I give them a copy of an interview (in the fabulous book We Owe You Nothing: Punk Planet: The Collected Interviews) with Jello Biafra which has this challenge: "It's time to start thinking, 'What do I do if I suddenly find myself in charge?'" (page 46 of the first edition). Many of my students find this idea to be a wonderful writing prompt, even as they're doubtful that they would ever be allowed to be in charge of a national government.

Maybe today, as so much conversation swirls about the future of the U.S. and who should lead it, maybe today would be a good day to think about that question:  if you found yourself in charge, what would you do?  And how can you do it now, even if you're not in charge?

Furniture Moving

Here we are, close to the midpoint of summer, which for me is Music Week--although as I think about it, for me, the midpoint was really a few weeks ago.  Music Week starts on Sunday, and my summer shifts a bit.  I'll be more involved at Lutheridge, after my seminary class ends Tuesday.

My mom and dad are coming for Lutheridge, but they'll have lodging at camp; we'll do happy hour down here at our house.  My former pastor and his wife will be staying with us; she'll be part of Music Week, and he'll be taking all sorts of pictures.  We've been trying to get the house into better shape for next week's festivities, and this yesterday, we made great progress.

When we first moved to this house, we bought a sleep sofa (the one in the picture above).  We had a hazy plan that we'd have a sleep sofa in the main living area and a futon/daybed option in the second main floor bedroom, which we primarily use as a study.  But as we've lived in the house, we've seen better possibilities for the layout:  move the sleep sofa into the study and get some smaller furniture to go with the two larger chairs in the living area.

We have since replaced the sliding glass doors with more energy efficient models, which meant that it was no longer easy to move the sofa through the doors, which is one way to get from the main living area to the study, outside across the deck.  Happily, my spouse figured out how to take the feet off the sofa, which meant we could move it through the house.  We also had to remove the door to the study and then put it back, but happily, that was easy.

The filing cabinet has been in the middle of our main living space, along with a teak table and two bar stools that used to be on our beautiful front porch in S. Florida.  We moved the filing cabinet to the study, and we moved the teak table and chairs to the deck, under the tented portion of the deck that means we can use the deck when it rains.  

I went to pick up the table and chairs that we bought on Monday, a much smaller table and chairs than the teak table and bar stools.  Yesterday we assembled them and put them in place:

The sides of the table can be extended to turn it into a round table, which means four people could eat dinner comfortably, and more, if we seated them creatively.  But most important, we can move around the kitchen without bumping into furniture.

There's still a lot of work left to do before the house is "finished."  I'm not showing pictures of unpainted drywall, or of the loft which is much further away from being "finished" than the lower level.  I've got some sorting to do of the piles that are on the desk in the study:

It's a much less Instagram-ready photo, isn't it?  But I like that it gives an idea of how we're more likely to live, a more honest look.

We Love Jesus, Yes We Do! We Love Jesus, How 'Bout You?

Yesterday I went for my morning walk and went by the dining hall in the minutes before breakfast, when all the campers wait outside.  I heard this chant/shout:  "We love Jesus, yes we do.  We love Jesus, how 'bout you?"  Then another group chanted/shouted the same thing back, only louder.  It was both a challenge between cabins/groups and a way of keeping kids occupied until the dining hall was ready for them.

Some might say, "Yes, and it was also indoctrination!"  Perhaps.  We might be kinder and say it was theological training.  But it seems less a way of mind control than a way of keeping kids focused and out of trouble while waiting to go into the dining hall.

Yesterday was the kind of day where there was lots of shouting in the news cycle.  Lately, it seems like every day is a day of lots of shouting in the news cycle.  I reflected on the purposes of shouting:  drowning out competing voices, keeping people focused, raising people's emotions for good or evil purposes.

When the news cycle shouts at me, I often turn off the TV/radio/internet site.  Yesterday, listening to children chanting/shouting outside the camp dining hall, I was charmed and wanted to linger.

But it's not my week of volunteering, not my week to enjoy breakfast at camp.  And so I rambled onward, picking a few berries out of the brambles on the downslope of the hill that took me away from the dining hall.

My First Publication

I don't submit to as many literary journals as I once did, and I have a variety of reasons for that state of affairs.  The main one is that it costs so much more than it once did to submit.  I know that journals will tell us that they aren't charging much more than the cost of postage, printer ink, and paper, but I can do math, and that's just not true.  They charge 3-5 times more than the cost of postage.  

And yes, I could afford a year's worth of fees, but do I want to spend my money that way?  Just on the slim chance that a poem will appear in a journal?  If my goal is to have readers, I'd have more people see my poem if I published it on Facebook or on this blog.  If my goal is to have my poems in a form where future generations might see it, I might be better off taking all those fees and self-publishing in book form, and then sending that book to as many libraries as possible. 

The odds of publishing have never been great, but before social media, I didn't have the same sense of how many people were submitting to journals.  And most of us are writing work of high caliber; I know, because I often see some of those poems on social media.  Mine are no better, no worse.  How does one catch an editor's eye for inclusion?  I know it's a matter of luck, of timing, of connection.  I might have something to do with that (knowing an editor, having a specific poem that fits a specific topic/form), but it's rare.

One thing that's strange about me is that I like the process of submitting.  I like going through my poems and putting together a packet of poems that speak to each other.  I like remembering the poems I've written and thinking about them as a larger way.

Still, I submit occasionally, especially when it's free, and I've gotten encouragement in the past.  This morning, I submitted a packet of poems to Beloit Poetry Journal.  Long ago, when I was first submitting poems printed on paper and mailed in envelopes, I sent a packet to them, and they published it.  That was in 1997 or so, and I've been submitting regularly since with no luck.  But I submit because it makes me happy to remember that long ago acceptance.

For a lark, I went to the BPJ website to see if my poem is in the archive.  It isn't, but my name is there.  Happily, I could go to my own records to help myself remember the name of the poem, and astonishingly, I still have a copy of the poem, and not just the journal itself (which I do have, but which is in a box packed away and hard to retrieve on a whim).

I do tend to keep everything--it's the grad school training in me, the knowledge of how important manuscripts can be, long after they find "final" form in publication.  So, to close this blog post, here's a copy of one of my first publications, which appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, in 1997 or 1998 (along with a gentle reminder that the speaker in the poem is not autobiographical--real life Kristin did not feel this way):

Land Mine Treaty


I’d like to have a baby,
but there is no
Cambodian farmer
so desperate for cash and vegetables
that he is willing
to dig up any field
as he hunts for old land mines
or just more land to farm.
No one to plow my acreage,
no one who will risk that
explosion.