Safe in Indiana

I am sitting at a desk in the Drury Hotel in Carmel, Indiana, on the northern edge of Indianapolis.  I'm here for an onground intensive for the TEEM program, my current route to ordination.  If you've been following along all week, you know that I'm here a day early.

It's a long trip, which I make by car.  I like being able to arrive with all my stuff, and I really like not dealing with the hassles of airline travel.  For this trip, I was really happy to be able to change my travel plans with minimum hassle.

I'm glad I left early.  I got in my car yesterday at 6:40 a.m., and it was already raining.  The illuminated signs on the interstate that give information about road conditions told drivers of high wind warnings and advised us to be alert for debris on the roads.  As I made my way north and west, the rain continued, and there was already standing water on the road.

Happily, the rain wasn't heavy, and there wasn't much traffic on the roads with me.  I was able to check into the hotel with no problem, and there were plenty of luggage carts available.  I got unpacked and organized and headed down to dinner.

Before the TEEM program intensive in June, I had never heard of this hotel chain.  I am happy to return here again.  I love that they offer both breakfast and dinner.  The dinner menu changes, although I imagine there are standards.  When I was here in June, the taco/burrito bar was offered twice, which was fine with me.

Last night we had pulled pork, which was great because I had been craving barbecue.  It wasn't the burnt ends kind of experience I wanted, but it was good enough.  I got my third glass of wine, added the former pour to it, and headed back to my room with a very full glass.

Another plus to staying at this hotel is the 3 free drinks every evening.  It's not just wine, but also several kinds of beer, along with all sorts of mixed drinks.  It's an interesting business decision, and last night I was happy to partake.

I spent time reading a non-academic book as I sipped my wine.  On Tuesday, when I realized I'd be at the hotel an extra day, I got some regular fiction from the library, so last night, I started Kevin Wilson's Perfect Little World.  Earlier this year, I read Now Is Not the Time to Panic, so when I saw it in the stacks, I decided on another book of his.  So far, it's compelling.  I also got Lionel Shriver's The Mandibles, which I've read twice before.  It's an interesting look at a near-future dystopia, and I'd like to revisit it.  We'll see if this week is the week.

Today I plan to read more of Perfect Little World, along with academic reading for the coming week.  I brought my quilting project with me, so I also plan to do some sewing--my hope is that there will be something interesting on the cable stations on the big TV, but if not, there's plenty on my computer.

I'm sure Indianapolis offers many diversions, but I'm going to stay put and enjoy having time to focus on joys that I usually have to tuck in the margins of my other responsibilities.

A Good Stretch of Poetry Days

The past few days have been a good poetry days, in a more well-rounded sense--by which I mean, I've been doing more than just writing down a line or two.  Let me capture what a good stretch of poetry days looks like:

--A few months ago, I had an idea for a poem, Jesus buying a fixer-upper of a house.  I didn't do anything with this idea since I first had it (in late April, as evidenced by this blog post).  But this week, I returned to it, and I'm really delighted with the surprises that the poem offers.

--Yesterday, I read a volume of poems.  My students were working through a time management module and had to enter due dates into calendars and planners.  I thought they would blaze through the assignment, but only a few of them did.  I went back to my office to get something to read.

--That book was Donna Vorreyer's Unrivered.  What an amazing book!  Vorreyer explores themes of aging and the natural world and relationships, and many of her poems have theological imagery and ideas that I didn't expect.  She's also skilled at a variety of forms.  It's a book that demands a re-read, which I hope to do soon.

--I read most of the book in one sitting, and I returned to read the rest of it later in the afternoon.  It's always a very different experience to read an entire collection in one day, and I'm glad I did it yesterday.

--I had a late afternoon phone call after the Endorsement Panel yesterday.  I was invited to be the official poet, a poet laureate of sorts, of the Southeastern Synod's Synod Assembly.  What a cool possibility!

--My mom heard me say that I was invited to be poet laureate of the Synod, which would also be an interesting possibility.

--This morning I returned to my poem about Jesus working on the fixer-upper.  Here's what I wrote, a stanza which surprised me--I didn't know I was going to write it until the lines flowed out:

Jesus wipes down every surface,
scrubbing when necessary.
He paints the walls in a soothing
version of the color that first flooded
the world when God said,
“Let there be light.”

A Week-end in Books and Sermons

It was a good week-end, full of bread baking and writing (sermon and a poem), a good Sunday at church, and some piece work (by which I mean sewing together small scraps).  We watched a lot of Hot Bench, a court TV show that is slightly smarter than all the rest, but only slightly, with the cases which are more small claims court, not life threatening types of situations.

Saturday was an easier day than some Saturdays, because I already had a satisfying sermon draft by Saturday.  I can't always manage that feat, but when I do, I notice how much less stressed I feel on Saturday.  I slept better as Saturday night went into Sunday too.  

I was pleased with how I delivered it too and happy about the last part of the last sentence, which wasn't in the manuscript: "to live into a future where everyone has a place at the table, not under the table." If you'd like to see the sermon, you can watch the recording here, on my YouTube channel.

On Saturday, I went to the library and wandered the stacks; it's a small branch library, so it doesn't take long.  I saw some books from Ann Hood, books I hadn't read.  Once, long ago, she was one of my favorite authors--when did I stop reading her?  I checked out two of her books, and I read The Obituary Writer in one late afternoon and evening.  It's a fairly short book, and an easy read, a book that revolves around 2 characters and their decisions, decisions mostly about love.  I was less interested in the one who lost her love in the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, but I kept reading.

Last night, I finished Patti Smith's latest, Bread of Angels.  Here's how I described it on the books read list I keep:  Parts were compelling, parts boring, most of it interesting, but not really in the mood for this book, which made me sad and made me wonder if I might should save it until later when I’m more in the mood for childhood creativity in the midst of poverty and adolescent/young adulthood creativity in a variety of hovels and grittiness. But what I really wanted was insight into later middle age creativity and not much of that.

But I might also have written this:  "In other words, it's not Just Kids.  But of course, nothing will ever match that book."

No Sealey Challenge for Me--But a Different Daily Poetry Challenge?

For one brief moment yesterday morning, I thought about doing the Sealey Challenge:  reading 1 volume of poetry each day in August.  I've only done it once in the past, so yesterday morning, I went back and read the blog posts that I wrote in 2020; this post talks about the overall experience, and this one talks about photos I used when making my Facebook posts.  Some people have posted their daily experiences on Instagram, but I'm not on Instagram.  Did I post on Twitter in 2020?  I was on Twitter, so probably.

I even went so far as to gather all the single volumes of poetry that I have on my bookshelves here at the house (I have even more in boxes and a few volumes at my office on campus).  But by afternoon, I decided not to do it.

I was able to do it in 2020 because my work life was so different.  I was in an office every day for 8-ish hours a day, but I had long patches of time during the day when I didn't have tasks to do.  At that point, we thought it was likely that the campus would close at some point in the next year, so my main work job was to keep it going, in a hospice kind of way, keeping everyone comfortable, but not starting new initiatives.

It was 2020, early-ish in the Covid time, no vaccines, and trying to stay distanced.  So I had fewer people coming to my office to complain or to strategize or to fight off boredom by gossiping or rage baiting.  In short, I had a lot of free time, even though I had to spend it in an office.

During those no-task times in 2020, I was able to read a book straight through.  My work life is about to get a lot more complicated, with commuting and going to class and one set of online classes coming to an end and another set beginning.

But yesterday's thinking about the Sealey Challenge did remind me that I want to start reading more poetry again.  I want to carry a volume of poetry with me throughout my teaching day.  I want to model the behavior of reading in the moments of down time that come with every class.

And that has made me think of something else--maybe I want to project a poem onto the board at the start of each class--a different type of daily poetry challenge!  Maybe I want poems each day that encourage students.  Hmmm.  Let me think about this. 

Adventures in Reading Outside of the House

I began the day, the outside of the house part of the day, at the dentist's office yesterday morning for an 8 a.m. appointment.  I brought a book, Francine Prose's Five Weeks in the Country.  By the end of the visit, after 29 pages, I decided that I was already dreading having to finish the book--the grown up characters in the book are SO odious.  I reminded myself--you don't have to read any further.  And so, back to the library it goes!

I ended the day, the outside of the house part of the day, at the dermatologist's office to get a basal cell skin cancer removed.  I arrived late in the afternoon, and it wasn't a surprise that they were running a bit late.  Happily, I had a book, Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad.  

What a delightful book!  How did I miss its publication back in 2005?

Well, a lot was going on in my life in 2005, much of it difficult (hurricanes, house damage, mother-in-law's broken hip and death by medical industrial complex). 

I was glad to have that book with me, because the appointment took longer than it might have earlier in the day.  Even more, I was glad it was a compelling book, a book I would have enjoyed, even if I hadn't been stuck with it, in the unique way that one is stuck in a doctor's office.  It's a short book, and I read about half of it during the time of waiting.

For the past several years, I've tried to get back in the habit of carrying a book with me everywhere, especially to health care appointments, where I know there will be some waiting time--far better to read a book than to read my phone.

Happy Independence Day: History as Life Preserver

I have begun this 4th of July listening to a variety of podcasts:  an interview with The Rest is History British podcasters and David Remnick and a NYT Book Review podcast with Jill Lepore talking about history and good books for Independence day.  I listened to this story on heartland rock, which didn't tell me anything I didn't already have figured out about Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A."  This piece on Octavia Butler's typewriter was disappointingly short. 

I have been re-reading Octavia Butler's Wild Seed, and I might go on to re-read Kindred, both interesting approaches to understanding history.  The interview with Jill Lepore meanders into a remembering of what it was to be immersed in books, especially the summer reading in childhood type.  Glorious!  I am always grateful to have longer stretches of reading time than I sometimes do during the school year.

This morning, I've also been re-reading past July 4 blog posts that I wrote.  Every 4th of July post is both similar and different, full of hope, yet also tinged by dread of what might be coming.  This year is no different.  Sure, we have a corrupt president, but that has usually been a national truth revealing how many different ways one can be corrupt, if one has enough power.

Here is the way I concluded my 2012 July 4 post.  It seems perfect for any ordinary Independence Day, but also for this one, which celebrates the U.S. at year 250:

I love this picture of a flag and a life preserver.  I often wish that our country could do more to hold out a life preserver to oppressed people across the globe.  But it's good to remember that our history serves as a life preserver of sorts, a beacon of hope to so many.

Happy Bloomsday!

I only care about Bloomsday as a sort of cosmic accident. When I got to grad school and pored over the list of classes I could take, I discovered that most of them were full. As a new grad student, I was last to register. And so I found myself in Tom Rice's class on James Joyce. What a life-changing experience that was.

Several of the stories from Dubliners show up in anthologies, even first year literature anthologies, so I might have eventually discovered them in my teaching life that was to come. But would I have ever had the patience to wade through Ulysses all by myself? Absolutely not.

Bloomsday celebrates the day, June 16, on which all the action in Ulysses takes place. The book covers almost every kind of action that can take place in a human day: we see Leopold Bloom in the bathroom, we see Stephen Dedalus pick his nose, we see Leopold Bloom masturbate . . . and we finally get to the masterful final chapter, where Molly Bloom muses on the physicality of being a woman.

As with many books, whose scandalous reputations preceded them, I read and read and waited for the scandalous stuff. As a post-modern reader, I was most scandalized by how difficult it was. It's hard to imagine that such a book would be published today.

But what a glorious book it is. What fun Joyce has, as he writes in different styles and plays with words. What a treat for English majors like me, who delighted in chasing down all the allusions.

I went on to write my M.A. thesis on Joyce, trying to prove that he wasn't as anti-woman as his reputation painted him to be. Since then, other scholars have done a more thorough job than I did. But I'm still proud of that thesis. I learned a lot by writing it. At the time, it was the longest thing I had ever written--in the neighborhood of 50 pages. A few years later, I'd be writing 150 pages as I tackled my dissertation--on domestic violence in the Gothic. By the time I'd written my thesis, I had said all I had to say on Joyce.

So, happy Bloomsday.  Those of us who were born later than Joyce, who haven't read much of the work that came before Joyce, probably aren't aware of what a radical experiment he presented.  A work that takes place in just one day?  Revolutionary!  I could argue that Virginia Woolf did it more artistically with Mrs. Dalloway, but before the Modernists, most people would have thought of just one day as not worthy of documenting.  And Joyce's interior monologues capture like no other work what it's like to be inside a brain, to listen to thoughts without the scaffolding of traditional narrative.

I have read Ulysses several times, and I confess, I likely will never read it again.  But I'm grateful to have done it, grateful that it exists, grateful that I had guides to show me of its mastery.

Summer Reading Report Card

I am happy to report that I am managing to read this summer.  Once I took reading in the summer as a given--classes came to a close, and what else would one do?  Now I continue onward:  as one set of classes ends, I teach the next set.  But summer still feels spacious in a way that other seasons do not, in part because I'm working from home more, commuting less.

I would likely not have picked up Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir, if a friend hadn't talked about how much she liked it; she read it after her grown up son raved about it.   After the movie came out a few months ago, she asked if I had read it, and after her recommendation, I added it to my ever growing list of books to read.

I read The Martian (I wrote about it in this blog post) and liked it well enough, but Weir hasn't been one of those writers whose work I seek out.  Project Hail Mary felt familiar yet different.  I liked the flashbacks better than the parts in the spaceship.  I found the premise intriguing, the in-depth mechanical explorations less so.  

After finishing Project Hail Mary, I was in the mood for something shorter.  Kevin Wilson's Now Is Not the Time to Panic fit the bill.  Wilson captures a different kind of summer from the one I am having, a teenager without a job kind of summer.  Wilson captures the mid-90's, captures what it was like to have artistic aspirations in a pre-World Wide Web age.  The parts of the book about the girl artist grown up were a bit less developed, but I wasn't as curious about her--should I have been?

When I was younger, in my middle school years, my goal was to read 100 books in the summer.  Often the local library had some kind of contest.  Of course, those were easier books which I could read in an afternoon.  When I was older, in high school, I was reading the books I felt I should read by the time I went off to college, along with pulpy romances and multigeneration family sagas.

Now I just want to be reading books that call to me when I'm doing other tasks.  These two books did just that. 

Great (but Easy) Books to End a Reading Slump

When I read/hear a book review/author interview, if the book sounds good, I put a request in at the local library--the same goes for social media.  But often, it takes many months before I actually read the book, which means I often don't remember where I heard about the book.  In some ways, it doesn't matter, but I'm often curious, particularly if the book disappoints.

I'm happy to report that my 3 latest reads have not disappointed.  I am always overjoyed when I get books that are the kind of reading experiences where I get lost in the book and/or when I wake up thinking about the book.

*  Still Life by Sarah Winman was not that kind of book.  It was more gently compelling, a perfect just before bed kind of read, when I can only read a page or two, every evening or so.  It was a book about two characters who meet in Tuscany as WWII is coming to an end and the ways their lives revolve around Tuscany and each other.  It was a delight of a read, not the 800 page sprawling history, but encompassing post-WWII 20th century history nonetheless.  It showed humans at their best, and occasionally (enough to make the book compelling) not at their best.  What made it gentle is that the characters were able to recover from bad behavior.  It's the kind of book that bubbles up in my brain occasionally, and in a good way.

-- Nonesuch by Francis Spufford was also rooted in World War II, but it was a different approach, with time traveling and wizardry of a sort.  I loved the main character, a woman both of her time and ahead of her time, lots of interesting insights about gender and relationships and finance.  I had trouble visualizing the way the time travel happened, by way of statues and shapes shifting, so I scanned the pages and pages of description, and had a reading experience that came out just fine.  It was a fun but also serious read about fights against fascists, both the historically accurate kind (Britain during the bombings of London) and the time travelling, fantastical kind.

*  The Wedding People by Alison Espach was a different kind of delight, revolving around the ways we try to redeem our lives through our relationships.  At first, I almost took it back to the library, because I didn't want to read about very expensive weddings and the entitled people who want them.  But the book was in high demand, even though it was published in 2022, so I decided to read the first chapter--and I was hooked.  The main character is an adjunct English faculty member, so there's some delightful stuff about reading and teaching, along with lots of humor--and a happy ending!

# Next up is Colored Television by Danzy Senna.  How delightful to have a bit of time to return to reading, one of my earliest loves. 

* I put these books on my list after reading Paisley Rekdal's March 18 Facebook post:  "OK people, I'm getting ready for a little R&R time and I'm looking for a fun book that will tax no more than 5 brain cells. Like, writing that will basically bathe my frontal lobe in martinis and oxytocin and chocolate for a day or two then evaporate. A one-night stand of a book. A dumb but hot college boyfriend of a book. What is that book? I swear, I will go back to serious literature and yelling at my congresspeople and more paperwork in a week, but right now I just need a recommendation for a fun, IQ-obliterating read. No judgement. What is that book for you?"  These two books were so delightful and satisfying that I returned to her post this morning to capture some additional recommendations.

-- This book came to me by way of a Fresh Air interview with the author.

#  This book came by way of Leslie Pietrzyk's May 16 Facebook post of 4 books that she had recently read: "Earlier in the year I was in a patch of so-so books, and I'm delighted to report that these excellent beauties got me out of my slump! Highly recommend, and 3 are writer-adjacent!"   Her post reminded me that I heard good things about Colored Television when it first came out, so I requested it from the library, where it arrived in record time.

Creative Upkeep: Sorting the Strips, Filling the Markers

Yesterday was a day of creative sorting, creative upkeep.  Late morning, I returned home from a bagel break with a retreat friend who is here working a temporary gig at Lutheridge--what a delight to remember how many friends I have in the wide, wide world.  I decided it was time to return to my Christmas quilt that I want to have ready to gift at Thanksgiving.

Of course, it's been awhile since I picked up this project, so I had to remember what plan I had back in March when I cut strips and put them away.  Happily, I had put all the strips in a separate bag inside the bag of Christmas cloth, so I laid out the strips by color and leapt back in.  Later, I laid out the patches on the bed to see how far I am from finishing.  My plan is to sew the top together at the August Quilt Camp and finish assembling it at the November quilt camp.

In the afternoon I read a bit outside, as I did on Monday--trying to keep my sunkissed look from last week going.  It's been awhile since I spent time on the deck, and I've missed it.  I used to do the refilling of my markers on the deck--at first because we didn't have another table, and then, because it was messy and I wanted the mess to stay outside.  I decided to refill my markers yesterday.

It's a task that I don't particularly like--I would rather buy a new marker than refill the old one, wasteful as that is.  But I've already bought a lot of ink to refill markers, so I try to make myself refill the markers occasionally.  It's sort of meditative (when the ink goes where it should), sort of irritating (when the ink spurts or overflows).

In the evening, I did some stitching and did some sketching, along with some reading.  I felt a bit irritable because it's a week that's unusually hot for the mountains in North Carolina, and I'm trying hard not to turn the AC on too early in the afternoon/evening.  My spouse hates the cold weather months, and I want him to have some heat while it's here (while at the same time wishing he would just go outside and be in the heat out there).  

We finally turned on the AC when the inside temp hit 80 degrees.  Shortly after that, I went to bed where I slept the satisfied sleep of one who is getting her creative life back on track.

A Look Back: 2025

I've been thinking about my approach to the new year; I have been keeping a blog since 2008, so I also have a fairly easy way to see what I do each year.  Some years, I set intentions or adopt resolutions.  Some years I have a word/phrase.  Most years in the waning days of December, I look back.  So, for today's blog post, let's look back.

My Intentions for 2025

On January 1, 2025, I wrote a blog post where I had three specific intentions for 2025.  Up until the moment that I wrote that post, I had no plans to adopt these intentions.  Let's start with these intentions, as I look back on 2025:

--"I want to do strength training 20 days out of every month, 10 minutes over an exercise session."  Most weeks, I did a day or two of strength training, either with weights, or with the weigh of my body.  That means that most months, I did 6 days of strength training, not 20.  

--"I want to end the year with 52 poems written, finished poems. They may not be worth sending out, but they need to be finished."  I did much better with this goal during the first three months of 2025.  I did end up with somewhere between 15 and 25 finished poems, which is more than I would have had without that intention.

For both of the above intentions, the good thing about those intentions is that I remembered that I had the intention, and throughout the year, the intention called me back, tugged me back to the behavior I wanted to cultivate.

--"I want to concentrate on faces (both from the front and profile) and hands, and not in isolation, but as part of the figures that I draw."  Here, too, I did much better with this intention in the first months of the year than in the last 9 months of the year.  I drew much better faces, when I was concentrating.  I still have trouble drawing hands if they're connected to the rest of the body.

Other Aspects of 2025

--I continue to enjoy teaching.  It was great to teach literature survey classes again.  I revisited some classic texts, which is always interesting, especially as I revisit them at very different times of my life.

--I finished my MDiv degree at Wesley Theological Seminary.  I find it interesting that when I thought about the high points of 2025, the teaching was what came to mind before finishing the MDiv degree.  I'm not reading too much into that.  I finished the MDiv in May and my brain tends to work back in chronology--so since I've been teaching more recently than finishing the MDiv, that's what came to mind first.  It's also because I had such a good fall semester teaching such great students and classes.

--When I went back and counted my non-drinking days, I've been very successful.  I still drink, but I did have a long stretch in the summer where I drank no alcohol.  Stay tuned for my 2026 intention in terms of health.

--I haven't read as many books this year (only 50, if my list can be believed), but at the end of the year, I've been on a reading binge, and I'm always happy to find my powers of concentration still allow me to read a book from beginning to end.

--I finished a quilt top, which I used with an old quilt that I created twenty years ago to create something new.  The old quilt had a back that was in good shape, so I quilted the new top to the old quilt and created a binding/border.  I've continued to put fabric together in ways that delight me.

--My job as a Synod Appointed Minister continues at Faith Lutheran in Bristol, Tennessee.  They like me, and I like them, and although they've tried to find a full-time pastor, those attempts haven't led them to a viable candidate.  Periodically, I remind us all that if the congregation finds a great candidate and decides to offer them a job, I'll understand.  Similarly, we don't know what my Candidacy Committee will decide at various stages.

--In terms of candidacy, I have made some progress on the road to ordination.  I finished my MDiv which some people might think would mean I should be ordained by now.  But I went to a Methodist seminary, so that's not the way that ordination works at this point in the ELCA, the more progressive expression of Lutheran churches in the US.  Over the summer, I did the required CPE training at the Asheville VA Hospital, but I have had to wait until Spring 2026 semester to take the Lutheran Foundations course that I need.  Will I need more classes?  Will I also have to do an internship?  Stay tuned.

Reading in the Waning Days of 2025

It's been a great month for reading--less so for writing, but I'll get back to a more regular writing schedule in January.  I've found myself wishing I could go back and repeat some of the reading, most particularly Ian McEwan's What We Can Know.  

Would I wish that I could reread it if I hadn't heard this New York Times Book Club podcast about the book?  Probably.  I knew at the time I was reading it that I would want to reread it.  I zoomed through it the first time just to find out what happened, and I knew I would want an additional read to appreciate some of the other aspects of the novel, outside of the propulsive plot.

My last read of 2025 will be Kristin Hannah's The Women, which I found in the community library where my folks live and where I'm visiting.  I had heard such good things about it, and it, too, is a propulsive novel.  But I can't see myself reading it again, once I'm done.  It made me think about the TV shows M*A*S*H and China Beach.  I've only read 100 pages, so I'm interested if Hannah goes in any unexpected directions or adds some depth to the characters.  So far, there's lots of exploring of the place of Vietnam and the surgical procedures that nurses did under intense pressure during the Vietnam war.

My mom and I spent some time in the community library in the afternoon.  She is always on the hunt for good books, and I had this momentary hope that we might find the McEwan book.  After all, the Hannah book is recent--but it's one of the few in the library published in this century.  We found a John Jakes novel, Charleston, along with another book. 

As I have been doing more intense reading in December, I've remembered my own writing impulses, particularly the novels I thought I would write.  I've been thinking about my writing goals for 2026.  I'm not sure I want to commit to writing a novel in 2026, but I'm not sure I don't.  Let me continue to think:  if I was writing a novel that wasn't going to be intertwined stories, what would the plot be?

Winter Solstice Fragments

Let me take a moment and record a few bits and pieces from the past few days.

--This morning, I had my eye on the Amazon delivery schedule, which I almost never do, and I noticed that the tracker on the map was in the shape of a sleigh.  It made me smile.

--I was tracking some new fabric scissors.  I used my fabric scissors over Thanksgiving to cut Steam-a-Seam, and I won't be doing that again.  My scissors were a bit duller, and then my spouse tried to sharpen them the way one does knives.  Now the old fabric scissors don't cut at all.  I have a pair of 50 year old fabric scissors, which also aren't as sharp as I'd like, and a rotary cutter that also is not as sharp as it needs to be.  Yesterday I thought, this is ridiculous and ordered more scissors.

--I have not been doing a great job going for a daily walk.  I have managed to walk 2-3 times a week, which once upon a time (50 years ago) would have been the recommended amount.  I will get back on track in the new year.

--We watched A Muppet Christmas Movie, which is different than A Muppet Christmas Carol.  I like A Muppet Christmas Movie better--lots of funny allusions to all sorts of Christmas movies and themes.

--When I look back on this winter break, I want to remember that I did a lot of sewing, a lot of reconnecting with friends, a lot of reading of real books!  I didn't do as much walking or writing, but that's O.K.

--Today is the winter solstice.  After today, more light!  

Visits with Friends, from Long Ago and More Recent

I made a quick trip to Columbia, SC on Monday.  One of my grad school friends had a catastrophic stroke in summer of 2024, and she's in a skilled nursing unit.  I try to see her regularly, although it's difficult because of my schedule and her health issues.  She still hasn't regained all of her powers of speech, so I worry that my visits are frustrating.  But I also know how much people in care facilities need visits from their friends and family, and so I am determined to keep making the effort.  It's what I think I would want my friends to do for me.

We had a good visit.  We looked at some of the ornaments on her tree.  She's made counted cross stitch ornaments through the years, and the most beautiful and elegant ones are on the tree and hung on across the window.  We had a discussion of sorts about Jane Austen.  I thought of my grad school friend yesterday as I drove home and listened to a discussion of Jane Austen, on her 250th birthday; it was a great conversation on the NPR show 1A, which you can enjoy here.

After the visit with that grad school friend, I went to visit another grad school friend.  We went to our favorite pizza place for a very late lunch/very early dinner.  Zorba's on St. Andrews Road does an amazing job with their Greek pizza.  We also drove around the Shandon area to look at holiday lights.

Long ago, in our grad school days, we lived in a run down apartment building near Five Points, and we often drive by to see it.  Well, we won't be doing that again.  It's been bulldozed.  It was disconcerting to see a construction site where our apartment quadplex used to be.

I left yesterday morning and stopped by the new Trader Joe's out in Harbison--at last, a Trader Joe's with enough parking!  I stocked up on cheeses and other appetizer like snacks, along with a variety of stuffed pastas.  We had some neighborhood friends coming over for happy hour last night, so I wanted to get food on my way home.

I took a walk yesterday afternoon--the weather has gone from record breaking cold Monday morning to a high in the low 60's.   I took this picture because the blueness of the sky took my breath away.

And the photo makes me think that maybe my phone camera is more O.K. than I thought it was.  Maybe the washed out quality of some of the photos I've been taking is about the fluorescent light. 

After my walk and before the happy hour guests, I got a call from the melanoma doctor.  It was last Thursday when I got the phone call from my dermatologist.  I'd been keeping my eye on a spot that we all thought was a bug bite, but it didn't go away or fade, so we decided on a biopsy.  I was expecting it to be a cancer, but not a melanoma.

After the biopsy

My dermatologist refers melanomas to a specialist, so I was instructed to wait, which I did.  The melanoma doctor passed the first test, by calling me within days.  And I will go tomorrow for the consult.

The prospects are good for me.  The melanoma isn't deep:  .3 mm (.3, not 3.).  There's a 5 level scale of seriousness, and from what I can tell, .3 isn't even a stage 1.  The biopsy site looks like a deep cut, but who knows--I am sure there will be additional flesh removed.

But for today, let me focus on the pleasant:  coffee with a retreat friend, quilt group at the local Lutheran church, and a Zoom session with folks/friends who have been meeting to discuss books and the contemplative life.

Cold Weather, Cozy Evenings, and the Relentless Drip of Bad News

For the past several weeks, I've gotten up on Sunday mornings and studied weather reports.  I've enlarged screens to better study the radar and try to figure out where precipitation is falling.  Last week the forecast was for freezing fog, but we didn't see any impact on road conditions.  

Yesterday I knew we would encounter some precipitation between Arden, NC and Bristol, TN, but I was surprised by how much was falling.  The roads were mostly wet, but at the highest point, there was more snow sticking to the pavement than I expected.  I felt a bit of panic and wondered if we should turn around.  But I also knew that road conditions on the way back were likely to be just fine, and once we headed down the mountain, the road conditions went back to being wet, not white.

To view the recording of yesterday's sermon, head here to my YouTube site.  To read the manuscript, head over to yesterday's blog post.

I'm glad I had a chance to be with the congregation of Faith Lutheran yesterday.  My sermon went well, as did the rest of the service and Confirmation class.  The trip back was fairly easy, and we had a restful end of our Sunday.

We spent the majority of our time watching YouTube videos of Josh Johnson, a comedian whom my spouse first noticed on The Daily Show.  We didn't see any news reports about the death of Rob and Michele Singer Reiner.  I woke up yesterday morning to the news of the shootings at Brown University and Bondi Beach, Australia, but by the end of the day, those shootings were not foremost in my mind.   I can't decide whether or not to be worried about my ability to synthesize the news of shootings and just move on.  I'm not numb, exactly.  I'm certainly not jaded and blasé.   But I am aware that the issue of guns and mass violence is vaster and harder to solve than most people want to think about, and I don't have much in the way of solutions.  I remember a time when there was less regulation of guns and less gun violence at the same time.  I think of my high school in Knoxville, TN, where kids drove to school in trucks that had gun racks with guns in them, and we didn't shoot each other.  So I'm one of those strange people who doesn't think that guns are the problem, but there is some sort of other problem that's rooted in alienation and isolation and lack of rootedness in institutions that keep us from killing each other.

Happily, last night I didn't spend time on those thoughts about gun violence.  

I sorted Christmas fabrics and made another log cabin patch and read a bit of Adam Haslett's Mother and Sons--what a wonderful book!  The 3 books I've read over Christmas break so far (this one, Ian McEwan's What We Can Know, and Joe Mungo Reed's Terrestrial History) bear re-reading, a reading where I'm not racing through the book anxious to know how the plot turns out.

Today I will leave my spouse at home, tending to the pipes for a night, while I go to South Carolina to catch up with some grad school friends.  I'm leaving the computer behind--it's that rare moment when I don't need to monitor classes, plus I'm not going to be gone long.  It will be good to be away from the relentless drips and drumbeat of bad news.

First Week of December Thoughts on Year End Lists and More

I had every intention of writing yesterday; after all, I had a largely unstructured day, since my ear doctor appointment got moved from Tuesday to Monday.   I had every intention of walking too.  

And how did my day get away from me?  I should be more specific--my mornings are the times when I have plans for getting things done.  Yesterday I started baking because we had the idea of sending a care package to a nephew who is studying for final exams.  I kept baking, and when my spouse was at the dentist, I wanted to enjoy having the house to myself, so I didn't go for a walk.  I was making progress on the endless grading that is constant at the end of the term, so I kept going.

By later in the day, after I got back from the post office and the library, it was windy, so I decided to hunker down, watch T.V., and sew some quilt squares.

Let me record some thoughts from the past few days:

--I was sad to hear about the death of Tom Stoppard and astonished to realize that he was 88 years old.  I had forgotten that he wrote the screenplay to Shakespeare in Love.  If I ever get to teach the Brit Lit survey class again, I'll end by having us watch that movie in its entirety.  It's an interesting counterpoint to Waiting for Godot--in some sense, it's in the absurdist line of theatre, but it's also different in ways that make sense as a way to close the course.  It looks both forward and backward, and it's a work from 1999, which gets me closer to the 21st century than I got this year, when I ended with Waiting for Godot.  I feel vaguely guilty for ending the course in the 1950's, and showing a film that features a Stoppard screenplay would alleviate my guilt.

--I went to the post office yesterday expecting a big crowd--it is early December, after all.  Happily there was only one person already at the counter and then me in line.  I bought some holiday stamps, even though I already have plenty of stamps.  I thought of my grandfather, my mom's dad, who collected stamps and taught me how to do it.  I wondered if anyone still collects stamps.

--We've been binge watching NYPD Blue.  I am using the term binge watching perhaps differently than some do, especially when talking about a series that lasted from 1993 until 2005.  It's a show we return to, but it's easy to dip in and out.  There are enough story lines that go across episodes that make me want to return to it.  It's well written and well acted, and it seems as worthy of attention as any of the "prestige TV" shows that aired on HBO in the past decades.  I watched it for a few years when it first aired, but I don't remember much of it.  Because it was a weekly show that was on the air for so long, there's a lot to watch, and we are watching it on a channel that just runs the show, episode after episode, so we can't pause the series.

--I am looking at a variety of year-end Best of _____ lists.  I'm no longer surprised when I haven't heard of most of the movies on the list.  But this year I'm surprised how few of the books crossed my radar screen until landing on the year end list.  And many of the ones that are on the list that I've heard of are ones I didn't like.  Hmm.

--Yesterday I took our Thanksgiving hambone and turned it into a pot of bean soup--what alchemy!  For decades when I cooked vegetarian beans, there would always be someone who asked what gave them flavor without the pork.  I never understood the question until a few years ago when I got to take the hambone home.

Gratitude Tuesday: British Lit, Teaching, and the Larger Perspective

This morning, I'm trying to remember to do my writing first before going to teaching duties.  Yesterday I did grading for my online classes; I thought I was caught up with grading late work, only to discover that I had some more to do.  It's not a huge deal--it's late work, after all, so students should have no expectation of timely grading.  But the term is ending soon, so there's some pressure, all self-imposed, because the semester isn't ending that soon.

In short, I was in a sour mood yesterday.  That's not the reason I didn't do any blogging.  I didn't do any blogging because time just zoomed away from me.

I went to school yesterday, and had a good in-person teaching day.  My English 101 class got their final exam writing assignment and settled in to write--they are one of the best classes I've ever had about settling in to a writing day.

My British Lit class was wonderful in a different way.  I did a variation of an in-person final exam that I did in the spring with my American Lit class (see this blog post for more information).  My Brit Lit class is much smaller, so I skipped some steps.  First I had them write their top 5 list, the 5 works we studied which most inform their understanding of the world today, the top 5 list of works that they would keep on the syllabus.  Then I had them divide into 2 groups of 4 students.  Each group made a group list and put it on the board at the same time.

Both groups had Frankenstein at the #1 spot, which I expected.  I was happy that both groups also included "Goblin Market" and Mrs. Dalloway.  We had a good discussion about the similarities in the works and the differences.  One group also included Wollstonecraft's "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" for similar reasons.  That group's fifth work was "Porphyria's Lover," which led to a great discussion of new ways of telling stories and creating characters, like the dramatic monologue--new ways which are as old as literature, in many ways.  

The other group chose Dorothy Wordsworth's journal, which made me happy and led to a conversation about women's lives and ordinary lives being seen as important--links to Mrs. Dalloway.  The other group also chose Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," mainly for ways it shows the way the past affects the present--good insights that the student who advocated for it came up with on his own.

We also talked about works that we didn't cover deeply or much at all, and what might be included next time.  One of my students suggested Jane Austen, and I said that I had also been thinking about adding Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre.  I also mentioned that Sense and Sensibility is coming back to the big screen for one day only and recommended it.  I may have waxed too enthusiastic about Emma Thompson, saying, "If Emma Thompson came through that door right now and said, 'Come away with me right now, and we'll make wonderful movies,' I would leave without a second thought.  Would I go get my purse?  Yes, probably."  And then we talked about big name British actors of the 1990's for a few minutes, and then I turned our attention back again to the work of the course.

I feel very lucky to be teaching this next generation of students at Spartanburg Methodist College.  They give me hope for the future.  They have a wide range of interests:  I'm thinking about my Brit Lit students who had a great conversation about musical theatre when I asked them about the direction of theater after "Waiting for Godot."  They've been good sports about my cell phones in class ban.  They're respectful, even as they question what the larger world wants them to believe.  

I've got one more class day, today, wrapping up three classes, and then it's on to Thanksgiving and exams.  I don't need to report to campus for exams, another aspect of life that makes me feel very lucky.  So much gratitude here in this week as we dash to Thanksgiving and beyond!

Book Buyers on Campus

On Friday afternoon, I noticed a stranger in the office suite.  No one seemed alarmed, so I thought maybe he was expected.  He wore slightly better clothing than our usual student visitors.  A job candidate, perhaps?  But surely not on a Friday afternoon, which is not a high traffic time on campus.  A former department member?  Maybe--but it would be going way back, because I hadn't heard of an older white man as a former department member.

In the end, he turned out to be a book buyer, the kind who goes from campus to campus, looking for old textbooks to buy.  The business model used to be that he'd buy them for slightly more than one could get at the campus bookstore.  Now campus bookstores have a much smaller footprint, and many college teachers are using online textbooks, open source material, or no text at all.  

I'm a little surprised that there's enough of a market that someone would still put on their better clothes and trudge from building to building with a rolling suitcase for the books to be bought.  But I'm also happy.

And yes, I realize all the reasons why this shadow economy is bad for book writers and students and textbook companies.  But I'm also happy.

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.

Mary Wollstonecraft and Me

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

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

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

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

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

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