Halloween 2025

And so our beautiful October comes to a close.  

Today is Halloween, and I live in a house that will have no trick-or-treaters.  We have discovered a Roku channel that offers nothing but NYPD Blue, so we'll probably watch some more of that.  I used to watch the show in the 90's, and I forgot how compelling it is.  I stayed up later than I meant to last night as I hoped to see how a narrative arc about a serial killer would end, so I may go to bed early tonight.

In my adult life, I approach Halloween as the beginning of an important time that lasts three days.  I'm a theology geek, so I call it a triduum.  Halloween emerged from its pagan roots as a natural bridge to All Saints Day (November 1) and All Souls Day (Nov. 2). More on those holidays in the coming days.

This year, I'll spend Halloween writing a sermon.  This year, what scares me is the willingness of politicians to let SNAP benefits expire.  I can create an All Saints sermon that references the Biblical texts, our current political situation, and all the saints who have come before us.

I still have to teach, of course.  But the semester has revealed that my classes on MWF are nothing to fear or dread; no classes are, but I'm trying to use Halloween words today.  In Brit Lit, we'll cover Joyce's "The Dead," in a bit of serendipity.  In English 101, we'll sketch leaves and pinecones and acorns while we explore how sketching might impact our ability to describe things.

That class will probably be more openly enthusiastic than the Creative Writing class where I did the experiment yesterday.  Every semester, I know that each class will have a different dynamic, but each semester often surprises me in how that dynamic plays out. 

I will wear my candy corn earrings one last time.  Here's a picture that I took at the school's pumpkin patch a few weeks ago (look at that glorious blue sky!):

This morning, I'm thinking of past Halloweens:  in childhood, where I'd spend months planning my costume, the joy of all that candy.  I'm thinking of 2016, where Halloween was my first day as an administrator at a new job, and my first impression of people was the costume contest and the joy with which they approached the idea of a costume contest.  

I'm wishing I had time to bake, time for more contemplation.  Well, maybe next year when Halloween will be on a Saturday.  This year, I'll continue to enjoy these elements of my best life:  getting ready for my Sunday at the country church I love so much, fun classes to teach today, and cozy time in the evening as we cook together and then revisit quality TV from decades past, while I stitch a new quilt top for the well-worn quilt on our bed.

"Frankenstein" in the English Composition Classroom

For those of you who are wonder when this blog became a teaching blog, I apologize.  It's an easy way for me to keep track of ideas that work.  In an ideal world, others would see and be inspired.  But on a practical level, it's an easy way for me to remember and be inspired.

In my English 101 class yesterday, I knew that I wanted them to do the Build Your Own Gothic/Spooky story worksheet that I created for an Edgar Allen Poe module in the spring, which I described in this blog post.  I thought I needed a bit more, so I had the previews for the new Frankenstein movie ready to go.  

As I was walking to class, I thought about Mary Shelley's journal, and I knew I had copies of the pages where she talks about dreaming of her dead baby and bringing it back to life.  I rushed back to the copy machine to make a few more copies, and a successful teaching day was born.

I handed out the pages of Mary Shelley's journal, the one page handout that captures several entries where she is grieving the baby and where she records the dream.  I had them read it and see if any spooky stories were suggested.

Then I showed the two previews:  one that gives us the creature's voice and one that gives us Victor Frankenstein's voice.  We talked a bit about the novel, about the film versions, about the ways it has inspired so many of us in so many ways.

Then I had them fill in the worksheet.  They settled in and seemed truly engaged with their ideas; this class is amazing in that way.

Today, I'll add this story from the CBS Sunday news show.  It's both an interview with Guillermo del Toro, the director, and lots of interesting information and visuals.

I'll need to come up with a bit more for them to do, since they did the worksheet on Tuesday.  Happily, I have a few hours to figure it out.

Environmental Resilience in Our Science and Our Literature (and Psyches)

It's the kind of morning where I feel a bit fragmented--so let me collect the fragments to see if a mosaic emerges.

--There was a Facebook ad that took me to this new degree, a Master's in Environmental Resilience at UNC-Asheville.  It's not as interesting to me as it first seemed it would be--if I was younger, perhaps.  I'm just glad to see that some programs are thinking in this direction.

--I also wanted to record it because I wondered if they would ever offer an elective in writing the history of environmental resilience--and could I teach it?

--Also, if I put together any sort of reading series, it's good to remember non-literary audiences that might be out there.

--For the sake of future historians, I feel I should mention Hurricane Melissa as the strongest landfalling hurricane in the Atlantic, which came ashore in Jamaica yesterday.  It was the strongest in terms of wind, while in terms of barometric pressure, it ties with the Labor Day hurricane of 1935.  It's too early to know what the damage is, but certainly it will be huge.  

--Future historians might laugh at me.  Faithful readers of this blog know that I think strong hurricanes like this one will be more and more common as the years go on.  Future historians will understand the scope and contours of that prediction.

--We are having lots of rain this week.  In a way, I'm glad.  We've had a dry October, which is glorious in its way, but it makes me worry about fire dangers.  In a way, the rain makes me anxious, particularly when it continues day after day, particularly with hurricane coverage increasing.

--Let me go take a walk, while we have a break in the rain.

Watching "Thriller" in the Composition Classroom

Yesterday, my English 101 class continued its study of music, more specifically Michael Jackson's "Thriller."  I thought about playing the song without the video and then the video to have them compare and contrast the images in their head without the video to the video.  But in the end, I decided to go with a simpler movie review type of writing--plus, the official video is almost 15 minutes long, and the class is only 50 minutes long.

We did have time for a bit of discussion about whether or not the video holds up well.  Most of the students agreed that it did hold up well.  It wasn't as scary as it might have seemed in 1983 when it debuted, but the music, the costumes, the dancing, and almost every other element was sound.

Only 1/3 of them had seen the video before, and only one student had seen it in the last month.  I wasn't sure what to expect in that regard.  I also wondered how much of Michael Jackson's story they would know.  Most of them seemed to say that his history of being accused of sexual abuse of children shouldn't negate his art. 

It was strange, in a time wrinkle kind of way, to watch this video with my first year students.  This video premiered when I was a first year student, in 1983.  I remember making a special effort to see it on MTV; it felt like an important cultural moment.  And now MTV is bankrupt.  Michael Jackson's red jacket that he wore is in the Smithsonian--and the Smithsonian is closed because of a government shut down.

It feels like we're at another cultural moment of a turning point, but it's hard to know where we're headed.  I don't know that I felt the same way in 1983, at least not about "Thriller." 

It was a fun way to have a sort-of scary, very short film.  It was a great addition to my fall festival two weeks in English 101 class.  Will it lead to good writing?  Time will tell.

Autumn Music, Autumn Writing

I had a great English 101 class on Friday, writing with a variety of music playing, and I want to record what we did.  I wanted students to write not only about the music, so I gave them apples again, with a prompt on the board:  Write a description of the apple; write about the view of the world from the point of view of the apple; write about the point of view of a human observing the apple; or write about anything the music inspires.  They were supposed to do some writing while listening to the music.

I also gave them a worksheet that had the title of the work and the composer/arranger/artist and the type of music.  For each work, they had two questions to think about and to write about:  What does the music make you think about in terms of autumn; how did you feel while writing with this music playing?

Here is the playlist, in the order that I played them:

"Autumn Leaves" by Miles Davis

"Season of the Witch" by Donovan

Autumn part of The Four Seasons by Vivaldi

"October" by U2

Autumn by George Winston (I let the whole album play until the end of class, so we didn't listen to the whole thing).

Some of the music was long-ish, and I was impressed with my students' ability to stay focused--and distressed about my own inability to settle into the music and listen.  I kept wishing I had chosen shorter pieces, but having a long piece of music was part of the point.

I collected the worksheets, but not the other writing.  I wanted them to feel free to write whatever they wanted for part of the time. Of course, that meant that some of them only filled in the worksheet.  I decided that I was O.K. with that, since they all appeared to be listening attentively.

I was impressed with the level of analysis that they gave me on the worksheets.  Several of them wrote about noticing how the music calmed them.  

If they remember nothing else from their first year Composition class with me, I hope they remember that music can be a resource for restoring mental health.

Apples in the Composition Classroom

It's been a good teaching week.  On Monday, on my way home from work, I bought a bushel of apples from my favorite orchard, Coston Farms.  On Tuesday, I was surprised to find out how much a bushel of apples weighs as I carried them to my office--happily, there was a cart inside the door of my office/classroom building.

I took apples to every class.  I had them lift the box, so that they had an idea about how much a bushel weighs.  It's something we've lost, as we've moved from being an agricultural society to our current culture that's largely out of touch with where we get our food.

In my writing classes, we described an apple before I gave them an apple.  Then they described the apple that was in front of them, and we compared the two pieces of writing.  We talked about depictions of apples in popular culture (Snow White, Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden, and Johnny Appleseed).  We looked at the poignant poem "Summer Apples," by Catheryn Essinger, and talked about the apple as a "little cathedral to memory."  Then we did some additional writing.  I realized that I would have lots and lots of apples, so I took some to my British Literature class too.

It's very similar to what I did two years ago, and I wrote about in this blog post.  I'm happy to report that it worked again.  Two years ago, I came up with the plan because I wanted to have a reason to buy a bushel of apples.  Last year, all my plans were upended by Hurricane Helene.

My plan for this week and next is to do various autumnal themed activities and then have a writing assignment about which one best captured the season.  Today we'll watch the "Thriller" video; it will be interesting to see how many of them are familiar with the whole video or with the song or with Michael Jackson at all.

Thinking about AI and Machine Learning and the Protestant Reformation on the Feast Day of Saint James

This morning, I've been listening to podcasts--specifically, Ezra Klein's October 15 interview with Eliezer Yudkowsky about how Artificial Intelligence trained on the Internet is very different from anything that has come before.  It's interesting to be listening to that interview while writing a sermon for Reformation Sunday and thinking about the even more ancient feast day of Saint James.

I did not realize until this morning just how many James exist in the circle of Jesus.  The more famous Saint James is the one we celebrate in July, the one that people celebrate by walking to his shrine in Santiago de Campostela in Spain from a variety of starting points.

James the Brother of Jesus was one of the early leaders of the Church, which may or may not tell us that he's not one of the ones that the Gospel writer of Mark presents as coming to Jesus to try to get him to be quiet.  Or maybe he is, and he changed his mind.  James the Just is another name given to James the brother of Jesus, which suggests to me that he would be capable of changing his mind.

There are places in Acts and throughout the letters that make up so much of the New Testament that make us think that James is one of the ones in charge of the early Church, along with Peter.  He seems to be one of the ones making big decisions for the larger group.  He's given credit for helping move the early Church to the inclusion of Gentiles.  There are other scholars who see James the Brother of Jesus as more traditional, that it was Paul who reached out to Gentiles and James who argued for staying with Mosaic Law.  Circumcision played a big role in these deliberations, according to some scholars.

The more I look for answers, the more I am struck by how much we do not know about the early Church or about Jesus as a historical figure.  From there, it's a short realization to how easy it is to make the early Church figures be who we want or need them to be.

Still, I am grateful for their work.  On this morning where I've been listening to Ezra Klein's podcast about how Artificial Intelligence through Machine Learning has the capability to destroy the world (more specifically, humans), it's good to remember that the end of the world has been forecast many times, and so far, we persist.

Two Rough Drafts Composed of Gingerbread

My poetry writing goes in cycles.  The cycle I like best is the one where I have a glimmer of an idea for a poem, a glimmer that takes shape throughout the day as I think about it, and by the time I sit down at my writing desk, I've got a shape of a poem to work with--and yet, there's still a delightful surprise or two.

Of course it's the cycle I like best.  Who wouldn't like this part?  It's where I feel like I'm doing what I've been put on earth to do.  It's the part of the cycle where I feel like I've come across some secret portal, available to all but undertaken by few, where I glimpse the secrets of creation (which I mean in all sorts of senses of that word).

Usually my writing process is more like this:  I have a line or two, I see what I can do with them, I come up with a bit more but not a complete poem, I put it aside to think about it later, and I rarely return.  It might be for a happy reason:  the fragment leads to a more solid idea.  It's more usual that I put it aside and then a week or two goes by, and I don't have any additional ideas, and life gets hectic.

Lately I've been stuck in the cycle I like least:  no ideas, no glimmers, no lines that fizzle out and go nowhere.  I feel like it's been months since I wrote a line, although that's not true.

Yesterday, much to my delight, I came up with two poems.  In the morning, I had a flash of an idea about gingerbread houses being evidence of a woman working out her trauma.  I decided to go big:  make the speaker the witch in the Hansel and Gretel story.  It's not done yet, but here is how the poem starts right now:

I deal with loss by baking.
My gingerbread structures tell
you all you need to know
about the trauma that still lives
deep inside me.

In the afternoon, I had the idea to have the gingerbread house speak.  The gingerbread house says that its not its fault that it bewitches small children. From there, the poem devolves a bit.   I had been listening to coverage of the book published by a survivor of Jeffrey Epstein, and the stories are harrowing, and those stories were in my mind as I wrote.  I need to do some work on getting the symbolism squared away.  The gingerbread house is not Epstein--that would be the witch.  Or maybe I want to back away and go in a different direction.

Or maybe not.

It was good to have a day with two rough drafts at the end, two rough drafts that have potential.  It's been a long, long time since I had a day like that.  Hurrah!

The Week Where A Clone of Myself Would Be Nice

This week is one of those weeks where I had more than one of me.  I'm looking forward to teaching the autumn themed writing module I've designed; yesterday I stopped at my favorite apple orchard to get a bushel of Pink Lady apples.  But the Southeastern Synod of the ELCA is having their continuing ed event here at Lutheridge.  I'll be doing a bit with that group; in a half hour, I'll head up the hill to camp to lead a morning walk.  I wish I had more time.

Even as I wish I had more time, I know that only some of the continuing ed would be relevant to me at this moment in my professional life.  The ELCA isn't geared to those of us who are bi-vocational.  Much of the support that the ELCA gives to clergy assumes a traditional clergy member who serves one congregation and doesn't hold down multiple jobs to make ends meet.  Or worse, it assumes that the clergy member is managing a staff of people at a church that has plenty of money.

And even though I know these things, when I see pictures of continuing ed events with lots of clergy folk having inspiring times, I want to be with them.  And similarly, when I see writers at events that look inspiring, I want to be there.  And when I read about successful teaching, I want to be creating modules that will do the same.

And so I try to do it all, sort of.  I could say that I do none of it well, but that's not true.  Could I do it better if I only had one thing to focus on?  Maybe.  Or maybe I would be bored and stop trying.

I also wonder what it's like to only want to do one thing, to focus on that one thing, to have no alternate lives tugging at the hem of one's garment.  I've gotten better at not obsessing over decisions already made, roads not taken.  But I'm not as good at settling down into my current life.  There's some part of me always creating alternate plans.

By now I realize that those plans will be useless.  Far better is my skill at pivoting when things need to be different or when something falls apart.  Perhaps that pivoting skill comes from my lifetime of alternate life Kristins tugging at me.

Well, let me get ready for my walk.  I've got only one self to be all the places where I want to be.  Let me enjoy it.

Week-end Update: Chili Fest and Hymn Festival

We had a good week-end.  Early Saturday afternoon, we loaded the car with a surprising amount of stuff for people who were only going to be gone for an overnight trip.  We headed across the autumnal mountains to Bristol, Tennessee, where Faith Lutheran, the church I serve as a Synod Appointed Minister, had its Chili Fest from 4-7.

It was a delightful event, even more so because it was so different from last year.  Last year we had planned to meet my father-in-law and his wife for Chili Fest.  When Hurricane Helene blew through, it obliterated every direct route between our house and Bristol.  But the hotel room was paid for, so we set out on the alternate route:  east on I 40, north on I 77, and east on I 81.  Part of me couldn't believe that it would really take 5 hours.  It did.  I spent much of Chili Fest trying not to feel tired, and I spent the time afterward trying to find an easier route home, which would did not exist.

This year was much easier.  I enjoyed the variety of chili and even more, the wonderful desserts with an autumnal theme.  We had a hayride and pumpkin painting, but for the most part, I tried to stay inside, talking to all the people who came out on an abnormally warm day to enjoy our event.

Even though it was warm, the weather was perfect, and the light cast by the setting sun was beautiful.  We stayed to help clean up, and then headed over to the hotel where we stayed for the night.  If it had been a Friday night, we'd have gone back home, but for a Saturday night, it made no sense.

Sunday was a good day at church.  I'm talking about Luther with my confirmands, which went well.  My sermon on Luke 18:  1-8, the widow demanding justice from a no-good judge, went well (you can view it here on my YouTube channel).

On Sunday afternoons, it's hard for me to want to do much else, but yesterday we decided to make the effort to go to a hymnfest at the local Lutheran church in Arden, where we live:

It was a great event.  Mary Louise (Mel) Bringle, the hymn writer, was there, and it was interesting to hear her insights about how she wrote the hymns.  And then we sang them.  It was a good mix of her insight, our singing, and special musical presentations.

Even better, we had a chance to see friends we don't often see, because of my work schedule.  I worry that by the time I'm retired or working less, I won't have as many friends as I once did--we're none of us getting younger.  Sigh.

But for now, let me be happy about the opportunity to have so many soul-enriching opportunities in one week-end.

Autumn Passings, Autumn Sketching, Autumn Cooking

We have had a stretch of gorgeous days, the perfect autumnal kind of perfect day:  sunny and warm, but not hot, not humid, no hint of rain.  Some days, the breeziness has made it almost uncomfortable, and I do worry about the lack of rain.  We have so much combustible material in the mountains, even before the remnants of Hurricane Helene came through, that I'm much more comfortable if we have rain every few days.  

Let me capture some of the past week in the form of snippets and scraps:

--I made some pumpkin butter, an experimental kind.  I opened a can of pumpkin and put about 1/3 of it into a greased ceramic apple baker.  I stirred in some of my homemade pumpkin spice mix and tasted it--oh, right, I remember, pumpkin butter requires some sugar.  I stirred that in and let the mixture bake as I was toasting some of the rugged bread that I got as a day old special from a local bakery.  Delicious!

--That left me with part of a can of pumpkin, so last night, I made the pumpkin bread dough that this morning I made into pumpkin cinnamon rolls--delicious!

--I have been sad about how many female greats have died in the past few weeks:  ecofeminist writer Susan Griffin, actress Diane Keaton, NPR great Susan Stamberg, and perhaps feminist theologian Phyllis Trible.  I am grateful for their lives and work.  I am glad that they lived long lives.  I wish we could have had them with us for a bit longer.

--I have been doing more sketching in the evening.  

A few years ago, I was happy with the pumpkins I was sketching.  This year, I've been feeling like I lost that skill.  So I've been focused the last few nights, and I've actually used my phone to watch a short tutorial or two to remind me how to do it.

What this blog post doesn't capture is the page after page of sketches that didn't come together.

But this morning, as I saw last night's sketch, I felt happy.

--This week-end is Chili Fest at the church I serve in Bristol, TN.  Last year we went; we had non-refundable hotel reservations, so we made the 5 hour trip.  The trip usually takes just under 2 hours, but a year ago, every road that went directly across the mountains had a closed portion.  The only way to go was west across I 40, north up I 77, and east on I 81.

--I'm so glad that we have survived to see a different autumn.  It's not as blazingly gorgeous as the autumn of 2022, but it has its own beauty nonetheless.

Pedagogy from the Pumpkin Patch

Yesterday was a good teaching day.  I got to campus, and as I entered the Humanities building, a student from Spring was coming out.  She stopped to tell me how much she missed me and the English 102 class that she took with me.  We talked about the possibility of her taking my Advanced Creative Writing class in the spring.  I was glad to know that her experience with me was a happy one.

My English 100 classes went well.  This week, both in those classes and English 101, we've experimented with a different kind of peer editing.  We had a check list to make sure the work had all the required elements, so we did the first few readings checking for those.  Then we read each essay but didn't comment on them.  This approach allowed students to read more essays and to see how they worked or didn't.  We talked about which approaches made essays easier to follow (headings, for example).  In each class, students read every single essay, since they didn't have to take time to write comments.

My Creative Writing class was on a field trip of sorts.  

Yesterday was the pumpkin patch that was right outside the building where we meet.  

So we went out to paint pumpkins and to see if we could find ideas and inspiration for next week's writing.  I plan to bring in this blog post of my own and this classic piece about decorative gourd season from McSweeney's.

I don't always have earrings that match my teaching plan for a class, but yesterday I did.  

I bought these candy corn earrings from a pre-teen entrepreneur at a Mills River farmer's market in the summer, and I was happy to have more than one occasion this fall to wear them (the other will be Halloween).

I don't know if we'll create writing that we wouldn't have had without the trip to the pumpkin patch, but I'm happy that we'll have a chance to see.

Short Story Publication

My writing time is short this morning:  I've been doing a bit of submitting to journals and some sermon writing.  I wanted to do the submitting while the submission window is open, and for some of them, it's only open until they hit the submission cap.

So let me post a link to my latest story publication in South 85.  It's one of my favorite stories that I've written, and I'm glad it's published.  I'll write a longer blog post later that tells how I came to write a story so unlike the ones that I usually write, 3 shorter vignettes, connected with poetry-like segments.  One of my best friends called it the best short story I've ever written, one that showed that I had moved to a new level with my writing.  She and I had been meeting on a regular basis, reading each other's short stories, so she when she made that declaration, she had more experience with my writing than most.

Erasure Poems, Mary Shelley, and a Creative Writing Class

Last week, I saw a poster about an event on the glass of my classroom/office building.  I thought about how it would be perfect for my Creative Writing class--a pumpkin patch with pumpkin decorating, autumn drinks, and some sort of photo opportunity.  And in a pleasant surprise, I not only saw the poster before the event happened, but it's happening on the day that my Creative Writing class meets.  So, my plan is good to go for class on Thursday, October 16.

My Blackout Poem with pages from Mary Shelley's journal

That still left me yesterday to plan.  So I decided to experiment with blackout/erasure poetry and collage.  I had planned to do this with my British Literature class, and I still might.

Here is a close up of the words I selected, and I do think they sort of work as a poem:

I photocopied some pages from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, along with a selection of entries from her journal, including the passage about her dreams of her dead baby.  Each student got three sheets, with 6 pages total.  I had a variety of markers, both colored and black, fine tipped and thicker.

I also had a variety of popular magazines and old crafting magazines.  They were on tables, but first, we did the blacking out.  I explained the process and then showed them what I had done with the pages from Mary Shelley's journal.  Then we sank into the work.

Some students never did the collage part, and that was fine with me.  

Some students took the images with them, and I do wonder if they'll return to it.

I was impressed by what they created, but I'm not going to post all of them.  Here's a sample:

Here is a student's page before collage:

And after the student added images:

Here is another finished creation:

They all seemed to enjoy it, both the ones who zipped through it, and the ones who spent all of their time carefully blacking out lines.

I enjoyed watching them work, and I liked the opportunity that I had to try it too.  Now, should I take this project to my Brit Lit class?  Stay tuned!

Peace in Our Time: Hopes and Hesitations

When I was young, my imagination was consumed with the idea of being held hostage or being kidnapped.  I blame the Symbionese Liberation Army, the ones who kidnapped Patty Hearst in 1974, when I was 8 years old.  The hostages held in the embassy in Tehran (from 1979 until 1981) also held a large amount of my attention.

Yesterday as I drove down the mountain to Spartanburg, I heard the special BBC coverage of the release of the 20 Israeli hostages still living, the ones held in Gaza for over 2 years.  I have not spent the last 2 years consumed by worry about those hostages.  I have tried not to spend time imagining what they're going through--the bit that I did know made me sure that it's been a brutalizing experience, and I don't want terrorists inhabiting my brain in that way.

When I was 8, I had no idea what Patty Hearst was going through.  I worried about being snatched away from my family, and this was a time before that fear was widespread.  Later, with the hostages in Iran, I wondered more about logistics than the possible abuses.  Did they live at the embassy?  Did they have books to read?  As a young woman, I wondered about the other women:  did they have enough tampons?  I also wondered who was doing the cooking and cleaning.  And of course, as the days turned into months and years, I wondered how this would all end.

Yesterday as I listened to the BBC coverage, I thought about how hard it will be for these former hostages to be reintegrated into Israeli society.  Of course I hope that it won't be.  Some people are better at turning ghastly experiences into forces for good in the world.  But many more people don't have those coping skills.

Later in the day my spouse texted me:  "Peace treaty signed!"  As we relaxed on the deck in the late afternoon, we talked about our hopes and hesitations.  As I said in previous posts, we've been alive for a long time now, and we've seen past presidents create peace treaties or peace frameworks, only to have them crumble into pieces in a very short time.

But we both agreed that it was wonderful to feel hopeful, even if it's a guarded hope.  I will say that if this peace is still holding in a year, I'd be willing to say that various folks deserve the Nobel Peace Prize.

Explorations and the Imagery of Those Interactions

Today is the federal holiday that celebrates Columbus Day; I'm willing to wager serious money that most of us don't have the day off.  When your mail doesn't arrive, you can take a minute to remember Columbus, who wanted to find a shorter trade route, but failed miserably in that goal. 

For most cities, gone are the days when we'd mark this holiday with parades and time off. Those of us who grew up in the 70's and later have likely rethought this holiday.

What marked an exciting opportunity for overcrowded Europeans in the time of Columbus began a time of unspeakable slaughter and loss for the inhabitants of the Americas, many of whom have never recovered or who disappeared completely.  Let us take a minute to remember all of the cultures that have vanished because of these kinds of encounters.  Let us mourn that loss.

But although those cultural encounters came at an enormous human cost, it also provided the opportunity to enrich the cultures on both sides of these encounters.  Look at the European cuisine before the time of Columbus, and let yourself feel enormous gratitude for the vegetables that came from the Americas. Look at the cultures that existed in the Americas before the Europeans arrived and let yourself marvel at the ways in which technology enables the building of cities.  For those of us who benefit from domesticated animals, which is almost all of us, let us celebrate Columbus and the opening of the space between cultures.

This morning, I'm revisiting the 2011 discussion with Charles Mann on NPR's Fresh Air.  He had just published 1493:  Uncovering the New World Columbus Created.  He points out that the arrival of Europeans does a lot to create wilderness--the diseases brought over wiped out huge swaths of indigenous populations, which left the land unpopulated, which meant the forces of the natural/non-human world could reclaim the land.

Today, perhaps because I spent a huge part of the week-end watching the 2020 mini-series The Stand, I'm thinking of the implications of disease.  Indigenous people had experienced something similar to the disease described by Stephen King, seeing most of their people wiped out.  Mann says the number was 2/3:  

"GROSS: So in North America, when the settlers were fighting wars with the Indians, the Indians that they were fighting with, the Native Americans they were fighting with, were survivors of these plagues?

Mr. MANN: Yes, they were, by and large, people, you know, who were in a state of complete cultural shock because, you know, two-thirds of the people that they knew had died. And there is just no culture that can resist foreign invasion, even by small bands of people like the Europeans were, when you've just had this enormous, shattering experience."

Later in the broadcast, he says that in the 100 years after Columbus, 1 out of 5 people on the planet had died.

I have been trying to think of a graceful transition to my next subject, but I can't come up with one, so I will just wrench away to something else:

Last night, as the sun was setting, I discovered that I had made my quilt top too wide.  How could this have happened?  Just last week-end, it wasn't wide enough, and I didn't think I added that much?  My spouse and I devised a plan, and I set to work ripping out the seam of part of the quilt that was too wide; later I'll add it to make the length of the quilt fit--it's far from catastrophic, as discoveries go.

I looked at the sunset colors in the sky and thought about that time when the crew on one of Columbus' ships saw land from a distance, that liminal time before all the changes got set into motion.  I am now trying to create a poem about ripping out seams on Columbus Day.  So far, it's not working, but I wrote down some ideas and maybe they'll come together.

This morning I look at my breakfast and think about the explorations of Columbus and those who came after.  I have pumpkin butter that I've made on my toast made out of 9 grain bread.  I began the morning by drinking coffee, and then switched to hot tea with milk and sugar.  It was Columbus that made this meal possible, although if he hadn't done it, surely someone else would have.

I think about the next 500 years.  If humanity survives, what will they look back to in 2025, either in amazement or in sorrow?

The Lessons of Columbus for the Creative Life

Writing time is short this morning, so let me run a Columbus Day post that I wrote in 2013.  It's one of my favorite meditations on Columbus.

Today we celebrate Columbus Day: October 12 was the actual day of the first sighting of land after almost 2 months at sea. I’m always amazed at what those early explorers accomplished. At Charlestowne Landing (near Charleston, SC), I saw a boat that was a replica of the boat that some of the first English settlers used to get here. It was teeny-tiny. I can't imagine sailing up the coast to the next harbor in it, much less across the Atlantic. Maybe it would have been easier, back before everyone knew how big the Atlantic was.

In our creative lives, we may have to set off on a tiny boat. We might wish we had different resources, but we start with what we have. Sure, it would be nice to attend that MFA program or to have the job that only has a 2-1 teaching load (do those exist at an entry level anymore?). But the good news is that we can make our way across a wide ocean, even if we have less resources than others. All we need is a smidge of time and the resolve and self-discipline that it takes not to waste that time.

Important journeys can be made in teeny-tiny boats. It's better than staring longingly out towards the sea.

We often think that starting the voyage is the biggest hurdle. But once you begin the journey, the hard part may be yet to come. I've often wondered if Columbus and other explorers ever woke up in the middle of the night and said, "What am I doing here? I could have just settled down with my sweetheart, had a few kids, watched the sunset every night while I enjoyed my wine." Of course, back then, a lot of options were closed to people, and that's why they set off for the horizon. No job opportunities in the Old World? Head west! Sweetheart left you for another or died? Head west!

Maybe we need to just set sail, knowing that we're going to be out of sight of land for awhile. Maybe we need to get over our need for safe harbor, for knowing exactly where we're going.

It's easy to feel full of enthusiasm at the beginning of a project. It’s far harder to keep up that enthusiasm when you're in the middle of a vast ocean, with nothing but your instruments and the stars to guide you, with no sense of how far away the land for which you're searching might be.

Maybe we have a manuscript that we feel is good, but no publisher has chosen yet. Maybe we have a batch of poems that seem to go together, but we have no sense of how to assemble the manuscript, while at the same time, we know we need to create 20 more poems. Maybe we have a vision of the kind of job that might support our creative selves, but no idea of how to get to where we want to be from where we are.

I'm guessing that many of us have similar feelings during our creative lives. We start a project full of enthusiasm. Months or years later, our enthusiasm may flag, as we find ourselves still wrestling with the same issues, even if we’ve moved on to other projects. We can take our cue from the great explorers of the 1400s and later. It’s true that we may feel we’re making the same explorations over and over again. But that doesn’t mean we won’t make important discoveries, even if it’s our fifth trip across the Atlantic on a tiny boat.

I keep thinking of the ship's logs and the captain's journals, which Columbus kept obsessively. Perhaps we need to do a bit more journalling/blogging/notetaking/observing. Maybe it’s more calibrating or more focused daydreaming. These tools can be important in our creative lives.

Maybe we need a benefactor. Who might be Queen Isabella for us, as artists and as communities of artists?

The most important lesson we can learn from Columbus is we probably need to know that while we think we're sailing off for India, we might come across a continent that we didn't know existed. Columbus was disappointed with his discovery: no gold, no spices, land that didn’t live up to his expectations. Yet, he started all sorts of revolutions with his discovery. Imagine a life without corn, sweet peppers, tomatoes. Imagine life without chocolate. Of course, if I was looking through the Native American lens, I might say, "Imagine life without smallpox."

Still, the metaphor holds for the creative life. Many of us start off with a vision for where we'd like to go, perhaps even with five and ten year plans. Yet if we're open to some alternate paths, we might find ourselves making intriguing discoveries that we'd never have made, had we stuck religiously to our original plans.

Saturday Fragments with "The Stand"

It's one of those Saturday mornings where I wonder where the time has gone, even though I know it's not actually late.  Let me collect a few fragments from the past few days:

--Last week, we explored a Halloween channel, but I quickly realized there wasn't much I wanted to watch.  What I really wanted to watch was the 2020 version of Stephen King's The Stand.  I didn't want to pay to stream it, so I requested the DVD from the library.  We watched the first two episodes last night, and I was impressed.

--I thought I had watched part of the first episode before, but as we watched it, none of it felt familiar to me.

--This morning, I found a podcast from 2021 that has a discussion both of the 2 versions of the book and the 2020 series.  At first I was confused because the site I was on gave an August 2025 broadcast version.  I did some digging and found the original website where one can watch the podcast, which is an aspect of podcasts which I usually don't use.

--I've spent the last week thinking about a book-length collection of poems.  I had thought that I might never return to that type of project.  But lately, I thought of using my 2019 manuscript (I wrote about its assembly in this blog post) as a base, adding poems that have been published/written since I assembled it.  The idea intrigues me, and this term, I have time to pull it together for a few contest submissions to presses I want to support.

--On my way home yesterday, I stopped at my favorite apple orchard, Coston Farms.  I bought my favorite apple variety, the Mutsu.  But I wanted another one for contrast, so I got the Pink Lady, which was my grandmother's favorite later in her life.  Earlier in her life, she went with Rome or Macintosh, along with Red and Yellow Delicious--she wasn't an apple snob at all.  I am a bit more of a snob, although I'll be happy with a bag of Red Delicious apples, if they're on sale.

--I also stopped at the Village Bakery, in its Fletcher location.  They had day old bread on sale, and I thought I had won the lottery.  Sure, I bake my own bread, but I didn't have any for yesterday's vision I had of bread and cheese and apples on the back deck.

--It was not as lovely last evening as it would have been earlier in the week.  It was chillier and cloudier.  But today may be better, and I still have all of the elements for a good snack/light meal. 

Peace in the Middle East?

It has been a week of Nobel awards; this morning, along with many others, I'm waiting to see who wins the Peace Prize.  It's been a week of grim anniversaries:  the 2 year anniversary of the war in Gaza is the primary one that consumed much of the news.  But it's also a week where there might be a chance for peace in the Middle East.

I've also been alive long enough to know how impossible it seems to have peace in the Middle East, and how fragile any progress can be.  I've seen deals rejected, deals that seemed like good ones to me.  I've seen people dig into paths that will lead to certain ruin.

There are people wiser than I am who have many more words than I do.  But it seems like we might be at a hinge point here, and I wanted to note it.  

I've been thinking of other intractable conflicts which suddenly were solved, most notably the one in Ireland.  When that was signed in the late 90's, I thought that it had a slim chance of success.  And here we are, decades later, and peace has held.

May it also be so now. 

Spring Schedule Wrinkles and the Ironing

I didn't write a blog post yesterday, and I didn't walk.  I was feeling grumpy and tired and there was an on again off again drizzle, plus I've had a dry cough for a few days.  It's the autumn game that I haven't had to play in the past few years:  is it a cold or is it allergies or is it dust or is it the change in the weather back and forth?  Do I have a fever or should I simply turn the AC back on?  I had a wrinkle in my spring schedule, and I spent a lot of time composing an e-mail to try to sort it all out--happily, by the end of yesterday, it was sorted, but it took time and mental energy.

Long story short:  because I went to a Methodist seminary, I still need to take at least one class at a Lutheran seminary.  The Lutheran theology class is offered once a year, a synchronous class, and the day and time that it's offered changes each year, which makes planning hard.  Last year, there was a conflict with a class that I was teaching, plus I was finishing up MDiv classes, so I decided to wait another year.  I had hoped that it wouldn't be a time conflict with my teaching schedule, but Tuesday, I discovered that there would be a conflict.  

Happily, I was able to strategize with my department chair, and we rearranged classes.  I had to let go of the American Lit class that conflicted with the Lutheran theology class on Thursday morning, but at least I can keep on my slow track to ordination.

I ended yesterday with some retreat planning and then went right to bed, as I will do tonight.  Last night's retreat planning was for Quilt Camp, tonight is Create in Me.  In the Spring, if I feel sad about my schedule, let me remember that taking classes in the evening, the way I did for much of my MDiv program, was not my ideal schedule either.

I began this morning by looking at the travel pictures of friends.  One of my friends just got back from a month long trip following the Mississippi River from its headwaters in Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico.  Just looking at the pictures makes it sound phenomenal and makes me wish that I was at a retirement point.

Of course, chances are good that even if I was at that retirement point, I'd be staying home, baking goodies, reading, writing, and doing some sewing.  My friend's trip sounds like nothing but fun and feasting, but because I had a chance to talk to her before I saw the photos, I knew that the trip had challenges:  the rain, the extra time that it took to go through small towns, the set up of the campsites that took longer too.

So let me continue with the work at hand, and the work of appreciating the life I have.

Drawing Dahlias

I don't remember being aware of dahlias until the last few years.  I asked one of my neighbors about the huge flower in her garden that I couldn't identify, and she told me it was a dahlia.  Now, of course, I see them everywhere.  This fall, a different neighbor has been trimming his plants and putting out a bucket for us neighbors to make bouquets.  I take a few, leave the rest for others, and then take the unclaimed ones a morning or two later.

This week's bouquet seems unusually beautiful to me:

Every time I get flowers, I think, I'm going to sketch these.  Last night, I decided to do it.  I loved this sketch so much that I didn't want to add color and risk ruining it: 

But I did want to experiment with color, so I made a sketch of just a few flowers and a leaf, and then, I  added color.  Hmm.  I'm not unhappy with it, but my dried out markers made it tough to get the impact I envisioned.

I'm never unhappy, though, when I sketch, even if it's not what I had in mind.  It's good to give myself practice in observing and sketching and feeling gratitude for the natural beauty all around me.

A Different Kind of Grieving: Hurricanes and Deconsecration

It was a good week-end, a 4 day week-end really with Fall Break included.  With Fall Break included, it was a GREAT 4 day week-end, full of activities which nourish me, both literally and figuratively:  cutting and stitching fabric, cooking and eating great food, writing a sermon and preaching at Faith Lutheran in Bristol (TN), reading and watching a wide assortment of recordings.

Every so often, a certain sadness crept in.  We watched the PBS show This Old House, the 2 episodes of the current season where the team comes to the Asheville area to help rebuild after Hurricane Helene.  I felt this odd mixture of grief and gratitude.  It's a bit of survivor's guilt at how much damage we did not sustain during Hurricane Helene.  

There's also some past hurricane trauma mixed with sadness about damage to past houses and my inability to make finances in South Florida work out.  I say "my inability," but it's really not my fault--the inability is structural, both done intentionally (insurance policies and lack of decent jobs that allow people to afford necessities like housing) and some out of our collective control now, like the changes wrought by climate change.  

There's gratitude that we sold the house when we did and got a lot of money out of it, something that will not be possible in years to come (and may, indeed, not be possible now).  It was a weird mix of emotions that left me in tears on Saturday night.

I experienced something similar last night as we watched the Sunday service from our old church in South Florida.  It was not just a worship service but the last service in that building.  Over the past several years, a new worship space has been built, so the news is happy.  There will be a gas station where the old sanctuary sat, so I have mixed feelings about that:  hurrah for the money and new building that the church gets, hesitation about a gas station's negatives.

But as I watched the service, which included prayers and liturgy of deconsecration, I felt sadness sweeping over me.  It's a ridiculous sadness in a way, not the least of which is that I'm no longer there.  Other people have much more of a right to make decisions than I do--and I was part of the church council back in 2019 that unanimously voted to move forward with these plans.  The sanctuary is a dark, dreary worship space--and yet, I feel this nostalgia for it.

I see my emotional state on both Saturday and Sunday night as a form of grieving, and it's not a grieving that gets discussed as much.  I feel like my grieving makes no sense--I'm grieving a loss that got me/us to a better place.  And yet, the losses are real.

I know enough about grief work that I know it's wise to let the tears come, to let myself feel both the grief and the joy.  I don't need to talk myself out of feeling what I feel.  The process will be much easier if I just let the feelings come.  And so, I did.  

Thus, that process, too, was part of what nourished me this week-end.

Second Day of Fall Break: Cooking with Recipes

I have been having a great Fall Break.  We've been cooking to use up the odds and ends in the refrigerator, and yesterday was the day to use up the poblano peppers that I bought for a different recipe and didn't use.

My spouse loves chile rellenos and whenever we go to a new-to-us Mexican restaurant, that's what he orders. We try making our own periodically, but it's a huge undertaking.  But yesterday we had the time, so we decided to give it a go.  Here's the finished project:

My spouse made the tomato sauce which was spooned on to; my spouse wished that he had put it on the plate underneath the peppers, but I was fine either way.  The peppers are stuffed with a combination of beef crumples and a Mexican white cheese, the kind that looks like fresh-ish mozzarella, but tastes saltier and less creamy.  We whipped egg whites and gently folded in the yokes.  We dipped the peppers in the eggs and then a flour and cornmeal mixture, and then we fried them in our biggest cast iron skillet.

After lunch, we settled in to watch a cooking show.  I found The Great American Baking Show Halloween edition.  What a treat!  It was the type of show with celebrity cooks, in this case 4 comics.  In some ways, I like those versions of the cooking shows best--no one's hopes and dreams are being squashed.

The disadvantage to baking shows is that they make me want to bake--and so, I did.  My spouse had a birthday in the past week, and because I was out of town helping to lead a retreat, we didn't celebrate.  I wanted a chocolate cake, to use up some souring milk, and he loves German Chocolate cake.  Lo and behold, I had all the ingredients, and so, we made this cake:

It would not have looked this way without my spouse.  I have two round cake pans--my spouse cut each round cake into two cakes, which left us with 4 layers, not two.  I would not have had the patience.

Here is the recipe for the cake:

Chocolate Sour Milk Cake

2 c. sugar
1/2 c. shortening
2 eggs
3 c. flour
1/2 c. cocoa
2 tsp. baking soda
2 c. sour milk
Vanilla

Beat together sugar and shortening. Sift together flour, cocoa and baking soda. Add liquid and dry ingredients alternately to first mixture (I just mixed it all together, and it was fine). Grease pan (9x13) generously; dust with flour. Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes. Do not open oven before 30 minutes.

----

And here is the recipe for the frosting, from a Southern Living website recipe:

2 cups chopped pecans or walnuts (I used pecans)

 

Toast the nuts in a 350 oven--or don't.  Other recipes call for toasting the coconut, but I didn't.

Mix the following in a pan and heat:

1 (12-oz.) can evaporated milk
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
3/4 cups butter
6 large egg yolks, lightly beaten

Some recipes will tell you not to let the mix boil, but mine did.  You want to cook the frosting for 12-14 minutes--it should bubble and become golden-brown, with a pudding consistency.

Once you've cooked the mix, add the nuts and the following:

2 - 2 1/2 cups sweetened flaked coconut
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

As it cools, it will become thicker and more spreadable.

First Day of Fall Break in Variations of Fabric

Yesterday was one of those days when I feel like I didn't get anything done.  I could make the argument that I didn't have to get anything done--it was my first day of Fall Break, after all.  But let me focus on the real truth:  I got a lot of stuff done.

I went to the bank and got some money transferred to savings and ordered some more checks.  Sure, I could have done that online, although not with my phone.  I do not do mobile banking.  I could have called the 1-800 # and done the self service.  Actually, I tried that, and the automated voice told me that I last ordered checks in 2023, which I thought was not correct, so I worried I would order checks and get the wrong check #s.  Going to my local branch is easier than the other options I had, and I do realize how unusual that is.

While I was out, I went to the Fresh Market to pick up some more provolone cheese for the rice-veggie dish I wanted to make.  Those of you paying attention may say, "Didn't you make that weeks ago?"  No, gentle reader, I did not.  I bought the ingredients.  Yesterday I decided that if I didn't use the eggplant in a day or two, it would be going to the compost bin.

As I crossed the Fresh Market parking lot, I thought about Asheville Cotton, one of my favorite fabric stores near me; it's in the same shopping plaza, and I don't go there enough.  It's one of the stores that I would feel sad if it closed, and I know I need to do more to support those stores.

I knew that the store had a reduced price section in the back, but I didn't know they had several baskets of remnants:  fat quarters for $1.33 (usual price $3.99) and remnants for $6.99 a yard.  I indulged:

I got home and made the recipe (which you can find in this blog post) and then ate some of it for a later lunch.  It was not as delicious as I remember, perhaps because I used smoked provolone from an Italian market in earlier incarnations, and this time, I did not.  But it was tasty enough.

We watched The Four Seasons, the original movie, not the updated Tina Fey version.  It was delightful, but not as funny as I remembered.  I checked in on my online students and answered some e-mails.  And then we watched Redwood Highway, which had been recommended based on some other viewing, and since it was free, why not?  As we watched, I stitched.

So why do I feel I've done nothing?  In part, because I spent a lot of time on the Realtor.com site.  Why did I do this?  Am I hoping to sell this house?  No, absolutely not.  Am I looking to buy an additional house?  There are situations where I could see this option making sense, but so far, I haven't seen anything that inspires me to move forward.  So in some ways, that perusing of houses feels like a waste of time, but if I slant it differently, it's research that shows that there's no property worth pursuing right now.

It also feels like I "wasted" a day because I didn't do much writing, and I didn't get a walk in.  But I did a lot of other activities that fed my soul, so let me consider yesterday a win.

Fall Break Begins

My Fall Break is off to a good start, despite a trash can mix up in the predawn hours.  I dragged/rolled the trash can to the street only to discover that it was the recycling, which doesn't get picked up until next week.  Happily, my spouse had put the cans in the wrong spaces last week, and the recycling had been put into the recycling can in the days that followed.   I did have this vision of needing to resort the garbage and the recycling, and happily, that was not the case.

I have not done much in the way of writing this morning, and I haven't gone for my walk.  But happily, I have hours and hours to do that still.  

I am always torn on these days off:  part of me wants to accomplish a lot, and part of me wants to unwind.  I usually end up doing some of both.

I love having a 4 day week-end, as this Fall Break will be.  I could have one day be a loafing day, and 1 day be a getting things accomplished day, and I still have Saturday.

I have had this blog post open for several hours.  Perhaps it's time to just admit that I am done blogging for this morning.

Surrealistic Poem Generating in Creative Writing Class

Once again, not as much writing time this morning--but the next two mornings will be glorious.  Finally, Fall Break is here!  I've been going full steam ahead since CPE started on June 9.  I thought about scheduling all sorts of appointments:  hair, dermatologist, car.  But I've decided that I really need something else, which will probably look like staying home to bake--although I might see if I can get the car in for an oil change. 

I need to do some planning for my Creative Writing class; I need poems for next week.  Yesterday I changed plans when I realized it was going to take time to get individual poems together.  I shifted to my surrealistic poem experiment, which I tweaked to be both individualistic and collaborative.

Yesterday went well.  That's my best case brain talking.  My worst case brain says that they were overwhelmed and mystified at how what we did constitutes poem writing.

I left all the samples in the office, but we created some fascinating poems.  I gave them my document of abandoned lines, which had space above and below to add lines of their own.  Here's an example, the first page of the document:

----
In a past time, you’d have been Magellan

I watch you solder bits to a motherboard

This body, a country with no maps

Some days the backyard garden explodes

I keep the quilts made by a spinster aunt.

-----

I have 15 pages, so they have plenty of lines to choose from.  I had them write companion lines and then cut the pages into strips.  And then we did a lot of experiments.

First we chose 6 strips at random and turned them over.  We asked ourselves, how did they work together?  We had the option to add more lines from our collection of strips.  We could create more lines.  We could rearrange.

I had also rearranged the tables so that we had several tables with long sheets of paper on them.  I had them put the strips they weren't going to use on those sheets of paper--ideally, everyone would put at least one strip on each strip of long paper.

Everyone had a long sheet of paper with strips, and we spent 15 minutes arranging the strips into something resembling a poem.  I read a few out loud.  I thought they worked as poems, but my students seemed more hesitant.

I do realize that one reason why I think they work is that the abandoned lines are my lines, so in some sense, they do work well together.  I also realize that I have more training in doing reading without insisting on some external meeting; I did confess to my students that I like having a clear meaning, which these poems may not always have.

Next week, when we return from fall break, I'll back up a little.  We'll do some poems with clear meanings and talk about how/if/why they work.  And we'll do a bit more experimenting with form:  sestina and villanelle and pantoum and sonnets--but maybe we'll do something simple, like triolets, and avoid/save the harder stuff.

But first, Fall Break!  Actually, first I go down to Spartanburg Methodist College.  Today is a writing day for my students, so it will be easier for me--which is good, because midterm grades are due, and we have a Humanities department meeting.