Strategies for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women

For my internship with the Southeastern Synod of the ELCA, I get to do a variety of activities, many of which I've written about as they have occurred.  Some of these activities have had me doing something new, like leading middle school confirmands through bread baking.  This past week's internship activity was a writing task, not anything out of the ordinary for me.  But it was satisfying nonetheless.

Way back in the summer, my internship supervisor and I had brainstormed ways that I could be useful, and writing for the e-newsletter was one of them.  We looked ahead at upcoming events, and one of them was the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, on Nov. 25.  Back in the summer, that day seemed so far away.

I wrote to one of the Synod staffers who has been hired to coordinate women in ministry to see if she had anything planned.  I didn't want to duplicate efforts or step on her toes.  I had been thinking about an article that talked about the day and offered ways for ordinary people to do something.  There are lots of days that have us discussing various issues.  It's easy to feel overwhelmed, and I thought a list of possible activities would be a good counterpoint to despair, cynicism, and hopelessness.  My supervisor, when hearing of my proposed article, said, "Go for it."

I made the list, and I put it in a bulleted form so that my supervisor could edit it if need be.  Much to my delight, he didn't.  I turned it in Tuesday morning, and by Tuesday afternoon, it was online.  Go here to read it; I like that it's a mix of educational, spiritual, and advocacy type activities.  There's a bit of politics, but it's the non-partisan type.

Back when I was planning my week, I thought I would have the whole week to work on it, but I'm happy to have had the due date of Tuesday.  Later today, Quilt Camp starts, and I am happy to have almost everything else cleared off of my schedule.  I am ready to lose myself in fabric in the best possible ways.

A Tale of Two, no Three, Novembers

After a day that followed a night of excellent sleep, I had a night of not-excellent sleep.  So let me just post some reflections and see how/if they hang together.

--A tale of two Halloweens, well more accurately, two post-Halloween shopping experiences.  Last year, on the afternoon of Nov. 1, between classes, I went to the saddest Target in the U.S., the one in Tenleytown, in NW D.C.  I wanted to pick up some Halloween candy on sale, but there was nothing, not a scrap.  And then yesterday, I went back to Walmart, where last week, Halloween candy was on sale for 50% off--yesterday it was 75% off.

--There was so much candy at Walmart that it was as if Halloween had never happened.  Did Walmart overbuy?  Did Walmart shoppers anticipate fewer trick-or-treaters this year and thus, underbought?  And yes, I bought some candy at the 75% off sale, but mainly because I am creating a S'mores station for a gathering on Sunday, and it seemed like an economical way to get some Hershey bars.

--It's November, and my thoughts turn, as they sometimes do, to the movie The Day After.  It was broadcast first in November.  The other day, I thought, yes, November 1983, forty years ago this month (November 20, 1983, to be precise).  I pulled up a calendar--that was a Sunday.  I remember watching it in my dorm, in the lounge that had a TV, because I went to school in olden days when TVs were expensive, and we couldn't afford one to take to college for our individual dorm rooms.

--We must have watched that movie, and then a few days later, gone home to our families for Thanksgiving.  Did we talk about the movie?  Had our families seen it?  I don't remember.

--As I realized how long ago the movie came out, I thought about my own students, the ones I teach in a physical classroom, who are the age now that I was then.  Do they think about nuclear war?  It may be a more likely scenario now than it was 40 years ago.  At least 40 years ago, we knew where the nukes were, and it seemed highly unlikely that any new governments would be able to develop them.  And now?  

--I have written about the nuclear situation before, many times before.  Climate change catastrophe does take up more residence in my brain, and I do wonder if that would still be the case if I hadn't lived in Southeast Florida and seen climate change happening in real time.

--Still, I find myself hoping that there will be some retrospectives as we get closer to the anniversary of the release of The Day After.  I'd love to hear from some of the actors who performed, from the director.

--A year from now, will we be looking back to polls released earlier this week?  It's the standard kind of poll--who's ahead in a presidential race that seems more precarious than usual, what with the two front runners being so very old, and one of them facing unprecedented legal problems.  More than once each day, I shake my head and can't believe my country and the larger world has come to this.

--And of course, I wonder if I will look back on this time, the way I do my college years, and I think, I thought it was bad then, but wow, is it worse now!

--I feel I should end on a cheerier note.  But it's November, early November, rarely a cheery time.  Let me close, write my article for the Elimination of Violence Against Women Day for the Southeastern Synod, and then get ready to teach.

Time in November

The end of daylight savings time always seems a marker to me, that sudden shift to afternoon darkness.  Before we turned back the clocks, I could tell myself that it wasn't really getting dark that much earlier; what's a minute here and there.  Last night, the difference was clear.

As in past years, I gave up trying to adjust to a new schedule, and I went to bed sometime between 7 and 7:30.  I didn't sleep well the night before, so I fell right asleep.  And I slept through the night, which means that although I woke up every 2 hours or so, I was able to fall right back asleep, which hasn't been my pattern for a few weeks.  I slept until almost 5 this morning, and it was a good quality sleep with good dreams.

This week is quilt camp, which means I'll have a different relationship to time this week.  In some ways, it will be less structured starting on Wed.  I have permission to miss my Wed. and Thursday night seminary classes, since I am going to a retreat.  I'm not driving to Spartanburg on Thursday.  

But I'm trying to be very focused on getting a quilt done for my nephew, who will graduate from high school in the spring.  It is the quilt I've been working on for several years without realizing I was working on it for him.  I think he'll like the colors.  It will be huge, so it can serve him through the years.

When my sister was pregnant with him, I thought I would make more quilts for him than I have.  I would never have anticipated the total collapse of my quilt group, and looking back, I realize how much we helped each other keep going with our projects. 

I don't know if he'll cherish this quilt, and part of me wonders why giving him a quilt feels so important.  But I know why it does--I made baby quilts for him and then a quilt for his big boy bed.  This passage feels important to, and necessary to have a quilt to mark it.

But before I get to quilt camp, today is a more normal Monday:  readings to do for tonight's class, writing to do, and always, grading.

A Dumpling Recipe Worth Preserving

I've been making chicken and dumplings for decades now.  It's never been my favorite, but it's comforting and homey and good for a blustery day and/or when we're sick.  I thought yesterday would be a blustery day, so I planned to make chicken and dumplings, since we'd already had a pot of chili earlier in the week.

In September 2020, during our vacation at a timeshare in Hilton Head, we made the best chicken and dumplings I've ever made, a dish so delicious I'd have it outside of blustery/sick days.  In the years since, I've tried to recreate that dish.  Was it the raw celery I used to make the stock?   Was it using an uncooked chicken instead of the bones left over from other meals?  The dumplings were fluffy in a way that I've never had before.  Was it the self-rising flour? 

Yesterday, I made the worst batch of chicken and dumplings ever.  Even though I used a raw chicken and cooked it for hours, with carrots, celery, and onions, along with dry herbs (basil and oregano), the stock was the blandest stock ever to come out of the Berkey-Abbott kitchen.

The dumplings were worse:  gluey and dense.  We cooked them two, three times as long, and we still couldn't get them to cook through.  

Much as I wanted to dump the whole thing and order a pizza, we decided to try to salvage the meal one more time.  I went to this website and decided to try the recipe for dumplings.  They were so good that I'll post the recipe below, in case it disappears.  We added more salt to the broth, and we had a decent meal.

I will say that I'm grateful to have a dishwasher on days like yesterday.  We dirtied almost every mixing bowl in our quest for an edible dumpling.

Dumpling recipe:

Mix one and 1/3 C. flour and 2 tsp. of baking powder, along with a grind or two of salt (about a tsp).  In a different bowl, combine 1 tablespoon of melted butter with 2/3 a cup of milk.  Add the liquids to the flour and mix very briefly--overmixing is the death of dumplings.  Drop the dough by spoonfuls into the pot, lower the heat to a simmer, cover the pot, and let it all cook for 15-18 minutes.  The recipe says to resist the urge to lift the lid during the simmering process.

Teaching Observations and Late Mid-Life

This week, I had the follow up to my teaching observation.  My department chair and I are teaching at the same time, so we had a Monday follow up by way of Teams.  I find Teams a bit clunkier than Zoom, but maybe that's because I no longer use Teams as much.

My purpose here is not to discuss ways to do meetings from a distance and which tech platform is better.  Let me return to my original purpose, to talk about the teaching observation.  The teaching observation took place two weeks ago, and I wrote a blog post about it the morning after.  I thought it went well, and happily, she thought it went well too.

The one critique she had was couched in language of care:  "The biggest challenge I observed was that the weight of the class seemed to be on Kristin’s shoulders rather than the students, and I wonder if there are ways to remove some of that pressure."  She made some suggestions, and we discussed those and other possibilities in our follow up meeting.  The vibe was not bossy, not "You must change, or we won't hire you again."  She's had non-talkative students too.  It was more like two colleagues discussing and strategizing.

In all my years of teaching observations, no one has had such nice things to say about my voice and presentation:  "Strengths: In a mid to late afternoon class, an instructor faces the challenge of making sure students aren’t in a post lunch haze. Kristin uses her presence and voice modulation quite well to face this challenge head on. In an age where students seem to be less and less inclined to speak above a whisper, it is refreshing to see Kristin model what projecting your voice looks like. It makes a world of difference that students in the very back of the room can hear the instructor just as clearly as those in the front. I also mentioned her presence; students need to know that the instructor in front of the room is in command and in control of the space. Kristin does a good job of moving to shift their focal points and keep students engaged; additionally, the modulations were very demonstrative of the kind of tone that is appropriate for reading and experiencing Poe."

Wow!  All those years of drama training pay off!  In fact, I've said for years that my adolescent yearning to be on stage has served me well.  Back then I was dreaming of a Broadway stage, but in my late middle age, I'm happy for this classroom stage.

Am I late middle age or early old age?  I am 58, and in good health, if a bit overweight and fond of frumpy clothes, so it feels like late middle age.  I don't think I can claim midlife with no modifiers these days.  

Yesterday's teaching was oddly satisfying.  I say oddly satisfying because we were discussing research papers and documentation, and I did not major in English hoping that I could make teach people to document more precisely.  On the way home, I stopped at my favorite apple orchard, and I still marvel at the fact that my favorite apple orchard is on the way home.  Well, sort of on the way--it's not just off the interstate, so it did take me about 15 minutes longer to get home.  But I arrived home with two kinds of apples and sweet potatoes.

It was the kind of day that would make me envious if I read about it when I was living somewhere else.  Not every day is like that--let me hasten to add, so that this blog stays real.  But I am so happy for the days that are.

Days of Remembrance

Today is the Feast of All Souls. You might be confused--didn't we just celebrate this holiday yesterday?
No, that was All Saints. All Saints was originally designed to honor the saints, those who had been beatified. Official saints, canonized by the Pope.

All Souls Day, celebrated the day after All Saints, was designed to honor everyone else who had died.

In some traditions, All Saints Day honors all the Christian dead, and All Souls Day honors those who have died in the past year. Those of you with excellent memories of your English major days may remember that Sir Gawain left for his adventure with the Green Knight on All Souls Day. Medieval audiences would have read a lot into that date of departure. As Sir Gawain leaves, his castle-mates would have been expecting to celebrate his life the following year.

All Souls' would develop into the kind of day that drove Martin Luther crazy. On All Souls' Day, people would be encouraged to spend money so that their loved ones would get out of purgatory sooner. According to medieval theology, a soul wasn't ready to go to Heaven right away, so everyone would have loved ones in purgatory.

In most Protestant churches, All Saints' and All Souls' have merged into one, and that makes sense to me. Still, my inner English major will always have a sense of these alternative liturgical calendars. I like having more to celebrate, more ways to remind myself that there's more to life than what occupies most of my time (work--both on the job and at my house). I like having holidays that remind me that we're only here for too brief a time. It helps me to treasure the fleeting moments that I have.

This week, I came across this blog post which posits that although these holidays of All Saints and All Souls were almost pushed to extinction post-Reformation, today they are back in much fuller force, a full fortnight of remembering our dead that culminates in various remembrance days around November 11 (Armistice Day, Veterans Day, Remembrance Day):  "In many churches All Saints/All Souls and Remembrance Day are kept on two subsequent weekends, more because of practicalities of when services can be held than because anyone has intended to create a fortnight-long season of remembrance - but the effect is that we think more about death at this time of year, and for longer, than our medieval forebears did."

Dearly Departed

It is incredibly windy today; my county is under a burn ban until the end of the week, because the fire marshal expects dry, windy conditions to continue.  This dark windiness feels appropriate to this time of year, as Halloween shifts to All Saints, as the warmth of October gives way to a leafless November.  

It's a time when death is on the brain, even if no celebrity has died.  I've been reading the articles following the death of Matthew Perry, who played Chandler Bing on Friends.  In some ways, it wasn't a surprise--he's had intense struggles with addiction for decades, and while so many had hoped he had beaten his demons, even if he had, it's tough on the body.  Still, he was very young, 54.

One of the better pieces I've read was written by Patti Davis, an op-ed in the New York Times, about Perry's addiction and her own experiences.  Here's a nugget:   "I want to tell you something about addiction: No matter who it is or what substance that person is hooked on, loneliness is at its root. For whatever reason — and I have no theory as to why — there are those of us who feel isolated in this world, as if everyone else had some secret formula for getting along, for fitting in, and no one ever let us in on it. That loneliness resides deep inside us, at our core, and no matter how many people try to help us, no matter how many friends reach out, support us, show up for us, it never entirely goes away. It’s vast and shadowy and also part of who we are. Something happens when we discover a drug or alcohol: Suddenly we have a companion holding our hand, propping us up, making us feel we fit in, we can be part of the club. It’s there for us in the empty hours when it seems no one else is."

This morning, I was up even earlier than usual.  I was having odd dreams, fights about drywall in my dreams.  I had that residual restlessness from bad dreams, so I just got up.  I read an e-mail from the dean of my seminary about recent outbreaks of both antisemitic and anti-Palestinian graffiti at American University next door.  I felt weepy, both at the hate that comes in all varieties and at my dean taking the time to write to us all with words of hope in a time of deep distress.  

Her e-mail/letter ended this way:  "Friends, your calling matters. Working toward shalom is working toward a world where everyone enjoys the blessings of abundant life that God intended for all God’s creation, a place where everyone thrives. There are many ways to support peace efforts, to love our neighbors, to lament, to care for the vulnerable, and to pray unceasingly. If you are at a loss for words, pray anyway. Remember that the Spirit intercedes for us when we do not know what to pray (see Romans 8:26-27). Our chapel remains open for prayer. To echo Martin Luther King, Jr., there are many ways to let the light of God’s love shine into the darkness. Let's stand together for shalom."

I lit a candle and watched both the wind beyond the glass, and the little flame that didn't realize all the forces that would snuff it out if given much of a chance.  I thought of how autumn has shifted to a time of dry, dead leaves and immense amounts of pine straw. 

I said a prayer, for mercy on all our souls, the living and the dead.