A Day that Is Less Idyllic: Active Shooter Training and Travel Delays

In case my life seems too idyllic, let me record the events of yesterday, so that I remember that it's not all uplifting teaching and preaching with poetry and sermon writing.  And let me spoil the suspense by saying it was all minor stuff really, in the longer range view.  But it made for a very long day.

I had to leave early because yesterday was the last scheduled day of Active Shooter training that we're all required to take.  This year, because we're shifting to a new system, we had to actually find 2 hours when we could sit in an auditorium to be trained in what to do if an active shooter comes to our campus.  Yesterday was the only training time, and there were many, which didn't conflict with a class that I was teaching.  I needed to be in the auditorium by 9, and I knew that there was road construction, so I left by 7:30--happily, there was no road construction.

In so many ways, this Active Shooter training never changes.  The only change that was mentioned is that past trainings told us that hiding was an option, but we want to move away from that thinking, because if the shooter finds our hiding place, there's no escape.

I wrote to a grad school friend while the training was happening--a real old-fashioned letter written by hand on paper.  I didn't want to try to balance a laptop on the auditorium chair without a desk, but writing a letter was doable.  I wanted to write to someone who would share my being aghast and sad at the thought that we now need this training.  Our grad school selves would never believe it.

I went on to have a good teaching day and headed to the car, ready to go home for a quick supper before a Zoom call to help with retreat planning.  It was not to be.

My commute usually takes no more than an hour.  Three hours later, I was still sitting on I 26, occasionally moving an inch or two.  I thought I was in some road construction hell, but it turned out to be a horrible accident that had shut down the interstate.  I sent a text to one of my fellow retreat planners to let her know that I wouldn't be at the meeting.

I got home to my supper which was cozy and lovely, and then I went straight to bed.  Happily, there was no reason that I needed to keep muscling through the day.

As I said, as bad days go, it could have been much worse.  I am now trained for an active shooter event, training that I don't expect to ever need to use.  I do understand all the liability reasons why schools want us to get this training.  

Bookending my day was the road accident, but it was not my accident.  I saw the smashed cars when I finally drove past, and I said a prayer for the victims, along with a prayer of thanks that it only impacted me in inconvenience, not in something more essential.

In Praise of Untidy Women: Teaching "Mrs. Dalloway"

This morning, I was thinking of the last time I taught Mrs. Dalloway.  I know that I didn't teach it when I was just out of grad school, that first job at Trident Technical College in South Carolina.  I thought I might have taught it when I taught the survey classes at the University of Miami; I have a memory of reading the paperback on the Miami Metro as I commuted back in the years 2000-2001.  

But this morning, I went to my computer file called "Old Computer," to the Teacher Stuff file in that Old Computer file.  Sure enough, there was an old syllabus from the turn of the century, a syllabus which shows that I did not teach Mrs. Dalloway.  

I think I was thinking of adding Mrs. Dalloway to the syllabus, but I might have been re-reading it during my long commute on public transportation because I had just read Michael Cunningham's The Hours.  Back in those days, the only Virginia Woolf selections in the Norton Anthology were her nonfiction.

This morning, I'm reflecting on age and teaching, age and literary characters.  Clarissa Dalloway is 52 years old.  If I had taught this book back in 2000, I'd have been closer to young Clarissa Dalloway than Clarissa Dalloway at midlife.  Now, I am 8 years older than Clarissa Dalloway in the book.

As I have re-read chunks of the book this past week, I've been struck by how Clarissa Dalloway's thoughts move back and forth in time.  But I do wonder if my students, who are the same age as young Clarissa, find it as compelling as I do.  After teaching the book yesterday, I spent a good chunk of my drive home feeling this fierce yearning for my girlhood self and all her friends.  In my case, it's more poignant because so many of my high school female friends have died.  They won't be crashing any dull parties that I might give, the way that Sally arrives uninvited at the end of the novel.

I really loved the descriptions of the young Sally Seton with this reading; I don't remember loving her as fiercely in past readings as I have been now.  I love that one of young Clarissa's older aunts calls Sally "untidy."

With this reading, I'm also struck by how the Peter Walsh character is the one who is much more stuck in adolescence than the two women, Sally and Clarissa.  He still yearns for them, and I suspect he's primarily yearning for the women that they were, or the women that he thought they were.  And I'm feeling slightly guilty, because I'm not spending much time on reading the Septimus passages, although I do circle back to discussing him.

In my morning meanderings, I came across this article in the New York Times, Michael Cunningham reflecting on Mrs. Dalloway.  My writing time draws to a close, so I'll conclude using Cunningham's conclusion:  "“Mrs. Dalloway” would be a book about a London that had been changed forever, superimposed over a London determined to get back to business as usual, as quickly as possible. Clarissa would stand in for all those who still believed in flowers and parties; Septimus for those who’d been harmed beyond any powers of recovery. The novel would also mark the early period of a literary career that would change forever the ways in which novels are written, and read. It’s an intricately wrought portrait of a place and a moment, and a stunningly acute depiction of the multifarious experience of living a life, anywhere, at any time."

Quilt Camp Homily: the Prophetess Anna and Our Quilting/Spiritual Life

I gave the homily for our Saturday night Quilt Camp closing worship.  I wanted to take a minute and make a record of the experience before it slips away.

Our Bible verse was Psalm 91: 4, and we focused on the first part, about God covering us with God's feathers and sheltering us beneath wings.  We talked about wings and feathers and angels.  We had a prayer board in the shape of wings, and we had feathers where we wrote prayers.

I wanted my homily to go in a slightly different direction--what happens when we don't feel that sheltering space?  What happens when it looks like everyone else's prayers get answered and not ours?  How many of us feel too old for whatever might have once seemed to make us special?

We had begun the retreat by talking about where we had sensed the presence of angels, and I started my sermon by talking about the angel Gabriel appearing to Mary, but that's really a young person's story.  Can you imagine if Gabriel came to any of us with that possibility?  We'd say, "Hmm, mother of the Messiah--not really my calling thanks."  

So I thought about other people who make an appearance in our Advent and Christmas texts.  I thought about Elizabeth, who gets to be the mother of John the Baptist.  But she doesn't even get the angel message herself; it comes through her husband, who laughs at the idea that his very old wife might have a baby.  He's struck mute through the whole pregnancy for his disbelief.  But it's still pregnancy, still not everyone's idea of fulfillment.

I continued:  I call your attention to a bit later in the story, when Joseph and Mary bring the baby Jesus to the Temple.  Simeon has been promised that he will not die without seeing the Messiah, and he holds the baby Jesus, holding the light of the world in his arms.  But I call your attention to Anna in Luke 2:  36-38 (I read the text).  We may think of Mary Magdalen as the first evangelist, the first to tell of the empty tomb, but I've come to think of Anna as the first, as she goes out to tell everyone about the Messiah.

Of course, it's sobering to realize that by the time the Gospel of Luke was written, that very Temple has been destroyed, and it will be thousands of years before there will be another one.

Then I took the turn to quilting:  it's a bit like quilting.  Some of us have everything we need, the right material, the sewing machine that is up to the job.  Other times, we discover we didn't buy enough cloth, and it's no longer available, and we have to figure out what to do.  There are times we are given a quilt started generations before, and it comes with no instructions, and we have to figure out a way.  And we, too, will die.  Maybe someone else will complete our projects, maybe not.  But we continue to do what we can do.

The life of faith is like this.  Some times, everything goes well.  Other times, the sewing machine explodes.  But we are in a group that can keep us going, keep us encouraged, help us solve the problems.

I concluded with what I think is the most important thing to remember:  when we feel abandoned by God or abandoned by our quilt group, we're not.  God is still there, although we may not be able to hear God.  Even someone like Mother Theresa has felt this way, as we discovered, when her letters were published after her death.  Some people thought her doubt diminished her, but I felt just the opposite, this relief that if even someone like Mother Theresa feels doubt, then I shouldn't feel alarm when I feel abandoned.

The trick is to keep going, keep working on our quilts, keep believing until the time when it isn't so hard to keep going.

As I delivered the homily, I noticed a few people wiping their eyes.  I noticed people smiling and nodding--happily, I didn't see any angry expressions.

I felt good about my homily, and I got good feedback, from people who appreciated the brevity to those who appreciated the message which gave them hope.  But most importantly, I feel that my homily spoke to those who were feeling loss and grief, emotions that are never very far away, especially for those of us who are on the older side of life.

Armistice Day with Monastic Poem

It has been many years since I was teaching the second half of British Literature in a Fall semester when Armistice Day/Veterans Day happens.  This year, I am.  We've already covered the material, although now we're discussing Mrs. Dalloway, a book which may be the first depiction of World War I caused PTSD in a novel.

I think it's hard for most of us to conceive of how many people died in World War I.  Even when I have my students imagine all of their male classmates going off to fight and no one coming back, I think it's hard to get our heads around the total.  I wish we could all go to the WWI cemeteries in France.  It's a visual that's tough to capture in a picture; it does make a very different impact.

Years ago, I was at Mepkin Abbey on Armistice Day.  It also happened to be near All Saints Sunday, the first All Saints Day after Abbot Francis Kline had been cruelly taken early by leukemia, and the Sunday we were there was the day of the memorial service for him. Part of one of the services was out in the monks' cemetery, and all the retreatants were invited out with the monks. I was struck by the way that the simple crosses reminded me of the French World War I cemeteries:

I took the above picture later from the visitor side of the grounds, but it gives you a sense of the burial area. I turned all these images in my head and wrote a poem, "Armistice Day at the Abbey."



 Armistice Day at the Abbey



The monks bury their dead on this slight
rise that overlooks the river
that flows to the Atlantic, that site
where Africans first set foot on slavery’s soil.

These monks are bound
to a different master, enslaved
in a different system.
They chant the same Psalms, the same tones
used for centuries. Modern minds scoff,
but the monks, yoked together
into a process both mystical and practical,
do as they’ve been commanded.

Their graves, as unadorned as their robes,
stretch out in rows of white crosses, reminiscent
of a distant French field. We might ponder
the futility of belief in a new covenant,
when all around us old enemies clash,
or we might show up for prayer, light
a candle, and simply submit.

Hinge Points of November

The wind is howling outside, and I'm trying not to be nervous.  Will it be better when the sun is up?  On the one hand, I'll be able to assess how much wind is actually blowing.  On the other hand, I'll be able to see the trees as they move in the wind.

I have a bagel toasting in the oven.  It's one of the bagels I bought on Wednesday when I went out to breakfast with some of the Quilt Camp leadership team.  I offered to bring a bagel or two with cream cheese back for my spouse.  It turned out to be cheaper to buy a dozen bagels, which are half off on Wednesdays, with a tub of cream cheese than to buy two individual bagels with cream cheese for him and one with cream cheese for me.

I am wishing it was a week ago, when I would still have the delights of quilt camp coming.  How wonderful that it was so wonderful!

It is hard to believe that a third of November has already zoomed by.  A week ago I'd be scrambling to make sure that everything was in place for me to be off campus from Wednesday to Friday.

Two weeks from now will be the last two days of regular class days.  Then we break for Thanksgiving.  After Thanksgiving is a reading day and then final exams.  I'm in that stage of the semester where it feels like we've been meeting together since the beginning of time, and we've covered all the important material.  But we still have two weeks together.

Two weeks from now we'll be getting ready for Thanksgiving, one of my favorite holidays.  I'll continue to try to savor every moment that remains of my favorite season, the one from early September to December 24.

Quilt Camp Ends

I did not mean to take a break from blogging.  In the past, I've often had time to blog, but this year, I was trying to get a sermon written and to keep up with all the classes I'm teaching, which meant I needed to log in periodically.  Other than those times, I haven't had the computer on at all, which has been heavenly in a way, in most ways.  I haven't had my usual early morning writing time because I've left the house just after 6 a.m. to open the Faith Center for early morning quilters--and this year, we had more early morning quilters show up than ever before.

Let me record some wonderful moments, and to note that there wasn't much in the way of any moments that were less than wonderful. 

--I am almost done repairing the old quilt that we've been sleeping under since 2005.  I still need to complete the binding on two sides, which is more complicated than it seems.  It's at the edges of the quilt that I need to make decisions about whether or not I cut the extra fabric or tuck it under the binding.  The edges are already thick with 4-7 layers of fabric from the old quilt.  

--My fingers ache.  I quit sewing yesterday when I realized that my forearms also hurt, and I worried a bit about feeling the twinges that could become carpal tunnel syndrome if I'm not careful.  I was thinking of a librarian-artist I knew who spent a week-end cutting paper for an installation art project and pushed on past the pain of her wrists and eventually needed surgery.

--I tried a variety of thimbles to protect the pads of my fingers.  The silicone one was best, except it still allowed the occasional needle stick.

--I will always sew by hand--it's a soothing thing to do while also having other activities going on, like TV watching or visiting with family.  But the day is likely upon us when I will stop doing some of the rest of it by hand, particularly for bed-size quilts.  One of my Quilt Camp buddies told me about a woman who will do some basic quilting with her long arm machine and even provide the batting, for just $100.00.  It sounds too good to be true to me.

--But now, I don't have to sew by hand.  One of my other Quilt Camp buddies brought me a sewing machine to have, and it's a good little machine made by Bernina.  No, it's not the high end version.  It's their budget model--but it will even do button holes.  I did a bit of sewing with it, and it's a dream.

--I have a vision of starting to assemble quilt tops for Lutheran World Relief.  I have so much fabric, and I continue to collect more.  The machine will help with this process.

--My feet are also sore this morning.  We took more walks than we usually do.  Or maybe this daily walking at 3:00 will be the new normal at Quilt Camp, as more people realize it's an option and that it's good to get up and move around more than just going to the bathroom or the snack table.

--I can scarcely believe Quilt Camp is over.  There's always a moment before it starts where I savor the beginning, while also knowing how fast it will fly by.  And now, it has.  As always, what I cherish most is the chance to reconnect with friends.  

Quilt Camp Begins

I am glad I was able to be here yesterday to help with set up for Quilt Camp.  We don't have to do the heavy lifting work, the getting the 90 tables in place in the Faith Center at Lutheridge.  But we did need to do the other work:  deciding where the cutting tables and ironing boards will be, putting plastic tablecloths on the tables in the worst condition, going out to get more plastic tablecloths, running extension cords from plugs to tables, and those kinds of things.

We also had to do the work that seems trivial but takes time:  putting nametags into plastic holders, putting those plastic holders on the table so that retreat members could find them easily, lots and lots of organizing of supplies.

By the time that everyone arrived and settled in, I was tired.  But it was a pleasant tired, a far cry from the tired that I feel after driving in from a distance for a retreat.  I got some sewing done, and today I hope to make serious progress on my big project:  a new quilt top for the quilt that we sleep under.  The quilt top is created.  I'll attach it to the old quilt and put on a new binding.  The quilt back is still in good shape.

It may seem like a strange approach, adding a new quilt top to an old quilt.  But in fact, it's a very old approach:  quilters in past centuries didn't have access to supplies that we do, so they used old quilts as the layer of batting in new quilts.

I also plan to make progress on my other big project, the log cabin quilt, the one I thought I might be able to finish back in March.  But when I stretched it on the bed, I realized I needed a few more rows.  I've been making log cabin patches, so we shall see.

We're having glorious weather, which is a gift.  I am leading a walk each day at 3, and if the weather this week was the rainy, cold weather of last week, we'd ditch those plans.  At Quilt Camp, we spend much of the day and night in a chair, and I spend it hunched over, which is my posture any time I'm in a chair. 

I am surprised to realize I took no pictures yesterday.   Happily there is still time.

Gratitudes Before the Start of Quilt Camp

Quilt Camp starts today.  This time, unlike last Quilt Camps, I'm part of the leadership team.  I will help with set up today, I will deliver the very short sermon for Saturday closing worship, and beyond that, I'm not sure what being on the Quilt Camp leadership team means.

In the early days of summer, when I thought about Fall Quilt Camp, I thought I would head to Spartanburg today, do my teacher duties, and then arrive for Quilt Camp.  But as the semester has gone on, I've changed my mind.  My students can use today to get caught up, and I'd like to be a bit less tired when Quilt Camp starts.

I am so grateful to be working at a place where I have this kind of flexibility.  I am so grateful to be at a place where when I say, "I'll be leading a quilt retreat this week," and no one says, "What does that have to do with you as a teacher?  No, you can't be off campus this week."  I'm thinking of past bosses who made their disapproval known, even as I was using my personal vacation time to be away.

Make no mistake:  I do get teaching inspiration from retreats.  It may be a different kind of inspiration than I would get at a literary conference, but I am a different teacher, a better teacher, because I go on these retreats.

I am also grateful that I live closer to camp.  When I first heard about Quilt Camp at Lutheridge, back in 2018 or 2019, I lived in South Florida, a twelve hour drive if all the traffic went smoothly.   I was torn--on the one hand, it was a longer retreat, so the drive would be worth it; in those days, I never would have made the drive for a retreat that started Friday night and ended Sunday morning, as so many retreats did then.  But on the other hand, it was such a long drive.

Because I live here now, I have the best of several worlds.  I don't have a long drive.  I get to sleep in my own bed.  I don't feel like I'm abandoning my spouse or my other duties at home.  Of course, that benefit has a shadow side--it's also hard for me to completely disconnect on retreat.  But that was true of past retreats too.  My brain is always working at various levels, and it's hard for me to focus on just one.

This morning I realized another value to coming to Quilt Camp from my house that's less than a mile away.  I feel less pull to do the other area attractions:  apple orchards, fabric stores, and Appalachian arts and crafts.  At least my active brain will calm down around the other wonderful outings that I would want to be taking, if I didn't already live here.

On this morning of the day when Quilt Camp begins, I am most grateful to be feeling like my life is in better alignment than it was back in 2018/2019 when I thought about the possibility of coming to Quilt Camp and decided I couldn't make it work.

Rejections to Treasure

I got a rejection note in my inbox, and it spurred me to look up my submission.  Sure enough, the rejection note referred to two of the poems in a specific way (the full fat cream and the cinnamon rolls):

"Thank you very much for entrusting us with your poetry. I’m sorry to say that you’re not a finalist for this year’s ______ Prize, but I'm always glad to read your work! As far as I'm concerned, you deserve all the full fat cream, all the cinnamon rolls."

I promptly made a few more submissions, with those poems, to other places.  It put me in mind of a time long ago, when I was a much younger poet, taking rejected poems out of the envelope of rejection, giving them a quick check to make sure that they weren't marked in any way, and putting them directly into a new envelope going to a different literary journal, along with another self-addressed, stamped envelope.

For many years now, I've been avoiding any literary journal that charges $3.00 or more for a submission.  I was still back in the paper era, thinking about how little I used to spend when I sent out submissions in envelopes through the U.S. Mail.  But postage has gone up, so now $3.00 seems somewhat reasonable, at least once a year.

I'm still aghast at the odds against my success.  I still want to be a bit wary, and I don't want to lose track of my expenses, which are no longer tax deductible for me, since it's been years since I earned any money from writing.

There is part of me that wonders why I bother.  Publications aren't likely to get me a tenure track job or other opportunities.  My annual review at Spartanburg Methodist College does consider publications, but they are far from the most important part of how I will be evaluated.

I have been dreaming of a book with a spine for so many years and decades now that I still hope it happens.  So part of my submission strategy is force of habit.

I still get a thrill when I have an acceptance.  That alone makes it worth the submitting.  I also know that other work has to take priority, the teaching and the sermon writing, the work that actually pays me money.

A Wonderful All Saints Sunday

We had a great All Saints Sunday.  Much as people complain about the time change, every autumn when we turn the clocks back, I have a night of wonderful sleep.  This year was no exception.  Because of the time change, we were both up early, and we headed over the mountains to Bristol early.

It was wonderful to travel in the daylight, to see the trees in their full and fading autumnal glory.  This year, various trees are on their own schedule.  Some are still green.  Some have lost all their leaves.  There's every variety of in between.  It's not as full and blazingly beautiful as two or three years ago, but it's been a treat, especially considering last year.

I was glad for the extra time, because we had a lot to unload.  I knew that the confirmation class, and perhaps all the youth who arrived for Sunday school, would set up the space I envisioned for people to put photos and other mementos of loved ones who had died.  I brought all the supplies:  fabrics, fairy lights, candles (both traditional and electronic), candle holders, 2 yellow mums, and a small table.  I gathered 2 additional small tables from the sacristy.

The youth did a great job of working together to create the space.  They are two pairs of siblings, and the siblings are cousins, so we had a head start in working together.  They seem like the kind of cousins who are more like siblings, siblings who like each other and have fun together.  I was so impressed with what they created:

The congregation came through too--we had plenty of pictures, so many that we added two additional flat spaces (flipped boxes with white tablecloths to hide their identity).  

After church, we spent some time in the front, hearing stories of the loved ones whose pictures had graced our worship space.  I had made extra bread, and people ate bread or took some home.  It was delightful, a way of having a picnic with the ancestors.

My sermon went well, which is always a treat for me.  What I mean by well is not that everyone loved it, but that I felt good about my delivery (not too much reading, not getting tongue twisted).  If you want to view the recording, it's here on my YouTube channel.  If you want to read a version, head to this post on my theology blog.

We came home and relaxed, as we always do.  Sunday afternoons come after very full mornings, so we're not going to be doing much of substance.  We watched a great PBS show about a man who was taking a last trip on a buckboard wagon pulled by his 36 year old mule on their last trip in Hyde county, NC.  It was oddly compelling.  I did a bit of sewing on my quilt top and headed to bed.

Today I have two days of work, and the rest of the week is spent at Quilt Camp, just up the hill at Lutheridge.  I'll sleep in my house and spend the rest of my time at Quilt Camp.  I'm hoping to make progress on a variety of projects.

It sounds heavenly, and it will be, but first I have to do the prep work so that I can be gone from my full-time teaching job.  I am probably further along on that project than I think, but I feel a bit of anxiety.  At the same time, I'm sure it will all be fine.  It's nice to be at a school where I can rest easy in the knowledge that it will all be fine, even as I'm feeling a bit of anxiety.

All Saints Sunday, 2025, the Prep Work Edition

We had a pretty good day yesterday, a day of running the dishwasher three times because we were doing so much baking.  

I also got some grading done, some sermon revising done, a trip to the local library branch that always cheers me up.  I got early morning shopping done at Walmart, where, to my delight, they had the anise seeds I needed for the Pan de Muerto, the Day of the Dead bread recipe that my spouse shaped into delightful shapes.

I looked at my Walmart cart which had marigolds for today's table at Faith Lutheran that will hold the pictures and other things that remind us of our loved ones and the anise seed for the Pan de Muerto, the festive bread we'll use for communion and eating after worship.  My cart also contained nicotine tablets for my spouse, along with paper towels and other mundane objects for every day life.

Today should be a good day at Faith Lutheran Church in Bristol, TN.  My two confirmation students will help set up the worship space, which will give us a chance to talk about worship and worship spaces.  I have hopes that the service will be meaningful; my tiny congregation has had a tough year in terms of losses, sickness, and death.

The Day After Halloween

One of my students yesterday asked me if I got many trick-or-treaters at my house.  I answered simply, "Not really."  I didn't want to explain that I live in a neighborhood that is very small and has very few children.  Even if I kept the porch light on, if I was a child, I wouldn't make my way down the shadowy, gravel driveway to the porch.

So, we kept the porchlight off.  We ate our dinner early, watched some episodes of NYPD Blue, and I fell asleep early, as I usually do.  It felt like a good Halloween, although I know that it might seem sad to the student who asked if I had fun Halloween plans.

Today I will bake a special bread for tomorrow's All Saints Sunday service.  This morning I will head out to several stores on a quest for anise seed for the bread--and a chance to snag some after Halloween deals.  I saw several witch's hats yesterday that made me want a witch's hat of my own, but I don't want to pay much money for something that I won't wear very often.

Halloween 2025

And so our beautiful October comes to a close.  

Today is Halloween, and I live in a house that will have no trick-or-treaters.  We have discovered a Roku channel that offers nothing but NYPD Blue, so we'll probably watch some more of that.  I used to watch the show in the 90's, and I forgot how compelling it is.  I stayed up later than I meant to last night as I hoped to see how a narrative arc about a serial killer would end, so I may go to bed early tonight.

In my adult life, I approach Halloween as the beginning of an important time that lasts three days.  I'm a theology geek, so I call it a triduum.  Halloween emerged from its pagan roots as a natural bridge to All Saints Day (November 1) and All Souls Day (Nov. 2). More on those holidays in the coming days.

This year, I'll spend Halloween writing a sermon.  This year, what scares me is the willingness of politicians to let SNAP benefits expire.  I can create an All Saints sermon that references the Biblical texts, our current political situation, and all the saints who have come before us.

I still have to teach, of course.  But the semester has revealed that my classes on MWF are nothing to fear or dread; no classes are, but I'm trying to use Halloween words today.  In Brit Lit, we'll cover Joyce's "The Dead," in a bit of serendipity.  In English 101, we'll sketch leaves and pinecones and acorns while we explore how sketching might impact our ability to describe things.

That class will probably be more openly enthusiastic than the Creative Writing class where I did the experiment yesterday.  Every semester, I know that each class will have a different dynamic, but each semester often surprises me in how that dynamic plays out. 

I will wear my candy corn earrings one last time.  Here's a picture that I took at the school's pumpkin patch a few weeks ago (look at that glorious blue sky!):

This morning, I'm thinking of past Halloweens:  in childhood, where I'd spend months planning my costume, the joy of all that candy.  I'm thinking of 2016, where Halloween was my first day as an administrator at a new job, and my first impression of people was the costume contest and the joy with which they approached the idea of a costume contest.  

I'm wishing I had time to bake, time for more contemplation.  Well, maybe next year when Halloween will be on a Saturday.  This year, I'll continue to enjoy these elements of my best life:  getting ready for my Sunday at the country church I love so much, fun classes to teach today, and cozy time in the evening as we cook together and then revisit quality TV from decades past, while I stitch a new quilt top for the well-worn quilt on our bed.

"Frankenstein" in the English Composition Classroom

For those of you who are wonder when this blog became a teaching blog, I apologize.  It's an easy way for me to keep track of ideas that work.  In an ideal world, others would see and be inspired.  But on a practical level, it's an easy way for me to remember and be inspired.

In my English 101 class yesterday, I knew that I wanted them to do the Build Your Own Gothic/Spooky story worksheet that I created for an Edgar Allen Poe module in the spring, which I described in this blog post.  I thought I needed a bit more, so I had the previews for the new Frankenstein movie ready to go.  

As I was walking to class, I thought about Mary Shelley's journal, and I knew I had copies of the pages where she talks about dreaming of her dead baby and bringing it back to life.  I rushed back to the copy machine to make a few more copies, and a successful teaching day was born.

I handed out the pages of Mary Shelley's journal, the one page handout that captures several entries where she is grieving the baby and where she records the dream.  I had them read it and see if any spooky stories were suggested.

Then I showed the two previews:  one that gives us the creature's voice and one that gives us Victor Frankenstein's voice.  We talked a bit about the novel, about the film versions, about the ways it has inspired so many of us in so many ways.

Then I had them fill in the worksheet.  They settled in and seemed truly engaged with their ideas; this class is amazing in that way.

Today, I'll add this story from the CBS Sunday news show.  It's both an interview with Guillermo del Toro, the director, and lots of interesting information and visuals.

I'll need to come up with a bit more for them to do, since they did the worksheet on Tuesday.  Happily, I have a few hours to figure it out.

Environmental Resilience in Our Science and Our Literature (and Psyches)

It's the kind of morning where I feel a bit fragmented--so let me collect the fragments to see if a mosaic emerges.

--There was a Facebook ad that took me to this new degree, a Master's in Environmental Resilience at UNC-Asheville.  It's not as interesting to me as it first seemed it would be--if I was younger, perhaps.  I'm just glad to see that some programs are thinking in this direction.

--I also wanted to record it because I wondered if they would ever offer an elective in writing the history of environmental resilience--and could I teach it?

--Also, if I put together any sort of reading series, it's good to remember non-literary audiences that might be out there.

--For the sake of future historians, I feel I should mention Hurricane Melissa as the strongest landfalling hurricane in the Atlantic, which came ashore in Jamaica yesterday.  It was the strongest in terms of wind, while in terms of barometric pressure, it ties with the Labor Day hurricane of 1935.  It's too early to know what the damage is, but certainly it will be huge.  

--Future historians might laugh at me.  Faithful readers of this blog know that I think strong hurricanes like this one will be more and more common as the years go on.  Future historians will understand the scope and contours of that prediction.

--We are having lots of rain this week.  In a way, I'm glad.  We've had a dry October, which is glorious in its way, but it makes me worry about fire dangers.  In a way, the rain makes me anxious, particularly when it continues day after day, particularly with hurricane coverage increasing.

--Let me go take a walk, while we have a break in the rain.

Watching "Thriller" in the Composition Classroom

Yesterday, my English 101 class continued its study of music, more specifically Michael Jackson's "Thriller."  I thought about playing the song without the video and then the video to have them compare and contrast the images in their head without the video to the video.  But in the end, I decided to go with a simpler movie review type of writing--plus, the official video is almost 15 minutes long, and the class is only 50 minutes long.

We did have time for a bit of discussion about whether or not the video holds up well.  Most of the students agreed that it did hold up well.  It wasn't as scary as it might have seemed in 1983 when it debuted, but the music, the costumes, the dancing, and almost every other element was sound.

Only 1/3 of them had seen the video before, and only one student had seen it in the last month.  I wasn't sure what to expect in that regard.  I also wondered how much of Michael Jackson's story they would know.  Most of them seemed to say that his history of being accused of sexual abuse of children shouldn't negate his art. 

It was strange, in a time wrinkle kind of way, to watch this video with my first year students.  This video premiered when I was a first year student, in 1983.  I remember making a special effort to see it on MTV; it felt like an important cultural moment.  And now MTV is bankrupt.  Michael Jackson's red jacket that he wore is in the Smithsonian--and the Smithsonian is closed because of a government shut down.

It feels like we're at another cultural moment of a turning point, but it's hard to know where we're headed.  I don't know that I felt the same way in 1983, at least not about "Thriller." 

It was a fun way to have a sort-of scary, very short film.  It was a great addition to my fall festival two weeks in English 101 class.  Will it lead to good writing?  Time will tell.

Autumn Music, Autumn Writing

I had a great English 101 class on Friday, writing with a variety of music playing, and I want to record what we did.  I wanted students to write not only about the music, so I gave them apples again, with a prompt on the board:  Write a description of the apple; write about the view of the world from the point of view of the apple; write about the point of view of a human observing the apple; or write about anything the music inspires.  They were supposed to do some writing while listening to the music.

I also gave them a worksheet that had the title of the work and the composer/arranger/artist and the type of music.  For each work, they had two questions to think about and to write about:  What does the music make you think about in terms of autumn; how did you feel while writing with this music playing?

Here is the playlist, in the order that I played them:

"Autumn Leaves" by Miles Davis

"Season of the Witch" by Donovan

Autumn part of The Four Seasons by Vivaldi

"October" by U2

Autumn by George Winston (I let the whole album play until the end of class, so we didn't listen to the whole thing).

Some of the music was long-ish, and I was impressed with my students' ability to stay focused--and distressed about my own inability to settle into the music and listen.  I kept wishing I had chosen shorter pieces, but having a long piece of music was part of the point.

I collected the worksheets, but not the other writing.  I wanted them to feel free to write whatever they wanted for part of the time. Of course, that meant that some of them only filled in the worksheet.  I decided that I was O.K. with that, since they all appeared to be listening attentively.

I was impressed with the level of analysis that they gave me on the worksheets.  Several of them wrote about noticing how the music calmed them.  

If they remember nothing else from their first year Composition class with me, I hope they remember that music can be a resource for restoring mental health.

Apples in the Composition Classroom

It's been a good teaching week.  On Monday, on my way home from work, I bought a bushel of apples from my favorite orchard, Coston Farms.  On Tuesday, I was surprised to find out how much a bushel of apples weighs as I carried them to my office--happily, there was a cart inside the door of my office/classroom building.

I took apples to every class.  I had them lift the box, so that they had an idea about how much a bushel weighs.  It's something we've lost, as we've moved from being an agricultural society to our current culture that's largely out of touch with where we get our food.

In my writing classes, we described an apple before I gave them an apple.  Then they described the apple that was in front of them, and we compared the two pieces of writing.  We talked about depictions of apples in popular culture (Snow White, Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden, and Johnny Appleseed).  We looked at the poignant poem "Summer Apples," by Catheryn Essinger, and talked about the apple as a "little cathedral to memory."  Then we did some additional writing.  I realized that I would have lots and lots of apples, so I took some to my British Literature class too.

It's very similar to what I did two years ago, and I wrote about in this blog post.  I'm happy to report that it worked again.  Two years ago, I came up with the plan because I wanted to have a reason to buy a bushel of apples.  Last year, all my plans were upended by Hurricane Helene.

My plan for this week and next is to do various autumnal themed activities and then have a writing assignment about which one best captured the season.  Today we'll watch the "Thriller" video; it will be interesting to see how many of them are familiar with the whole video or with the song or with Michael Jackson at all.

Thinking about AI and Machine Learning and the Protestant Reformation on the Feast Day of Saint James

This morning, I've been listening to podcasts--specifically, Ezra Klein's October 15 interview with Eliezer Yudkowsky about how Artificial Intelligence trained on the Internet is very different from anything that has come before.  It's interesting to be listening to that interview while writing a sermon for Reformation Sunday and thinking about the even more ancient feast day of Saint James.

I did not realize until this morning just how many James exist in the circle of Jesus.  The more famous Saint James is the one we celebrate in July, the one that people celebrate by walking to his shrine in Santiago de Campostela in Spain from a variety of starting points.

James the Brother of Jesus was one of the early leaders of the Church, which may or may not tell us that he's not one of the ones that the Gospel writer of Mark presents as coming to Jesus to try to get him to be quiet.  Or maybe he is, and he changed his mind.  James the Just is another name given to James the brother of Jesus, which suggests to me that he would be capable of changing his mind.

There are places in Acts and throughout the letters that make up so much of the New Testament that make us think that James is one of the ones in charge of the early Church, along with Peter.  He seems to be one of the ones making big decisions for the larger group.  He's given credit for helping move the early Church to the inclusion of Gentiles.  There are other scholars who see James the Brother of Jesus as more traditional, that it was Paul who reached out to Gentiles and James who argued for staying with Mosaic Law.  Circumcision played a big role in these deliberations, according to some scholars.

The more I look for answers, the more I am struck by how much we do not know about the early Church or about Jesus as a historical figure.  From there, it's a short realization to how easy it is to make the early Church figures be who we want or need them to be.

Still, I am grateful for their work.  On this morning where I've been listening to Ezra Klein's podcast about how Artificial Intelligence through Machine Learning has the capability to destroy the world (more specifically, humans), it's good to remember that the end of the world has been forecast many times, and so far, we persist.

Two Rough Drafts Composed of Gingerbread

My poetry writing goes in cycles.  The cycle I like best is the one where I have a glimmer of an idea for a poem, a glimmer that takes shape throughout the day as I think about it, and by the time I sit down at my writing desk, I've got a shape of a poem to work with--and yet, there's still a delightful surprise or two.

Of course it's the cycle I like best.  Who wouldn't like this part?  It's where I feel like I'm doing what I've been put on earth to do.  It's the part of the cycle where I feel like I've come across some secret portal, available to all but undertaken by few, where I glimpse the secrets of creation (which I mean in all sorts of senses of that word).

Usually my writing process is more like this:  I have a line or two, I see what I can do with them, I come up with a bit more but not a complete poem, I put it aside to think about it later, and I rarely return.  It might be for a happy reason:  the fragment leads to a more solid idea.  It's more usual that I put it aside and then a week or two goes by, and I don't have any additional ideas, and life gets hectic.

Lately I've been stuck in the cycle I like least:  no ideas, no glimmers, no lines that fizzle out and go nowhere.  I feel like it's been months since I wrote a line, although that's not true.

Yesterday, much to my delight, I came up with two poems.  In the morning, I had a flash of an idea about gingerbread houses being evidence of a woman working out her trauma.  I decided to go big:  make the speaker the witch in the Hansel and Gretel story.  It's not done yet, but here is how the poem starts right now:

I deal with loss by baking.
My gingerbread structures tell
you all you need to know
about the trauma that still lives
deep inside me.

In the afternoon, I had the idea to have the gingerbread house speak.  The gingerbread house says that its not its fault that it bewitches small children. From there, the poem devolves a bit.   I had been listening to coverage of the book published by a survivor of Jeffrey Epstein, and the stories are harrowing, and those stories were in my mind as I wrote.  I need to do some work on getting the symbolism squared away.  The gingerbread house is not Epstein--that would be the witch.  Or maybe I want to back away and go in a different direction.

Or maybe not.

It was good to have a day with two rough drafts at the end, two rough drafts that have potential.  It's been a long, long time since I had a day like that.  Hurrah!

The Week Where A Clone of Myself Would Be Nice

This week is one of those weeks where I had more than one of me.  I'm looking forward to teaching the autumn themed writing module I've designed; yesterday I stopped at my favorite apple orchard to get a bushel of Pink Lady apples.  But the Southeastern Synod of the ELCA is having their continuing ed event here at Lutheridge.  I'll be doing a bit with that group; in a half hour, I'll head up the hill to camp to lead a morning walk.  I wish I had more time.

Even as I wish I had more time, I know that only some of the continuing ed would be relevant to me at this moment in my professional life.  The ELCA isn't geared to those of us who are bi-vocational.  Much of the support that the ELCA gives to clergy assumes a traditional clergy member who serves one congregation and doesn't hold down multiple jobs to make ends meet.  Or worse, it assumes that the clergy member is managing a staff of people at a church that has plenty of money.

And even though I know these things, when I see pictures of continuing ed events with lots of clergy folk having inspiring times, I want to be with them.  And similarly, when I see writers at events that look inspiring, I want to be there.  And when I read about successful teaching, I want to be creating modules that will do the same.

And so I try to do it all, sort of.  I could say that I do none of it well, but that's not true.  Could I do it better if I only had one thing to focus on?  Maybe.  Or maybe I would be bored and stop trying.

I also wonder what it's like to only want to do one thing, to focus on that one thing, to have no alternate lives tugging at the hem of one's garment.  I've gotten better at not obsessing over decisions already made, roads not taken.  But I'm not as good at settling down into my current life.  There's some part of me always creating alternate plans.

By now I realize that those plans will be useless.  Far better is my skill at pivoting when things need to be different or when something falls apart.  Perhaps that pivoting skill comes from my lifetime of alternate life Kristins tugging at me.

Well, let me get ready for my walk.  I've got only one self to be all the places where I want to be.  Let me enjoy it.

Week-end Update: Chili Fest and Hymn Festival

We had a good week-end.  Early Saturday afternoon, we loaded the car with a surprising amount of stuff for people who were only going to be gone for an overnight trip.  We headed across the autumnal mountains to Bristol, Tennessee, where Faith Lutheran, the church I serve as a Synod Appointed Minister, had its Chili Fest from 4-7.

It was a delightful event, even more so because it was so different from last year.  Last year we had planned to meet my father-in-law and his wife for Chili Fest.  When Hurricane Helene blew through, it obliterated every direct route between our house and Bristol.  But the hotel room was paid for, so we set out on the alternate route:  east on I 40, north on I 77, and east on I 81.  Part of me couldn't believe that it would really take 5 hours.  It did.  I spent much of Chili Fest trying not to feel tired, and I spent the time afterward trying to find an easier route home, which would did not exist.

This year was much easier.  I enjoyed the variety of chili and even more, the wonderful desserts with an autumnal theme.  We had a hayride and pumpkin painting, but for the most part, I tried to stay inside, talking to all the people who came out on an abnormally warm day to enjoy our event.

Even though it was warm, the weather was perfect, and the light cast by the setting sun was beautiful.  We stayed to help clean up, and then headed over to the hotel where we stayed for the night.  If it had been a Friday night, we'd have gone back home, but for a Saturday night, it made no sense.

Sunday was a good day at church.  I'm talking about Luther with my confirmands, which went well.  My sermon on Luke 18:  1-8, the widow demanding justice from a no-good judge, went well (you can view it here on my YouTube channel).

On Sunday afternoons, it's hard for me to want to do much else, but yesterday we decided to make the effort to go to a hymnfest at the local Lutheran church in Arden, where we live:

It was a great event.  Mary Louise (Mel) Bringle, the hymn writer, was there, and it was interesting to hear her insights about how she wrote the hymns.  And then we sang them.  It was a good mix of her insight, our singing, and special musical presentations.

Even better, we had a chance to see friends we don't often see, because of my work schedule.  I worry that by the time I'm retired or working less, I won't have as many friends as I once did--we're none of us getting younger.  Sigh.

But for now, let me be happy about the opportunity to have so many soul-enriching opportunities in one week-end.

Autumn Passings, Autumn Sketching, Autumn Cooking

We have had a stretch of gorgeous days, the perfect autumnal kind of perfect day:  sunny and warm, but not hot, not humid, no hint of rain.  Some days, the breeziness has made it almost uncomfortable, and I do worry about the lack of rain.  We have so much combustible material in the mountains, even before the remnants of Hurricane Helene came through, that I'm much more comfortable if we have rain every few days.  

Let me capture some of the past week in the form of snippets and scraps:

--I made some pumpkin butter, an experimental kind.  I opened a can of pumpkin and put about 1/3 of it into a greased ceramic apple baker.  I stirred in some of my homemade pumpkin spice mix and tasted it--oh, right, I remember, pumpkin butter requires some sugar.  I stirred that in and let the mixture bake as I was toasting some of the rugged bread that I got as a day old special from a local bakery.  Delicious!

--That left me with part of a can of pumpkin, so last night, I made the pumpkin bread dough that this morning I made into pumpkin cinnamon rolls--delicious!

--I have been sad about how many female greats have died in the past few weeks:  ecofeminist writer Susan Griffin, actress Diane Keaton, NPR great Susan Stamberg, and perhaps feminist theologian Phyllis Trible.  I am grateful for their lives and work.  I am glad that they lived long lives.  I wish we could have had them with us for a bit longer.

--I have been doing more sketching in the evening.  

A few years ago, I was happy with the pumpkins I was sketching.  This year, I've been feeling like I lost that skill.  So I've been focused the last few nights, and I've actually used my phone to watch a short tutorial or two to remind me how to do it.

What this blog post doesn't capture is the page after page of sketches that didn't come together.

But this morning, as I saw last night's sketch, I felt happy.

--This week-end is Chili Fest at the church I serve in Bristol, TN.  Last year we went; we had non-refundable hotel reservations, so we made the 5 hour trip.  The trip usually takes just under 2 hours, but a year ago, every road that went directly across the mountains had a closed portion.  The only way to go was west across I 40, north up I 77, and east on I 81.

--I'm so glad that we have survived to see a different autumn.  It's not as blazingly gorgeous as the autumn of 2022, but it has its own beauty nonetheless.

Pedagogy from the Pumpkin Patch

Yesterday was a good teaching day.  I got to campus, and as I entered the Humanities building, a student from Spring was coming out.  She stopped to tell me how much she missed me and the English 102 class that she took with me.  We talked about the possibility of her taking my Advanced Creative Writing class in the spring.  I was glad to know that her experience with me was a happy one.

My English 100 classes went well.  This week, both in those classes and English 101, we've experimented with a different kind of peer editing.  We had a check list to make sure the work had all the required elements, so we did the first few readings checking for those.  Then we read each essay but didn't comment on them.  This approach allowed students to read more essays and to see how they worked or didn't.  We talked about which approaches made essays easier to follow (headings, for example).  In each class, students read every single essay, since they didn't have to take time to write comments.

My Creative Writing class was on a field trip of sorts.  

Yesterday was the pumpkin patch that was right outside the building where we meet.  

So we went out to paint pumpkins and to see if we could find ideas and inspiration for next week's writing.  I plan to bring in this blog post of my own and this classic piece about decorative gourd season from McSweeney's.

I don't always have earrings that match my teaching plan for a class, but yesterday I did.  

I bought these candy corn earrings from a pre-teen entrepreneur at a Mills River farmer's market in the summer, and I was happy to have more than one occasion this fall to wear them (the other will be Halloween).

I don't know if we'll create writing that we wouldn't have had without the trip to the pumpkin patch, but I'm happy that we'll have a chance to see.

Short Story Publication

My writing time is short this morning:  I've been doing a bit of submitting to journals and some sermon writing.  I wanted to do the submitting while the submission window is open, and for some of them, it's only open until they hit the submission cap.

So let me post a link to my latest story publication in South 85.  It's one of my favorite stories that I've written, and I'm glad it's published.  I'll write a longer blog post later that tells how I came to write a story so unlike the ones that I usually write, 3 shorter vignettes, connected with poetry-like segments.  One of my best friends called it the best short story I've ever written, one that showed that I had moved to a new level with my writing.  She and I had been meeting on a regular basis, reading each other's short stories, so she when she made that declaration, she had more experience with my writing than most.

Erasure Poems, Mary Shelley, and a Creative Writing Class

Last week, I saw a poster about an event on the glass of my classroom/office building.  I thought about how it would be perfect for my Creative Writing class--a pumpkin patch with pumpkin decorating, autumn drinks, and some sort of photo opportunity.  And in a pleasant surprise, I not only saw the poster before the event happened, but it's happening on the day that my Creative Writing class meets.  So, my plan is good to go for class on Thursday, October 16.

My Blackout Poem with pages from Mary Shelley's journal

That still left me yesterday to plan.  So I decided to experiment with blackout/erasure poetry and collage.  I had planned to do this with my British Literature class, and I still might.

Here is a close up of the words I selected, and I do think they sort of work as a poem:

I photocopied some pages from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, along with a selection of entries from her journal, including the passage about her dreams of her dead baby.  Each student got three sheets, with 6 pages total.  I had a variety of markers, both colored and black, fine tipped and thicker.

I also had a variety of popular magazines and old crafting magazines.  They were on tables, but first, we did the blacking out.  I explained the process and then showed them what I had done with the pages from Mary Shelley's journal.  Then we sank into the work.

Some students never did the collage part, and that was fine with me.  

Some students took the images with them, and I do wonder if they'll return to it.

I was impressed by what they created, but I'm not going to post all of them.  Here's a sample:

Here is a student's page before collage:

And after the student added images:

Here is another finished creation:

They all seemed to enjoy it, both the ones who zipped through it, and the ones who spent all of their time carefully blacking out lines.

I enjoyed watching them work, and I liked the opportunity that I had to try it too.  Now, should I take this project to my Brit Lit class?  Stay tuned!

Peace in Our Time: Hopes and Hesitations

When I was young, my imagination was consumed with the idea of being held hostage or being kidnapped.  I blame the Symbionese Liberation Army, the ones who kidnapped Patty Hearst in 1974, when I was 8 years old.  The hostages held in the embassy in Tehran (from 1979 until 1981) also held a large amount of my attention.

Yesterday as I drove down the mountain to Spartanburg, I heard the special BBC coverage of the release of the 20 Israeli hostages still living, the ones held in Gaza for over 2 years.  I have not spent the last 2 years consumed by worry about those hostages.  I have tried not to spend time imagining what they're going through--the bit that I did know made me sure that it's been a brutalizing experience, and I don't want terrorists inhabiting my brain in that way.

When I was 8, I had no idea what Patty Hearst was going through.  I worried about being snatched away from my family, and this was a time before that fear was widespread.  Later, with the hostages in Iran, I wondered more about logistics than the possible abuses.  Did they live at the embassy?  Did they have books to read?  As a young woman, I wondered about the other women:  did they have enough tampons?  I also wondered who was doing the cooking and cleaning.  And of course, as the days turned into months and years, I wondered how this would all end.

Yesterday as I listened to the BBC coverage, I thought about how hard it will be for these former hostages to be reintegrated into Israeli society.  Of course I hope that it won't be.  Some people are better at turning ghastly experiences into forces for good in the world.  But many more people don't have those coping skills.

Later in the day my spouse texted me:  "Peace treaty signed!"  As we relaxed on the deck in the late afternoon, we talked about our hopes and hesitations.  As I said in previous posts, we've been alive for a long time now, and we've seen past presidents create peace treaties or peace frameworks, only to have them crumble into pieces in a very short time.

But we both agreed that it was wonderful to feel hopeful, even if it's a guarded hope.  I will say that if this peace is still holding in a year, I'd be willing to say that various folks deserve the Nobel Peace Prize.

Explorations and the Imagery of Those Interactions

Today is the federal holiday that celebrates Columbus Day; I'm willing to wager serious money that most of us don't have the day off.  When your mail doesn't arrive, you can take a minute to remember Columbus, who wanted to find a shorter trade route, but failed miserably in that goal. 

For most cities, gone are the days when we'd mark this holiday with parades and time off. Those of us who grew up in the 70's and later have likely rethought this holiday.

What marked an exciting opportunity for overcrowded Europeans in the time of Columbus began a time of unspeakable slaughter and loss for the inhabitants of the Americas, many of whom have never recovered or who disappeared completely.  Let us take a minute to remember all of the cultures that have vanished because of these kinds of encounters.  Let us mourn that loss.

But although those cultural encounters came at an enormous human cost, it also provided the opportunity to enrich the cultures on both sides of these encounters.  Look at the European cuisine before the time of Columbus, and let yourself feel enormous gratitude for the vegetables that came from the Americas. Look at the cultures that existed in the Americas before the Europeans arrived and let yourself marvel at the ways in which technology enables the building of cities.  For those of us who benefit from domesticated animals, which is almost all of us, let us celebrate Columbus and the opening of the space between cultures.

This morning, I'm revisiting the 2011 discussion with Charles Mann on NPR's Fresh Air.  He had just published 1493:  Uncovering the New World Columbus Created.  He points out that the arrival of Europeans does a lot to create wilderness--the diseases brought over wiped out huge swaths of indigenous populations, which left the land unpopulated, which meant the forces of the natural/non-human world could reclaim the land.

Today, perhaps because I spent a huge part of the week-end watching the 2020 mini-series The Stand, I'm thinking of the implications of disease.  Indigenous people had experienced something similar to the disease described by Stephen King, seeing most of their people wiped out.  Mann says the number was 2/3:  

"GROSS: So in North America, when the settlers were fighting wars with the Indians, the Indians that they were fighting with, the Native Americans they were fighting with, were survivors of these plagues?

Mr. MANN: Yes, they were, by and large, people, you know, who were in a state of complete cultural shock because, you know, two-thirds of the people that they knew had died. And there is just no culture that can resist foreign invasion, even by small bands of people like the Europeans were, when you've just had this enormous, shattering experience."

Later in the broadcast, he says that in the 100 years after Columbus, 1 out of 5 people on the planet had died.

I have been trying to think of a graceful transition to my next subject, but I can't come up with one, so I will just wrench away to something else:

Last night, as the sun was setting, I discovered that I had made my quilt top too wide.  How could this have happened?  Just last week-end, it wasn't wide enough, and I didn't think I added that much?  My spouse and I devised a plan, and I set to work ripping out the seam of part of the quilt that was too wide; later I'll add it to make the length of the quilt fit--it's far from catastrophic, as discoveries go.

I looked at the sunset colors in the sky and thought about that time when the crew on one of Columbus' ships saw land from a distance, that liminal time before all the changes got set into motion.  I am now trying to create a poem about ripping out seams on Columbus Day.  So far, it's not working, but I wrote down some ideas and maybe they'll come together.

This morning I look at my breakfast and think about the explorations of Columbus and those who came after.  I have pumpkin butter that I've made on my toast made out of 9 grain bread.  I began the morning by drinking coffee, and then switched to hot tea with milk and sugar.  It was Columbus that made this meal possible, although if he hadn't done it, surely someone else would have.

I think about the next 500 years.  If humanity survives, what will they look back to in 2025, either in amazement or in sorrow?

The Lessons of Columbus for the Creative Life

Writing time is short this morning, so let me run a Columbus Day post that I wrote in 2013.  It's one of my favorite meditations on Columbus.

Today we celebrate Columbus Day: October 12 was the actual day of the first sighting of land after almost 2 months at sea. I’m always amazed at what those early explorers accomplished. At Charlestowne Landing (near Charleston, SC), I saw a boat that was a replica of the boat that some of the first English settlers used to get here. It was teeny-tiny. I can't imagine sailing up the coast to the next harbor in it, much less across the Atlantic. Maybe it would have been easier, back before everyone knew how big the Atlantic was.

In our creative lives, we may have to set off on a tiny boat. We might wish we had different resources, but we start with what we have. Sure, it would be nice to attend that MFA program or to have the job that only has a 2-1 teaching load (do those exist at an entry level anymore?). But the good news is that we can make our way across a wide ocean, even if we have less resources than others. All we need is a smidge of time and the resolve and self-discipline that it takes not to waste that time.

Important journeys can be made in teeny-tiny boats. It's better than staring longingly out towards the sea.

We often think that starting the voyage is the biggest hurdle. But once you begin the journey, the hard part may be yet to come. I've often wondered if Columbus and other explorers ever woke up in the middle of the night and said, "What am I doing here? I could have just settled down with my sweetheart, had a few kids, watched the sunset every night while I enjoyed my wine." Of course, back then, a lot of options were closed to people, and that's why they set off for the horizon. No job opportunities in the Old World? Head west! Sweetheart left you for another or died? Head west!

Maybe we need to just set sail, knowing that we're going to be out of sight of land for awhile. Maybe we need to get over our need for safe harbor, for knowing exactly where we're going.

It's easy to feel full of enthusiasm at the beginning of a project. It’s far harder to keep up that enthusiasm when you're in the middle of a vast ocean, with nothing but your instruments and the stars to guide you, with no sense of how far away the land for which you're searching might be.

Maybe we have a manuscript that we feel is good, but no publisher has chosen yet. Maybe we have a batch of poems that seem to go together, but we have no sense of how to assemble the manuscript, while at the same time, we know we need to create 20 more poems. Maybe we have a vision of the kind of job that might support our creative selves, but no idea of how to get to where we want to be from where we are.

I'm guessing that many of us have similar feelings during our creative lives. We start a project full of enthusiasm. Months or years later, our enthusiasm may flag, as we find ourselves still wrestling with the same issues, even if we’ve moved on to other projects. We can take our cue from the great explorers of the 1400s and later. It’s true that we may feel we’re making the same explorations over and over again. But that doesn’t mean we won’t make important discoveries, even if it’s our fifth trip across the Atlantic on a tiny boat.

I keep thinking of the ship's logs and the captain's journals, which Columbus kept obsessively. Perhaps we need to do a bit more journalling/blogging/notetaking/observing. Maybe it’s more calibrating or more focused daydreaming. These tools can be important in our creative lives.

Maybe we need a benefactor. Who might be Queen Isabella for us, as artists and as communities of artists?

The most important lesson we can learn from Columbus is we probably need to know that while we think we're sailing off for India, we might come across a continent that we didn't know existed. Columbus was disappointed with his discovery: no gold, no spices, land that didn’t live up to his expectations. Yet, he started all sorts of revolutions with his discovery. Imagine a life without corn, sweet peppers, tomatoes. Imagine life without chocolate. Of course, if I was looking through the Native American lens, I might say, "Imagine life without smallpox."

Still, the metaphor holds for the creative life. Many of us start off with a vision for where we'd like to go, perhaps even with five and ten year plans. Yet if we're open to some alternate paths, we might find ourselves making intriguing discoveries that we'd never have made, had we stuck religiously to our original plans.