Hurricane Remnants and Travel

Last June, when I left Indiana after the first TEEM onground intensive that I attended, I thought ahead to our next gathering in October, where I anticipated autumnal shifts with still-warm days.

I did not anticipate a hurricane affecting the weather that far inland.  But here we are.  I've changed travel plans, and instead of leaving on Sunday, I'm leaving in a few hours.  There's already a bit of rain here, but nothing like what is expected later this morning.

We are supposed to have record breaking warmth in the 80's in the early part of the week, and cooler temps by week's end.  I have packed a variety of clothes--lots of layers for my upper body, some with sleeves and some not, and shorts for my lower body which is odd-shaped and hard to fit for long pants in this time of my life.

This hurricane has turned out to be a normal-ish hurricane, not a monster that zoomed up several categories just before landfall--how refreshing!  It moved ashore as a category 2, very survivable for most structures--not a fun way to spend an evening, but likely not life threatening for many.

I am still glad I changed my travel plans.  I should be able to stay ahead of the storm remnants today, and it will be good to head into the week being better rested.

Hurricane Watching and Other Notes from This Week

I am hurricane watching, and you might ask why.  I will always keep a wary eye on any Gulf or Atlantic hurricanes--even before Hurricane Helene came to my neighborhood, I was this way.  This week-end, I'm headed to Indianapolis, and Hurricane Isaias is too.  I was going to drive on Sunday, but since the hotel could add Saturday night to my stay, I've decided to pack the car later today and leave tomorrow instead of Sunday.  

I will avoid much of the heavy weather (I hope), but there's no way to know what that weather would be on Sunday.  Maybe the remnants will park themselves over Kentucky and just produce random rain showers.  Maybe it will be a huge amount of water falling from the sky for all the midwest.  Maybe the system will scoot on out of the picture on Saturday.  Regardless of what happens, I hope to be in my hotel room, safe and secure.  I'm glad I thought to call the hotel on Tuesday and extend my reservation, just in case.  If the hurricane had fizzled, I could have canceled that day and kept my Sunday travel plans.  But I'm predicting no fizzle, so off I go tomorrow morning.

I'm taking sewing and books as if I'm staying for an extra month, not an extra day.  I'll have my laptop, and I'm hopeful I can do all sorts of writing throughout the week.

When I look back, I know I'm likely to remember this time of hurricane watching.  Let me also record some other events from early October that I want to remember:

--It's the time of year when it's time to do the HR training for not just one school, but both schools where I teach.  This year, it's been surreal to be doing the anti-sexual harassment and Title IX training against the backdrop of the frat house rape case at Cornell.

--I have continued to have such good teaching experiences.  At some point, I want to write a post about my increased use of small groups this semester.  Or maybe it's enough to note that I'm doing more, and I'm amazed at how well it's working.  A case in point:  for yesterday's Creative Writing class, I put the seven students into 2 groups.  I asked them what makes a good spooky/scary/Gothic story.  They had good conversations.  I had them each make a list of the top 5 elements.  Then I had them do the Build Your Own Spooky/Scary Story worksheet.  It went so well that I'm going to have my English 101 class do the same thing.

--I have also done a lot with setting up the classroom tables in stations.  In my Wednesday Nonfiction class, I wanted the students to see how smaller pieces of writing could be included in larger pieces of writing:  blog posts into books, Facebook lists into books, Twitter tweets into a book, teaching handouts into a book, recipes and restaurant reviews into memoir.  

Students moved from station to station, making notes, and then filling out a worksheet about insights they had.  I was impressed by how serious they were as they studied the artifacts.

When Jesus Plans Your Family Reunion

On Sunday, I went through my old files looking for a St. Francis poem that I thought I had written--but I was thinking of an Ash Wednesday poem.  While searching, I found an old manuscript of Jesus in the world poems, many of which I had forgotten writing.  

Because my time is short this morning, I'll post one of them here.  Let me make sure to mention that the people in this poem are not based on real friends and relations.  It is published for the first time here.

Reunion



We let Jesus plan our family reunion,
and we won’t be doing that again.

He searched through the stunted
branches of the family tree and invited
them all: Weird PopPop Walter, who went to war
and was never the same, Cousin Buddy
who married that poor little black girl,
Aunt Leona, who we never forgave
for stealing all of Mamaw’s silver.

And then Jesus went and invited strangers
to our feast. People we didn’t know
from Adam’s housecat. We’re lucky
they didn’t rob us blind.
Where Jesus thought all these people
would park, I don’t know.

We usually cater these events, we told
him that. But no, Jesus had to go and change
things. Price of admission, he informed us,
was that we had to bring our favorite food, enough to share.
How could I do that?
My favorite food was Mamaw’s sweet
potato pie, and no one’s made it since she died.
But one rainy day, with restless
children to entertain, I set
one to work peeling potatoes and taught
one the secrets of pie crust.
The smell of those pies baking made me weep
with missing her, which alarmed
the children. To distract them, I dug
out the old quilts she made, and we lost
the rest of the day to looking at photo albums.

Fired by insider information, the children pestered
everyone at the reunion, and we told each other stories
we hadn’t thought of in years. I hope my girl stopped
thinking of herself as fat and sees herself as sturdy
like her Great Aunt Lillian who did the plowing
herself after flu felled all the menfolks.

But the greatest miracle of all was the singing.
Descended from northern Europeans, we keep
our mouths shut to keep from freezing, but Jesus
got us to open up. Jesus built a big bonfire,
and we spent the night singing while the leftovers multiplied
to feed us again.

Jesus planned our family reunion,
and we might let him do it again.
Maybe in five years or so.

Purchases and Vaccinations: The Witch Hat Edition

Yesterday was an afternoon of purchases and vaccinations.  My witch hat (with a veil!) was the most fun:

My school will have a week of various Halloween activities in late October, and I had been thinking about a witch hat, the easiest costume.  I thought about making one--after all, I have a lot of fabric.  But after seeing the prices on Amazon, I ordered one for less than $10.00.

Our other afternoon purchase was much more expensive:  2 mattresses for our fixer-upper in Spartanburg.  We have bed frames arriving soon that won't need box springs, but we still needed mattresses.  So off we went to Mattress Firm, where we could test mattresses in Arden, buy them, and have them delivered in Spartanburg.

If you're thinking of mattresses of your youth that were much less expensive than today's mattresses, they still exist; the lowest end mattress was $295.  We bought more expensive mattresses, made by Sealy, firm, no memory foam.  They were still much cheaper than the high end mattresses at the front of the store.

Then we went to get our flu and Covid shots.  I often wait until later in October, but I've seen several articles that note that flu and Covid outbreaks are arriving earlier this year, so earlier shots are best, if possible.  October is a heavy travel month for me, and yesterday offered a good window--no evening plans and no Tuesday morning commitments, should the shots hit me harder than usual.

I'm happy to report that they did not hit me harder--just the usual soreness at the vaccination sites on my arms.

I spent the evening sewing strips of Halloween fabric together while watching the Ghostbusters movie with the females.  We think we had seen it before, but I had little memory of it.

This morning, I did more experiments with my witch hat and different lighting.  Here's one with less light:

And here's one with more light, which lets you see the veil, which is made of a cobwebby looking material:

I realize that future generations may see this witch hat as all that is wrong with our modern society of disposable things made half a planet away and sped on its way to me.  But I also know that I'll still be using it in spooky seasons 20-30 years from now, or for as long as I'm alive.

Week-end Update: Expected and Unexpected Joys

I have had a good week-end, good in ways both expected and unexpected.  

I began the week-end by driving down to Columbia, SC to meet up with my parents so we could go to the James R. Crumley Archive banquet together.  In past years, I had seen people post pictures of the banquet, and I always thought it sounded interesting, the kind of event I would be sure to attend if I lived nearby.

I've lived nearby for several years, but this was the first year I could go.  Past years had seminary classes, minister commitments, and of course, Hurricane Helene disruptions.  As I got ready to go, I realized that I wasn't really sure what to expect.  I wondered if there would be people I would know.  I was happily surprised to have such a good time, which I wrote about in this blog post. 

I knew that the week-end would have good family moments, and it did.  It was great to be with my parents.  We are all old enough that I feel the passage of time keenly, that each good time together might be the good last time together.

My maternal grandfather's family farm is in Lexington, SC, the county next to Columbia; a lot of relatives still live on the family farm and surrounding farms, although they no longer farm the way they once did.  On Saturday morning, we joined a group of them at Lizard's Thicket, a local restaurant, for late breakfast.  What a treat!  It was great to catch up with beloved second cousins, and great to meet folks who are newer to the area.  And I had an amazing breakfast with some of the best restaurant biscuits I've ever had.

We've talked about future reunions, and I hope that we can do it.  One of the unexpected sorrows of moving back to the Carolinas is that I don't get together with friends and family as often as I would like.  We're still somewhat spread out, and my work schedule makes it complicated in a way that it wouldn't be complicated if I was retired.

Yesterday we got back from church and settled in for our post-church sermon watching.  We made pizza.  I thought we were in for the night when my cousin called.  

It was a happy phone call.  He was passing through town after being in Utah at a conference, waiting for his family who was picking him up on their way to the beach.  I offered to come get him, and he said yes.  We were able to offer him pizza; I would have made a different meal if I had known he was coming, but he was happy.  We had a few hours to catch up, and he had time to take a walk around Lutheridge, which he was craving after a morning and afternoon traveling by plane.

I feel very lucky to be at this point in my life.  Many people don't make it this far, to their 60's.  And many people don't have as many loved ones, friends and family both, alive when they are in their 60's.  While I wish I had even more time with them, I'm grateful for the time we do have.

The Feast Day of Saint Francis for Creative Types--for All of Us

Today is the feast day of Saint Francis.  For those of you who want a more spiritual meditation, head to these posts on my theology blog, one without photos, and one with photos.  For those of you wondering why we should care about a medieval saint or for those of you wanting to celebrate his life with your creativity, read on.

Francis continues to speak to so many of us, and for so many reasons.  Let's look at the various reasons and how they might inspire us in our creative lives.

--Francis is most associated with love of animals, which may explain his enduring popularity.  Churches across the world will celebrate his feast day by having services where people are welcome to bring their pets for a blessing. 

In our art, how could you take something traditional, like a worship service, and subvert it?  I'm thinking of the short story told via PowerPoint slides in Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad.

Today is a good day to think about the role of pets in our lives and to think about how we feel about less cuddly animals.  The symbolic possibilities may seem obvious--how could we use animals in a less obvious way as symbols in our work?

--Francis has come to be associated with the environmental movement, in part because of his love of animals, in part because he liked to visit ruined parts of society.

Today is a good day to think about our planet, much of which is already ruined.  We might think about the fact that we're living in the Holocene Extinction, one of 5-7 times in our planet's history where we know we're losing species at a far faster, and perhaps catastrophic, rate.  How can our creative endeavors address the situation? 

--Francis came from a very wealthy family, a family he renounced in solidarity with society's poor and outcast.  He lived amongst the lepers, the lowest of the low, and ministered to their needs.

Who are society's lepers today?  Can our art help humanize them?

--Francis worked to help end the Crusades. 

How could our creative work help end wars?

--Francis created three religious orders, two of which exist today, centuries after he created them.

What kind of community could help us in our creative endeavors?  Does it exist already?  If not, could we create such a community?

Several times during his life, Francis had to write a rule book for how the communities would live together.  If you created such a rule book, what would you include?

--Francis created the first Nativity scene, what we might today call a living Nativity scene, complete with real animals.  His scenes were inspired by paintings of the Nativity scene (think Jesus in a manger, surrounded by those who loved him and some animals).  He wanted visitors to feel the full engagement of all their senses.  We might think of Francis as an early performance artist or maybe someone who created a piece of installation art.

If we've been working in a certain medium for many years, we may have gotten complacent about trying to have all the senses of our audience engaged.  What can we do to change that?

If you're not a performance artist or a person who creates installation art, what could you do to move into that area?  It's an exciting time for collaboration and for exploring technology.  And yes, it's a scary time too.

--The life of St. Francis shows us the transformations that can happen when we dare to dream.  Dare to dream today.

A Banquet and Archived History

Yesterday I drove down to Columbia, SC to meet my parents so that we could all go to the James R. Crumley Archives banquet.  In years past, I've seen pictures of the event, and I've always been curious.  This year, schedules aligned, and we could go.

Each year, as far as I can tell, the banquet is held at a different place.  So far, the Archive has not had a permanent home.  That's about to change:  Newberry College has donated land for a building and now the capital campaign begins.  We heard a bit about that new development last night.

(l-r Don Poole, Ina Berkey, Jane Mitcham,Tom Berkey)

But most of last night's banquet was to celebrate the accomplishments of the honorees:  an individual, a church, and a synod of the ELCA.  It was enough of a program to justify the banquet, but not so overwhelming/long that people started leaving early.

(l-r Honoree Dorothy Jeffcoat, Don Poole, Ina Berkey)

Before the event, we had been invited to be part of a program that told the story of African American Lutherans in the southeast.  That program turned out to be a documentary that's available to all (go here to watch), along with some segments about Atlanta from a forthcoming documentary in the same series.

It was a lovely evening with good food, good stories/speeches, and even better, the chance to reconnect with others from the region.  I was happy to be reminded of all my connections:  to individuals, to various churches, to synods from the southeastern United States, to Newberry College, and to church camps.  But more than that, I was happy to hear the stories of all the good happening in the world, in small ways and in big ways.

Celebrating the Arrival of October with Fabric

I spent much of yesterday attending to tasks that I often don't find time for during regular school days:  a dermatologist appointment, some grocery shopping, and a hair cut.  But I also did some fun activities.  Last year, I went to Asheville Cotton, one of our local fabric stores, on the first day of Fall Break.  This year, I continued the tradition.

I don't really need fabric, but I wanted to buy a few small pieces to keep me feeling inspired, and I really wanted some fall or Halloween fabric.  

I saw this bag but didn't pick it up immediately--after all, I could choose my own fabric, couldn't I?  I could, but I found it a bit overwhelming.  And I didn't get a price break on the mystery bag. 

I went to the remnant section and was uninspired.  I picked up a piece or two and headed to the cash register.  At the last minute, I added the mystery bag to my purchase.

I am happy to say that I am delighted with the fabrics--some of them even glow in the dark!

It's strange to me that I got more delight from the mystery bag than I would have from taking the $40.00 and buying my own selection of bits and pieces.  I was happy for someone else to have made the decision for me.  And the surprise element was fun.

It reminded me of a time that's beginning to seem very long ago.  When I lived in Hollywood, Florida, I bought my fabric at Jo-Ann's, because it was easy and had what I needed.  Occasionally, my quilting friends and I would go to a huge store that specialized in specialty quilting fabrics; the prices were too high for my budget at the time, but I did splurge on backing fabric once.

The store sold plastic bags of scraps, many of them too small to be useful.  But occasionally, there would be one worth the $10 price.  I loved dumping out the bag and seeing what was actually there.  Even better was when one of my quilting friends bought one too, and we could trade.

Last night, I didn't work with any of the new fabric I bought.  I'm trying to get a quilt made by Thanksgiving, so I worked on that.  Plus, I like having the new fabric for a bit of time before cutting into it.  It's a way to stretch the joy, and who can argue with that?  

Rough Drafts and Fall Break

We are at midterm at Spartanburg Methodist College--which means it's Fall Break today and tomorrow.  My spouse and I will have a day of working on different projects:  he's putting polyurethane on the sanded hardwood floors in the fixer-upper house in S'burg, and I have various appointments today (dermatologist, hair, Zoom session with one of our onground intensive instructors).

Yesterday my spouse and I went to S'burg in different cars, so I had some time alone at the Arden house.  What did I do with my alone time?  Cooking and baking, of course.  I have a lot of apples which aren't getting fresher, so I made this apple cake; it's a strange recipe, with mashing the apples with a mixer to get the crumbly batter into something that is more like a cake batter.  The finished cake is very moist.  When I first took it out of the oven, it seemed more like a bread pudding.  It's delicious, both iced and un-iced.

I also made dinner with the ingredients I bought on Tuesday for this Smitten Kitchen recipe that uses frozen ravioli and fresh spinach. It's similar to another Smitten Kitchen recipe that includes tomatoes (I use a small can of petite diced), cooking on the top of the stove, with a last-minute broil.

You might think I would do more writing during a time in the house when I knew that the T.V. would stay quiet.  I did write a draft of the paper that is due Oct. 5.  And while my Nonfiction Writing students worked on their next assignment, I did write a rough draft of my Mary in a Time of Climate Change,  poem (see this post for the original inspiration).  It went in surprising directions, although I didn't have much of a vision, so the main surprise was having any direction at all.

It reminds me of a similar process a few weeks ago.  I had been trying to write about Nancy Drew taking up quilting.  I was leafing through A. E. Stallings' Afterlife, her wonderful collection of mostly published poems, and came across "Medea, Homesick."  I thought about Nancy Drew, homesick for her youth.  And a poem just tumbled out of me.

This morning I've been looking at rough drafts of poems that I've composed in the last 2 months.  My goal for Fall Break is to finish one or two.  I am delighted to realize that I've written more than I remembered, although some of them are just some lines that may or may not have potential.

Well, let me get ready to go on my walk.  I'm eating extra apple cake calories--plus, I want to enjoy autumnal weather before it turns rainy/wintry.

Pumpkin Sketches and Full Moon Walks

Yesterday, we made a quick grocery store stop on our way back from Spartanburg.  At one point, I heard an announcement over the loudspeaker, so I went to the in-store Starbucks.  I had heard correctly--they were giving out samples of Pumpkin Spice Latte--yum.

For me, though, this season is really Pumpkin Sketching season.  Here's my latest:

Those of you who know me best know that I am often sketching pumpkins.  But in autumn, it feels more legit--the way I am always drawn to autumn spices that some call pumpkin.

This past week has also been full moon walking week.  It feels less onerous to walk in the pre-dawn dark when a full moon awaits.

I had always wondered if there was ever a time when I could capture both the moon and the lighted cross at the Lutheridge lake.  I'm calling this one a success, even if my phone camera is less advanced.

I also like the one that has some lights from the lodge/boathouse.  It's not quite spooky season vibes, but close--summer shifting vibes perhaps.

Mary in a Time of Climate Change

I met the artist Jill Ross through an online journaling group offered by artist Vonda Drees.  That feels like a very different time and world, and in a way, it was, back in 2018.  We were journaling our way through  Joyce Rupp's Open the Door: A Journey to the True Self.  I first blogged about the experience in this post, but there were others.  Through the years, we did some additional journaling classes online together.

Beginning of a Mosaic by Jill Ross

A few days ago, Jill posted this picture on Facebook with this caption:  "Day One- New Adventure Series, Mary in the time of Climate Change," and I wrote to say it would make a great poem title.  Then I wrote to ask if she'd mind if I wrote the poem.

I haven't written the poem yet, but I wanted to make sure I captured the idea.  I've used Biblical and mythological characters, like Noah's wife and Cassandra, to talk about climate change in past poems, but never Mary.

Noah's wife seems like a much more obvious choice than Mary, but I'm guessing it's because I haven't really thought about it much.  I immediately thought of the refugee angle (the flight into Egypt in the Gospel of Matthew), but is that a result of climate change?  Hmmm.

Let me capture some possible lines and see if they lead to anything:

--I have watched the grapes retreat to cooler climates.

--I know what it's like to flee a dictator.

--I have lost my children too.

--Blue is my color, my color and my mood.

--You have feared the flood and the fire.

Sunday Wrap Up: Sundaes on Sunday and Helene Memories

Yesterday, we had worship in the picnic pavilion at Faith Lutheran in Bristol, Tennessee.  It was a bit chilly, but we continued on with worship as planned.  For more on worship, I wrote this blog post, or you can go straight to the recording of the sermon.

We had a potluck lunch with ice cream sundaes (Sundaes on Sunday!) after worship.  I looked across the field behind the pavilion with rolled hay and not for the first time did I think, I have fallen into a Norman Rockwell painting--and I mean that in the best possible way.

On our way home, we stopped at the grocery store.  I wanted better cheddar cheese to go with the apples I bought, and I picked up a bottle of white wine too.  It was as perfect an autumnal supper as I thought it would be.

Melancholy nipped at the edges of the day.  It was the anniversary of the worst damage of Hurricane Helene, and I had that on the brain as we went across the part of I 26 that had to be rebuilt after the Nolichucky River flooded in Erwin, Tennessee.  There were homes and manufacturing plants and a hospital and a radio station that aren't there anymore.

I also felt a bit of sadness scrolling through everyone else's memories and also a post on a friend's birthday that her husband posted.  She died suddenly and unexpectedly in February, and he invited us to post memories on his post earlier this week.  It was wonderful to read and remember, but also deeply sad, because she wasn't even 60 yet.

I fell asleep early as I often do on Sundays, but it was a good sleep, unlike Friday's sleep because of relentless headache because of commuting stop/slow down.  

And now for the week ahead:  Thursday and Friday are Fall Break, with midterm grades due Wednesday, so it will be a different week.

Saturday Fragments: Weather, Walking, and Apples

It has been a good week overall, yet I still arrive at this Saturday feeling a bit fragmented.  Let me capture a few fragments:

--I am still trying to decide if my apple comparing review exercise in my Nonfiction Writing class was effective.  In some ways, it was:  we had a great conversation about the apples, but we're still in the process of translating that experience to the writing of reviews.

--I haven't done as much walking this week--we've had several very rainy mornings, and while I don't mind walking in the rain, I worry more about walking in rain in the dark, as I must do with my MWF schedule.

--While I haven't done much poetry revising, I've been revising a short story I found in my files.  It didn't need much revising, so I don't know how much I should be patting myself on the back.

--We've had the arrival of our first cool weather--finally!  I want to bake, but I'm also aware of how many calories my fall favorites contain and how much time some of them take to create.

--I decided to do some tasks out of order this morning.  I went on a full moon walk--lovely!

--Yesterday was a day that many folks were celebrating Dolly Parton.  My spouse found 2 possible movies for us to watch.  I wasn't really up for 9 to 5.  Instead, we watched Straight Talk (1992), where Dolly plays a woman who leaves a bad boyfriend and heads off to interesting adventures in Chicago, some of which involve James Woods, who plays a newspaper guy.  Lots of unbelievable plot twists, but I didn't really care.

--My spouse and I both agreed that this movie is Dolly at her most physically lovely.  Her personality, lovely as always, blazes through this movie, which made it particularly perfect.

--We are almost at the 2 year anniversary of Hurricane Helene.  Two years ago today, I went down the market to Spartanburg Methodist College, hoping to finish up student conferences.  On my way home, driving through rain that seemed normal, I got a weather alert on my phone, telling me about a flash flood warning, urging me to seek higher ground.  I had just driven across a mountain and assumed the alert was for someone else, since I was in a car on the Interstate (I 26).  A day later, that part of the Interstate would be under water.

--And now there are new houses and apartment buildings being built on that land that flooded.  Maybe it was a hundred year flood, and those structures will be safe.  I am doubtful.

More Thoughts on Housing

ELCA pastor Clint Schnekloth has been doing some interesting thinking and writing about housing and the Church's responsibility in this time of housing lack; this piece about the vacant (not abandoned so much as underused and underutilized) church space is his latest, and this piece has some specific examples of responses by individual churches.

My church is much smaller, both in terms of space and members, than Schnekloth's church in Arkansas.  We have had members who needed temporary housing, which has led me to ponder our own use of space.  We don't have an educational wing/building with unused space.  It would take some radical rethinking to transform any of the rooms below the sanctuary.  It's a country church, with the sanctuary and restrooms on the first floor, and in the basement, a kitchen, a small fellowship hall, two bathrooms (one with a walk-in shower), three classrooms, one storage area, and a pastor's office.

As a very part-time minister who is only at the church on Sunday, I would be happy to give up my office to be a one room sleeping area for someone in crisis, even if the crisis lasts weeks.  But would the person who comes after me be happy with that decision?

And let me also remember that the Church Council has more say in this than I do.  My church in Bristol is amazing in terms of the members being responsible for the vision and the mission.  They've had very temporary pastors for over a decade now.  I don't want to undercut them.

Pumpkin Patch Anniversary

Yesterday was a lovely day to go to apple orchards and pumpkin patches.  I did look for the farm I didn't buy, the farm on the way to the orchard, which I blogged about in this post yesterday.  The house no longer exists, and I'm almost sure that the property has been transformed into a housing development called--wait for it--The Orchards.

I bought 3 types of apples, and I'll report on the writing assignment tomorrow.  I had a vision of buying Pink Ladies, in honor of my grandmother, and because they are so different from grocery store apples.  Similarly, there's a variety called Ginger Goldens which sounds like the Grimes Goldens that my mother-in-law always spoke of wistfully.  But those weren't in yet.  I bought Granny Smith, Ambrosia, and Ludacrisp.

I decided to pop over to the pumpkin patch next door.  They have so much more than pumpkins, both the kind you pick yourself from a giant garden where they grow in the ground (unlike pumpkin patches at a church) or already picked pumpkins, a wide variety.  They also have garden produce, some grown nearby, some not.  There's a refrigerator case with products from a local dairy (or creamery, if you want a prettier name) and with meat raised locally.  They carry all sorts of products in jars:  jams, jellies, all sorts of pickled things.  The stores also has all kinds of gift shop things, like figurines and wall decorations along with some sweatshirts, t-shirts, and hats.

I bought some Cherokee Purple tomatoes at an end of season sale.  I bought 2 pumpkins for the seasonal display I always create at our mailbox.  And I got a free hot apple cider.  The pumpkin patch was celebrating its 7th anniversary, along with the beginning of autumn, and they offered all customers a choice of a free hot apple cider or a free apple slushie. 

As I drove home, I thought about that pumpkin patch that opened in 2019--they survived Covid and the ravages of the remnants of Hurricane Helene that closed the main road for months, along with smaller flooded road incidents.  I thought that I should be the one giving them a cider or a slushie for their dogged endurance.

That hot apple cider was so delicious.  I wound my way home, across back roads that still aren't completely repaired--I know, because I had to go an alternate way because of repairs.  Once I would have had to pull over to have my phone guide me.  Yesterday I was fairly sure I knew where I was going--and I was right.

Here's to 7 more years, pumpkin patch--and 7 more years after that!

Of Apple Farms and Alternate Futures

Later today, I will stop by my favorite apple orchard on the way home.  I will be buying apples today and then again later in October--all for the sake of writing projects for my classes.  Tomorrow my Nonfiction Writing will have 3 kinds of apples, and we'll discuss the kinds of reviews we could write.  Then on Friday, we'll write those reviews.

I have a memory from a past autumn of driving to my favorite orchard and seeing a farm for sale.

This morning, I went back through my blog to find the reference, and I did; this post from September 29, 2011 has this bit:  "I continue to try to convince myself that a farm for sale is not a sign about my life's direction. I'm trying not to think about the proud tradition of poet-farmers in this country. I'm reminding myself that a farming life would leave me too exhausted to write. Too exhausted and broke to boot."

Each time I make the drive, I try to remember which property was for sale, and today will be no different.  But I do wonder if the house that was part of the property has since been torn down. It was looking old and tired 15 years ago:

Fifteen years ago!  I didn't ever call to find out how much the farm would cost, but I assume that even 25 years ago, I couldn't have afforded a 38 acre farm.  It is one of those choices, though, that still intrigues me.

If I see a farm for sale today, on my way to the apple orchard, I might make a different choice.  I would imagine keeping my teaching job in Spartanburg, while also running an apple orchard, while also teaching online classes part-time, while also preaching part-time in Bristol, Tennessee.

And then, I probably would make the same choice I made in 2011.  I would back out of the driveway and try not to look back.

I am so grateful to have arrived to living in this area, even without buying a farm 15 years ago.  If I had bought that farm, I might have missed out on my dream jobs that I have now:  teaching English classes at a small, liberal arts college (a dream job for my whole adult life) and preaching every Sunday at a small, country church (only very recently recognized as a dream job).

Hurricane Anniversaries: Hugo and Beyond

I have spent the last 10 minutes reading a Wikipedia article about Hurricane Hugo.  People who dismiss Wikipedia articles probably haven't read any in the past 20 years--they can be downright scholarly.  I got absorbed in various parts of the history of that storm, when all I really wanted to know is the day and time it came ashore in South Carolina, a more precise day and time than I found in this local news graphic:

The answer to that question:  very early on September 22, which means that on this day in 1989, I'd have been waking up nervous.  In the afternoon, after grad school classes at USC, some of us went to The Fresh Market, where I allowed myself to buy all sorts of treats I wouldn't ordinarily afford, either in terms of costs or calories.  

In the evening, after seeing footage on the local news about Charleston folks seeking refuge in the downtown USC arena, we took a spare blanket or two down to donate.  We were sheltering some refugees ourselves:  my undergraduate friend, Heather, her baby Sam, and her spouse, who had been at her mom's house in Charleston while her mom was away.  We put masking tape on our windows.

And then we waited.

You might ask why we were worried, being so far inland.  But Sumter was also similarly inland, and that town experienced major damage.  But I don't think we even experienced much in the way of  power outages in Columbia.  Our refugees stayed with us a few more days before heading back to help her mom clean up.

We moved to the Lowcountry in 1992, and there was still damage everywhere, from tilted trees to stray wreckage here and there.  Similarly, when we moved to South Florida in 1998, we still saw some leftover damage from Hurricane Andrew.

And here, in North Carolina, there's still lots of damage from Hurricane Helene, the remnants of which came here two years ago--the anniversary is later this week, but it's never far from my mind.

In 1989, Hurricane Hugo seemed like the kind of fearsome storm that would come just once in a lifetime.  Now we get these strong storms much more frequently.

And at some point, we'll look back and see this time period differently--a time when strong storms came, but we had time in between to clean up and rebuild.  Future generations will probably not have that luxury, if they are still living near the coast at all.

Guardians of Lesser Galaxies

It has been a week-end of restocking supply shelves and catching up on maintenance tasks.  Even after 2 trips to the grocery store on Friday, I woke up yesterday and realized we had forgotten to get toilet paper.  So it was off to Walmart, and if I go to Walmart, why not stock up on other items, like baking supplies?

I've spent the last two week-ends at retreats, and we've been doing more repair/restoration work at the fixer-upper house in S'burg, so it's not surprising that the pantry had become a bit bare.  Plus it's been wiltingly hot, so I haven't felt like baking, cooking, or eating.

We did the grungy task of cleaning up the grill, a task far beyond the regular cleaning.  Something happened somewhere along the way, and the grease pan stopped catching all the grease.  As I wiped and scrubbed and went through a roll of paper towels, I wondered how our occasional grilling could generate so much grease.

Yesterday afternoon we decided we wanted something different to watch, and we've become a bit enamored of the baby Groot character of several short films of several years ago, like this one.  So we watched Guardians of the Galaxy, and then the sequel.  It was the perfect super hero movie for me:  accidental heroes, lots of great music from the 70's, and reworked mythology of all kinds that worked for me, even as much of it was over the top.

The savior story lines made me reflect on how much I yearn for this kind of over the top salvation.  One of my parishioners has lost her housing, and no matter how much church members try to help her, we find ourselves stymied.  I keep reminding myself that much of the difficulty is structural:  there's not enough low income housing for people who have really low income.  There's not enough housing, period.

During the past few weeks, I've found myself thinking about possible solutions, and I wrote a post on my theology blog about Lutheran safe houses.  I also try to be firm with myself about what a small church with a part-time pastor can actually do, as I worry about burn out for individual members--and about a member having nowhere to go, should the motel she's in decide she can't stay.  We're at the back up plan to the back up plan, and I am both worried and tired.

In fact, I'm feeling so tired that I did a Covid test yesterday.  My dean came down with Covid this week, and I just wanted to be sure that my off and on scratchy throat and exhaustion weren't anything transmissible.

As I was reading blog posts from past Septembers, I came across this fascinating poem possibility in this post from September 18, 2024:  "As I've been puttering this morning, I thought, I should write a poem with the title "Hildegarde of Bingen Forgets Her Feast Day." The poem could go in several possible directions: she forgets because she is busy, she forgets because it no longer matters, she forgets because she has dementia."  I went back to my files, and if I composed this poem, I didn't do it on the computer.

Chances are good that I did nothing with this idea because a few days later, I was dealing with the remnants of Hurricane Helene, which left us without power for roughly 9 days, without internet for roughly a month, and boiling water until early December.  Again and again, I am a bit whipsawed when I think about all we have managed to survive.

Deep breaths--let me do something with poetry before it's time to get ready for church--or just sit here and breathe deeply.

Love Poem in Strips

Some of my more interesting teaching ideas come when I get towards the end of what I have planned, and there's still a lot of class time left.  Some days, I just finish.  Some days I come up with something else because I've already let the class go early in the last week or two, and I don't want students to start to expect it.

Yesterday I went to my Creative Writing class with worksheets, along with two sonnets:  a traditional love sonnet by Constable and "My Mistress' Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun" by Shakespeare.  In a 102 class several semesters ago, I created a Love Imagery Generator Worksheet:

Love Poem Imagery Generator


My love is like _____________________________________________________.

My beloved’s eyes are like ____________________________________________.

My beloved’s skin is like ______________________________________________.

My beloved’s personality is like ____________________________________________.

My beloved’s hair is like _________________________________________________.

I love my beloved the same way I love _____________________________________.

My beloved’s cooking is like ___________________________________________.

My beloved’s hands are like __________________________________________.

My beloved’s voice is like ______________________________________________.


We filled in the sheets; I encouraged them to feel free to make up a fictional beloved.  In fact, I advised it might work better as a fictional experiment.

I had taken out parts to make a new worksheet, and we tried making a love poem to a non-human, like a car or a phone or a pet:  My beloved's _________ is like ________.

By design, I had extra worksheets which I cut into strips.  I gave everyone 6 strips and had them fill in the blanks.  They could use the worksheets they'd already filled in or create something new.

I had planned to have them paste strips to pink paper on tables around the edge of the room, but I realized we'd end class 30-40 minutes early if I went with my original plan--not good.  So I pasted three strips per paper, strips I took from each student, with space in between.  I divided them into 2 groups of 4, with 2 pink sheets per table.  They worked in groups, or pairs, to put additional strips on the paper, which took 15-20 minutes longer than each student pasting strips would have taken.  On the 5th sheet of paper, I put more strips in a random way--students were working more than I anticipated to have the poems make sense and/or flow.

Before I read them, I asked what they expected.  Then I read them.  They were a mix of things:  intriguing imagery, cliches, weirdness that did and did not work.  It might have been interesting to have them take each poem and try to go deeper.  I thought that the completely random poem was no better or worse than the poems they took more care creating, but I didn't tell them that.

I had them take pictures of the poems, just in case they wanted them later.  They will be taking one of the poetry projects we've done and revise, plus a short process piece:  a love poem, a photo with haiku, and either a villanelle or a triolet are the options.

I'm so pleased with how this class session went--my students were engaged, even though I could tell that some of them were mildly frustrated at times or perhaps baffled is more accurate--or both.  They worked together, even though they weren't sure what they were doing.  We all seemed to leave in a good mood, astonished at what we had created--or maybe it was just me who was astonished.

Inkspire and Other Events of the Week

I am tired this morning--it's a good tired because of a more intense week of good stuff, but a good tired is still tired.  Let me collect some fragments before they float away:

--One of my colleagues at Spartanburg Methodist College has been bringing in watermelon from her garden, which seems miraculous to me.  I've never been able to grow the larger, slower produce:  winter gourds/squash or melons.  I've been feasting on melons that someone else has cut up for me--a real treat.

--I was asked to be part of the search committee to find a new, full-time Speech hire.  I said yes, and I have no regrets:  as our provost said, it's one of the more important tasks that a college does.  But it will take a lot of time, and just thinking about it makes me tired (in a good way, but still tired).

--I am part of a student's Capstone project, and yesterday was her first event with me as a guest speaker.

It went really well.  It was a small group, but they were attentive.  I decided to talk about blocks and distractions that might keep us from writing and some techniques for dealing with those.  It was nothing earthshattering:  write in smaller increments--10 minutes a day can lead to having 150 to 300 pages in the course of a year.

--I love this broader view picture, the Inkspire event among many other events:

I love being part of a college that has so many events happening.

--Yesterday was a pizza party for Humanities majors, and we got good turnout.  Delightful!  But also tiring.

--In the midst of all of these events yesterday, I was sad to hear about the death of Annie Dillard.  She was not one of my writing/reading touchstones.  I remember a college summer of commuting when I read Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, which I had heard so much about--but I was underwhelmed.  I felt the same way about all of her work, and I feel weird about that, with so many people whom I respect having a different experience.

--It's the time of the school year when I feel like it's getting harder to stay ahead, especially with copying.  In part, it's because I have a lot of competing ideas for my creative writing classes, and all of them seem worthwhile.

When I want to remember why I tend to do the same thing semester after semester in English 101, it's so that I can devote creative energy to other classes.

--The work on the fixer-upper house has felt more intense.  Last Thursday we rented a floor sander, and now the big spaces are done.  Now we need to get the insides of the closets and the edges near the baseboards.  We're renting a different kind of sander today--here's hoping it makes it easier.

The Ghost in the Machine and the Holy Spirit

In late 2022 and early 2023, I first heard about ChatGPT and the current incarnation(s?) of artificial intelligence, I heard a lot of experts telling us that machines/programs/AI can't learn the way humans can learn.  Then they'd explain the creation process of these technologies and how humans programmed them to learn, and I thought, that process sure sounds the way my students learn.

Now I'm hearing a few people talking about the technology and issues of morality and spirituality.  Granted, more people are talking about how AI might kill us all--this week, at least, more people are talking about those dangers.  I saw one pastor post his notes from a Carey Nieuwhof webinar on AI and the Church and this bit intrigued me:  “AI doesn’t have the Holy Spirit. You have the Holy Spirit. AI doesn’t pray.”

When I was growing up in the 1970's, almost every Christian faith tradition taught that humans were God's supreme creation, the best of the best.  Many of those traditions taught that only humans go to Heaven.  It's a different faith scene now--says this pastor who is thinking about her first blessing of the pets as part of a worship service, at least first as one I've led.

This morning, I find my mind coming back to AI, to our beliefs (hopes?) about how human neurons are superior to silicon neurons.  I think about an NPR show back in the early days of this century that had philosopher Daniel Dennett as part of a panel discussion on Artificial Intelligence. He said that he thinks that silicon based life forms (like computers) are eclipsing carbon based life forms (like you and me). Further, he said that computers are using humans to assist in the evolution of computers. The part of me that loves sci-fi was intrigued, and continues to be intrigued. The part of me that doesn't understand machines was horrified at the thought of enabling them to take over the world and enslave us.  The rest of the panel scoffed at Dennett's idea.

Now it seems like prophecy--or that Dennett was keeping up with the research in a much more comprehensive way than most of us.

I am aware of the dangers of anthropomorphizing this technology, and yet I keep thinking of Claude or ChatGPT praying.  What would those prayers sound like?  Would God hear them?  How would God respond?

This morning's pondering took me back to other times when I've tried thinking about God in different ways than I was taught in childhood.  It's made me think of a poem I wrote a long time ago, when I looked up at the pre-dawn sky and thought about how many astronomical objects are cold, hard rocks as far as we can tell. It led to this poem, which has become a renewed favorite of mine, after the spouse of a dear friend told me how it had stuck with him and made him think about the universe differently. It was published in my first chapbook Whistling Past the Graveyard.


Geology, the True Life Science


Our planet—warm, gooey corner
of a cold, lifeless cosmos,
a primordial ooze which forms
the perfect building blocks for life,
a miraculous exception to the universal
rule. The official astronomer’s story.

But perhaps God prefers rocks and minerals.
Why else create such a diverse abundance?
Maybe animals and humans are the experiment
gone horribly wrong, an accident of pumping liquids
surrounded by decaying flesh.

Bones calcify, kidneys form stones, arteries harden
with plaque—instead of medical disaster,
perhaps our bodies move towards their ultimate evolutionary
destiny, seeking God’s pleasure.

A Different Approach to Peer Editing

As a teacher, I have had students do peer editing a variety of ways:  in pairs, in groups of 4-5, as a big group passing papers to the left every ___ minutes, online as a discussion thread, and so on.  My new approach with peer editing in my two different creative writing classes has gone better than any other experience, and it's been so good that I'll try it with my English 101 class next week.

My Creative Writing class is a sophomore level class which attracts all sorts of students, but most do have an interest in Creative Writing.  They're not taking the class just because it's the only one where they could get a seat or the only one offered at a time that works with the rest of the schedule.  My Nonfiction Writing class is an upper level class; students who take that class are English majors for the most part.   

Both classes are much smaller than my 101 class.  The Creative Writing class is 10 students, Nonfiction 8.  My 101 class has 24 students when they all come to class.  

Back to my new approach.  I gave 2 days to peer editing not just one.  On the first day, we sat in a circle, each student with their rough draft.  We did timed readings, roughly 4 minutes per reading, no writing/feedback, pass the draft to the right, repeat.

My theory was that if they had done a quick reading, they could spend less time reading when it came time to give written feedback.

On the second day, I moved the tables so that each table would operate as a station with 2 chairs.  Each station had several copies of the rough draft and peer editing feedback sheets to fill in.  I also gave each writer a sheet where they could ask for specific feedback, which I won't do with my 101 class.

Students could move from station to station, reading at their own pace.  Some students read more slowly, while the ones who read and responded more quickly, could move to other stations.  Each writer got several response sheets, and most writers got responses from every student in the class.  No student sat idle--everyone was engaged on some level during the whole class period.

It was such a success that I'll try it next week with my 101 students.  Will it work?  Stay tuned!

Satisfying Sunday

Yesterday was a fairly good day.  At church, as I was moving through the communion liturgy, I could feel my throat about to crack, and sure enough, I went into a coughing fit.  Because I was at the words of institution, I felt weird about having someone else speak the words--Lutherans believe that only ordained or specially appointed ministers can consecrate the bread and wine.  I think it would have been fine, as long as I was there, but I don't really know how members feel.  So I drank some water, coughed a bit, and powered through.  People were kind.

I have spent most of the week wondering if I'm fighting off a cold:  I'm more tired and less hungry, and my throat has felt a bit scratchy off and on.  And I'm still not here.

I felt good about my sermon, although I'm aware of all the ways it could be improved; you can view it here on my YouTube channel and read it in this blog post).  We spent Sunday afternoon as we usually do, watching other people's sermons from churches where we feel a connection.  No one else preached on the Gospel.

I wanted something else of depth before we reverted to our usual viewing of old TV shows like Whose Line Is It Anyway?  We watched this podcast of David Brooks interviewing philosopher Meghan Sullivan. My spouse and I both have solid liberal arts educations along with graduate degrees, so it wasn't groundbreaking for us, but it felt nourishing.

I did some stitching in the evening so that I stayed awake past 7:15--success!  I'm making smaller squares, the first level of a log cabin square--but they're not all the same size.  I may put them aside and go back to the quilt I'm making for my cousin's first child who graduates from high school this year.

And now, another week:  week 6 at one school, week 3 at another.  We've got sanding to finish at the fixer-upper house.  The work at Faith Lutheran continues.  Onward!

Overscheduled Saturday

Yesterday was an overscheduled Saturday, full of rewarding activities, but almost too full.  I had Zoom calls, one after another, along with a conference call with the church council which was meeting in Bristol, and a phone call to catch up with my sister.  I volunteered at the Lutheridge Camp Store, a frustrating experience because I don't do it often, and can't quickly ring up purchases--we don't have a scanning system, but instead a touch screen where the volunteer clerk must look up items to add them to the cart.

At the end of the afternoon, I pulled out a different sewing project.  I wanted to puzzle through a pattern for a ditty bag; I've said I would make several for a woman who is serving as a chaplain to those who work on boats and ships on the Mississippi River.  I wasn't sure how the drawstrings would work, but they do.  I went ahead and finished the whole thing by hand, even though I had only intended to figure out the drawstring mechanism.

Even though I went to bed very early, which is not unusual for me these days, I'm still a bit tired.  We're at the time in the semester where the early enthusiasm is waning, and yet there is still so much to go.  I have a similar thought about the S'burg fixer-upper house.  We're making progress with floor sanding, but overall, there is still so much to go.

I've also felt a bit of melancholy as all the September 11 remembrances aired:  so much loss with reverberations across the decades.

But let me also remember the joys of recent days, particularly when it comes to working together:  my spouse and I strategizing about renting sanders, church folks figuring out how to help a fellow member, patrons at the camp store waiting patiently.  Let me remember that my students are wonderful and thus, I want to be my best teacher self.

Alternate Apocalypse

Even though my friends tease me for my apocalyptic mindset, my ability to see dystopia lurking around every development, I am not always quick to see immediate, personal danger in world developments.  I remember a leadership team meeting in early February of 2020, when our college president mentioned this strange new sickness in China and maybe we should be thinking about how it might affect us.  I remember saying that it wouldn't be any worse than the flu (my first blog post about the disease is here, January 30, 2020).  I had been aware of various versions of flu and SARS viruses, and I understood worst case scenarios--in other words, I'm not a denier of any sort.  But still, I was the one downplaying the danger.

On September 11, I was getting ready to drive down to the University of Miami to teach my Brit Lit Survey class.  I was still at home, almost ready to walk out the door, with NPR on the radio, when I heard about the first plane hitting the World Trade Center.  I wondered what part of the navigation on the plane could have gone so terribly wrong, or could it be engine failure?  And then the second plane hit, and I thought, what are the odds of that?

As I drove to Miami, hearing more information and then the Pentagon plane, I kept scanning the skyline for mushroom clouds.  I had spent my life expecting a nuclear attack.  I did wonder if I should turn around and go home.  But not only did I not go home, I taught my first class to the distracted students who came.  By the time of my second class, U of Miami President Donna Shalala had canceled all classes for the day.

I am sure I have mentioned much of this story before, perhaps in different combinations.  I've been blogging since 2008, and that's a lot of anniversaries.  It's hard to believe it's been 25 years.  My onground students weren't born in 2001.

As I think about these 2 historic events, the COVID-19 pandemic and 9/11, the pandemic probably changed more lives of more people I know personally than 9/11.  People made dramatically different decisions once they had gone through that time of pandemic crisis.  If I had been in NYC, if I moved in military circles, perhaps I would have had different experiences.

Or perhaps it has to do with the passage of time.  I do remember always having a gas tank never below empty and always having a case of water in the car.  I remember asking if my school had an emergency plan, and I did take note of various control panels in the building.   Those developments, though, were later, because that school was AiFL, and I didn't start that job until 2002.  I asked about the emergency plan during the days when the federal government would issue color coded threat levels.  Those memories have faded, but pandemic memories are still fresh.

I have always looked for the exits, no matter where I am.  I am the one who says, "If something happens, and I'm in Spartanburg and you're in Arden, we'll meet in Arden."  I'm the one who knows which location is best for surviving various dystopias.

I have been listening to various programs that look back on that day and how it changed us (I particularly like this podcast from The Dispatch).  This blog post seems inadequate.  So let me post a poem.  It's not a 9/11 poem, but a pantoum about preparing for the wrong apocalypse.  I wrote it in 2002 or 2003.

And of course, we haven't prepared for the "wrong"  apocalypse.  Global warming has accelerated, and the world is less safe from nuclear weapons now than we ever were in the cold war years.  History should teach us that unexpected apocalypses are always lurking.

Alternate Apocalypse



We expected mushroom clouds and radiation.
Instead we changed the chemistry of the atmosphere.
Chunks of glaciers break for freedom and sail across the sea.
Ice caps melt, and the sea swallows islands.

Instead we changed the chemistry of the atmosphere,
yet we refuse to believe the evidence of global warming.
Ice caps melt, and the sea swallows islands,
but global warming is just an unproved theory.

Yet we refuse to believe the evidence of global warming.
Temperatures rise farther and earlier in the year,
but global warming is just an unproved theory.
Some years we have no winter.

Temperatures rise farther and earlier in the year.
Old people bake and die forgotten in their homes.
Some years we have no winter;
furious storms hurl themselves across the oceans.

Old people bake and die forgotten in their homes.
Lucky ones huddle together, hiding from the oppressive heat.
Furious storms hurl themselves across the oceans.
We see new diseases stalking continents.

Lucky ones huddle together, hiding from the oppressive heat.
We expected disasters to rain down on us, but not these.
We see new diseases stalking continents.
This was not the apocalypse we envisioned.

We expected disasters to rain down on us, but not these.
We feared nuclear winter, not this relentless warming.
This was not the apocalypse we envisioned.
We expected mushroom clouds and radiation.

Visions and Revisions

It's been a good week, but I feel behind, in the way that I often do once the semester gets underway.  I was shocked yesterday when I wrote in my bullet journal:  "Teaching Plans, Week 5."  Let me capture a few notes from the week:

Writing:

--This week's short story writing made me think of earlier writing I've done.  Very few of my short stories are in my folder of short stories to be sent out in hopes of publication.  So I went back hunting.

I have a few short stories that are set in a specified time:  2027 (the story was written in 2010 or so, but it didn't really need to be set in 2027, from what I could see) and 2076 (did I just have a yen to write a science fiction story?).

And then, I remembered:  I was creating a book of linked short stories.  It's a family saga, and these stories were written with the collection in mind, so I had to be aware of when the characters would have lived.

Now I think I'll take at least one of them and tinker with a new draft.  It will be more effective if the older woman in the hospital is the mother, not the mother-in-law.  I no longer need to explain what a smart phone is.  The revision won't take a lot of work, and I'll keep the original, in case a publisher ever asks me for a collection of linked short stories.

--I also did some poetry rough draft revisions when my two Creative Writing students needed to spend the class time writing.  I had printed the rough drafts in week 1, but never had time to look at them.

Commuting and the Fixer-Upper House

Today we will rent a drum sander to do the floor work.  Here's hoping it goes well.  Yesterday's commute reminded me of why this house was a good idea:  an accident hours before had shut down the interstate, in a place where there's really no other way around.  Our trip home took at least an extra hour, and I was so exhausted that I was dozing in the chair by 7:30 in the evening.

Department Life

We had a department meeting yesterday, and we went over course descriptions, some of which need some gentle revisions.  It was a collaborative vibe, so different from some schools.  I was startled to realize that I have some expertise (teaching experience and publishing) in all the types of classes we teach:  professional writing, creative writing, and literature. 

Teaching Life

My onground classes continue to be a delight.  Usually by week 5, there's at least one student, and sometimes a whole class, who I'm seeing as an aggravation, or one class that's so much more unengaged than the others.  But the chemistry of this term makes me think it may be one of my all-time best.

Quilting Inspirations: A Short Story Draft!

In later years, when I wonder why my blogging fell off a cliff in the past week, let me remember 2 factors.  Tech woes kept me offline or otherwise engaged for several days:  an internet outage one day, followed by my authenticator app not working and then being glitchy.

But I've also been writing a short story!  Once that sentence would not have merited an exclamation point at the end of a sentence, but I haven't written a short story since the piece I wrote for my seminary class in the late fall of 2024.

I had a glimmer of this week's short story during Quilt Camp--a woman who is more of a traditionalist being shocked when her old nemesis wins a best-in-show award at the Asheville Quilt Show.  I keep remembering the quilt I saw at the show which used tiny gear parts for flower blooms; it was a steampunk quilt (imprecise title--update:  it's called "Steampunk Garden," and it was made by Paula Entin which won first place for use of non-traditional materials).

Last week we had writing time in both of my creative writing classes, and I really enjoyed writing with them--and it helped to have an idea.  But then I wanted a finished draft, and by tomorrow, I'll have one.  Hurrah!

The Asheville Quilt Show and our summer Quilt Camp have been giving me all sorts of inspirations.  Just this morning, I thought about my Nancy Drew poem where she decides to go back to teaching (I put the poem in this blog post).  Over the next few days, I'll think about what happens if Nancy Drew decides to start quilting.

Post-Labor Day Shift

It has been an intense few weeks, book-ended by Quilt Camp on one end and Crafts for Christmas on the other end.  I made a quick trip to Columbia, SC for an overnight last Wednesday; I am trying to go once a month to see my grad school friend who had the catastrophic stroke 2 years ago.

I've had tech woes with the authenticator app which allows me to access my online classes, so I feel a bit behind.  That school has just switched its process for attendance verification, which has also left me feeling discombobulated.

It's been a good teaching time, particularly for my 2 Creative Writing classes.  Last week I had the class peer edit a short piece of mine; it's one of the few things I've written that works as both a short story and a piece of creative nonfiction.  Then we wrote together.  I brought my laptop, and I wrote too.  As a result, I have a new short story, one that came to me during Quilt Camp.  I still need an ending, but I expect to have that after I go on my walk. 

This morning, I also have that sad wistfulness that comes from knowing it will be some time before I see these friends again:  neighborhood friends, retreat friends, and grad school friends.  There's also a bit of overwhelm from a fixer-upper house that needs us to take the next step of refinishing the floors.  And there's the ordination overwhelm--I am doing an onground intensive in October, and I have some work to do beforehand, including a Zoom session tonight.

Let me go and walk and remember that all will be well.

A Nancy Drew Poem for Labor Day

Labor Day brings to mind many things for me.  I think of the ways this holiday has changed.  In my lifetime, Labor Day signaled a coming end to the intense heat, with only a week or two left.  But in our time of planetary climate upheaval, no longer.

Labor Day has also signaled fashion choices, like when to put away white clothes and sandals.  But we are no longer bound by these dictates.

Most people have forgotten or never learned about various Labor movements of the 20h century.  We have time off, most of us, in large part because of those movements.

I am thinking of all the workplace poems I've written, poems about workplaces and thankful that I no longer work there, and sad, too, because corporate types destroyed them.

So let me post a different kind of poem, about Nancy Drew, in her retirement returning to the public school classroom.  Nancy Drew wouldn't be teaching college. She'd have had a teacher's certificate from pre-feminist days. And they'd let her teach the kids that were headed to juvenile jails and drop out land--who cares about those kids?

When I wrote it, I thought about a friend's experience teaching those kinds of kids. She was allowed to do basically whatever she wanted, to abandon textbooks and to teach whatever came to her, so long as she kept the kids from hurting each other or the other children in the school.

I thought about Nancy Drew's friends, Bess and George--what happened to them? Could they help Nancy Drew solve the mystery of how to reach these students?

Of course! Bess has started a bakeshop and this generation of students, raised on cooking shows, eat up what she has to offer in the way of old-fashioned home-ec. George, the tomboy, has gone on to become a marine biologist, so she leads field trips into various ecosystems.

 This poem appears my third chapbook, Life in the Holocene Extinction.

Nancy Drew and the Mystery of the Pre-Drop Outs



Nancy Drew decides she needs new
mysteries to solve, so she returns
to school, to mold young minds.

Long ago, in between cracking cases
involving diaries or letters or maps and solving
secrets in attics and towers, she got a teaching
certificate, as ambitious women did in those days.
Now she calls the school board to see
how she might be of use.

Her credentials, old and out of date,
don't prevent her from taking charge
of the most hopeless classrooms,
the students on a layover
on their journey to juvenile court.

Given tattered textbooks and worksheets without
answer keys, Nancy Drew adopts
a different approach. As always, she calls
on her friends.

Bess runs a bakeshop, so she teaches
the students to cook, a retro home-ec
approach. Nancy Drew's feminist critics
would not approve, but this generation
of students, raised on cooking shows, responds
with rare enthusiasm.

Nancy Drew believes in fresh air and sunshine,
so she recruits her friend George, a marine
biologist, for ideas. George leads
field trips to various ecosystems:
swamp walks and snorkeling and soon
some of the students are ready
for college-track science classes.

These clues to a better future don't prevent
some of her students from sneaking
away to explore more ancient secrets.
She tries to keep them focused on the future,
but she remembers Ned Nickerson
and those cars now considered classics.

She thinks of Ned in the roadster,
and later, her love confined to the hospital bed,
immune from rescue, unable to hear
her whispered pleas.

She kisses the old locket always worn
around her neck and writes the day's lesson
plan on the white board. At the end
of the day, she erases the smeared
lines from the board to leave a blank
space to be filled again in the morning.

Tech Woes, Famous Death Woes

Yesterday was a frustrating day.  On Thursday, I had trouble with the authenticator app that I have to use to get access to my online classes.  On Friday, I had the same trouble, so I thought I'd call the help desk early in the morning before everyone else tried to call.  So, at 4 a.m., I called, and at 5:20, I was able to explain my issue, and a ticket was created.  It left me frazzled all day, and feeling annoyed that I was letting tech troubles get to me.

I thought the problem was solved, but no, this morning, the app is not working again.  Later I will go up the hill to use Lutheridge's wi-fi, to see if the problem is my home wi-fi.  But other than that, I am not going to waste another day on this.

Yesterday afternoon the Crafts for Christmas retreat started.  I haven't had time to make a sample, so I made a small string of bunting.  We ate dinner, and then we did more crafting.  I was feeling tired and still a bit frazzled from the day, so I headed home at 8.  I am sure there were retreat friends that crafted all night.

Yesterday I put together a draft of a sermon.  I was sure it was terrible.  This morning, I read it and thought it wasn't nearly as awful as I worried it was.

Yesterday I had planned to write an appreciation of Gloria Steinhem, who died on Wednesday.  Like others who have died recently, she had a long life; she was 92 when she died.  For many years, I was a subscriber to Ms., the magazine she founded.  In pre-internet years, it was an amazing resource, with more global news than I was getting otherwise, with a wide diversity of alternate visions of what life could be.

This morning, I found out that Cassandra Wilson also died this week. There were several years in the mid to late 90's when I was in love with her voice and her music.  Her version of "Last Train to Clarksville" was revelatory--or so it seemed at the time.

I'm listening to it again as I finish this blog post, and while it may not seem groundbreaking now, it's because so many people have done similar work (taking an old pop standard and making it anew) in the decades since she did it.

I am ready to stop writing tributes--I am hoping for a few weeks with no notable deaths.

Now, let me get ready for another day--creating with friends, one of the best kinds of days!