Salad Potlucks, First Week Seminary Readings, and Other Delights

In a week where seminary classes are underway, and face to face classes that I teach are underway, and online classes have been underway, and another massive hurricane has come and almost gone, let me record some observations, instead of creating a coherent blog post about one subject.

--I have done the first two seminary writing assignments and turned them in.  My seminary is now using Blackboard Ultra (instead of the older version of Blackboard), so it all feels both familiar and unfamiliar.

--It has been cool to see familiar faces on the seminary class zoom calls.  Some I've only known through online classes, some through onground, and some both.

--Yesterday I went to the quilt group at the church near my Lutheridge house.  We had a salad potluck, which was much more varied than it might seem.  I was surprised by the variety of the salads.  I made the pasta salad I've been making since I first came across it in Mollie Katzen's The Enchanted Broccoli Forest Cookbook.  A pound of cooked pasta, some cut veggies (bell peppers this time), and a vinaigrette of 1/3 C. of balsamic vinegar and 1/3 C. of olive oil, plus dried basil and dried oregano.  So tasty!  Yesterday I had it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

--So far, my seminary reading has been more interesting than I thought it would be--it's been much older theology and church history, which doesn't always thrill me.  As I read about the early church leadership and how canonical texts were chosen for what would become the Christian Bible and what heretical movements were squashed, I was surprised by how much of it I already knew.

--Hearing about my classmates' internship sites made me happy for us all--such a wide diversity of placements.  Our professor reminded us all of the importance of self-care and to remember that we are at our sites to learn, not just to be used as cheap/free labor.

--Hurricane Idalia does not seem to have spewed as much harm as we might have feared, but it will be interesting to see what the final damage estimate is.  Extreme flooding doesn't leave behind as much camera-ready footage as wind damage.

--I got an e-mail from my chair to the English department at Spartanburg Methodist College about what we need to do if we need to be absent.  It was so reasonable.  I was saddened at how refreshing I found the tone, how sad I was that for so many years I have worked for other schools that suspect people of slacking off and shirking if they call in sick and/or arrange an online module when they are away at a conference or taking care of other responsibilities.  

--It is wonderful being at a small, liberal arts college in South Carolina, wonderful to see all the activities that are taking place.  In addition to sports, we've already had auditions for a play, calls for an art show, an ice cream social, a movie night.  And that's just what I see in posters that are up on the walls of the building where I teach and announcements in e-mails.

--I've been hearing so much about the death of higher ed; this week, I've thought, maybe it's not true.  And if it's maybe not true for that institution, maybe it's not true of others, like the mainline Protestant Church.

Weather Watching and Laundry

I feel scattered again this morning.  I got up at midnight and spent an hour reading about hurricane Idalia, at the same time wondering why I was doing this.  In part, it's because I was having trouble sleeping.  In part, it's an abiding curiosity about weather that I share with many family members.  Is it because we come from farm folk?  Is it because my family members grew up with older family members modeling this behavior?

It looks like we have another hurricane that will come ashore in Florida and continue moving over land--and it will be hurricane strength when it gets to Georgia.  It's a category 4 storm at least.  I spent some time in the middle of the night trying to determine how many strong storms have come ashore during my lifetime.  We have definitely had more category 4 and 5 storms strike the mainland U.S. in the last 15 years than we had in the 15 years before that.

It will be interesting to see how much damage takes place in major population centers that are further from the coast, Tallahassee and Gainesville.  It will be interesting to see how other port cities on the east coast fare:  Jacksonville, Savannah, and Charleston.

This morning, I need to face something much more mundane:  the laundry.  It's not as simple as it might seem.  We've been without a laundry room since late June, so every 10 days or so, I wash a load at the laundromat and bring it home to dry.  Today, however, is a day to wash sheets, so I'll also use their dryer.  It's a pleasant enough laundromat and close, and the hi-efficiency washer is a marvel.  Still, I'll be glad to have a laundry room here at the house again--and to get the washer and dryer out of the middle of the kitchen floor, where they've been since late July.  We did get a good deal when we bought them on sale in late June to have them delivered several weeks later.  But I might not have felt the same sense of urgency, had I known that the laundry room construction would be delayed.

But after the laundry, I have quilt group, and we're having a salad potluck lunch before getting down to making quilts for Lutheran World Relief.  And tonight I have my second seminary class that meets for the first time.  I'll read for tomorrow's class as I monitor the laundry.

First Day of Fall 2023 Seminary Classes

My first seminary class for Fall 2023 semester was last night:  The Ethical Self and Prophetic Witness.  We're meeting virtually, every Monday night by way of Zoom.  I have heard great things about this class, but it's a hard class for me to summarize.  Here's the course description:  

"This course will help students grapple with moral agency in public by inquiring just who is the “self” implied in various accounts of ethics and of Christian prophetic witness, inviting them to consider how traditioned, historical humans can enact moral agency in non-ideal conditions."

After last night, I'm a bit more clear on what the course will cover.  My professor sees that the field of ethics is in serious trouble; the field of ethics traditionally envisions a single person making decisions about what is right and wrong, but that's not a real world vision, at least not these days, if it ever was.  A more real world vision would include the larger community.

So, we'll look at some of the big traditional thinkers in the field of ethics, Kant and Mill, and then we'll move on to more modern writers.  If last night's class is any indication, we'll have rich and interesting conversations.  Another plus:  my spouse might listen in, and we, too, might have rich and interesting conversations.  He has grad level training in Ethics and has been teaching undergrad classes for years, so I was afraid he might be snarky.  Happily, he was impressed, and we drifted off to sleep last night chatting about ethics.

In fact, I had some trouble staying asleep.  In part, it's because I spent much of yesterday at my desk, getting a variety of tasks done.  In part it's because I was excited to be back in school.

Here I am, starting year 3 of seminary.  It's strange to think about the path I've taken.  In some ways, I've looped back:  I started taking classes virtually, then last year I was on campus, and this year, I'm back to taking classes virtually.  Three years ago, I still had my full-time job and my online teaching job.  This year, I'm Zooming in from a different location, and happily, my full-time job is no more.  But I've picked up an in person teaching job, and I'm living in a place with a much cheaper cost of living.  Hopefully it will all work out.

Speaking of those in-person classes, let me go ahead and keep this blog post short.  I need to get my walk in before the rain starts again, so that I can get ready for the commute and the in-person teaching day ahead.

Thinking about St. Augustine in the Midst of Hurricane Season

Today is the feast day of Saint Augustine.  While I respect his vast amount of theology and other types of writing, his work will never be as important to me as they are to so many other people.  For a more straightforward blog post about him, I did write one on my theology blog.

In the past, I might have written a post that took issue with some of Augustine's theology.  But this year, he's speaking to me from a different angle.  My Church History professor pointed out that Augustine lived until almost the end of the Roman empire, and it's important to remember that the end didn't happen with a bang. People like Augustine could see what was coming, and he must have had a sense--perhaps a deep, deep sense--of all that was going to be lost.

I finished that blog post this way:  "Augustine was living in a similar time to ours; there had been diseases and political intrigue and invaders coming from all directions, along with upheavals that kept various populations on the move. I'd like to channel some of his writing energy in response to all of these slow motion collapses."

I am not doing a good job of channeling any energy into any direction this morning.  I am keeping an eye on Tropical Storm Idalia, which I expect to blow up into a major hurricane.  Up here in the mountains of North Carolina, I'm not feeling personally threatened.  In fact, it's days like these that make me SO, so very grateful to be here, even in a house that needs updating.

Still, I can't seem to look away.  And it's more than just leftover habits from living in hurricane country.  I've lost many hours to climate doom and gloom this summer (and for many years before).  I wonder if the same was true for Augustine.  True, he didn't have social media to distract him, but I bet he spent a lot of time trying to think through the implications of what he was seeing.

Let me shift focus, while at the same time realizing a certain amount of time this week will be consumed by hurricane monitoring. My seminary classes start tonight--how quickly the summer has gone.

Pivoting to Past Times

This morning, news of 2 deaths took me back to specific times in my life:  Bob Barker and Maureen Seaton.  I was surprised, in some ways, to learn that Bob Barker had been alive these many years, and saddened to realize how relatively young Maureen Seaton was when she died, in her mid-70's.  At this point, if there's a cause of death, I haven't found it.

Bob Barker seemed old when I was first aware of him, lazy summer days watching The Price Is Right, with my mom and sister.  We loved this game show, and I'm not sure why.  Looking back from a distance, the prizes seem less than fabulous, unless one won one of the showcases at the end.  I remember one babysitter pointing out that the contestant was lucky to have won extra cash because she'd need it to pay the taxes on the prize package.

Still, we tuned in, almost every morning, unless we had swim lessons.  And the show went on--and on and on--long after we quit watching, long after Bob Barker stopped hosting it.  Reading the news coverage, Barker seemed like a good human.  I'm glad he lived so long.

Maureen Seaton also seemed like a good person, but unlike many of my peers, I was not her student.  I was an adjunct at the University of Miami where she taught, but our paths rarely crossed.  Once I went to a reading where she and Denise Duhamel read from their new work.  I bought Little Ice Age, which had just been released.  Seaton signed it, and told me how much she appreciated the fact that I bought her book in the hardback edition.

I looked up the publication history--that reading must have been in 2001 or 2002.  Wow.  It seems a lifetime ago, and in so many ways, it's just as distant a time as my suburban childhood watching The Price is Right.  I went to poetry readings so often that many faces started to seem familiar.  I had dreams of my own book with a spine, and when my first chapbook was accepted in 2003 for publication in 2004, it seemed a tantalizing possibility.

It's also a time before I got a job in the for-profit education sector.  That job at the Art Institute of Ft. Lauderdale was good in so many ways, but disastrous in others (being part of that industry as it spiraled down).  It was a time between disastrous hurricanes, the one that hadn't affected me personally (Andrew in 1992) and the ones that wrecked me in so many ways (Katrina in 2005, Wilma in 2005, and Irma in 2017).

With each death, the gloomy part of my brain says, "Well, so this is how it is now.  More death than emergence."  But let me pivot from gloominess.  Let me be grateful for the time that we have had.  Let me savor what is left.

Brief Reflections on a Second Week of Teaching

I'm feeling tired this morning, and I can't decide if it's a good tired or not--maybe it's a mix of good tired (I did good teaching and preaching this week!  I made mostly healthy food choices and walked every day!) and not-as-good tired (driving!  depressing politics!  no creative writing done!).  Let me record some snippets:

--I have finally gotten the computer in my work office to communicate with the printer, which makes my life much easier.  Hurrah!  It's not a speedy computer, and the keyboard makes writing difficult (it's got a few extra keys, so I hit a backslash button every time my pinkie reaches for the enter key).

--I also got a key to the office.

--I am surprised that it feels easier to teach English 101 than the 102 class, which is the Literature class.  I'm still figuring out the pacing in that class and how many handouts I need.  There's not as much participation as I would like, but it's only the first week of talking about literature so that might change.  And if it doesn't, I'll make adjustments.  I can talk about literature all by myself, even though I'd prefer a discussion.

--I am still loving the ability to feel inspired and/or to find a poem/writing online and to bring it to class.  Finding one poem often inspires me to go hunting after others that I had forgotten that I loved.  For example, I found this New York Times article about hip hop being the answer to poetry malaise, and I wanted some poetry to go with it.  I am not into 21st century hip hop enough to bring in song lyrics, so I went way back and made copies of Gwendolyn Brooks' "We Real Cool."  I tried to think of other great African American poets and went hunting for Natasha Trethewey poems--wow!  She is so wonderful, which I have known since Native Guard was published.

--For the past 3 of my 4 teaching days, I've gotten home and quickly lost any energy that I had.  I have been so exhausted in the late afternoon and early evening, going to bed at 7:15 kind of tired.  I need to figure out how to change that, at least on Thursdays when I am a seminary student in a Systematic Theology class from 6:30 to 9:30.  I suspect that if I don't drink wine and have a bit of iced coffee, I'll be fine. 

--This morning it's time to take the newer car in for an oil change--it's been a year.  Let me bring this blog post to a close so I can get ready to assist.  Then it's time to turn my attention to my other job:  sermon writing awaits! 

Waning Days of Summer

In later years, when I look back on this blog, will I wonder at what I left out?  For example, there's no analysis of the first presidential debate--in part because one needed cable to watch, in part because it started at 9, but in largest part, because I have no desire to watch this madness.  Another example--will I look back and see the plane crash in Russia as bigger news than it seems today?  I figured that the man who attempted a coup against Putin 2 months ago was a dead man, and it did take longer than I was expecting.

When I look back on these days of waning summer, I'll remember going over to the local Lutheran church to work on quilts for Lutheran World Relief.  Yesterday I looked through the big bins of donated fabric and put together bundles for our leader to assemble into quilt tops.  She says she's no good at this, and that I save her lots of time by doing it.  If I took those bundles and tried to assemble quilt tops, it would take me much longer than it takes her.  It is a good partnership.

I did not bring as many tomatoes home yesterday, but that's not because it was the waning days of summer but because we had more quilters yesterday.  That's O.K., because I got a buy one get one free deal at the Fresh Market yesterday--now we have two huge containers of tropical fruit salad in the fridge.  Well, on Monday we did.

I enjoyed going to the Fresh Market so much on Monday that I went back yesterday.  I have loved the Fresh Market since grad school days, back when they didn't sell cleaning supplies, back when I could scarcely afford much of what was for sale.  But back then, the store offered petit fours, each one costing twenty-five cents.  Sadly, that seems not to be the case these days, at least not at our local Fresh Market.

In these waning days of summer, the course shells for my seminary classes that I'll be taking this fall have opened.  Nothing looks too formidable--hurrah!  I will miss these days that have had a more leisurely pace, but it will be good to move forward with my MDiv degree.

Even though the weather is much more like summer, it's clear summer is coming to a close.  I'm seeing leaf color on trees in the lower elevations.  It seems earlier this year than last year, but maybe I just wasn't paying close attention last year.  I've been picking a handful of blackberries every morning on my walk--those bramble bushes are about at their end, which makes me savor the berries even more.

I am looking forward to seeing how the seasons change on this mountain.  But I am trying to savor the last weeks of this season.