No AWP For Me

Various social platforms (primarily Facebook for me) have begun to fill with writers posting their AWP schedules.  My grad school friend and I briefly thought about going.  After all, it's in Baltimore, within driving distance, which it rarely is.  We both have family in the area, although we would have stayed in the conference hotel.

I decided early that I couldn't do it this year.  Some years, AWP is the same year as spring break, when I'm working at places that have a spring break, and that confluence makes the whole thing easier.  Some years, AWP is nowhere near spring break, and that, too, makes the whole thing easier.

This year, AWP is right before my spring break in a March that is very busy even before adding a big conference.  So I decided not to go.

Some years I feel like I'm missing out, and now, it's been so many years since I attended that if I could get there, it might not feel like a repeat of past years in terms of what I learn/hear.  And now, I'm teaching a lot of creative writing courses, which has not been the case in the past.

Next year, I might see if I can get some travel money from Spartanburg Methodist College.  But this year, I'm glad not to be travelling this week.  The rest of March will have plenty of travel, lots of family reconnecting, and a quilt retreat near the end.  That's almost more than I can handle, so I'm glad not to be adding AWP on top of it all.

Being Born Again: Sermon Revisions in the Midst of News Reports

In later years, I may wonder why I'm not writing more about the events of yesterday:  bombs on Iran and Ayatollah Khamenei dead.  Maybe later readers will wonder why I didn't analyze Trump's decision to go ahead without consulting Congress or maybe they will have knowledge I don't.  I will say that U.S. presidents have been moving forward with war plans, asking for forgiveness rather than permission, for my whole life regardless of political persuasions.  

I didn't pay close attention to the news yesterday.  I was working on both taxes and my sermon.  I didn't even hear about the death of Khamenei until evening.  At the end of the day, I wrote this Facebook post:  "Doing some sermon revisions, thinking about Nicodemus who comes to Jesus, two men who likely see the world very differently but take the time to talk. I'm thinking about how Nicodemus is perplexed in the third chapter of John (tomorrow's reading) but by the end of the Gospel of John, he's buying an astonishing amount of burial spices for Jesus, a public declaration of Jesus' importance. I'm thinking and revising and flipping to news reports and my sermon seems even more relevant, about the necessity of talking and understanding and being born again for new possibilities in this life."

In a week of good time management, I have my sermon written before Saturday, and my spouse offers suggestions.  This week, I got my sermon draft done by Thursday, and I was proud of that.  Yesterday, as we were going over his notes, I realized that I had printed out not the sermon for today, but one for two years ago.

In a way, I was relieved.  The fact that the sermon was so unfamiliar just two days after I had written it had me worried before I checked the date on the sermon.  In a way, no harm done.  I made the discovery while my spouse still had time to read the correct sermon yesterday, and I had time to make the sermon stronger.  My spouse wasn't upset that he read two sermons this week.

And yet, it reminds me that although I may think I have all the parts of my life moving smoothly, there are some indications that it may be more tenuous than I want to think.  I thought of this again in the afternoon, as the phone rang, and I realized that the afternoon was later than I thought, and I hadn't called my parents, as we had arranged on Friday.  Again, no harm done, except . . .   I thought of this idea again as afternoon faded into dusk, as we looked in the recycling bin for the draft of the correct sermon with my spouse's notes on it.

It was a productive day, despite the mishaps.  I got the first draft of our taxes done, and now we have decisions to make about how to pay them.  Happily, we have the resources.  I got the finished draft of my sermon done.  Now let me get ready to preach and preside at Faith Lutheran in Bristol, Tennessee--worship starts at 10 a.m., and all are welcome.

The First Fish Fry of the Season

Yesterday afternoon, I finished teaching, drove from Spartanburg to Arden, where I live, and then, after changing clothes, drove from Arden to Bristol, Tennessee, where I am a part-time minister at Faith Lutheran.  Last night was the first of four spring fish fry events.

People pay $10 for a wonderful plate of food:  fish (fried or baked), mac-and-cheese, pierogies and caramelized onions, cole slaw, green beans, rolls, and an amazing assortment of desserts and drinks.  I use the word amazing because I know how many members we have and how many desserts we offer, and that means people are making a lot of dessert.

All of the money goes to local charities, primarily the local ones that deal with hunger.  But people come for the food.  That's what I thought until last night.

We arrived at 4:45, and the event was supposed to start at 5.  When we got there, people were already there, waiting for food.  Many of the people who came were so excited to be there.  They love the food, but more than that, they love the chance to sit and reconnect with neighbors from across the community (and a few of them are reconnecting with literal neighbors).

We had a steady stream of people coming and going, with almost every place in the smallish fellowship hall occupied for the first 80 minutes of the event.  We ran out of cole slaw, but we didn't run out of desserts.  

I thought about how past Kristin would have viewed this event.  She would have wondered why we were having this event, when so many people who come already have a church home.  She would have looked at the amazing amount of work that it takes to put on this event, and she would have suggested that we donate a chunk of money instead of buying the food and cooking it and selling plates.

But current Kristin has a glimmer of a different way of thinking about this.  People are hungry for community.  They want to have a chance to reconnect with people who live in the same geographical area.  They care less about people's religious or political beliefs.

I realize that what I observed last night may be more true in small towns than in big urban centers.  But I suspect that even in the big cities, people are longing for the kind of connection that a fish fry event can give them.

Of Lab Results and Lectures

I didn't write yesterday because I got good lab results and wanted to process a bit in my offline journal--and then it was time for Lutheran Confessions class.  Let me record some thoughts here:

--My lab results show that almost all of my numbers are in a good range.  It's my vitamin D that is a bit low, which is an easy fix.  The results that make me most happy are my liver numbers, which had been drifting up.  I have been very focused in the last year on reducing alcohol intake, and for the last 8 weeks, since Jan. 2, I have had no alcohol.  And this blood work has my liver numbers back down, back in the healthy range.  I am entering the time of life where it seems that no one is getting good medical news, so let me be happy while I can be.

--My Lutheran Confessions class continues to be great.  I am so impressed with how my professor can talk about the Reformation for hours, making it interesting, apparently without much in the way of notes.  There's a PowerPoint, but he's amazing at using the PowerPoint as it should be, as a scaffolding, not as a document to be read out loud in class.

--As I was talking about my professor's skills with my spouse, we reminded ourselves that we have specialties too.  I could talk at great length about any number of poems or short stories, about several periods of literature, particularly British Literature of the Romantic and early Victorian period, and the Modernist time between the two world wars.

--I was sad about the passing of Jeff Galloway, who was a fierce advocate for less fierce running.  He's most famous for advising runners to take walking breaks.  He was also part of the group of runners in the 70's and 80's who went for Long, Slow Distance.  These are ideas that shaped me, that I return to again and again, the idea of meeting your body where you are right now, and that less hard exercise can actually be better.

--I had an idea for my 102 class, which I'll post below.  It took much less class time than I thought, but I decided I was O.K. with that.  I'll also use the assignment as one of the possibilities for Revised Writing 3--the in-class experience can be useful in several ways, so I'm happy about that.

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Making a Modern Case: The Characters from “Antigone”


In our current day, we have a variety of ways of getting information/viewpoints out to larger groups: a State of the Union address or other speeches, a news program interview, a Tik Tok video or other types of social media, a talk show, a podcast, a trial, a creative work (a song, a book, a television show).


In your small group, think about the characters in the play “Antigone” who have a point of view. If the play happened today, what would be the best way of making a case that each character was right and others were wrong.


Choose one character from the list below and choose one way of making a case for that character’s view. Create something that you will present to the class. We don’t have a lot of time, so it won’t be fully formed. You might decide to tell us what you would have created if you had time.


Antigone

Ismene (her sister)

King Creon

Haemon (Creon’s son and Antigone’s fiancé)

The people ruled by Creon

What We Watched When We Didn't Watch the State of the Union Address

Last night, I wrote this Facebook post:  "In my younger days, I wanted to be a reporter. In my older days, I am so grateful to have a job where I don't need to stay up for the State of the Union address, although when I teach "Antigone" tomorrow, I may wish that I could make more specific references to the speech. Nah, it's probably better to keep that class conversation more general: what do we do when our moral/religious beliefs are in conflict with what our earthly rulers want us to do?"

I didn't need to make a conscious choice.  By 9 p.m., when the pageant started, I was already asleep.  Instead of watching the State of the Union address, we watched A Fish Called Wanda.  We had seen it before, in the theatre when it first came out, and then again, we likely rented it once more on a VHS tape.  I remember it as being hilarious, and a lot of that hilarity is still there.  

However these days, I don't always gravitate to slapstick comedy, the physical kind of comedy.  In my older age, I don't always warm to the hilarity of "Oh my goodness, we were about to have sex, and my wife has come home so I need to explain things while the pretty young thing is hiding in the room" kind of plot twist.  Having one of the criminals have a severe stutter led to moments of meanness that were very cringe-y these days.

But the acting was good, and the timing was superb, and Jamie Lee Curtis is such a delight in everything she does as are the Monty Python folks as is Kevin Kline that it was a pleasant way to spend time after dinner and before bed.  It's strange to think about our viewing habits have changed.  We no longer view network TV at all, in parts because we don't have cable and our antenna reception is so bad.  Once we would have done all of our movie viewing during the week-ends, and it would have required advance planning or having purchased the movie, which we likely wouldn't have done in our impoverished grad school days.

This morning, my brain returned to the State of the Union address and my Facebook post.  I also thought about my department chair asking me if I had ever taught a journalism class.  I wrote about it in this blog post:  "Before she assigned me the Journalism class, my department chair reached out to me by way of e-mail to see if I'd be open to teaching it. Here's what I wrote back: "I am open to that, although I haven't taught it. But long ago, in my Newberry College undergrad days, I was an essential part of the student newspaper. We went looking for hot stories, a la Woodward and Bernstein. We never found them, but we had fun just the same."

This morning, I've been trying to write a poem that combines threads of my Facebook post and threads from my blog post.  I still need a third stanza, so I'll let my subconscious brain keep working on it while I get ready for my working-for-pay day, the teaching of "Antigone."

States of Union, States of Disunion

Soon I leave to go to the doctor's office for my annual physical exam.  Let me record a few thoughts.

--I'm thinking about what has changed since my last doctor's appointment.  I've had my first colonoscopy, which I've been trying to schedule for years, literally years.  Finally, last year, my doctor referred me to another doctor who both does colonoscopies and surgeries.  I've gotten hearing aids.  But the bigger news is my first melanoma.

--Five years ago Russian invaded Ukraine.  It seems important to note this fact.

--The State of the Union speech is tonight.  I wasn't planning to watch it anyway--past my bedtime.  But once the president said that it was going to be "very long," well, that sealed the deal.

--Yesterday as I was driving to work, I was wishing I had made a different schedule for my 101 class, so that we didn't start a new module the week before Spring Break.  When I got to the office, I created that different schedule.  There are times that it is great to be the teacher, wonderful to be the one in charge.

--There are many reasons why I love my teaching job at Spartanburg Methodist College:  schedule flexibility and getting to talk about literature I love being among the top.  But not having to stay up to watch the State of the Union speech is another one.

Finally Seeing "Frankenstein"

Yesterday, after an afternoon of cooking and baking, we settled in to watch the newest version of Frankenstein, the Guillermo del Toro version.  We didn't have Netflix at the time it came out, and we may not have it much longer, because it keeps making us enter information that the platform already has.

I was excited when it first came out.  I thought it would be more faithful to the book.  I was wrong.

I'm not one of those annoying English majors who believes that the movie adaptation must stay faithful to the book.  I realize that decisions must be made for the sake of brevity or art or any number of other reasons.  But I do wish that those decisions made sense.  This movie had decisions that did not make sense to me.

I read about the change of Elizabeth to be less of a love interest.  But frankly, she's such a minor character in the film that I didn't understand the change.  The ending, where Victor apologizes to the creature, was such a different ending, which does such violence to the text.  By then, I was barely able to watch the movie, which would be ending in a few minutes, because of those kinds of changes.

My spouse was more puzzled by the ways the plot parts made no sense, particularly the creature's ability to heal when hurt and the fact that he could not die.

In places, the movie was gorgeous; there is that going for it.  During the first part of the film, I was intrigued by the intellectual part of the movie, but once I saw how Victor treated the creature, and realized it was going to continue, I found it a tough watch.

I'm glad I watched it for many reasons.  I appreciate del Toro's enthusiasm, for one.  And if I do teach the text again, I'll want to have seen it.

I do not feel the same about the current adaptation of Wuthering Heights.  I don't have that kind of time to spend on that movie.