Teaching Anxiety and Gratitude

I have been feeling anxious this morning, which is strange for a woman who will have a fall break this week.  Of course, midterm grades are due tomorrow, which is probably why I'm feeling a bit anxious.  But I have most of the grading done--so why anxiety?

I also have last week's travel done--again, I would have thought my anxiety would be dying down, not flaring up.

It may have to do with today's lesson plans.  I have a plan, so why anxiety?  But it might rain, which means going out to observe our trees again may not be the best plan.  I changed my approach in Creative Writing so that I have time to find more poems for next week--it should work fine, but who knows (it will be a variation on the process I described in this blog post, poem writing when we don't feel inspired).

Let me focus on some gratitudes--and then I'll shower and head on down the mountain:

--My travel was fairly easy yesterday, despite a day of rain.  The rain was mostly light, and it wasn't the tropical hurricane type rain that might have happened, if the hurricane had moved differently.

--My teaching review was fine; I got the evaluation back and read it this morning.  That also happened last week, and while I thought it was fine, I always like confirmation.

--I slept for part of the night with the sound of gentle rain.

--I have fall break this week; I feel like I really need it.

--The retreat went well, and before that, the reunion with grad school friends went well.

Keeping Our Lamps Trimmed and Burning

I've had the spiritual "Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning" in my head for much of the week-end:  "Keep Your Lamps, Trimmed and Burning, for this work is almost done.  Children don't grow weary."  It was the anthem for Sunday worship at St. Stephens, and it was also the theme for the women's retreat that the church offered, the retreat where I led workshops on spiritual journaling (more on those workshops in this blog post).  

It was a great retreat, with lots of thoughts on what keeps us on fire and how our lights are threatened by candlesnuffers everywhere.  It was a rich subject, and we could have spent a week or more on the subject.

I was most moved by the closing worship for the retreat.  We gathered around the paschal candle in the worship sanctuary.  Earlier in the retreat, we had thought about something that's important to us that we worry will be lost.  My list could have been long, but we were asked to choose one to bring with us to closing worship.  

As we entered the worship space, we were given small candles, the kind that we get on Christmas Eve.  At the end of the short worship, each woman came to the paschal candle and lit her candle while she said the thing that was important.  The whole assembly said, "Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burning."

We heard things like "freedom" and "democracy" along with specific items.  Mine was "the idea of the value of a liberal arts education."  I loved that we took time for each woman to state her item and we met each offering with a prayerful chant.

We ended with a song, "I Want to Walk as a Child of the Light," and not for the first time, I reflected on how wonderful it is to sing together.  I am much more used to sitting in spread out sanctuaries where I only hear my own voice.  I much prefer to sing in closer quarters, where I can't hear any individual voice.

It was also a great way to close the retreat.  We have much work to do, but it was good to remember that we're not doing it alone.

A Tale of Two Writing Workshops

Yesterday, I facilitated two writing workshops; the topic was spiritual journaling.  The approach was the same, but the attendance was different.

I presented a variety of writing prompts with time to write.  We didn't have time to read our writing out loud to each other, and I wouldn't have done that, even if we had lots of workshop time.  If we had had more time, I might have had us do some out loud processing of the writing experience itself. 

Here's what we did:

--I had objects on a table (yes, that old chestnut--but I haven't ever done it with this group), and I had people choose several.  Then we wrote for 5 minutes.  Because it's a religious retreat, I added 2 minutes of writing about what God might be saying to us through the object.

--We wrote to our current selves.  We wrote in the voice of ourselves 20-50 years from now.  We wrote in the voice of our younger selves, the women we were when we were 18-20 years old.   After doing that, we wrote in the voice of God:  Creator, Redeemer, Holy Spirit and/or The Trinity.

--Because writing in the voice of God might have felt sacrilegious, I had us make a list of what's bringing us joy and then talked about the Ignatian ideas of consolation and desolation, and the value of making that list at the end of the day.  We also talked about gratitude lists.

--I handed out two double-sided sheets of writing prompts.  We talked about the value of doing spiritual journaling alone and with a group.  

--I also talked about non-word ways of journaling, like sketching or taking a daily photo.

--I reminded us that two thousand years of spiritual practices gives us lots of options, and the assurance that if we've dropped a practice and want to return, we can.

The first workshop was just before lunch, and we had less time than the scheduled 45 minutes, which was fine with me.  It was a completely full workshop:  people had three to choose from.

In the afternoon, a workshop was added:  the chance to meet with the retreat leader.  My afternoon spiritual journaling workshop had one person.  So that it would feel less strange to us both, I decided to do the prompts too.  It turned out to be a nice variation.

Originally I had planned to leave Williamsburg today, but I decided that I needed to be gentle with myself and that my Monday students can have a writing day without me.  I'm glad that I have an extra day to linger in the satisfaction of a good retreat.

Hurricane Helene, One Year Later

At this time a year ago, I'd be up and about, as I always am, doing some hurricane tracking, thinking about last minute packing.  A year ago, my plan was to wait for sunrise and then drive to Williamsburg, where I was scheduled to lead a writing workshop at my mom's women's retreat.  A year ago, I thought I might wait until mid-morning to leave, when I expected the worst of the rain from the remnants of Hurricane Helene to be over.

By mid-morning, trees were crashing all around our neighborhood.  Thankfully, none fell on our house, but some of our neighbors were not so lucky.  When I saw big trees across the neighborhood roads, I realized I wasn't leaving in the afternoon.  I asked my neighbor across the street if she thought I could get out of town on Saturday morning.  She said, "I don't think you'll be going on your trip."

She was right.  By afternoon, North Carolina authorities advised that all roads in western North Carolina be considered impassible.  Of course, I didn't know that, because I was trying to conserve cell phone power.  Our power went off just before 5:30 a.m. and didn't come back on for over a week.  Internet and water proved harder to restore.  We did have running water for all but a few days.  We had to boil it, but it did come clear out of the taps, so it was safe for flushing and relatively safe for showers (I was careful not to let any get in my eyes or mouth).  We were without internet for 20 days, and happily, most days our phones could work as a hotspot.

This year, I am in Williamsburg, hoping to lead my writing workshop today.  This year, it is raining, and I'm reminding myself that I am safe.  This year, I'm saying a prayer for all those who will find today a tough day, with hurricane memories and other triggers.

You Are the Tree, You Are the Board, You Are the Sawmill Blade

I have some potential poets in classes where I might not expect to find them.  Yesterday, in my English 100 class (the pre-college writing class), we breezed through the material I had prepared.  I had this worksheet, along with a list of words that might inspire ways to fill in the blanks.

The tree sings __________________  at night. 

The tree yearns for ________________________. 

The tree misses __________________________. 

_________________________ misses the tree. 

 The tree contains a secret which is __________________. 

The tree’s favorite color is ___________________________. 

 The tree’s best friend is _________________________. 

The tree resembles this human made object. 

The tree wraps itself in a quilt made of ___________________. 

The tree goes _______________________ for vacation. 

The tree wishes you knew ____________________________. 

It was much too early to end class, so I had them do some free writing in response to prompts.  I designed it to be quick free writing, so if one prompt didn't work, another would be on the way soon.  They would write for 2-3 minutes without stopping.

After doing that, I told them that I wanted them to write 15 lines of writing, which might be like the poem we read (Joy Harjo's "Speaking Tree"), or it might be different--but it had to show them thinking creatively about a tree, not just descriptively.

As you might expect, the responses were varied.  But some made imaginative leaps that were delightful.  Between the free writing and the fill in the blank worksheet, some students came up with some truly creative ways to think about trees.

Here are the freewriting prompts:

--You wake up tomorrow morning, and you discover that you are a tree, outside there, on the quad of the campus.  Describe how you feel and what you see.

--The next morning, you wake up, and you are a single leaf on the tree.  Describe life from the viewpoint of that leaf.

--The next morning, you are soil, the dirt beneath the tree.

--The next morning, you are a bird.

--The next morning, you are the bird's nest.

--The next morning, you are this door, made of wood that was once a tree.

--The next morning, you are the blade of the saw mill that transformed the tree into wood for boards to make doors and furniture and lumber.

--The next morning, you are a saw mill.  Are you abandoned?  Transformed into something else?  Or are you still transforming trees into boards?

--It's a hundred years from now.  Write about life from the perspective of one of the above.

At some point, I should try this exercise myself.  It worked so well for my students that I'd like to see how it works for me.

Reunion, with Tea

I am sitting in a hotel room in Columbia, South Carolina.  Soon I will go to breakfast with grad school friends who are in town as part of their grand North American tour.  They live in England, but both of their sons live in the U.S., one on each coast.

Yesterday we had a grand tea.  My English grad school friend made scones, and I brought 2 sweet treats:  raspberry streusel bars and butterscotch bars.  I've posted the recipe for butterscotch bars before (go here), but search as I might, I could never find the recipe that I used for the raspberry streusel bars.  So I experimented.

On Sunday, I realized I had forgotten to put in much sugar.  Happily, I realized it as I was assembling it, so I used a bit of brown sugar.  They were very crumbly because I always try to use less butter.  So on Tuesday, I tried again.

I wanted these bars to work because they were my vegan and gluten free offering.  I used too many frozen raspberries, so the bars were a bit soggy.  Happily, everyone loved them.  

The scones were the stars of the show, as they deserved to be.  And there were other treats.  We had delicious finger sandwiches.  I forget how wonderful a cucumber sandwich with cream cheese can be. There were some petit fours and slices of apple.

But of course, the real treat was being together.  Long ago in grad school, we gathered every Saturday.  We each brought a treat to share, and we worked on various craft projects.  Many of us in those days were working in embroidery of sorts:  counted cross stitch, crewel, tapestry.  I remember going to various craft stores and wishing I could afford the pre-assembled kits.

I also remember wondering if we should be working on writing projects--and not the research for grad school type of writing assignments.  Most of us had dreams of writing a novel or some other long-form piece.  Of course, it's much easier to sit in a group and socialize over sewing than to socialize over writing.

And now, here we are, decades later.  I am grateful that it is still good to be together, even if the parameters have changed.

Perfect September Weather, with Brewery and Haiku-Like Creation

It has been a week of perfect autumnal weather, the kind of September weather I used to envy when we lived in South Florida, and we had months to go before we would get any relief from relentless heat.  It's been the kind of weather where we have warm/hot days followed by cool nights and misty mornings.  There's rain here and there, but nothing that disrupts plans.

Yesterday I drove home, and during an hour drive, I had blazing sun, a brief rain that took visibility to near zero, and clouds of all sorts.  We headed to a nearby brewery where our neighborhood group was having one of our get togethers.  I'm the person in charge of planning get togethers for the neighborhood, so I was pleased at how many people came.  I chose the brewery that has a covered sitting area outdoors, the one that has the most outdoor space under cover.  

The picture gives you a sense of the outdoor area--but what you only get a glimpse of is the uncovered outdoor area, which is as big as the covered area, with picnic tables (some with umbrellas, some not).  It's a great space.

There was a food truck, but they only offered Philly cheesesteak sandwiches, which is not my thing.  But they had the most delicious fries I've had in a long, long time.  It helped that we got them the moment they were out of the fryer.

This morning, I'll go for a shorter walk than usual.  I'm being observed this morning in my English 101 class, so I want to give myself plenty of travel time.  I'm not stressed about the observation itself, which is a nice change of pace.  I know that the people in charge are not looking for a reason to get rid of me, and that's not always been the case in my teaching life.  But I don't want traffic to snarl up my headspace, so I'll give myself extra travel time.

Here's a photo from Monday's walk, in which the mist enthralled me, and I stopped to get the perfect photo to go with the haiku I composed while I walked.  I'll post the haiku-like creation below the photo:

Misty cathedral
composed of early bird song
baptism by fog

Autumn Arrives with Summery Temperatures and Pumpkins

Today is the autumnal equinox.  We had what felt like an early fall back in the last days of August, and in the last few days, it's felt like summer is making a comeback.  Yesterday as we made the trip over the mountains to Bristol, I noticed more trees that have changed color, but the mountainside overall still appeared green.  Such is the nature of this transitional time.

For two weeks now, I've had the garland that I made out of fabric scraps draped over the mailbox.  Now I've added some small pumpkins!

On Saturday I had planned to go to a farmer's market to pick up some pumpkins.  I stopped at Walmart to get some nuts for some baking I planned to do.  I realized I could do my autumnal shopping at Walmart and save myself a trip.  I feel somewhat guilty about shopping at these big stores at all, and particularly when I'm not supporting local farmers.  I am also aware that I could go to the farmer's market and not find pumpkins at all.  So I bought the pumpkins and also a mum.

And of course, I tend to spend most autumns buying pumpkins, so it's not a one-shot opportunity.  And as I posted on Facebook, yes, I do realize I'm running a bed and breakfast for squirrels and bears.  But the collection of pumpkins at my fence post and mailbox gives me joy, and I hope it gives my neighbors joy.

I had thought I would spend the afternoon on Saturday baking, but instead, I spent it revising a sermon for Sunday (yesterday), writing the sermon for next Sunday (September 28) when I'll be away, and doing some grading for my online classes.  It was a pleasant afternoon, and I do realize I may see it as pleasant even more so, since the sermon delivery went well yesterday morning (go here to see a recording of it).

It was a good week-end.  Here's hoping that this first week of autumn will be similarly good.

Eighth Covid Shot, Last Covid Shot?

Yesterday after a great class finishing up Frankenstein in my British Lit class, I drove the hour back home, and my spouse and I went to Ingles, our local grocery store, where we hoped to get both flu shots and Covid boosters.  We are neither one of us over 65, but my spouse has some health conditions (early cardiopulmonary disease) that we thought might get us qualified.  I'm happy to report that we were successful in getting both shots.

I do wonder if this time is the last we'll get Covid shots.  Last year I assumed that getting a Covid booster and a flu shot would be part of our autumnal rituals.  This year, the future is much less clear, and not only for these vaccines.  

The last few days have brought a lot of public handwringing over the indefinite suspension of Jimmy Kimmel.  I haven't ever seen his late night show.  I remember him from his days in the 1990's as the sidekick in Win Ben Stein's Money; from what I could tell, he was on there in the hopes that jock/frat boy types would keep watching the show.  He's had more staying power than I would have predicted when I watched that show.

In terms of first amendment rights being erased, I'm much more worried about ordinary people who have been losing their jobs because of stray remarks or social media posts done on the employee's own time.  I drove home on Thursday and heard a South Carolina state legislator talking about a professor at Presbyterian College.  Friday morning I looked back over my blog and Facebook posts.  I've always been careful what I post, so I didn't see any cause for alarm.

You might accuse me of self-censorship, of obeying in advance, of giving up my first amendment rights without using them.  But I've been blogging a LONG time, and I remember even earlier days of blogging, when we all tried to be careful about how much about our personal lives we revealed.  Some of us had jobs we wanted to keep, and some of us were aware the a lot of creeps out there might use personal information for nefarious purposes.

We had no idea how many creeps were out there and how many nefarious purposes there could be.

This morning, I went back through my blog for a different reason:  I wanted to remember past Covid shots.  Last year was my 7th booster, so yesterday was my 8th booster.  Last year and 2022, I got my booster at the same time in September.  In 2023, it was a bit later, in October.  I remember being thrilled when I got us the appointment for our first Covid vaccines.  The moment we were eligible, at 7 a.m., I started dialing for appointments, and I later wrote this blog post about it.  At the time I thought about the fact that I used to do this dialing to try to get concert tickets and now it was for a vaccine.

That post is so hopeful.  I would never have dreamed that we would come to a day when we'd need to worry about vanquished childhood diseases making a comeback, even as people who suffered from polio and measles in childhood are still with us.  I am one of the last of a generation who routinely had chicken pox.  I can't imagine why we want to unleash that on children again--or on adults, who will have childcare and work disrupted when their children are infected.

On a more mundane note, I have no side effects to report, only than sore arms--a small price to pay, if it means that I'm not laid low by these infections.

The Autumn of Life

Yesterday I found myself in my Creative Writing class with my plans for the class upended.  I had planned to give them time in class to write, but we changed the due date to Tuesday, so it makes more sense for Tuesday to be the writing day.

Happily, I had come prepared with the worksheet that I described in this blog post, the Build Your Own Ode to a Season worksheet.  While they did that, I pulled up Keats' "To Autumn" on the Poetry site (the site that has the materials from the magazine, along with many other resources).  We listened to the poem without following along, and then we listened while we followed along, with the poem projected on the larger screen.  And then we talked about it.

What a treat to talk about this poem.  The more I read it, the more perfect it seems.

Because it was a Creative Writing class, we talked about the symbolism of autumn, the symbols themselves and how a story or a poem set in autumn might use that season as a symbol.  It made me think about who is in the autumn of their lives and who is not.

When Keats wrote this poem, he knew that he had TB, and he must have known that he was likely to die--so he was in the winter of his life.

I am 60 years old, so clearly in the autumn of my life.  But I want to think it's early autumn, September not late November.

Last week, I posted this picture, mist rising off the lake.  I can't always capture the mist, but I think I was successful here:

Yesterday I read the first line of "To Autumn":  "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness."  I asked my students if the mornings had been misty lately.  They looked startled.  I realized that they probably wouldn't know.  They're probably up after the sun has risen and burned off the mist.

But here at a higher altitude, it's been very foggy/misty, and I've really enjoyed watching the swirls.  I've thought of past generations, surrounded by fog and mist and smoke, and it's no wonder they believed in ghosts, that they described ghosts the way they did.

I'm feeling a bit haunted myself.  It's strange to teach this poem to students who are not much older than Keats was when he wrote this perfect poem.  It's strange to think how much older I am than my students.  When I first started teaching, I was only a few years older than my students.  Now I am decades older.

Like Keats, I'm haunted by my mortality.  Let this haunting prompt me to do my best work!

When You're a Jet

My spouse has discovered an MGM channel, which I think shows mainly classic movies.  Last night when I came out of my Zoom meeting, he was watching Fiddler on the Roof.  At first I thought it was a remake of the classic film of 50 some odd years ago.  But it was the original.  I caught the end, as the family and the community trudge across a bridge to what is next, and the younger family members decide that going to Poland will get them safety.

I thought of the history of the 20th century, how this decision to go to Poland likely means that this branch of the Jewish family will be wiped out.  I watched that column of Jews leaving the village and thought of all the displaced people in our own time, particularly the people of Gaza and the people of Ukraine.  Life feels particularly fragile now, but it's always been fragile, safety an illusion.

I confess to feeling that the ending was rushed--everyone must leave the village, there's a bit of discussion after dismay, and then everyone packs.  I was startled when the credits started to roll.

And up next, West Side Story, the original film, not the remake.  It, too, felt like a remake, a highly stylized one.  It's an interesting concept, a rumble, but with choreographed dancing.   I half expected the expert dancers of my youth, John Travolta and Patrick Swayze to make an appearance.

Long ago, I watched this film with my mom, and then she pulled out the LP of the soundtrack.  We often would watch a movie together and then spend days enjoying the soundtrack together.  A few years later, on a Sunday afternoon, we'd watch A Star Is Born, the Streisand-Kristofferson version, and she had the album, which we enjoyed together, even though much of the music wasn't to either of our tastes at the time.  

I realize I'm lucky to have grown up in a house with all sorts of music.  My dad loved folk music and jazz, and my mom decided that my dad was worth her time because he could intelligently talk about classical compositions, specifically Handel's Water Music.  We had music lessons and choir, and we made all sorts of music, both as individuals and as a family and as larger groups we belonged to.

I thought of this early training during West Side Story, as one of the Jets sings, "When you're a Jet, you're a Jet all the way, from your first cigarette to your last dying day."  I am grateful to have had this early musical training and grateful for good movies which still bind us together.

Hildegard of Bingen's Visions and Our Own

Yesterday I was listening to the songs of U2; this morning it's Hildegard of Bingen.  I was listening to this YouTube recording, but one has plenty to choose from.  More of her music still exists than any other medieval composer.

Here is the frontispiece from Scivias, a work that she wrote that describes 25 religious visions she received.  There is debate about whether or not she created the illuminations that I'm including in this blog post, but I love them.  Here she is shown dictating the vision and sketching:

I continue to be astonished each year, as her feast day approaches, when I consider her life and how much she accomplished.  I usually end that sentence with these words:  "for a woman in the 12th century."  But truly, she accomplished an astonishing amount for a human alive in any century:  she was an abbess, and because being in charge of one cloistered community isn't enough, she founded another. She wrote music and poems and a morality play and along the way, a multitude of theological meditations. She wrote to kings, emperors and popes to encourage them to pursue peace and justice.   She was an early naturalist, writing down her observations about the natural world and her theories about how the natural world heals us.

It's interesting to think about the different types of groups who have claimed her as their own. Feminists claim her importance, even though she didn't openly advocate equality. Musicians note that more of her compositions survive than almost any other medieval composer. Her musical works go in different directions than many of the choral pieces of the day, with their soaring notes. New Age types love her views of the body and the healing properties of plants, animals, and even minerals. Though her theology seems distinctly medieval, and thus not as important to modern Christians, it's hard to dismiss her importance as a figure from church history.

I like to think of Hildegard of Bingen smiling at the many ways we've seized her legacy and taken up her mantle. Some of us do that by writing, the way that she did. Some of us have seized her mantle by singing the music that she left us. Some of us tend our gardens, the ones we grow for food, the ones we grow for herbs, the ones we grow for the beauty of the flowers, the interior gardens that we may or may not share. Some of us take on the Hildegard's mantle when we scold bishops and legislators and remind them of the obligation of creating a more just society. We wear Hildegard's mantle as we care for the next generations, some of whom we're related to biologically, some of whom we will never meet.

Poems and Chocolates and U2 on a September Tuesday Morning

It's been a strange morning, strange but satisfying.  I began it as I do most Tuesday mornings, by reading Dave Bonta's weekly Poetry Blog Digest and exploring some of the blog posts.  Rachel Barenblat's post includes an amazing poem, which made me weep.  It's the perfect poem for a week of shootings, and sadly, multiple shootings is a hallmark of almost every week these days. 

I also wanted to hear U2's "Shadow and Tall Trees," so I went to a YouTube site, and after each U2 song has come another.  But they've all been from the early years, The Joshua Tree and earlier--such powerful music!

Some of it I haven't heard in decades.  I'm getting deep cuts from the October album for example.  I remember it as an album that I bought and didn't really listen to much; I wanted to be listening to War, and so I did.  And yet, I remember the songs still.  I don't listen to music that way much anymore.

I am also struck by the way the lyrics twine together contemporary politics and ancient religious texts and concepts.  Wow.

As always, this music takes me back to earlier falls:  the autumn of 1983 when I first bought a lot of this music on vinyl (War and October and Boy), the autumn of 1984 when I had The Unforgettable Fire in constant rotation.  That music made me think of listening to my own recordings on cassette as I drove across South Carolina to see my grandmother in Greenwood, SC.

Those memories made me think of her Whitman's Sampler and the time I got one of my own, on sale, at a local drugstore, during the spring of my last year at Newberry College.  Finally I could eat as many of the chocolates as I wanted!  My grandmother only ate one at a time, spaced out across many days, making that box last as long as possible.  It will surprise no one that being able to eat as much of the box as I wanted in one sitting was not as satisfying as I always imagined.  Ah, the heartbreak of grown up life!

I've been trying to write a poem out of it all, and I'm a bit haunted by thinking that I've already used this material but I can't remember if I really have or if I thought that it would make a good poem.

I've continued with the poem composing, and I like this line:  Sugar soaked mouth unsatisfied

I've also done some sketching and noted the way a mostly dried up marker looks like tree bark on the page.  That, too, seems like it should be a metaphor for something, but in a different poem.

I woke up this morning thinking that I was going to blog about reading Mary Shelley's Frankenstein this past week, and being struck by how it speaks to our current conversation/argument about generative AI.  Frankenstein seems timeless in so many ways.  Last year I read it for a seminary class, and the isolation of all the characters was what grabbed me.

I feel so lucky to have this life, and I'm amazed that I managed to stumble into it, being able to teach undergraduates in a small, liberal arts college in South Carolina, just up the road from my the small, liberal arts college where I spent my youth listening to U2 and reading British lit and dreaming of being a poet myself.

Sunday Update: Satisfying Sermons and Disappointing Pizza

Yesterday's worship service went well.  Come to find out, the seminarian who asked to give the sermon is at a Lutheran seminary, and her sermon was just fine.  She did not talk about some of the more polarizing parts of our society, like justice for Palestine or Trumpian politics.  She didn't talk about the assassination of Charlie Kirk.  Her sermon was much more universal, about the need to avoid writing people off, the way that God threatened to do with the Israelites when they worshiped a golden calf.  She tied in all the readings in a way that I rarely do; I usually focus on the Gospel alone.  Hurrah!

On our way home, we talked about the fact that the visiting seminarians will probably be eligible for ordination before I am, and we wondered if they would be interested in the job that Faith Lutheran could offer them.  My guess is that they probably have something different in mind, but I could be wrong.  If it would work out, I would be fine with that.  My goal has always been to be a good caretaker while they found something more permanent.

Our afternoon was more disappointing.  We got a pizza from the Ingles deli, and it was blah, blah, blah.  The one advantage:  it was quick to heat up.  We won't be doing that again.  My problem is that I want pizza made by one of our local places, in all its greasy glory.  My spouse objects to that kind of pizza on every level, primarily cost, but also, it's often structurally compromised (not cooked through, not enough toppings, too greasy).  So we get disappointing options, trying to work around those objections, and often, we're neither one of us happy with the meal.

I was surprised at how hard I had to work so that my disappointment didn't derail the whole rest of the day.  I could have ordered the pizza that I really wanted, but I had already eaten so many bad pizza calories that I didn't like.  My spouse took a nap, and I drifted around the house trying to decide what to do next.  I knew that I was still hungry, so I started a batch of focaccia.  I also made the lentil-barley combo that anchors my weekday lunch.  I'm always looking for ways to make it more interesting, so this time, I tried this recipe from Smitten Kitchen, the lime-cilantro dressing part of the recipe.  It wasn't as heavenly and sublime as the recipe makes it sound, but I decided to use it anyway.

And now it is time for another week to begin.  We are at that time in the semester where I feel a bit panicked about running out of teaching ideas, particularly in English 100, the class before the college level English Composition class.  But I know that I have plenty of ideas, and there's still plenty of time.    

No Sermon Sunday

It's an unusual Sunday.  I don't need to put the finishing touches on a sermon--we have seminarians staying at the church, and one of them has asked to do the sermon.  I said yes.  But I still need to go across the mountain:  there's Confirmation to teach and elements to consecrate and all the other elements of the worship to lead.  

We had a lovely day in Inman yesterday, spending time with my spouse's sister and her husband, exploring the small town shops and the nearby Lake Bowen.   It was good to reconnect.  

We began the day with cinnamon rolls that I had stashed away in the freezer.  I was happy that I remembered to bring a piece of foil so we could heat them up; I even greased the foil.  We ended the day with a meal in a Mexican restaurant. 

We headed home, and I crashed into bed very early, just after 7.  I don't know what left me so worn out, but I suspect that a week of nights of sleep interrupted by my spouse's coughing had much to do with it.  Happily, last night was a quieter night.

Now, let me get ready. 

Breakfasting on Pumpkin Bread

I have breakfasted on pumpkin bread; one loaf is for my sister-in-law, and the other is for us.  When we visit with my in-laws, I'll also offer the pumpkin cinnamon rolls that I made a few weeks ago.  I stashed one pan in the freezer for a later day.  This morning, I woke up worried that we might have more people than expected, so I made the pumpkin bread.  We won't starve.

I am still breakfasting on pumpkin bread; it will never be more delicious than it is right now, still warm from the oven.

It's an unusual Saturday, but the last few weeks haven't been usual either.   I don't need to finish a sermon today, because we have seminarians who are camping out at Faith Lutheran, where I am a Synod Authorized Minister.  They are in Bristol for the big race, and one of them asked to preach the sermon.  I said yes.  I am hoping it goes well; these are not Lutheran seminarians.  But even if it's a sermon with a problematic theology, the congregation will survive.  It's likely not the first sermon with a problematic theology that they will have heard.

But maybe it will be brilliant.  Here's hoping.

Back to today:  I'm not sure what the day ahead looks like.  Will we go to an orchard?  Will we sit and chat for hours?  

What a strange moment in time, with all of my spouse's remaining family within a few hours of us (for my sister-in-law, it's only for a visit).  Let me shift my attention to my online classes so that I'm ready to give family my full attention.

 

Mary Shelley as Sullen Adolescent and Building Our Own Odes

Yesterday was one of those teaching days when my energy level just CRASHED during my first class (first of three).  Was that crash just going to happen regardless?  Was it something about that class and its dynamics?  Something about the time of day?

Happily, I was able to keep going.  In my third class, the Creative Writing class, we had an in-class writing day, and I spent some time with Frankenstein, or more specifically, the readings that come with the Norton Critical edition.  It was great to spend the end of my teaching day remembering what teenagers are capable of producing.

Of course, most of my students are not Mary Shelley.  But if we could go back in time to meet Mary Shelley and her compatriots, we might not see her genius.  I would probably be the one wondering why she was making such disastrous personal choices--could the sex with Percy be that good?

Yes, I am officially old now.

I wish I could have structured the Brit Lit class differently so that we were reading Frankenstein closer to late October, early November.  But we are not.  

We did Keats' "To Autumn" on Wednesday, which was a delight.  Keats perfectly describes the weather we've been having, that shift from summer to autumn, but it's the warm side of autumn, not the kind that makes us know that winter is coming, and it won't be long.

I had such success with the Build Your Own Gothic/Spooky or Build Your Own Detective worksheets in Tuesday's Creative Writing class that I created a worksheet for Wednesday.  We did the worksheet first, then we read the Keats poem.  I'll let them do a revision as one of their Revised Writing options.

Here's the worksheet, in case it's useful:

Build Your Own Ode to a Season


Fill in the blank, and then add some additional thoughts in the space below.


Season of __________________________________________________.


If this season was a human, it would be ______________________________.


The animals associated with this season are _______________________________.


Most common type of weather in this season______________________________.


Parts of nature most associated with this season: ___________________________.


Best and worst foods associated with this season are _________________________.


Rituals and celebrations that are part of this season:____________________________.



In the past, humans saw this season as ____________________________________.

Osama's Sunflowers: A Poem for September 11

In the years since September 11, 2001, I have never not thought about that anniversary each year.  In 2017, it wasn't the first thing on my mind, since we had just had a hurricane, and we were trying to decide if it was safe to return home.  But eventually, I did realize what day it was.

In the years just after 2001, everyone remembered that anniversary each year when it arrived.  Now I have students who weren't born in 2001.  I think of my own reaction to my elders remembering the anniversary of the JFK shooting, which happened just a few years before I was born.  It seemed like such ancient history to me, while it was still very vivid for my elders.  I suspect the same is true of my students.

In 2001, we seemed to have shifted from the violence of assassinations to the violence of terrorist acts.  And now, we have a wide variety of types of violence, and I have no idea where the world is headed.

In 2011, I heard  this interview with Lawrence Wright, who wrote The Looming Tower.  I'm haunted by all the things we missed, all the pieces we didn't put together.  I'm haunted by the folks who say they tried to get a meeting with the President and key staff to go over all of this, but the scheduled meetings were cancelled again and again and again.

It makes me think about my life and all its facets.  What am I missing?  What should I focus upon?

Lawrence Wright told this nugget about Osama bin Laden, who flirted with both terrorism and agriculture, before committing to terrorism.  He loved his sunflowers.  

I understand how people become disaffected enough to leave their sunflowers behind and turn to dreams of destruction.  I'm grateful for my religious heritage that reminds me of the seductive qualities of evil, that warns me not to succumb to that glittery facade.

I continued to think about the terrorist that loved sunflowers, and not surprisingly, that nugget later led to a poem:

Osama’s Sunflowers


The terrorist sits in his armed
compound and watches videos
of himself. He counts
his weapons and yearns
for a nuclear bomb.

The terrorist dreams of hamburgers
and the joy of a cold beer
on a hot day.
The terrorist remembers the grill
he used to have, a container
of gas used to cook,
not to kill.

The terrorist tamps
down his longing
for the sunflowers he used to grow,
their bright smiles turned
towards blue skies.
He wonders about the different trajectory
had he chosen seeds and soil
instead of flame and ash.

Scraps of Time and Time to Write

Even though I've been up since 3 (it's 6:18 as I type this sentence), I feel like I've gotten nothing done.  But I have gotten things done:

--I've submitted both fiction and poetry to The Kenyon Review.

--I've checked on my online students, and even though I didn't grade, I did get an e-mail sent to the students who just started last week.

--I swept the floor.

--I had porridge for breakfast.

Let me capture a few moments from the past days before I go for my walk:

--I started re-reading Harriet the Spy last night.  I find Harriet unlikeable, which was not my reaction when I read it as a child.  Maybe I am re-thinking my plan to re-read childhood favorites.

--I have also been re-reading A Visit from the Goon Squad, which is even better than I remember it being.  I had that reaction the first time I read it, and then was a bit disappointed a few years later when I re-read it.  This time, I'm loving it, while at the same time feeling a bit sad about the fate of all these characters.

--My Creative Writing students had interesting reactions to the chapter from A Visit from the Goon Squad that is a PowerPoint.  Maybe that lesson wasn't the disaster that it first seemed last Thursday when we did it.

--Yesterday I thought I'd go back to more traditional stories.  I wanted something very short, but nothing came to mind.  I thought about Poe, but wasn't sure which one to photocopy.  Then I thought, why make copies?  Everyone's got a device--let them access this Poe site which has A LOT of stories.  So, after talking about stories and Poe, we spent 15 minutes reading Poe stories (I pointed out the first detective story, which was one of the choices).  We talked about Poe some more, and then I gave them two worksheets.   One I created in February to have students create a spooky/Gothic story (see this blog post for the worksheet contents) and one was the Build Your Own Detective Story worksheet, created by a colleague, that inspired me to create the one that more closely matched the class I was teaching (see this blog post for more details).

--The writing went well.  They had half an hour to fill in the worksheets, which require some amount of detail.  Not everyone needed the full time, and even the ones who zipped through the assignment came up with some great ideas.

--Happily, I did too.  I am trying to remember to seize scraps of time throughout the day to do some writing myself.  So far, I'm doing a better job of that than I was this summer.

Hurricane Irma Anniversary

On this day in 2017, we'd have been putting our most valuable possessions in the cars and driving further inland to get away from Hurricane Irma.  It was actually not the most panicked I felt in the lead up to that storm.  That moment came a day or two earlier, when it looked like South Florida might get a direct hit from Irma as a category 4 storm.

The folks in the Keys got to experience Irma as a category 4 storm.  We still had plenty of damage, and in some ways, we never recovered.  Sure, we fixed the damage.  But before Irma, we never fully realized how vulnerable that house was to flooding, and how much more likely we would be having flooding as the sea levels rose.

We could argue that it all turned out O.K.  We sold that house in the height of the South Florida real estate boom, and we sold it just in time.  We closed the deal in January of 2022; we wouldn't be so lucky now.  It took longer to move from contract to closing than we were expecting.  Several offers were rescinded when potential buyers discovered how much flood insurance would cost.

I am relieved to be someplace safer.  Even the experience of Hurricane Helene has not changed my mind, although I do see the irony that we left South Florida, which hasn't had much hurricane damage since Hurricane Irma, and got here in time for the worst natural disaster in North Carolina history.  But my hope here is that we've experienced a once in a hundred year storm, even factoring in climate change.  And we had no damage, so we fared better than many.

In some ways, I feel extraordinarily lucky.  I now have a dream job at Spartanburg Methodist College.  Once again, I thought of how much the world has changed since I last taught some of the literature I'm covering this fall.  Yesterday I taught the poetry of Keats, which I haven't taught since the early years of this century.  Back then, I had to do a bit of explaining about how much more communicable respiratory diseases can be than say, bloodborne diseases like AIDS.  Yesterday, as I was explaining tuberculosis, I thought about the fact that we've now had a global pandemic that my students have experienced personally, although I think tuberculosis is more ghastly than Covid 19, at least now.  We have a vaccine to protect us against Covid 19, although who knows how long those will continue to be available under the current regime.

I am in a place now that I couldn't have seen a way to get to back in 2017, when I was assessing possessions and getting ready for a hurricane.  I have a full-time teaching job at a small, liberal arts college.  I am still writing, and just yesterday, got an acceptance (more on that when the short story appears in South 85 Journal).  I live in a part of North Carolina where the cost of living is MUCH cheaper than in South Florida.  Although housing seems to be similarly expensive everywhere, our insurance and taxes are much cheaper here.

I do realize how lucky we are--not a day goes by when I am not grateful.

Week-end Update: Crafts and Worship

I had a good week-end, despite fighting off a cold.  Unlike in June, my cold responded to cold meds, and so despite some bouts of stuffiness and drippiness, I was able to have a good week-end.  I divide it into two parts:

Crafts for Christmas Retreat

This retreat is very small, and is more like a group of friends renting a house at a church camp to craft together than a retreat at a church camp.  Decades ago, it was a retreat that had dwindling numbers and was discontinued.  These women continued to meet.  Until we moved to our Lutheridge house, I wasn't able to participate.  I am so happy to be able to participate.

Each person brings a craft, and enough supplies for each person to make at least one of the craft.  And then we sit and create and talk and periodically, we put a meal together.  It's a wonderful way to spend a week-end.

On Friday night, I put together a cap out of fleece, which will come in handy when the weather turns cold.  It was the kind of pattern where one makes cuts in long slices, and then we tied the strips into knots.  On Saturday morning, I took lots and lots of small scraps and strung them together into garlands, one autumnal and one in reds and greens for Christmas.  On Saturday afternoon, I made creations out of fairly lights and wooden frames and shells.  It was much more frustrating but ultimately satisfying.

Since I live nearby, I sleep at my house and spend the day at the big retreat house, which works for me.  It's a wonderful way to see retreat friends one more time during the year.

Sunday

The Crafts for Christmas folks stayed until noon on Sunday, but I headed over the mountains to Bristol, Tennessee to preach and preside at Faith Lutheran.  We had a good Sunday.

I was a bit anxious, because yesterday's worship had lots of unusual elements.  It was God's Work, Our Hands Sunday; we collected snacks and treats for faculty and staff at a local high school.  For the youth sermon, I had the youth anoint the hands of the congregation with olive oil saying, "Holy hands for holy work."

We also officially welcomed a new member.  She came to us when the local Episcopal church closed, and she's been worshipping with us through the summer.  My spouse created a short liturgy to welcome her, a liturgy that was similar to the Affirmation of Baptism, but a bit more compact.  It meant more to her than I would have anticipated--hurrah!

After worship, we had donuts to celebrate the welcoming of a new member.  One of our members got better quality donuts, so it felt even more festive.  We are probably the only church in the U.S. that doesn't have a coffee hour after worship, so any time we do anything after worship, whether it be treats or decorating the sanctuary for a change of seasons or having a potluck meal, it feels festive.

And then, sleep

I woke up happy this morning, in part because of a wonderful week-end, in part because I was able to sleep through the night.  Before last night, I had spent at least three nights waking up between 12:30 and 2:00.  I would get up for at least an hour before trying to fall back asleep again.  I have gotten work done in those waking hours, both teaching work and creative work, but I feel better if I sleep through the night.  Happily, last night was the night where I did.  Any time I have sleeplessness for more than 2 nights I worry that I'm resetting my clock.  And then the relief of sleeping through the night is even more.

Paint Patch Poetry Process

I came across the idea of using paint swatches for prompts in Suleika Jaouad's The Book of Alchemy.  One of the essay writers talked about pulling out a paint swatch and writing about whatever comes to mind.  It's not a new idea, of course.  The world is full of objects which might inspire our words.

On Thursday, I took the paint swatches to class and had students take them out to their trees to try to match the color.  They had a whole worksheet to complete, with tasks that had them describe each part of the tree with more depth and tasks that had them observe the tree from various amounts of distance.  For most students, it worked far more effectively than I anticipated.  Hurrah!

I stayed in the classroom so that the students could move back and forth between classroom and tree without worrying about lugging along all their stuff.  In the first classroom, I could watch them work from my vantage point by the windows.  In my second classroom, I had a more limited view.

I hadn't brought a book or grading to do, so I decided to do some writing of my own.  I was less interested in freewriting than in creating a poem.  I decided that for each paint swatch, I'd choose one of the color names and write a line.  I did this seven times, leaving room between each line.

The first swatch was "cold foam," a lovely term for light beige.  I wrote this line:  The cold foam of the ocean.  Another swatch was "wayward willow," and this line came to me:  Wayward willow and salty breezes.

I went back and added lines after the first lines.  So now, the first stanza looked like this:

The cold foam of the ocean

I relish the deserted beach.

The class was far from over, so I did the paint patch pulling exercise again to add additional shading and to inspire new lines.  I got one patch with "pickling spices," and now the original stanza looked like this:

Wayward willow and salty breezes

offer little resistance to the coming storm

pickling spices shaping future events.

On Friday, I returned to the lines and stanzas.  Now the first stanza looks like this:

The deserted beach, a latte

littered with the cold foam

from the ocean, the moon

a harsh barista.

And now, it's not the first stanza.

It was great fun, creating this way.  I usually start with an idea, which makes revision harder for me.  But with this process, I had no commitment to the lines and images.  I had no sure feeling that I was even creating viable lines or headed to a poem.

Yesterday my first thought, as I stared at the lines, was to call it an interesting failed experiment and move along.  But I pushed through, and now I have a fairly decent poem.  

Will I do it again?  Probably.  But even if I don't, it's good to remember that there are many poetry processes.

Creative Writing Teaching Ideas

It wasn't my most sleep-filled night; my spouse is fighting off a cold, and if we had a dedicated guest room, I might have moved into it.  But we don't, so I was up in the middle of the night.  Happily, I got two poetry submissions completed--well, they'll be completed once I print them at the office.  Publication can be part of our annual review, but we won't be punished if publication doesn't happen, as long as we're doing other things.

Yesterday I tried having us read the Jennifer Egan PowerPoint that is a chapter (and a stand-alone short story) in A Visit from the Goon Squad.  It doesn't work as well as I had hoped.  It's hard to read on the classroom screen.  But I was impressed that my Creative Writing students stayed with it.  I decided to let them write the Daily Writing on their own, so that they could refer back to the PowerPoint.

I want to tuck this idea away for my 102 classes next term for those days when I need to be away.  We could look at it together one day, and I could give them the writing assignment for the day when I'm not there.  That way, I could be sure that students had actually looked through the whole thing.

I also had them read the article from The New York Times about a new version of The Wizard of Oz (gift article here).  The reviewer wrestled with whether or not it's even the same movie:  showing it in the venue of The Sphere, which has the movie shown on the inner walls of the sphere, distorts the movie, which has been shortened.  The writing assignment is to address whether or not the PowerPoint is or is not a short story, in the style of this review.  We shall see how it turns out.

As I was walking to my car, I thought about next semester, when I'll be teaching an Advanced Creative Writing class.  I thought about teaching adaptations, specifically Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower, both the original novel and the graphic novel.  Do I really want to teach something that I love so much?

This morning, I had different thoughts.  Could I have the students do some sort of adaptation of their own, an adaptation of a work they already love?  The course description is broad enough that we could go in any number of directions.  Hopefully the students will have some ideas about what they'd like to accomplish.

I would also love to see them adapt some of their own work.  Egan talked about writing a short story one way and then trying a different approach--changing the format or having the focus be on a different character or changing the point of view.  Could Advanced Creative Writing students do the same thing?

But those are thoughts for another day, later this year.  Today I need to make a quick grocery store run to get cold meds for my spouse and the makings for chicken and dumplings.  I will be up the hill most of today and tomorrow at the Crafts for Christmas retreat.

How lucky am I?  Two wonderful retreats in two weeks--just one of the many benefits of not living in South Florida anymore.

And yes, I did have my spouse do a Covid test last night before going out to dinner with retreat friends, just to be sure.  As we were waiting for results, I thought about the current state of affairs with public health and felt sad.  How much longer will we have Covid tests?  Under current "guidance," I am now too young to get the updated vaccine.  Sigh.

Another thing to add to my to do list:  get a flu shot before they become more restricted or banned.  Another to do list item for another day, but not as far away a day as the planning of Spring 2026 classes.

Adopting Trees and Other Calendar Items

At Spartanburg Methodist College, first year students take a required, one credit class that trains/reminds them of the techniques that can make them successful:  academic techniques, meet and greet techniques, involvement techniques.  There are many reasons why I love being at a liberal arts college, and this commitment to student success at every stage, and with a wide definition of success, is one of them. 

One of my colleagues teaches one section, and on Tuesday, she asked me, "Do you have your students adopt a tree?"  I smiled and said yes.  She said, "I saw that written in the calendars of a few of my students, and I knew they must be in your class."

I felt like I had been paid a great compliment.  Even better, I knew that my colleague meant it as a compliment.  I've said it before, and I'll keep saying it--it's WONDERFUL to be at a place where my creative approaches are seen as normal--admirable, too, but normal.  It's WONDERFUL to be at a place where I'm not the only one doing creative approaches.

These days, even people who aren't inclined to take creative approaches are experimenting, often in an attempt to come up with assignments that can't be fed into generative AI.

Today I will begin using the green, brown, and gray paint swatches that I got on Tuesday:

My English 100 students will take the swatches outside with them, to help them learn to describe the colors of their tree more precisely.  My English 101 students will do that, and we will also talk about the names of the colors on the paint swatches, in a way to think more poetically/with more imagination about colors.

Earlier this week, I had my classes try to write instructions:  get us from this classroom to the tree.  Don't just say, "Go outside."  What if we go to the door on the other side of the building.  They wrote directions and then tested them and then wrote about what they learned.

Granted, they weren't as tough testing each other's directions as I would have been.  But they seemed to be learning what I wanted them to learn, and they worked in different small groups than the peer editing groups.  This year, I am looking for ways to have them be in small groups occasionally, since I do think it has benefits, even if I'm not as big a believer in some of the practices, like peer editing, as I once was.

It's good for all of us to move away from the traditional model:  students in desk, teacher at the front, no one moving, not much student talking, too much teacher talking.  As the fourth week of classes comes to an end, I think I'm doing a good job of mixing up activities:  some individual writing, some instruction, some group work, some inside work, some outside work.

  

Trying to Get Back in a Groove

I have that what-day-is-it?, unsettled feeling that often comes after a one day holiday.  My unsettledness is compounded by having travelled on Monday and Tuesday and even still a bit by Quilt Camp.  I've helped my brain calm down a bit by getting papers graded, but my to-do list from last week reminds me that I'm not exactly caught up.

Yesterday as I was travelling from Columbia to Spartanburg I stopped at both Home Depot and Lowes to get paint swatches.  I got a lot of paint swatches.  I'm going to use them for my Adopt a Tree project for my writing classes and also for some other prompts.  I want to remind us that Green and Brown are not necessarily the descriptive words we might assume they are.

I am still in that happy part of the semester, where I'm ablaze with ideas.  There's the little nibble of anxiety creeping in, the worry that we will run out of activities, the worry that I'm not focused on the important tasks.  My absence rate is starting to creep up, and I've weighted the in-class work to be much more of the students' grades--but those factors aren't part of my creeping anxiety.

Let me get ready for my walk; let me remember that it's Wednesday, so it's not my Tuesday-Thursday schedule which is a smidge more leisurely.

Soul Satisfying Week-end

It has been a good week-end.  I will spend this Labor Day holiday driving the short distance to Columbia, SC for a quick overnight visit to some grad school friends, first one, then another.  Tomorrow I will drive back, stopping to teach at Spartanburg Methodist College.

I looked at last year's blog posts to try to remember what I was doing last Labor Day.  One blog post mentioned listening to an interview with Jennifer Egan, and said, "If I ever teach a creative writing class about fiction and/or short stories, I want to remember this podcast. She gives great insight about how she arranged the short stories, about the different types of narration (first person, second person, that intriguing experiment with PowerPoint), about the other writing she's done."

So I listened to it again this morning, since I am teaching Creative Writing and wanted some ideas as we shift to writing stories.  She mentioned that the PowerPoint chapter from A Visit from the Goon Squad is available on her website (go here), and now I have some great ideas for the next few class meetings.  Hurrah!

It's been a good week-end, full of unexpected twists and turns.  I had a good last morning at Quilt Camp on Saturday.  I was invited to be part of leadership; I've been helping, and I'm happy to volunteer in a more focused way.  On Saturday, we did some planning for the next several retreats.

My spouse noticed that Saturday was Play Music on Your Front Porch Day, so we had an impromptu event for our neighborhood.  We have a Facebook page and a way to send e-mails, so we posted invitations for 5-8 on that very same day, and happily some folks said yes.  It was a perfect evening.

Yesterday was a good day at church.  We had three visitors, and at first I felt some dismay about my sermon, which I'd been revising right until we left for church.  I wasn't sure about it, but it seemed to work (you can view that sermon here on my YouTube channel).   The energy level in church was great, with a happy vibe, and I was glad.  It probably had more to do with the small children visiting their grandmother and great grandmother, and that's fine.

We had planned to go to the Apple Festival in Hendersonville with my spouse's brother and his wife, but when they arrived, the sky had opened up with torrential rain.  I had thrown a pot of soup together (frozen baby lima beans, a few potatoes cut into chunks, sliced onions, frozen corn with water to cover--boil, whirred with my stick blender, heated up with cheddar cheese and these spices:  cumin, basil, oregano, garlic powder), so we had soup while we waited to see if the rain would blow over.  The soup was yummy, and I was glad I had the ingredients on hand to make it.

The rain did not blow over, so we settled in.  I did a bit more stitching while we chatted and listened to music.  When our guests left, we watched the last episode of Back to the Frontier.  We've had a lot of fun watching that show, and I'm sorry to see it end.

I am happy that I don't have seminary classes that need my attention.  There's plenty of other items that need my attention, so let me get to those before I hit the road.