Crafts for Christmas 2024

Yesterday was the perfect day, the kind of day that makes me wish I could have another one just like it.  I spent most of the day at the Crafts for Christmas retreat.  I got my sermon written before I headed over to the retreat, which meant I could enjoy it completely.

It's a participant run retreat, and it works beautifully.  Everyone brings a craft to share, along with supplies so that everyone can make the craft for themselves.  Some crafts are limited in terms of how many each person can make, but many aren't.  Each table has a finished example of the craft and plenty of supplies.  It's a delight.

I wasn't going to make a gnome out of yarn, but they were so cute, that I decided to give it a try.  The hat looked weird to me, so I made a different hat, and then I created something else out of the failed hat.

The craft I brought was fabric arts, with supplies for people to make a heart, an Christmas present, and/or an angel.  

They could be ornaments or you could put one in an envelope and mail it for the cost of 2 stamps.

I really liked that we could use materials from other stations.  I was hoping that my friends would bring buttons, and they didn't let me down.

I wasn't going to make some of the crafts, like the above trivet with wine corks, but then I gave it a try and liked it, especially as I experimented with some of the writing and images on the cork.

I made some cards, but didn't get pictures of them.  I had the opportunity to make ornaments like the one above and/or napkin rings, but decided not to.  That's my only objection with this retreat.  I don't have that many gift-giving obligations these days, and I live in a small house with not much room for more stuff.  So I focused on stuff that I can give away.  The gnomes will live in the pumpkin patch I'm creating for the front driveway.  I need more pumpkins.  Will I wish I had more gnomes, like this whole family of gnomes that we created?  If so, I'll know how to do it.

I didn't get pictures of the cooking that we did.  Everyone brings food, which means we had an abundance of food.  And there's no way to capture fully in words the joy of a day of working together on separate projects, interspersed with great conversation and the fellowship of food.

I have known about this retreat for years, but for years I lived in South Florida, and I couldn't come for a variety of reasons.  It seemed like such a long drive for such a short retreat, and it was.  Still, I feel regret for the years that I didn't get to experience this.

Let me shake off regrets and just enjoy that I can do these kinds of retreats and get togethers now.  Better late than never.

Happy Birthday, Queen Elizabeth I

Today is Queen Elizabeth I's birthday, which made me want to create a card for a friend of mine who loves Queen Elizabeth.  No time to shop for a card--but I did have time to make a quick sketch:

She looks rather ghastly, but then again, most of the portraits that I've seen of her show her as a rather ghastly visage.

I thought about what I had written for a weekly writing about her for Church HistoryII.  My writing time is short this morning, so here's what I wrote in February of 2023:

This week, I am thinking about all the ways of governing a country (and governing a Reformation):

--Hearing that so many French Huguenots survived King Louis XIV because they fled or were forced out—that fact made wonder why a country decides to burn so many “heretics” at the stake, as England did, and why some countries evict people (like the Jews from Spain) and some countries seems to manage to have a more flexible live and let live approach (although I realize that most countries did not manage to create a live and let live approach for very long, even if they were successful for a certain time period). I realize the reasons may be very complicated: control by fear/terror of the remaining population, not wanting to lose valuable people as they flee, royal connections to other countries that might temper the tendency to terror or inflame it. And of course, some of these rulers, like Mary Tudor, believe they are doing the Lord’s work by purifying the country (and yes, I do realize her motives may have been more mixed).

--Thinking of different approaches to heretics made me think of Elizabeth I and how I have admired her for so many years now. When I was very young, I read a biography of her: the kind that was marketed for elementary grades, a whole biography series on a shelf in the library, with orange binding, and I worked my way through the whole series. I remember how much the biographer praised her for how smart she was not to get married, to keep her suitors waiting and hoping, how she avoided wars with other countries this way. It may have been a gross oversimplification, but I do remember thinking, she got to be a queen and rule all by herself, which is better than any other option she had. Why on earth would you want to be married when you could be the queen? And yes, I am married, but I’m married to a philosopher who delights in these kinds of questions, so it’s not a slight against my spouse or even against marriage, so much as it’s an insight into my way of thinking about patriarchy and leadership.

--I am also thinking about another lesson in how to rule a country that I learned as an English major in college. We were taught that Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans failed because they were a joyless bunch, and when they cancelled Christmas, that was the last straw: bring back the king! Happily, Charles II had been safe in Europe, waiting for just this change in sentiment. Again, an oversimplification, but as is the way with many oversimplifications, a bit of truth.

--Lessons learned if ever I am a ruler: don’t cancel Christmas or the holidays/events that are relatively harmless, good for the economy, and bring people joy. Don’t commit to one suitor (or in contemporary terms, one ally), so that everyone remains on their best behavior. And be aware that just because I think I’m doing the Lord’s work, I may not be, so don’t institute reigns of terror. I say this with a bit of humor, but also with the realization that we’d have a better world if more leaders governed this way.

Oozing Boxes and Good Books

And here we are, at the end of a week.  A Monday holiday always gets me off schedule, and I'm a bit surprised to find we are at Friday.  Let me capture a few details from the week.

--I have now been in conversation with Amazon for almost 24 hours.  I opened the door yesterday to find a box oozing dish soap on my porch.  I was supposed to return the damaged item.  I wrote to say, "Really?  Return this soggy box that's oozing a gelatinous substance?"  I was asked to give them a picture.  

I did.  They said they'd have an answer in 6 hours.  They did not.  I am now in "conversation" with yet another representative.

--That "representative" disconnected us.  Another chat, and problem may be solved:

Let me write about happier things:

--I am reading Isabel Wilkerson's Caste:  The Origin of Our Discontents for a seminary class.  It is SO good.  Our professor has given us a few extra days to write about it, and I'm glad.

--It's interesting to me how enjoyable I'm finding most of my writing for seminary and how much it helps me learn.  I'm thinking about how to adapt these different types of reading/writing/processing assignments for the classes that I teach.

--When I get home today, I head over to the main part of camp for Crafts for Christmas.  It will be good to be with friends, most of whom I first met at Create in Me retreats.

I didn't get a walk in yesterday because of this Amazon mess.  Let me head out to get a walk in this morning.

Different Approaches to Storytelling

I've spent the last several mornings watching the videos for my seminary class on Biblical Storytelling.  Some of the material reminded me of some of the activities that my Florida church did when we had more children and experimented with interactive services.  It wouldn't take much to adapt these techniques for any church or group.  I'm thinking of adapting them for my Intro to Lit class, and I feel lucky to be at a school where I could.

We had a few puppets which we often used, often with costumes, but just as often not paying attention to what the puppet wore:

I don't know that I ever met a child who wasn't rivetted by a puppet.

But even if your church doesn't have puppets, which can be expensive to buy, or doesn't want to make puppets, you could have fun acting out the story.  We had a box of costumes/old clothes, but this picture shows that even if you don't have such a box, you can make do with whatever you have on hand--like paper towels:

In my Biblical storytelling class, we'll need to be able to get 75% word accuracy without consulting the text, but we certainly didn't do that in my Florida church.  The cool thing about approaching the Biblical text as skit is that one person can read, while the others act.  And no rehearsing is necessary.

This class has made me think about the Intro to Lit class that I'll be teaching next term.  It's been tough to get the students to come to class having read the text.  I'm going to ponder whether or not some of these techniques could be adapted to the college classroom.  Stay tuned!

Reading Notes, Teaching Notes

Let me record a few teacher thoughts, in this morning where I look at the clock and see that my blogging time has almost disappeared.  But that's OK--I had offline journaling time, and poem composition time, and seminary writing time.

--One of my seminary classes has us do reading notes, which can be in any form we like.  We could annotate the text and upload our notes.  We could write summaries.  It can be anything, so long as we demonstrate we've read the text.  I am creating a Word Doc for each text and in that doc, I am writing the kinds of notes I'd make in the margins, and when the text will let me, I cut and paste the text that I would underline.  I enjoy this much more than I think that I will, if the text is good.  And it does force me to engage with the text in a way that I might not otherwise.  For example, I skim less.

--I'd like for my college classes to do this, but I shudder to think at how much they would want me to explain what I'm looking for.

--I did come across this website, which explains TQE, a process for having high school students engage with a text.  It seems very doable, and I will try it.

--In fact, maybe I'll try it on the day that my chair comes to observe me--even if it doesn't work, she'll be O.K. with that.  She'll like the small group work that I have planned.

--Would I be thinking this way if my chair didn't want me to choose an observation time?  Yes, but I might be less methodical.

--I am thinking about doing a whole different set of classroom activities for my English 100 class that meets Thursday afternoons.  I've been trying to keep the 3 sections doing the same thing each week, but next week, we'll diverge.  This Thursday class is the one that is most likely to careen into sullenness and eye rolling.  Let me try to nip this in the bud.  I will modify the tree module that I'm doing in English 101 right now.  It will get the students out of the classroom and engaging in new ways.

--My first thought when I thought about having one class be on its own schedule was to wonder how I will keep track.  But I'm having trouble now.  The Tuesday-Thursday class meets for 75 minutes, and they are so restless, ready to be done and to leave after about 20 minutes of class time.  Let me put them on a completely different schedule and see what happens.  I may save myself lots of time in not having to make notes about who has done what.

Report from Labor Day Week-end

This has been a good week-end, and not just because I had yesterday off.  Let me capture some of the elements that made it special before they slip away into the mists of September memory:

--I enjoyed working on seminary classes.  They are going to be even better than I expected, and I was expecting them to be wonderful.  This morning, I watched some of the videos from my Biblical Storytelling class, and I thought, my drama nerd heart is very happy at the thought of this class.

--I had some good sewing time.  I worked on my quilt top, which always brings me joy, and in the spirit of full disclosure, is also bringing me some frustration as it gets bigger and bigger.  The frustration comes from needing longer and longer strips, so I'm no longer piecing together very small scraps.  But I've always found it soothing to sew in straight lines, so overall, I'm still happy with this project.  Here it is, stretched out across our queen sized bed, with burgundy comforter and pillows visible at the top.

--I also had fun constructing some projects for the upcoming Crafts for Christmas week-end.  I was trying to make an angel out of circles, and it took me several attempts before getting something close to what I had in mind:

My friend was making these angels out of paper and flat bead faces to put into Christmas cards.  

When I saw hers, I wondered if I could create something similar in cloth.  Now I'm pretty sure that I can.

--On Saturday, we had brunch with a variety of second cousins and their children and grandchildren.  What a treat!

--I was very pleased with how my sermon went on Sunday, and several people told me they liked it, people who don't always say that.  Hurrah!  You can read that sermon here.  

--I had wonderful walks, full of mists and fall colors.  

A new season is underway!

New Moon on Monday, Which Is Also Labor Day

It is Monday, a Monday with a new moon, which sent me to YouTube, where I watched the video for Duran Duran's "New Moon on Monday."  I had never seen this video, which isn't surprising.  I was in undergraduate school, and the communal TV in the lounge barely got network stations; it did not have cable.

The video is oddly compelling, a little film with soldiers that could be East German or Soviet, violence going on in the background, espionage in the foreground, a horse-drawn wagon of explosives in an inner city of cobblestoned streets, a motorcycle speeding across countryside.  It feels like a cultural artifact from a different age, which of course, it is.

It is Labor Day Monday, which feels like a treat.  I'm happy not to be racing through my Monday schedule, which would have me heading down the mountain to Spartanburg Methodist College to teach my 9 a.m. Composition class and then doing my hour at the Writing Center before an office hour and then two more classes.

It is September 2, which means our new health insurance through my job has gone into effect--which means I need to cancel our insurance that I got through the Affordable Care Act.  It means filling out paperwork, which means I need to budget a bit more time than I had thought.  Happily, I will have time later.  Let me get some seminary work done first.

At some point, I will switch to listening/watching the videos I need to for seminary classes this week, but this morning, I am listening to Jennifer Egan's interview with the New York Times podcast show about books.  She's talking in great detail about how she composed A Visit to the Goon Squad.  If I ever teach a creative writing class about fiction and/or short stories, I want to remember this podcast.  She gives great insight about how she arranged the short stories, about the different types of narration (first person, second person, that intriguing experiment with PowerPoint), about the other writing she's done.

It also reminds me of how I wanted to create a book of linked short stories, and I did.  It's not nearly as masterful as Egan's.  It also makes me want to write more fiction, but that's not the semester I can have this term.  If I'm lucky, I can do some poetry writing.

In past years, I would have had a massive poetry mailing created the old-fashioned way, with paper, stamps, and envelopes.  That tells you how long ago it was.  Part of me wants to do a bit of submitting today, but let me not get distracted.  I have seminary work to do.