A Good Week, Teaching and Sewing

It's been a good week, one that has left me a bit more tired than usual, but tired in a good way. 

We're at the end of the third week of in-person classes at Spartanburg Methodist College, and I'm happy to report that my classes are still in a collective good mood.  Yesterday, despite a bit of chaos at the beginning of class as I printed last minute submissions of rough drafts and rearranged the room, peer editing in my English 101 class went REALLY well.  Usually peer editing is a much more mixed event.

What's made it a tiring week is that I've been doing Quilt Camp on either side of teaching.  It's not ideal, but I'm glad to have had the time at Quilt Camp.  I've had a chance to spread out my fabric and remember what I was planning, back in May when I put fabric away as CPE was about to start.

I've been working on this quilt top:

I've been sewing strips to make it bigger.  I had planned to make this quilt completely random, but in fact, each strip has various smaller bits that go together.  I like how the whole quilt looks, and it's even more fun up close.  I've enjoyed sewing the strips, but as the quilt has gotten bigger, I've enjoyed it less.  

Note for the future:  I could sew the individual strips by hand, and then sew them all together on a machine so that the process goes faster.  Do I have a machine?  No.  One of the Quilt Camp folks is going to bring me a small machine to see if I want it.  Many people would not, because it can only sew two types of stitches, with no computer.  Plus it's small--she seemed to say that I could put it on a shelf.  We shall see.

In the meantime, I now will have some sewing to do in the evenings, as I try to stay awake until it's bedtime.  This kind of sewing can be more mindless than sketching in the evening or writing notes.

This Quilt Camp was promoted as a stripped-down Quilt Camp:  no teaching time, no planned excursions, no evening devotions/worship.  Fewer people have come, primarily because it's not a great time in August, the days leading up to the Labor Day week-end.  It's not great for me, because it's so early in the term, and I had already needed flexibility because of my mom's hospital scare and my need to be gone for a day to finish CPE.

But I'm glad I've made the effort.  It's been wonderful to have a chance to talk to people, to see other people's projects, to get inspired.  The quilt I'm working on has been inspired by this type of quilt, where the kind of small scraps that most people throw away have been sewed together into bigger blocks:

Here's an inspiration from this year:

Every square is different.  The quilter has followed a pattern, which boasts of 100 different squares.  I love the idea of following my own whimsey. 

I've enjoyed Quilt Camp, although it's been strange:  when I'm at school, I've almost forgotten that I had been sewing, and then when I've been at Quilt Camp, I've been immersed.  Wait--am I finally learning to exist in the present moment?

No, not really, although I am getting better at living in the present moment.  It helps to be living in a house and an area that we can afford, to have several jobs that I love, and that I'm not taking classes at the moment.  I am glad to be here in this place.

Hurricane Katrina Memories, Twenty Years On

Twenty years ago, New Orleans was being slammed by hurricane Katrina.  I've heard and seen a 20th anniversary report or two, and it's fitting that New Orleans gets the focus.  We lived in South Florida at the time, and South Floridians have their own Hurricane Katrina memories, which can be dramatic, on an individual level.

I didn't watch the flooding of New Orleans happen in real time, or even see much about it.  I remember hearing a radio snippet for a brief time when the power blipped on and then blipped off again.  The levees had been breached, but had not broken.  We know how that was about to turn out.

No, we were dealing with this:

It's a downed ficus tree with my spouse and his chain saw (that pink blob) in the foreground of the picture.  The standing tree stretched across the whole back border of our fence.  The downed tree took up our whole back yard.

The pictures are grainy, because they've been scanned and saved through many formats.  What you can't see underneath the green at the lower right is a smushed shed.  Here's a  better picture--that triangle of a roof was a shed that had been squashed by the tree:

The picture below gives a bit of a sense of perspective.  Look to the left of the picture, and you'll see my spouse by the fence.  You can see the twisted trunk of the tree rising in the center of the picture.

 

Of course, we lost most everything in that shed.  But it could have been much worse.  The tree brushed the wall of our house as it gently fell over, after a day of soaking rain, but it didn't go through the roof or the windows.  I'm still not sure what prevented that.

We spent a week cleaning up what we could, and then the insurance folks finally got in touch with us, and we used the insurance payment to have an arborist company finish the job.  We never could have done the trunk grinding by ourselves.

I have not written many poems about specific hurricanes, but hurricanes do swirl through my body of work.  They make such great metaphors, after all.

Here's a poem I wrote last century, around 1996.  I think it still holds up relatively well:

Weather Wife

The hurricane flirts with us; like a reluctant
suitor, the storm cannot decide whether or not to commit
to us. It won’t even make a definitive date.
We watch it vacillate, wonder
if it might decide to court another.

Why do these storms always arrive at night?
They party with Caribbean island after island,
leaving the coastal wife watching the clock
and waiting for its arrival, keeping the lights
lit and the supper warm.

The storm should sneak in, with a whisper of wind,
A dozen roses of rain, leaving a bit of sleep
to the exhausted wife of a coastline.
Instead, the hurricane roars in, renouncing
all others to embrace us fully.

Like a battering spouse, it smacks
us again and again. Not content to just hit
until we back down, it smashes
us to unconsciousness and rips
our most beloved possessions to shreds.

We clean up the damage while we try to soothe
the little ones. We try to convince
ourselves that it won’t happen again. The weather woos
us with calm surf and skies full of sunshine.
We continue in this marriage. We cannot divorce
ourselves to head to the passionless calm
of a chillier climate.


If you want a book-length treatment of hurricane Katrina in poems, I recommend  two wonderful books. Patricia Smith's Blood Dazzler does amazing things, an astonishing collection of poems that deal with Hurricane Katrina. I love the way that Katrina comes to life. I love that a dog makes its way through these poems. I love the multitude of voices, so many inanimate things brought to life (a poem in the voice of the Superdome--what a cool idea!). I love the mix of formalist poetry with more free form verse and the influence of jazz and blues music. An amazing book.


In Colosseum, Katie Ford also does amazing things. She, too, writes poems of Hurricane Katrina. But she also looks back to the ancient world, with poems that ponder great civilizations buried under the sands of time. What is the nature of catastrophe? What can be saved? What will be lost?

Here's a more recent poem, written years after after Hurricane Wilma (which wreaked devastation just 2 months after Katrina, just after we had finished up our hurricane Katrina clean-up) when I found myself weeping in the car, flooded by post-hurricane despair, even though the clean-up had been done and regular life mostly restored:


What They Don’t Tell You About Hurricanes



You expected the ache in your lazy
muscles, as you hauled debris
to the curb, day after day.

You expected your insurance
agent to treat
you like a lover spurned.

You expected to curse
your bad luck,
but then feel grateful
when you met someone suffering
an even more devastating loss.

You did not expect
that months, even years afterwards
you would find yourself inexplicably
weeping in your car, parked
in a garage that overlooks
an industrial wasteland.

That year, 2005, was the year when I got the first glimmer of a thought that would become a pounding scream:  "South Florida is not a safe place to be as the planet succumbs to global warming."  Even though we got to North Carolina in time to experience the worst natural disaster in the state's history, Hurricane Helene, I'm still glad we got to higher ground.

Quilt Camp Begins

Usually, Lutheridge offers Quilt Camp twice a year, once in the Fall and once in the Spring.  After the Spring Quilt Camp, where so many people were distressed that the Fall 2025 Quilt Camp was already full, leadership decided to offer a late summer addition and see if there was interest.

Of course, it's hard to know which stretch of time would be best.  We couldn't offer Quilt Camp when summer sleep-away camp was still happening.  This year, August also held a 75th Anniversary week-end for Lutheridge and the Asheville Quilt Show.  So this four day stretch heading into Labor Day week-end was the only option.

I waited until the last minute to sign up.  I'll be teaching today and tomorrow, and I didn't want to claim a table if it meant that someone else couldn't attend.  But we didn't have the full registration that we expected, so I went ahead and claimed my space.

Quilt Camp started at 3 yesterday afternoon, and I spent the first hour sorting through my various collections, trying to remember what I was thinking when I organized my material back in the spring.  At first I felt despair and an urge to just throw it all in the trash.  Part of my despair was remembering how I had a plan in the spring, and the summer wiped out my ability to do much of anything beyond CPE and my weekly preaching.

Happily, I can often pinpoint the source of my despair and move beyond it.  As I sorted through fabric, my mind delighted at the memory of these fabrics and how I came to have them and the friends who have been part of the process.  I sat and sewed a few seams and settled into a rhythm.

I didn't take any pictures, but that's O.K.  I still have time.  But even better, I have a few days of my own table, a few days where I can leave everything spread out with the knowledge that I'm not in anyone's way.  I can sort and organize and sew and reconnect with friends.  

I can reconnect with myself and with the One who made me--one of the biggest gifts of Quilt Camp!

Scatteredness and Schedules

I feel a bit scattered, or maybe it's more pulled in many directions.  A scaled back version of Quilt Camp starts today, and I'm trying to remember what projects I was working on before CPE got rolling.

I'll be going back and forth to Spartanburg Methodist College, and I have entered that period where I'm trying to remember who has done what in each class and where we're going in the immediate future.

In the further ahead future, I got my schedule for Spring, and what a sweet schedule it is:  3 sections of English 102, the Intro to Lit class, 1 section of the second half of the American Lit Survey class, and 1 section of Advanced Creative Writing.

I haven't really taught an Advanced Creative Writing class before, although I've taught variations that focused on a specific type of Creative Writing:  Poetry or Scriptwriting for Games (a Game Art design class) or Nonfiction Writing.  I'm glad I have some time to think about potential approaches.  

But back to our current semester.  This week is the one where I take my English 100 and English 101 students outside to look at trees.  The weather is PERFECT!  We've had a bit of a cold front go through, making it not cold but pleasant and less humid.  I am structuring these assignments a bit differently, and I'll report on it as I go.

For English 100, I'm trying something really new:  lots of in-class writing, some revision, and then students choose which draft to finish and turn in for a grade.  But it will be a multi-part assignment--turning in the 2-4 rough drafts, along with the finished draft, and an analytical piece about the writing and revising process.

Dispatch from the Involvement Fair

Yesterday I got my English 101 students started writing their rough drafts.  Halfway through class time, I left them writing while I went over to the Involvement Fair where I would be staffing the Poetry Club table.  Those of us who had RSVP'ed had a table ready, with a chair and a sign with the name of our club or group.

Most people brought extra items, and as I looked at other tables, I made notes for next time--some interestingly textured cloth to cover the table would be good, or even just a tablecloth that makes a bright pop of color.  Many people had candy or snacks on their tables.

I did think about flyers, and happily, our student who is in charge of revitalizing the Poetry Club has graphic design skills (and knowledge of computer design programs) that I don't have.  She created amazing flyers.  She also created a poster for the table; I brought a table top easel:

We lucked out in terms of the weather.  It was hot in the sun, but those of us who wanted to be in the shade had help moving tables.  The sky was blue and beautiful, and we had no threat of rain.  

I was surprised by how many groups showed up to showcase the opportunities for student activities and involvement:

It was lovely, spending a few hours standing and sitting in a central part of the campus where I don't often go, the area with the dining hall and the student activity center and some dorms.  I got to see students from past semesters, another reason why I should leave my office more often.  It's good to know that they are still in school, still making progress.

But more than that, it was good to see so many students who were so enthusiastic as they talked to people at the tables.  Even if they didn't want to sign up, they were still happy to be there, on a college campus, under a bright blue August sky.

I was too.

The Cinnamon Roll at the End of the World

I invited a neighborhood friend (one of my best retreat friends who is now my neighbor!) over for a cinnamon roll and a chat yesterday morning.  I planned to bake bread, and I thought I might just transform a bit of bread dough into cinnamon rolls.  But then I decided I wanted something more special, and I made a batch of pumpkin cinnamon rolls from this recipe.

As I rolled out the dough, in a way that I rarely do for just myself, I thought of that quote attributed to Martin Luther, about the world ending tomorrow.  I thought, if the world was ending tomorrow, I'd be making these kind of luxurious pumpkin cinnamon rolls.

I looked up the Martin Luther quote, ignored the debate over whether or not Luther actually said such a thing, and found a quote at an environmental stewardship website:  "As the story goes, when Martin Luther was asked what he would do if the world were to end tomorrow, he answered, 'I would plant an apple tree today.'”

I thought, if the world were to end tomorrow, I would make a batch of cinnamon rolls--two batches, one for today, and one for tomorrow.

I decided to use extra pecans and sugar because my friend was coming over for coffee, and a poem started to sprout in my brain.  I wrote down these lines:

If the world was on schedule to end
tomorrow, some of us would plant
an apple tree. Others would spend
the evening phoning every friend.

I would make two pans
of cinnamon rolls, one for tonight,
and one for the morning of the day
the world was on schedule to end.

I wrote a few more stanzas and let the poem sit (or rise, perhaps) overnight.  This morning, I added another line here or there, and I'll let it sit longer.

I am so pleased to have a poem appear, unanticipated, almost fully formed.  I am happy that I was alert enough to realize the potential in a line from Martin Luther and a batch of pumpkin cinnamon rolls.

Glory Days: 1995 and Now

Yesterday was the kind of teaching day that made me so grateful to have a chance to do some of this again, to do some of it for the first time.

I got to my office and sent an e-mail to my English Dep't colleagues to let them know that I had volunteered to be the faculty sponsor for the Poetry Club.  Lo and behold, another colleague had also volunteered, so we strategized about how to move forward.  We're both relatively new to Spartanburg Methodist College, so we're both grateful not to be going it alone.  Later, we talked to the student who is taking leadership too; she's in my Creative Writing class, and I like her energy.  As an added bonus, she's got visual art skills, so she'll be making the posters and flyers for the Involvement Fair on Monday.

I got grading done, so I'm caught up until Monday, and I've strategized my classes for next week.  The two classes that I teach on MWF went well.  In fact, after my Brit Lit survey class, one of my students said, "This is the only class where I wish it could go longer."  I think he was being sincere, not giving me empty flattery; he had been engaged for the whole class.

Yesterday we talked about Dorothy Wordsworth in all her Grasmere Journal glory.  She's now in the Norton Anthology of British Literature.  When I first started teaching her in the early 90's, I was bringing in handouts to augment the mostly male anthology.

As I drove home, I wasn't as interested in the NPR stations, so I listened to a station that was in the middle of a 90 minute "rock block"--and several songs in a row were from 1995, when I would have been driving back and forth from my home base near Charleston, SC, where I had a full-time teaching job at Trident Tech, to Columbia, SC, where my spouse was back in grad school.  As I listened to Seven Mary Three's "Cumbersome," I had that time wrinkle disconnect:  here I am in a tiny, fuel efficient car, driving on I-26, after having taught Dorothy Wordsworth to a group of students who were incredulous/aghast at the idea of Mary Hutchinson being willing to marry into the William-Dorothy dyad.

As I said, I am so grateful to be having a chance to relive some of my glory days, while at the same time wondering if I should be sad that my glory days don't involve something more transgressive (spoiler alert--I'm not sad).  Most people have glory days that revolve around ill-fated but glorious love affairs or some sort of sports/athletic achievement or some other advancement.  And mine revolves around a time when I was teaching literature I loved while writing poetry that amazed me.

We settled into our Friday night routine.  I bought the series Back to the Frontier only to find out that we would be getting it episode by episode, with each episode available early on Friday.  It's been another kind of time wrinkle, discovering that the whole series did not drop at once.  And I've enjoyed tuning in each week, just like we would have in 1995.

The show owes a HUGE debt to the PBS show Frontier House, which we watched in 2002, when it was on the air.  Three families see if they could live like Homestead Act settlers did in the late nineteenth century.  It's compelling, even as we realize that they are living a much safer variation:  no other humans attacking them and no animals attacking them and if the weather turned really ugly, they'd be rescued.

I discovered that we could watch Frontier House on YouTube, and so we watched about half of it last night.  It's not as compelling as when we first watched it, perhaps because we've had so many variations of reality TV since this early pioneer of reality TV aired.

My spouse and I always try to analyze how we'd do things differently.  We would not make for good reality TV--we would know what we signed up for and not whine constantly.  Of course, I'm not sure whining makes for good reality TV.

I do know that if I viewed my morning by way of some camera, this morning would make me long for such a life:  a good week teaching and pumpkin cinnamon rolls rising on the kitchen counter, my spouse sleeping while I'm writing.  Perhaps I have died and gone to Heaven, where I get to keep reliving these glory days.

Meet Your New Poetry Club Faculty Advisor

Yesterday, the English department (at Spartanburg Methodist College) got an e-mail from our Dean of Humanities, who was once head of the English Department.  She was writing to see if one of us wanted to be the faculty advisor for the Poetry Club.  Time is of the essence, since there's an involvement fair on Monday, where groups sit at tables so that students can see the wide variety of group involvement that's possible.

The current faculty advisor needs to step away because she's had a promotion which means she needs to shift her attention.  It's unclear as to how many Poetry Club members are still active.

I went to the dean to get more information, and I volunteered to be the faculty advisor, but also to step aside if someone passionately wanted the job--or to share the duties.  I'll go to the involvement fair on Monday.  We'll see how much interest there is.

As faculty advisor, I'm there to be of assistance, but not to run the club.  The club should be controlled by the students.  So I'm not sure what it will look like, to be the faculty advisor.  I guess much of that will be controlled by the students.  I'm happy to help, and I'm happy to brainstorm.

I love being part of a liberal arts school, where students have a wide variety of interests and lots of opportunities on campus to explore those interests.  I'm happy to feel like I have the time and bandwidth to be a faculty advisor--a year ago, I would have said no, given my teaching load and my seminary class schedule.  I'm happy to have a chance to experience this aspect of faculty life.

Thursday Strands: Mountains and Abandoned Summer Camps and a New Version of "Frankenstein"

This morning, I'm a bit tired, and yet I still have two teaching days to go.  So let me collect some strands and see if they make a coherent cloth:

--I am officially done with CPE, although I'm sure I'll continue thinking about it and processing it all for some time.  It was such a mixture of things:  rewarding, exhausting, challenging, on and on I could go.  I feel very lucky to have had a great group of people in the Chaplains department.  I have heard the CPE horror stories, and each day I felt immense gratitude for the people around me.

--Yesterday, the morning view of the mountains was stunning, with swirls of clouds.  I thought, I will miss this view.  Of course, I'll have other views of other mountains throughout the week as I drive back and forth to Spartanburg and Bristol.

--I read an interview with Guillermo del Toro, who has directed/created a new version of Frankenstein.  How fortuitous that it comes out the same semester when I'm teaching it!  It sounds like it will be a movie that is more faithful to the book than past movies have been, but I've been fooled that way before.

--Last night, as I focused on bill paying tasks, my spouse had a YouTube video playing about Thoreau's Walden--it was a delightful listen of snippets from the journal along with some biographical and historical tidbits.  I have no idea what the purpose of the video was; it didn't seem deep enough to have an educational purpose, and it didn't include a lot of personal appreciation.

--This morning, as I walked around camp, I thought of families who have bought old camps.  I thought of the E. B. White essay, "Once More to the Lake," that my Creative Writing class is reading and using for inspiration.  I'm thinking of a book for middle school readers, sort of a Harriet the Spy, if Harriet lived at an abandoned summer camp and was an aspiring naturalist.  Or maybe it's a story for older readers, and maybe it involves a ghost from the 19th century.

Last Day of CPE

My schedule changes today, but just for today.  Today instead of driving down to Spartanburg to teach, I stay in town for the last day of CPE.  I've got copies of my final paper/report.  We will gather in the conference room for our last day where we will read each other's final papers/reports.  Then our Educator has 20 days to write his comments.  At some point, that report goes to my synod Candidacy Committee.  As I understand it, it's not on file anywhere else; if someone in the future wants it, it's in my control.  

It's hard to imagine anyone outside of my committee asking to see it, or even knowing of its existence.  But I will keep both electronic and paper copies, just in case.  I have a file cabinet of documents that may never be needed again, but I keep them, just in case.

It's been strange, being back in the classroom at Spartanburg Methodist College, without being fully done with CPE.  In some ways, this summer seems like a strange dream.  In some ways, it was.  But more specifically, I'm feeling the same way I did when I lived in seminary housing and came to the mountains for short visits.  When I was in one place, it almost felt like the other place had been a dream.

I have given today's students out-of-class assignments.  I'm grateful that technology allows me to do this, and that I'm at a school that allows this.

I am looking forward to seeing everyone again, but it will be bittersweet because it's likely the last time.  My, that sounds apocalyptic, doesn't it?  So, let me be more specific:  our time of seeing each other every day is over.  For me, it's been over for the past two weeks, but today is really the end of our time being colleagues in this way.

Yesterday and today, my brain was full of topics both mundane and consequential.  Remember to fill your water cup with ice, the way you don't need to do when you go to Spartanburg.  Don't forget your employee lanyard.  Did I neglect anything in the final report?  I wish I had had a chance to make cookies for us all.  Is there a possibility that I might fail at this late date?

Last night I was so exhausted that I went to bed by 6:15--in some ways, CPE ends just as it began.  I am hopeful that it won't always be this way.  I was tired from teaching 3 classes back to back, the kind of classes where we are moving past the easy, first week stuff, where part of my brain is focused on the day's work and part is thinking ahead to what needs to happen next.  I was tired from the intense writing I've been doing to finish the CPE document.  I was tired from driving.

On Monday, I was tired, but it was different.  I was able to stay awake and make the above sketch, make another sketch for a friend in quarantine, write her a letter to go with the sketch, and read a bit.  

Early in CPE days, I discovered a tin of high quality Crayola markers in a filing cabinet, and I've had fun experimenting with them.  A few days ago, I ordered a tin for myself.  It's the perfect size, and it would mean I didn't have to transport all my Copic markers to the living room when I want to sketch in the evenings.

Why am I not sewing in the evenings?  I feel like I've lost the thread (pun intended).  There is a streamlined version of Quilt Camp that starts next week, so I hope to have a chance to sort through my materials (and material) and to remember what I was thinking/planning when I put everything away after the last quilt camp.

Today feels very transitional.  I hope I get to the end of today saying, yes, I am done with CPE--well done, good and faithful Kristin--with tears in my eyes, of course.

Revisiting the Past: Seminary Housing Move and the Lake District and Me

Three years ago, we'd be moving some of our stuff into seminary housing.  I thought I would live there two years, and then came news of the old housing, where my apartment was located, would be torn down. In some ways, that turned out to be for the best.

Had seminary housing not been going away, I might not have started thinking about finding a face to face teaching job.  I was trying to figure out a way to afford housing within driving distance.  Then I began to think about the other possibilities:  Wesley offers a wide range of modalities.  We have a house in North Carolina--it made sense to go back to distance learning.

Still, I am glad to have had a chance to live on campus, to explore D.C. again.  In some ways, I didn't do as much as I intended--no live theatre, no poetry readings.  But in some ways, I did more.  It would be a different experience these days, that's certain.

Of course, we never cross the same river twice, do we?  The D.C. I explored from 2022-2023 did not much resemble the D.C. of my youth.  Sure, there were familiar buildings, like the Smithsonian museums and the monuments.  But the surrounding city was almost unrecognizable to me.  And the suburbs were completely incomprehensible, not that I went there much, outside of my sister's house.

I've been revisiting the past in other ways.  For the past several nights, I've been re-reading A Passionate Sisterhood before bed.  It's about the women who were in the circle of the Lake District Romantic poets, like Southey and Wordsworth and Coleridge.  It's delightful, even though it's not my usual bedtime reading.

It reminds me of the first time that I read the book, back in 2000 when it was first published, and I was teaching survey classes at the University of Miami.  I was still trying to figure out my way to a full-time job.

The book also reminds me of graduate school, when I first discovered the journals of Dorothy Wordsworth.  I was taking a class in prose and the novel of the Romantic period.  I took it fall semester of 1988, and I was charmed by D. Wordsworth's journals.  Of course, I still am.

Tomorrow I need to be here in Asheville for the last day of CPE, so I've created an experiential unit for my students, so that they can have a taste of what went into the creating of that journal.  Hopefully they will walk for 20 minutes and write about what they see, and then they will sit in one spot for 20 minutes and write about what they see.  On Friday or Monday, we'll see if we can transform that work into poetry.

Monday Scatteredness

Today I feel a bit scattered, which seems normal.  It's going to be a strange week--on Wednesday, I won't drive to Spartanburg.  I'll go to the Asheville VA Hospital one last time on Wednesday to do the finishing event for CPE.  I have my paper for Wednesday written, and I'll revise it one last time before Wednesday.

Today I'll get the assignments for my students ready.  I thought about doing it this morning, but I felt my brain protest.  I'll plot out the week as I drive down to Spartanburg.

It's another one of those mornings where I find myself longing for slightly less to do.  But this week is unusual, I say with hope in my heart.

It's also that week where the first week excitement of the academic term simmers down, and I need to focus on the coming weeks, the day to day.

Let me shift my attention to my CPE writing, and then I'll walk, and then make the zip down to Spartanburg.

Writing Goals for the Last Third of the Year

I spent part of yesterday morning in a bit of a funk, and I'm not sure why.  I had a good week and was looking forward to a more leisurely Saturday, the only day of the week that has the potential to be leisurely for me.

I have several theories about my funk, but the one that makes the most sense is that I had writing to do, and I dreaded it a bit.  I needed to write a sermon, which is almost always satisfying when finished, but rarely something I look forward to.  I have a final paper for CPE, which from yesterday morning's vantage point, seemed like pure drudgery.

So I practiced some self-care.  I went to the Saturday farmers market in Mills River, which always cheers me up.  I bought some cookies from a young entrepreneur.  I did some sketching.  My Zoom call which is a women's Bible study group made me happy. I watched an old cooking show (Vivian Howard's A Chef's Life), which was a Christmas special, for a bonus win.  These are classic self-care practices for me.

But of course, what really made me feel better was getting the writing tasks done.  I now have a sermon I like, and I made significant progress on my CPE paper.  Now let me think about the upcoming semester.  I want to establish some habits that can get me back to writing more of what I want to write:

--I want to write my sermon by Thursday, which means that I start thinking and planning by Tuesday.  I had this goal in the spring, but the seminary course work I needed to do often took priority.

--I want to return to my goal that I formulated in the first days of this year, writing one finished draft of a poem a week.

--Actually, that's not really my goal.  Here is that goal, as I wrote it in my January 1 blog post:  "I want to end the year with 52 poems written, finished poems. They may not be worth sending out, but they need to be finished. Fifty-two poems gives me space to catch up, and space to have a white hot streak that sets me ahead."

--Right now, I have 14 finished poems in the file.  So I am seriously behind.  But I still have 19.5 weeks in the year.  I could get to 52 poems in the file if I focus.

--I have a lot of rough drafts.  Many of them won't require much revision. So, I'll take a look through those drafts, as I am also writing new work.  I also want to get back to writing new poems.

--Let me finish with the words of Octavia Butler, from one of her early journals, before she won the MacArthur, which changed her writing life trajectory:  "So be it, See to it."

Whiffs of Apocalypse

It's been an apocalyptic week in the news.  But when is it not an apocalyptic week, if one is inclined that direction?  Let me capture a few whiffs of apocalypse that came my way in the past few days:

--My various social media timelines, all 2 of them, have been full of nearby flooding, in Chattanooga and Raleigh, cars swept away kind of flooding.  Consequently, my dreams have been full of flooding.  We've had a lot of rain, and at one point in the middle of the night, a branch dropped onto the deck with a loud thump, which woke us both up.  I watched the rain while my spouse went to investigate.  I thought about the Hurricane Helene stories of houses swept away, and worried a bit, even though we don't live close to a river.

--Yesterday my spouse was invited to be part of a Zoom session that talked about disaster preparedness.  He and I compared notes about the damages done by hurricanes to our various houses.  It's not a great way to start the day.  I am astounded at the amount of damage and disruption through the years.  On the one hand, what did I expect when we moved to South Florida?  On the other hand, I have this idea that most U.S. families will only experience this level of disruption once in their lives--one catastrophic amount of damage to a home per family.  Maybe I'm wrong.  We've had at least 4:  Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Wilma, Hurricane Irma, and the December flood of 1999.  I'm not counting Hurricane Helene, since our home wasn't damaged--we were just inconvenienced for two months (no electricity for 2 weeks, had to boil water for 2 months, no reliable internet for 2 months)--wait, I am counting it now.

--After yesterday's discussion of hurricanes and destruction, I headed south to Spartanburg, only to find out that part of I-26 was closed.  There were electronic signs that said "Road closed after Exit 58, expect delays."  In the past, the sign said, "I-26 closed, detour to Hwy 25."  So I thought that maybe a road was closed near Exit 58 which was slowing down traffic.  But I was wrong.  I was able to follow others as we went the wrong way down the entrance ramp at Exit 58.  I had to backtrack 20 miles to Highway 25 because the old Spartanburg Highway is still closed after Hurricane Helene.  Happily, I left early, to get out of the way of my spouse's Zoom call, so I did get to class on time.

--It's also easy to see apocalypse in these days of Trump.  There's the takeover, if that's what it is, of the D.C. police force to crack down on crime--what crime exactly?  Hard to be sure.  There's the summit with Russia today in Alaska--is it a summit or peace negotiations or just an opening chat?  Hard to be sure.  There's the dismantling of so much that seemed to be good about government and the ignoring of what seems to be unraveling; I may never get on a plane again at this rate, between air traffic control issues, plane manufacturing issues, and disease issues.

--And of course, there's the lectionary Gospel reading for Sunday:  Luke 12:49-56.  In fact, all of the readings for this Sunday have more than a whiff of apocalypse.  It's interesting to write this week's sermon, after spending last week writing a sermon on the "Have no fear, little flock" teaching of Jesus.

Mary Wollstonecraft and Me

Yesterday was the first day of my British Literature survey class, and yesterday, in addition to doing the first day syllabus review, I talked about the revolutionary winds of the late 1700's.  I was doing some intro work to Mary Wollstonecraft, particularly her A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.

I talked about the ideas of human rights that were in their infancy in the 1700's and reminded students that we were not at a human rights for all moment of humanity.  No indeed--and along comes Mary Wollstonecraft to argue that women should have rights too, the same rights that people like William Godwin and Thomas Jefferson argued that men should have.  Not all men, of course:  white men, landowning men.

I talked about how now, her argument seems fairly obvious and/or straight forward and maybe even obvious:  educate women, and they'll be better mothers. Educate women, and they'll be better wives, companions to their husbands rather than mere ornaments. Nothing too shocking there.

And then I paused, a bit gut punched to realize how many rights for women have been rolled back in the past few years.  So I also talked about that. 

This morning, I'm thinking about Mary Wollstonecraft anew; I've written about her before in this blog post.  I'm remembering when one of my favorite grad school professors gave me a copy of the Norton edition of Vindication, along with a note that said she had an extra copy and thought of me.  I felt thrilled--a copy of my own, and proof that my professor might like me.  I may still have it in a box somewhere.

I'm thinking of all the times I've taught this work, through the years, and how long it's been since I taught it--the last time was probably in 2001.  At some point, I assumed I would likely never teach this literature again. I'm so glad that I was wrong.

First Day of Fall Semester, a More Tech-Free Fall Semester

Yesterday I drove down to Spartanburg Methodist College for the first day of classes.  I love the first days of fall semester--many of my students are brand new to college, so they are full of hope and good spirits.  I also have classes with students who are not new to college; they're in their second or third or fourth years.  Most of them return to fall semester well rested and ready/hopeful for a good year.  The first days of spring semester have a certain sparkle, but it's a little duller, a little more tinged with tiredness and fear.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I have three classes back to back, and then I sit in the car for my hour drive home across the mountains.  Yesterday I stopped at the library to pick up the books on hold for me.  I limped across the parking lot; I limbered up quickly, but I always forget how hard teaching is on the body, hard in a different way than my summer chaplaincy training.

I still have an old-fashioned approach to first class days.  I hand out a syllabus and talk about the upcoming class.  I don't read the syllabus, but I like having it on paper.  I like having a handout.  Some years I experiment with a getting to know you exercise.  This year I won't be doing that on the first day of class, maybe not at all.  I just didn't have the brain space to create it.  But yesterday, I walked past other classrooms where people were doing interesting activities, with phones turned into clickers and interesting projections on the wall, which made me wonder if I should plan something interesting for the second day of class.

Yesterday I explained that we will be a mostly technology free classroom.  There are days when we'll use the technology, and we'll be seeing how our writing process changes.  We'll also be experimenting with AI, the large language models that inform ChatGPT and the AI tools now woven into so much of the internet and Microsoft Office.  

I expected some push back; so far, there has been none.  One woman who is older explained that if her phone buzzed, she'd need to go outside to take the call to make sure her child isn't at the school nurse, but she would take care of any issues quickly.  I said, "That's exactly the way I would want you to handle this."

As I was driving home from Williamsburg on Monday, I heard this episode of the NPR program On Point.  The guests talked about how we use our brain, and how we retain information.  The last part of the show included information about generative AI.  It was no surprise to me that experiments demonstrated that people who write information by hand retain it longer and in more useful ways.  Typing information on a keyboard or a touch screen isn't as effective.  Feeding a prompt into an AI search engine is not effective at all.

This morning, I'm listening to a New York Times conversation about AI in classrooms--excellent information presented by people who are either teaching or doing extensive research.  I am hoping that this link gets you to a gift article where you can read the transcript or listen.  The conversation does a great job at discussing what AI can and cannot do.

In my classes, I've designed the grading differently this semester.  We'll be doing lots of in class writing, as we have always done, but this year, the in person writing will count for more of their grade--40-60%.  They will use the in person writing to create three revisions which will be graded; they will turn in the daily writing and the revision.

Much of the in class writing will be done by hand, on paper.  They will generate a lot of rough drafts, and they will have an incentive to come to class.  It's an experiment, and we'll see how it works.  And it's not that far away from other semester-long experiments that I've done.

Whipsawed in August

It is the morning for the blog post that says that I am whipsawed.   I am often whipsawed in August, as whatever has been happening in the summer will transition to whatever will be happening in autumn.  This year, there's the additional element of my mom's health scare. She seems to be on the mend, and once again, we've avoided the more dire scenarios.  At some point, our luck will run out, but happily, not this year.

It's been strange taking an unexpected trip up to help my parents.  My unhelpful patterns try to reassert themselves during times of stress and anxiety, which I think is the norm for most people.  Happily, I know what to expect, so I bought pretzels for times of overeating:  not a lot of nutritional value, but not as much harm as other choices.  I've managed to continue in my abstinence experiment in terms of alcohol--hurrah for me.  I practiced prayer and deep breaths and gave myself permission to have some treats, like ice cream.  Well, that's not exactly true--I've been eating a daily bowl of ice cream since mid-June when I had the cold that didn't go away for weeks.

Today I drive down to Spartanburg for the first day of classes.  Wow.  I am ready for a change, but I'm also tired.

It's also strange to think in terms of chaplaincy training, which continues, despite my going back to teaching.  I have a big, final paper to write, which I'll start on once I finalize these syllabi.  I'm done with the syllabi for today's classes, but tomorrow's classes still need some work.

Speaking of syllabi, let me give myself permission for a shorter blog post this morning.  Let me see if I can get my syllabi for tomorrow's classes complete.

The Glory Days of Older Movies and Outer Space

In addition to taking trips down memory lane by way of song this week, I've also been watching old movies.  I thought we would have movie afternoons, but afternoons have been full of naps.  So watching movies in the evening has been a great way of turning our attention away from the national news and getting ourselves settled.

I wanted to choose movies that we've all seen before.  I thought it might help to have something that's not challenging us to keep track of new characters and different plotlines.  On Saturday, we watched Hannah and Her Sisters, which I saw with Mom and Dad in a movie theatre when it was first released in 1986.  Dad came home from a business trip where he had seen it and loved it so much that he wanted to watch it again.  So we did.

They had no memory of ever seeing it, but they were open to it.  They laughed at all the funny parts.  We all stayed awake through the whole movie--no small thing.  I tried not to think of revelations about the more sordid side of Woody Allen that were to come, a reason I can't watch Manhattan again.  There were a few lines that made me wince, but overall, it holds up well.

Mom said she didn't understand it, and Dad said it was a great movie.

Last night, we watched Apollo 13.  After the death of Jim Lovell this week, it seemed fitting.  Plus I figured the plot line would be easy to follow:  doomed spaceship and astronauts trying to get home.  I was right--we were rivetted.

In the past, I've written an extensive blog post about my sadness thinking about the space programs of the past and wondering why we let all of that slip away.  Last night as we watched the credits, I felt a similar sadness about great movie making of the past.  I saw Apollo 13 in a movie theatre when it was first released.  It has been a long time since I saw a movie in a movie theatre, and even longer since I saw a movie trailer and thought that I needed to see it on a big screen, not a small one.  

Most movies these days don't seem like they're worth the time or the money or the effort.  I know it's because I'm not the target audience for many of them--if I liked big budget super hero movies, I'd be writing a blog post about how we're in a golden age.

I look at our movie landscape in 2025, and I don't see big budget movies that will make multiple generations happy.  There's very little being released today that I can conceive of seeing with both my parents and my nephew--or even with my spouse.  Sigh.

But let me not lose myself to sadness today.  Let me be happy that we could stream this movie in ways we could not 30 years ago--and for the same price that a video rental cost in 1995--about $3.00.  Let me be happy that we could sit on a sofa and watch a great piece of filmmaking together.

Papa Don't Preach and the Other End of Age

My recent singing of Prince's "Raspberry Beret" with different words (which I wrote about in this post) led me to some additional thoughts:

--I needed to snap myself out of a morning funk, so I sang Madonna's "Papa Don't Preach"--softly because I was at my parents' house.  No, this is not one of my usual go-to songs to snap myself to a better mindset.  But I heard it on my long drive to Williamsburg on Tuesday night and it's stuck in my head.

--The line about keeping my baby led me to do some math.  If the speaker in that song had kept her baby in 1986, that baby would be 39 years old, and let's assume the mom would be 16 or 17 years older, so 55 or 56.  I thought of the papa in the story, who likely now needs some assistance in his twilight years.  I thought of a short story, but that's been done to death. 

--I'd love to create a poem, but again, not around the issue of elder care or teenage pregnancy.  I want to write about caring for aging parents when we're all just flabbergasted that we've become this old.  In their minds, they're my age.  In my mind, I'm 32.  In some ways, we're reverting back to my adolescent years, with lots of focus on who should be eating what.  There's body shaming, both the kind we did during my adolescence, and the shame that comes with aging bodies that know exactly how old they are and lose no opportunity to remind us.

Saturday Scraps: Ice Cream and More

Saturday seems to be my day of collecting scraps that may or may not make a larger cloth.  Let me do that here:

--I have been in Williamsburg helping my parents recover from my mom's hospitalization.  For the past two days, I've taken them to doctor's appointments, and we've worn masks.  I've been thinking about those Covid years, especially as the news has come about HHS and the decision by RFK Jr. to discontinue funding MRNA vaccine research.  This current administration breaks my heart in many ways, but all the science progress which will be lost is one of the more significant heartbreaks. 

--Yes, I know that I'm speaking from a place of privilege, that if I had loved ones with immigration issues, the heartbreak would be a different one.  So many heartbreaks, significant and small, across so many parts of modern life in the U.S., in just 6 months.  

--But let me also capture happier moments, like the time earlier this week before my trip, when a colleague said she thought it would be fun to be retreat leaders together.  That may be the best compliment of the summer.

--This has been a sober summer, in terms of drinking.  It's the longest stretch of consecutive alcohol-free days I've had since . . . well, I'm not sure.  Probably 2005 or so.  That in itself is sobering.  I last had a glass of wine on June 15, so I'm finishing my 8th week with no alcohol.  I do worry that I've substituted an evening bowl of ice cream for wine, but that's a healthier switch.

--Soon it will be time to switch my full-fat ice cream for something with less fat and calories, if such a creation exists.

--I created this Facebook post yesterday:  "Later today, I will dish up ice cream. My mom will choose raspberry sorbet. I will sing, "She'll have some raspberry sorbet" to the tune of Prince's "Raspberry Beret," and I'll be the only one who gets the pop culture reference, but that will be O.K. because my mom is still here to eat raspberry sorbet, and so is my dad, and it's summer, and we have a wide variety of ice cream to choose from, each one deserving of its own song." It seems to have a bit of poetry--could it become a poem?

The Poetry of the Playlist, for Reviewers and for Students

I have spent a delightful morning pondering Bruce Springsteen--we are almost to the 50th (gasp!) anniversary of the release of the Born to Run album.  Born in the U.S.A. was my Springsteen entry point in the late summer of 1984, and then I got Born to Run later that autumn, in November.  I liked it alright, but I don't think that any other Springsteen album has captured my heart and imagination like Born in the U.S.A.

On the NPR program Fresh Air, I listened to this interview with Peter Ames Carlin, which explored the making of Born to Run--a fascinating glimpse of the creative process.  Before I listened to that interview, I read Peter McWhorter's piece in The Washington Post (hopefully a gift essay to read throughout the ages) about the Springsteen playlist that he listened to seven times--that's all of Born to Run, plus eleven songs:  “Rosalita,” “Prove It All Night,” “Brilliant Disguise,” “The River,” “Spirit in the Night,” “The Promised Land,” “Backstreets,” “Badlands,” “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” “The Rising,” and “New York City Serenade.”

By listening to the playlist seven times, he gained a new appreciation for Springsteen, particularly the poetry of Springsteen.  He has some interesting insights about poetry and the 21st century person:  "My Bruce immersion teaches me that the reason poetry on the page is such a rarefied taste in America today isn’t that Americans don’t have a taste for verse. It’s because there are pop music artists whose lyrics scratch that itch, just as Edna St. Vincent Millay and Robert Lowell once did. Taylor Swift’s music fits into the same category for me, as well as for many people over 40 I have spoken to about her work. I hear her songs as poetry; the music’s job is just to help get it across. And that’s what I hear when I listen to Springsteen: I hear poetry, and I hear Americans’ love of it."

There's also an interesting discussion about why and how the music of Billy Joel is different than that of Bruce Springsteen, and it boils down to the music that shaped them, folk music for Springsteen and Broadway for Joel.

I got some interesting ideas for teaching as I was listening, so let me capture them here:

--During a poetry unit, have students do something similar for the pop culture of their choice.  What scratches the poetry itch in ways that traditional poetry might not?  It could be music or theatre or a movie or a social influencer.

--Have students create a playlist or a watchlist of their favorite artist or artists and an essay about what is revealed by listening/watching across the list.

--Have students imagine the works that are important to them now, and how we'll think about them 50 years from now.  They could write about how the work has shaped them now and then imagine themselves 50 years from now.  Will the work speak to them differently?

Time Wrinkles: Octavia Butler Podcasts and Apocalyptic Texts

I spent much of yesterday the way I have spent Wednesdays for the past two months:  sitting in an Education day, except that instead of sitting around a conference table, I was at my parents' desk, being connected remotely to the interns and supervisor around the conference table.  Today, instead of driving to Spartanburg for meetings and faculty development, I will sit at the dining room table, finishing my sermon for Sunday, which someone else will deliver, and then working on syllabi.

I will also take my dad to his doctor's appointment and remind my mom and dad that it's time to eat the meals that I will provide/prepare/serve.  Tonight after dinner, we will probably watch the national news on PBS and MSNBC.

Last night we watched the news on those two shows, and I continue to be astounded at how the Jeffrey Epstein story dominates still.  It's not that way when I listen to NPR.  I see a story here and there in The Washington Post and The New York Times, but the Epstein story of the day is just one story among many.  I predict that future generations, should humanity survive, will also be astounded at how much time and mental energy this Epstein story, whatever it turns out to be, took over.

Is something being covered up?  Yes, probably, judging by the frantic efforts to keep from releasing whatever isn't being published.  Does it involve high-up government people?  Yes, probably, judging by the frantic efforts to keep from releasing whatever isn't being published.  Will it be important in 10 years?  One hundred years?  What aren't we seeing because we are consumed by this story?

After the endless blathering on TV news networks, my dad said, "I don't really understand that story."  Once I might have tried to explain it.  Last night, I said, "No one does."

Watching MSNBC exhausted at me--all of these people on a panel of 4 who agreed with each other, discussing at high volume with pointy fingers.  

This morning, I'm listening to old podcasts of Toshi Reagon and adrienne maree brown discussing Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower.  Yesterday, I read this blog post of mine, which references this episode of the podcast, about to-go bags, which made time wrinkle a bit for me.  The podcast was recorded in June of 2020, I first heard it in February of 2021, and now it is 2025, and while much has changed, much has reverted in this time of a second Trump administration.

I listened to that podcast when I was returning to writing my apocalyptic novel, a novel that is unfinished.  I thought about other apocalyptic novels that I've thought of writing, the writing plans I thought of at the beginning of June, and now, here it is August--another time wrinkle.

I am also thinking of my new year's goal of 1 revised poem a week, a goal which seems to be slipping away, although there is still time.  But even if I don't get to that goal, having it has returned me to writing poems as the months have gone on.  I will keep it as a goal for 2026--and the remaining months of 2025.

Travel in Dark and Light Shades

If you came to this blog hoping for a post that commemorates the first dropping of an atomic bomb on a city, head over to this older blog post.  I am in that mind space where I feel I have fallen out of time:  is it Saturday?  If not, why am I here and not somewhere else, getting ready for work?  Is it really August?  I went outside to take a mid-morning walk yesterday and went back to get a sweater.

I am in Williamsburg this morning.  I worked a full day at the hospital yesterday, then got in the car and drove 6 hours to Williamsburg.  I could have made the whole trip and been home by the time the day settled into full darkness, but I was stopped by a drawbridge.  

I had a lovely view of sunset colors, but it made the last half hour of the trip rather harrowing:  winding country roads, very dark, headlights behind me, oncoming traffic occasionally.  

The fact that I was in my 14th hour of wearing my contact lenses exacerbated my night vision issues.  Still, I wonder about my car's headlights.  My car did pass the safety inspection on Monday, but I need to see if my headlights really are O.K.

A clever blogger would tie these vision issues and illumination issues and Hiroshima anniversary into a poetic post, but I am not that blogger this morning.

Instead my brain is whirling, trying to remember what day it is so that I remember to log on for the today's Education training day in the life I left behind.  I am making a grocery list and kicking myself for not thinking about bringing some pantry staples like barley and lentils--but congratulating myself for remembering to bring a variety of tea and a pitcher to make a gallon of iced tea.

Let me remember to savor this time, even though I am here for a non-social visit, by which I mean, we'll be mostly housebound.  If there's one lesson to come out of Hiroshima and a thousand billion other historical events, it's that life can change in an instant, and we often look back with yearning to the before times 

August Travel in a Different Key

Today I will go to my last regular day of CPE, and actually, it's a little less regular than usual.  I'm going in early so that I can leave early to drive to Williamsburg, so that I can spend the rest of the week helping my parents.  

My mom was in the hospital last week, and my sister was there to help them through that.  Now I will arrive so that she can have a break.  We are doing solo caretaking because we hope that it will be less of a schedule disruption than having more people around--so one of us at a time, and spouses stay home to hold down the fort.

I need to leave Monday to be back to start teaching in-person classes on Tuesday (a week from today!) at Spartanburg Methodist College.  My sister might return to my parents on Monday, if they're not ready to resume life without help.

You might say, "Wait--don't your parents live in a continuing care community kind of place?"

Yes, yes they do.  But they're in an independent living part of the housing, which means they need to be independent.  In a week when neither one can drive, they need help.  We could hire help, of course.  But right now, my sister and I have job flexibility, so we can be there to do it.

Yesterday I spent time writing e-mails to explain my situation.  Even though classes don't start until Tuesday (a week from today!), full-time faculty duties start on Thursday and go through Monday:  faculty development, various meetings, and Convocation.

Happily I have been working in a full-time capacity for a year, so I've accumulated plenty of sick leave.  My dean and department head were wonderfully supportive when I wrote to tell them of my predicament and plan.  Similarly, my CPE supervisor is making it possible for me to do tomorrow's education day from my parents' study.

I have packed the car with all kinds of supplies:  poems to work on, books to read, my sewing basket, art supplies, and of course, this computer will come with me.  It will be a working time away on many levels.  I have syllabi to complete for both my in-person and online fall classes.  I have the final CPE report to write.  I have parents to care for.

But I expect that there will be some periods of down time, and I'm hoping to get a bit of recharging time in.  This summer has exhausted me on many levels.  I realize that autumn may bring a different set of strains.  But I am ready for the shift.

I have thought about previous early August trips I've made:  in 2022 to bring the first load of stuff to seminary for a year of on-campus housing, and several trips to Williamsburg to be with my parents under happier circumstances.  In 2021, we were making trips back and forth between the house we were soon to sell and the downtown condo that we were renting while figuring out what to do next.  These trips often seem like a change in key, to use a musical term.  Let's see what this August trip brings, whether the key will be to a major or a minor.

Seasonal Disarray

Yesterday I realized it was the last day to use a coupon at Michaels, the kind of coupon that I got because of past spending.  It was only for $5.00, but I will need a new sketchbook soon.

Yes, I have sketchbooks, but I use a particular type for my early morning practice.

It has been so long since I went to a retail place that I forgot what a nightmare it can be:  more shoppers, more traffic, that kind of nightmare.  I was hoping for a seasonal respite, since retail places are usually months ahead.  I was looking forward to some early autumnal vibes.

No such luck.  I came home and made this Facebook post:

"Went to Michaels to use $5.00 off coupon that expires at the end of the day--I was hoping for an autumnal infusion, but the place was in disarray, just like my sense of the season: clearance priced summer beach stuff mixed with incoming Halloween stuff, along with random baking supplies on sale and back to school supplies of unmarked prices. With my coupon and the buy one, get one at 50% off deal, I did get a free sketchbook when I bought one sketchbook, so at least I was able to get what I came for--in fact, double what I came for!"

The Hinge Festival of Lammas

 Early August is a hinge point in the calendar. In some ways, it's not as obvious a hinge as the autumnal equinox or the summer solstice; in fact, it's the time directly between those two hinges--we're as far away from the start of summer as we are from the start of autumn. But in some ways, it's just as significant a point of seasonal shift.

If we lived in medieval England, we would be celebrating the festival of Lammas, a festival that celebrates first harvests with loaves of bread standing in for that first harvest.  There might be processions to bakeries, to bless them and to bless the bakers.  

It would be a festival that celebrates abundance, the abundance that comes later in a cooler climate.  Of course, we here in Appalachia are celebrating that abundance too, with piles of zucchini showing up at every gathering for people to take.

We may have slogged through summer long enough that we may feel that nothing will ever change--it will be hot and humid forever. The light hasn't changed significantly, the way it will in a month or two. But we are losing more daylight each day as we hurtle towards a different season. Students aren't in school yet, but the time draws closer. Most of us aren't agricultural people anymore, but if we were, we'd be seeing crops in their final ripening. Harvest would be coming soon.


Now is a good time to take an accounting. Have we been planning some summer festivities that we haven't gotten to do yet? Now is the time. Do we need to adjust our trajectories for the rest of the year? Let us make some plans.