Soup for All the Saints

I had a fairly easy trip across the mountains yesterday, much easier than last week.  I was able to take I 26 the whole way, and much of the landscape was relatively undamaged.  Along the Nolichucky River in Tennessee, however, the damage was astonishing--the pictures just don't prepare me for the changed land.

We had a good All Saints Sunday at Faith Lutheran.  I was very happy with my youth sermon (go to this blog post for details about how to connect saints and gourds and braided bread) and my adult sermon was fine, but not as creative.  

I headed home to my spouse who's struggling with a back injury after too much time with a chainsaw.  I'm trying not to worry, but I'm worried.  I do wonder if I would worry as much if he hadn't had the horrible back issue that led to successful surgery in 2013.

I got some seminary writing done while my soup was warming.  I ate several bowls of broccoli cheddar cheese soup and wondered why I don't make this soup more often.  In part, because the clean up is annoying, in part because the blending is annoying, in part because I don't make soup as often as I once did.

Why was I making soup?  To be part of this:

Our neighborhood had an All Saints Soup gathering in the late afternoon, so I went up the hill to help set up.  It was a beautiful event, and even though some part of me is bone tired all the time once we get to November, there's still enough of the non-tired part of me to take joy in these kinds of gatherings.

I am taking over the position of being the person who plans these events in the coming year.  Happily, I won't be reinventing the wheel.

It was good to be with my neighbors, many of whom are also good friends.  It was nourishing to catch up, and I felt better knowing that I was not the only one wondering where October went, feeling sad because one of my favorite months just slipped away from me.

Clean up went fairly quickly, and soon we were home, waiting for football to be over, waiting to watch The Simpsons.  It was the Halloween special, the Tree House of Horror, and as with most years, I found myself comparing it to past years:  not as brilliant, but still better than much pop culture.

I was sad this morning to hear about the death of Quincy Jones--what a life he had!  I knew that he had done amazing things, but reading about them all, in one article, really made me appreciate him further. 

 

And it makes me even more strengthened in my resolve to appreciate my own life.  October may be gone, but November has its own autumnal beauty, especially this year, when we're having very mild days.  Let me remember to appreciate it all.

First Morning, Eastern Standard Time Returns

My body has no idea what time it is, but that's often the case.  I've been up for hours, in part because of the time change, in part because I'm often awake very early in the morning.  My normal wake up time is between 3 and 4.

I've been working on seminary papers, working on sermon revisions (the minor kind), getting ready to drive across the mountain to Bristol, Tennessee to preach and preside at Faith Lutheran.  I'm told that a lane each way on I 26 is now open, but even if it's not, the detour through the town of Erwin is not bad. The other routes are in much worse shape.

Yesterday I felt a bit sad and grumbly.  I didn't want to write my seminary essay that's due today, and I didn't want to write my sermon.  What a difference a day makes!

I went for a walk in the mid-afternoon.   Lutheridge was busier than I expected, and I made this Facebook post:  "Although we're surrounded by giant piles of dead trees, a group of YMCA youth plays football and a coach says, "Hustle up." And just like that my sad mood lifts a bit."

It occurs to me that even though I'm keeping track of time and expecting a normal-ish trip, that I shouldn't linger here on this writing.  Let me close and get ready.  It will be nice to leave in the not-pitch-black darkness.

Days of Dwindling Light and Lingering Exhaustion

It's been a strange week, full of attempts to vote (and finally casting our votes) and gathering gloom.  In some ways, it hasn't been gloomy but unseasonably warm.  Still, for the last couple of days, I've just given up and gone to bed between 7 and 7:30.  I've had this deep exhaustion, and it's an exhaustion that sweeps in periodically throughout the day.

It may be a post-hurricane exhaustion, or it may be the tiredness that I often experience in November--the exhilaration of early autumn has worn off, but there's still a ways to go before the semester is over.

Tonight we set our clocks back, which will probably mean that I go to bed between 5 and 6 p.m. for a week or two; I'll resist, but there will be a night or two for these first weeks of November where I give in and go to sleep even before toddlers do--that's what happened last year.

That said, I'll be very glad to get the extra hour of daylight in the morning.  My MWF commute down the mountain to Spartanburg has felt very harrowing in the past week or two, especially when it's been drizzling.  It will feel less harrowing when it's not pitch black.  Let me be honest--it's also harrowing because of the road being a bit more broken up after the hurricane. In the light, I can see the new potholes and seams that are coming apart.

Let me record one last thing, and then I need to turn my attention to seminary writing and sermon writing.  Yesterday on my way home from Spartanburg, I stopped and got the ingredients for a sensible dinner:  salmon and salad fixings.  But as I drove home with the groceries, I decided that I really wanted pizza, so we ordered pizza, which we ate while we watched a Muppet movie on Disney+.  It felt both like a special occasion and evidence of exhaustion.

Hurricane Debris and Early Voting on Halloween

We had a quiet Halloween last night--but that's not unusual for us.  We live in a quiet neighborhood that's not really safe for kids walking in the dark, because we have very few streetlights and no sidewalks.  It's not really safe this year, with all the remains of downed trees.  We have very few families with children who live in this tiny residential section of Lutheridge, the church camp.

Before our quiet evening, we headed to Fairview to vote, which I thought would be an easier polling place, once we finally got there.  It was much easier, once we finally got there.  There was exactly one person in line ahead of us.  The polling place was well run, and we were in and out in fifteen minutes.

The town of Fairview had more severe damage from Hurricane Helene, including the library.  The library itself wasn't open, but voting happened in the small meeting room.  I'm not sure what the damage was, because everything looked to be normal.  I didn't see a tarp on the roof, for example.  There wasn't mud that indicated flooding had happened.

We took Cane Creek Road, and there was plenty of mud along Cane Creek Road.  Cane Creek runs beside the road, and it had overrun its banks during Hurricane Helene.  The damage was staggering, with stacks of debris all along the way.  I cannot imagine where all this debris will end up, debris from all across the mountain.

It was a gorgeous day, another sleeveless shirt kind of day.  On our way back, we stopped at Turgua Brewery; I wasn't sure it would be open, since it was so close to the creek.  I knew if it was open, they could probably use our business, but more than that, I wanted a place to sit outside in the sun with my sun-starved spouse.

The brewery was open, and although the outdoor space had a few picnic tables, so we got ourselves settled.  The beers were tasty, and the sun was glorious.  I felt relief at getting voting done early, along with happiness that so many people are voting.  I always get a bit emotional thinking about what the ancestors did to get more voting rights for all, and I'm always happy when people are voting.

I am also amazed at the pace of hurricane recovery, at the presence of disaster assistance folks from the federal government to private groups.  We went through several hurricanes, under several different administrations, in South Florida, and never had this level of help.  Is it because Hurricane Helene was more severe?  Is it because it's an election year?  Do people care more about the mountains than South Florida?  Is it because the mountains are closer to assistance than the tip of the Florida peninsula?  It seems like any or all of those things could be true.

We ended our Halloween by watching the original Halloween movie, the 1978 John Carpenter film.  I'd seen bits and pieces, but never the whole thing.  It's about as scary as I can stand, and it's not as scary, because I had seen the ending, so I knew that one babysitter would survive.  I'd still have preserved something lighter, but if those shows exist in our streaming services, we couldn't find them.

I feel like I should end by saying something pithy about the survival instincts of virginal babysitters and the value of a good coathanger in a closet and our modern time, but I'll just close by remembering one of the best compliments I've ever gotten, on Nov. 1 of 1983 when one of my male friends said that I reminded him of the character in Halloween who survived, because I would be able to stay cool in an emergency or any kind of crisis.  

May it continue to be so.