First Week of School: The More Things Change

It's an interesting moment in time to be teaching first year students.  I mean that in a broad sense, but I also mean it in a "teaching the first week of classes during this particular week in August of 2026."  Let me unpack that statement a bit:

--Tuesday March 11 was our first day of classes.  It was also my first day as an Associate Professor on the tenure track at Spartanburg Methodist College, which I wrote about in this blog post.  Just before I went to my first class of the Fall 2026 semester, I read this article in The Atlantic about a professor leaving his tenure track job.  His college, Bates College in Maine, is in many ways completely unlike mine.  The beginning of the article made me think I was reading the complaints of an incredibly privileged man who got a teaching job right out of grad school, but it's more nuanced than that.

Here's the 5th paragraph (the nuanced part comes much later):  "When I defended my dissertation on Zoom that spring, one of my advisers joked that seeing me with a tenure-track job in hand was like 'watching the last dinosaur being born.' It was at once a compliment and a grim acknowledgment of reality. I had won the lottery in an apocalypse. I was going off to the kind of secure, prestigious, fairly remunerated academic job that was rapidly going extinct in a world where most people teaching college courses were stuck in the permanent underclass of contingent labor."

Most teachers I know are somewhere in between:  certainly not prestigious institutions, but not adjunct work either.

--As I drove home on Wednesday, I listened to this episode of On Point, which talked about reading, both in light of the state of Texas requirements announced very recently, and in terms of whether or not children are reading whole books at all.  It made me nostalgic for my own days of reading in elementary school and made me think about what we read in high school, where we did read whole books and plays.

I don't assign many whole books these days, and I feel mostly good about it--but the show made me wonder if I'm right.

--My students will be doing more writing, the old-fashioned kind with pens and paper.  Most of my department colleagues are also shifting back to paper.

I came across this Substack post that talked about what writers should be doing to prove that they did their own creative writing, should a publisher feel the need to have a writer justify their work.  As a poet, I'm not too concerned.  The post did point out how much formal writing, the old-fashioned kind that academics learn to write, will be flagged as AI generated.  Here's what the author did:  

"I ran my PhD thesis. Atmospheric physics, submitted in 2010, at a point when the technology being accused of writing it was more than a decade from public release. Running it through a detector in 2026 returns around 70%.

A physics thesis is exactly the careful, formal, low-perplexity register that the Stanford study found classifiers flag.

A detector tells you one thing: that a piece of text resembles a statistical distribution. The question in the room is who wrote it, and no detector has ever answered that one."

--This week is also a week with more articles about AI run amok, a week when at least one more experimental AI agent got out of the boundaries/cage/safeguards.  My apocalyptic brain immediately thought of a future when we look back and laugh/rage/cry at the obsession with student/writer cheating and ignoring the much larger threat.

--It's strange being at a school where most of us haven't seen each other since early May, and I haven't seen students since late April.  It's not strange to me when students return looking different.  They are in late adolescence after all.  But some of my colleagues are notably thinner.  Maybe it's having time off in summer, but one colleague did tell me that she'd been taking a GLP-1 drug (another new technology reshaping our lives), and it was transformative.

I had hoped to be somewhat thinner when I returned to school, but I'm happy with feeling healthier.

Conclusion;  In some ways, the more things change, the more they stay the same:  I always want to return as a transformed version of myself--transformed in a good way--if I haven't seen people in awhile.  And yet, I'm seeing changes underway that may completely reshape the world, in the way that the atomic bomb did, and the way the end of the Soviet Union did.

Angels of Deliverance

Today is an important nuclear anniversary.  On this day in 1945, scientists exploded the first nuclear bomb at the Trinity test site in New Mexico.

I hadn't remembered until doing some Internet wanderings that the explosion was scheduled for this date because Truman had an important meeting with Allied leaders in Potsdam on July 17.  Bomb as savior?

Oh, so many poetry possibilities!  There's the desert aspect, the prophets that so often emerge from wilderness areas.  There's the fact that this part of the country has become a detonation point for various immigration fights through the last four decades.

Those of you who have been reading this blog and/or my poems for awhile now will be saying, "Haven't you already explored this poetic terrain?"

Indeed, I have.  Yet I think there may be more to do.

It's also the birthday of Tony Kushner.  I remember long ago, in 1994, my friend who dreamed of writing plays told me about Angels in America, which she had just read.  It happened to be available from the Quality Paperback Book Club, so I ordered it.

I consumed it in one sitting.  It has haunted me ever since.

I watched both Angels in America and Perestroika when they came to the Kennedy Center during the mid-90's.  Wow.  Sometimes I forget the power of live theatre.  The HBO version came out in the early years of this century, and it, too was powerful, but when I'm watching something on a screen, I assume that part of the power comes from high-tech sorcery.  With live theatre, I give all the credit to the humans on the stage.

I have spent the years since wondering about the idea of writing that tackles the big issues of an age.  I've thought of August Wilson writing a play that represents the life of African-Americans during the twentieth century, one play for each decade.  And he pulled it off!

Some days, I think I dream too small.

It's oddly comforting to think about Angels in America, a play written about a dark time in American history.  I remember the early days of the AIDS crisis, when we weren't quite sure of the cause and how to prevent it and even as we discovered more about it, the thought that haunted us was that maybe there were additional transmission routes that we hadn't found yet.  The disease seemed more ravaging in those days, as people went from healthy to corpse in six months or less.  And then, as now, the government seemed helpless--or worse--in the face of the devastation.

And yet, here we are, into a generation or two saved by protease inhibitors.  There's recent talk of a pill that prevents transmission.  Darkness can be split apart by light.

I have hopes that ten or twenty years from now, we'll look back and say, "We were at a turning point, but we didn't see it then.  The world was about to emerge into a better place, but boy did it look bleak then."

And what writers/works will we see as the documenters of that dark time?  As a writer, is it better to document the dark time or to dream of the brighter future?

Noah's Wife Reads the Realtor.com Listings

It's a climate change/catastrophe winter break, in terms of my reading.  I zoomed through Ian McEwin's What We Can Know--in some ways, it's a literary mystery, but it's set in the future, after various climate catastrophes have changed the coming 100 years.  Yesterday, I started Joe Mungo Reed's Terrestrial History, which also travels back and forth in future years.  Both books are compelling in so many ways, and I'm so happy to find myself consumed by real reading again, not just doomscrolling.

Of course, the doomscrolling habits are hard to quit.

Those of you who know me, either in person or through this blog, know that climate change/catastrophe is never far from my brain.  This morning I read this article about German scientists sound the alarm about the apparent speeding up of warming--we might be to 3 degrees of increased temperature by 2050, not by the end of the century.

You might say, "Wait, I thought we had agreements that would allow us to avoid these outcomes."  Well, yes, if we actually did what we all had agreed to do.  And frankly, even with those agreements, followed to the letter, we'd have been cutting it close.

This morning, I found myself entering our South Florida zip code into Realtor.com, and scrolling through.  I'm always on the lookout for our old house to reappear.  This morning, it wasn't that house, but two houses across the street from our old house.  Hmm.  

And then I searched for the house itself, which is listed as a place we could rent for just $5,295 a month.  Are there really renters who can afford such a rent?  It's an apartment.com listing, so not a short term rental site from what I can tell.

Perhaps there are not renters who can/want to afford this rent.  It's been vacant since August--and probably before that.  It's been off and on the market since we sold it, and I don't think anyone has stayed there much.  It was listed as a short-term rental, then for sale, and now as a longer term rental.  I scrolled through the pictures and felt a bit of sadness at all the updates that we did that have been ripped out or covered over.  I have fallen into this pit of despair before, and always, there is this voice in my head saying, "Honestly, Kristin, you were lucky to escape with most of your possessions and a profit on the house sale."

And along with that voice of reason this morning, my muse chimed in, with her gentle reminder that I am writing a series of poems in the voice of Noah's wife (yes, the Biblical Noah who built an ark).  I am still working on it, but I am pleased with this vision of Noah's wife consulting the realtor sites and wondering if they made a mistake even as she is sure that they are safer now.

What a lovely way to salvage the spiral that the Realtor.com site often inspires!

Hurricane Katrina Memories, Twenty Years On

Twenty years ago, New Orleans was being slammed by hurricane Katrina.  I've heard and seen a 20th anniversary report or two, and it's fitting that New Orleans gets the focus.  We lived in South Florida at the time, and South Floridians have their own Hurricane Katrina memories, which can be dramatic, on an individual level.

I didn't watch the flooding of New Orleans happen in real time, or even see much about it.  I remember hearing a radio snippet for a brief time when the power blipped on and then blipped off again.  The levees had been breached, but had not broken.  We know how that was about to turn out.

No, we were dealing with this:

It's a downed ficus tree with my spouse and his chain saw (that pink blob) in the foreground of the picture.  The standing tree stretched across the whole back border of our fence.  The downed tree took up our whole back yard.

The pictures are grainy, because they've been scanned and saved through many formats.  What you can't see underneath the green at the lower right is a smushed shed.  Here's a  better picture--that triangle of a roof was a shed that had been squashed by the tree:

The picture below gives a bit of a sense of perspective.  Look to the left of the picture, and you'll see my spouse by the fence.  You can see the twisted trunk of the tree rising in the center of the picture.

 

Of course, we lost most everything in that shed.  But it could have been much worse.  The tree brushed the wall of our house as it gently fell over, after a day of soaking rain, but it didn't go through the roof or the windows.  I'm still not sure what prevented that.

We spent a week cleaning up what we could, and then the insurance folks finally got in touch with us, and we used the insurance payment to have an arborist company finish the job.  We never could have done the trunk grinding by ourselves.

I have not written many poems about specific hurricanes, but hurricanes do swirl through my body of work.  They make such great metaphors, after all.

Here's a poem I wrote last century, around 1996.  I think it still holds up relatively well:

Weather Wife

The hurricane flirts with us; like a reluctant
suitor, the storm cannot decide whether or not to commit
to us. It won’t even make a definitive date.
We watch it vacillate, wonder
if it might decide to court another.

Why do these storms always arrive at night?
They party with Caribbean island after island,
leaving the coastal wife watching the clock
and waiting for its arrival, keeping the lights
lit and the supper warm.

The storm should sneak in, with a whisper of wind,
A dozen roses of rain, leaving a bit of sleep
to the exhausted wife of a coastline.
Instead, the hurricane roars in, renouncing
all others to embrace us fully.

Like a battering spouse, it smacks
us again and again. Not content to just hit
until we back down, it smashes
us to unconsciousness and rips
our most beloved possessions to shreds.

We clean up the damage while we try to soothe
the little ones. We try to convince
ourselves that it won’t happen again. The weather woos
us with calm surf and skies full of sunshine.
We continue in this marriage. We cannot divorce
ourselves to head to the passionless calm
of a chillier climate.


If you want a book-length treatment of hurricane Katrina in poems, I recommend  two wonderful books. Patricia Smith's Blood Dazzler does amazing things, an astonishing collection of poems that deal with Hurricane Katrina. I love the way that Katrina comes to life. I love that a dog makes its way through these poems. I love the multitude of voices, so many inanimate things brought to life (a poem in the voice of the Superdome--what a cool idea!). I love the mix of formalist poetry with more free form verse and the influence of jazz and blues music. An amazing book.


In Colosseum, Katie Ford also does amazing things. She, too, writes poems of Hurricane Katrina. But she also looks back to the ancient world, with poems that ponder great civilizations buried under the sands of time. What is the nature of catastrophe? What can be saved? What will be lost?

Here's a more recent poem, written years after after Hurricane Wilma (which wreaked devastation just 2 months after Katrina, just after we had finished up our hurricane Katrina clean-up) when I found myself weeping in the car, flooded by post-hurricane despair, even though the clean-up had been done and regular life mostly restored:


What They Don’t Tell You About Hurricanes



You expected the ache in your lazy
muscles, as you hauled debris
to the curb, day after day.

You expected your insurance
agent to treat
you like a lover spurned.

You expected to curse
your bad luck,
but then feel grateful
when you met someone suffering
an even more devastating loss.

You did not expect
that months, even years afterwards
you would find yourself inexplicably
weeping in your car, parked
in a garage that overlooks
an industrial wasteland.

That year, 2005, was the year when I got the first glimmer of a thought that would become a pounding scream:  "South Florida is not a safe place to be as the planet succumbs to global warming."  Even though we got to North Carolina in time to experience the worst natural disaster in the state's history, Hurricane Helene, I'm still glad we got to higher ground.

Whiffs of Apocalypse

It's been an apocalyptic week in the news.  But when is it not an apocalyptic week, if one is inclined that direction?  Let me capture a few whiffs of apocalypse that came my way in the past few days:

--My various social media timelines, all 2 of them, have been full of nearby flooding, in Chattanooga and Raleigh, cars swept away kind of flooding.  Consequently, my dreams have been full of flooding.  We've had a lot of rain, and at one point in the middle of the night, a branch dropped onto the deck with a loud thump, which woke us both up.  I watched the rain while my spouse went to investigate.  I thought about the Hurricane Helene stories of houses swept away, and worried a bit, even though we don't live close to a river.

--Yesterday my spouse was invited to be part of a Zoom session that talked about disaster preparedness.  He and I compared notes about the damages done by hurricanes to our various houses.  It's not a great way to start the day.  I am astounded at the amount of damage and disruption through the years.  On the one hand, what did I expect when we moved to South Florida?  On the other hand, I have this idea that most U.S. families will only experience this level of disruption once in their lives--one catastrophic amount of damage to a home per family.  Maybe I'm wrong.  We've had at least 4:  Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Wilma, Hurricane Irma, and the December flood of 1999.  I'm not counting Hurricane Helene, since our home wasn't damaged--we were just inconvenienced for two months (no electricity for 2 weeks, had to boil water for 2 months, no reliable internet for 2 months)--wait, I am counting it now.

--After yesterday's discussion of hurricanes and destruction, I headed south to Spartanburg, only to find out that part of I-26 was closed.  There were electronic signs that said "Road closed after Exit 58, expect delays."  In the past, the sign said, "I-26 closed, detour to Hwy 25."  So I thought that maybe a road was closed near Exit 58 which was slowing down traffic.  But I was wrong.  I was able to follow others as we went the wrong way down the entrance ramp at Exit 58.  I had to backtrack 20 miles to Highway 25 because the old Spartanburg Highway is still closed after Hurricane Helene.  Happily, I left early, to get out of the way of my spouse's Zoom call, so I did get to class on time.

--It's also easy to see apocalypse in these days of Trump.  There's the takeover, if that's what it is, of the D.C. police force to crack down on crime--what crime exactly?  Hard to be sure.  There's the summit with Russia today in Alaska--is it a summit or peace negotiations or just an opening chat?  Hard to be sure.  There's the dismantling of so much that seemed to be good about government and the ignoring of what seems to be unraveling; I may never get on a plane again at this rate, between air traffic control issues, plane manufacturing issues, and disease issues.

--And of course, there's the lectionary Gospel reading for Sunday:  Luke 12:49-56.  In fact, all of the readings for this Sunday have more than a whiff of apocalypse.  It's interesting to write this week's sermon, after spending last week writing a sermon on the "Have no fear, little flock" teaching of Jesus.

Time Wrinkles: Octavia Butler Podcasts and Apocalyptic Texts

I spent much of yesterday the way I have spent Wednesdays for the past two months:  sitting in an Education day, except that instead of sitting around a conference table, I was at my parents' desk, being connected remotely to the interns and supervisor around the conference table.  Today, instead of driving to Spartanburg for meetings and faculty development, I will sit at the dining room table, finishing my sermon for Sunday, which someone else will deliver, and then working on syllabi.

I will also take my dad to his doctor's appointment and remind my mom and dad that it's time to eat the meals that I will provide/prepare/serve.  Tonight after dinner, we will probably watch the national news on PBS and MSNBC.

Last night we watched the news on those two shows, and I continue to be astounded at how the Jeffrey Epstein story dominates still.  It's not that way when I listen to NPR.  I see a story here and there in The Washington Post and The New York Times, but the Epstein story of the day is just one story among many.  I predict that future generations, should humanity survive, will also be astounded at how much time and mental energy this Epstein story, whatever it turns out to be, took over.

Is something being covered up?  Yes, probably, judging by the frantic efforts to keep from releasing whatever isn't being published.  Does it involve high-up government people?  Yes, probably, judging by the frantic efforts to keep from releasing whatever isn't being published.  Will it be important in 10 years?  One hundred years?  What aren't we seeing because we are consumed by this story?

After the endless blathering on TV news networks, my dad said, "I don't really understand that story."  Once I might have tried to explain it.  Last night, I said, "No one does."

Watching MSNBC exhausted at me--all of these people on a panel of 4 who agreed with each other, discussing at high volume with pointy fingers.  

This morning, I'm listening to old podcasts of Toshi Reagon and adrienne maree brown discussing Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower.  Yesterday, I read this blog post of mine, which references this episode of the podcast, about to-go bags, which made time wrinkle a bit for me.  The podcast was recorded in June of 2020, I first heard it in February of 2021, and now it is 2025, and while much has changed, much has reverted in this time of a second Trump administration.

I listened to that podcast when I was returning to writing my apocalyptic novel, a novel that is unfinished.  I thought about other apocalyptic novels that I've thought of writing, the writing plans I thought of at the beginning of June, and now, here it is August--another time wrinkle.

I am also thinking of my new year's goal of 1 revised poem a week, a goal which seems to be slipping away, although there is still time.  But even if I don't get to that goal, having it has returned me to writing poems as the months have gone on.  I will keep it as a goal for 2026--and the remaining months of 2025.

Travel in Dark and Light Shades

If you came to this blog hoping for a post that commemorates the first dropping of an atomic bomb on a city, head over to this older blog post.  I am in that mind space where I feel I have fallen out of time:  is it Saturday?  If not, why am I here and not somewhere else, getting ready for work?  Is it really August?  I went outside to take a mid-morning walk yesterday and went back to get a sweater.

I am in Williamsburg this morning.  I worked a full day at the hospital yesterday, then got in the car and drove 6 hours to Williamsburg.  I could have made the whole trip and been home by the time the day settled into full darkness, but I was stopped by a drawbridge.  

I had a lovely view of sunset colors, but it made the last half hour of the trip rather harrowing:  winding country roads, very dark, headlights behind me, oncoming traffic occasionally.  

The fact that I was in my 14th hour of wearing my contact lenses exacerbated my night vision issues.  Still, I wonder about my car's headlights.  My car did pass the safety inspection on Monday, but I need to see if my headlights really are O.K.

A clever blogger would tie these vision issues and illumination issues and Hiroshima anniversary into a poetic post, but I am not that blogger this morning.

Instead my brain is whirling, trying to remember what day it is so that I remember to log on for the today's Education training day in the life I left behind.  I am making a grocery list and kicking myself for not thinking about bringing some pantry staples like barley and lentils--but congratulating myself for remembering to bring a variety of tea and a pitcher to make a gallon of iced tea.

Let me remember to savor this time, even though I am here for a non-social visit, by which I mean, we'll be mostly housebound.  If there's one lesson to come out of Hiroshima and a thousand billion other historical events, it's that life can change in an instant, and we often look back with yearning to the before times 

Trinity Test Site, in History, Film, and Poetry

On this day in 1945, the United States exploded the first atomic bomb at the Trinity test site in New Mexico.

Robert Oppenheimer named the site, and when asked if he had named it as a name common to rivers and mountains in the west, he replied, "I did suggest it, but not on that ground... Why I chose the name is not clear, but I know what thoughts were in my mind. There is a poem of John Donne, written just before his death, which I know and love. From it a quotation: 'As West and East / In all flatt Maps—and I am one—are one, / So death doth touch the Resurrection.' That still does not make a Trinity, but in another, better known devotional poem Donne opens, 'Batter my heart, three person'd God;—.'"

I love a scientist who loves John Donne. Metaphysical poetry and atomic weapons: they do seem to go together in intriguing ways.

I think of Oppenheimer watching that explosion. In one book I read, the author states that these scientists were fairly sure what would happen, but not certain. There was some fear that they might somehow ignite the earth's atmosphere and destroy the planet. But they proceeded anyway.

Oppenheimer says that he watched the explosion and thought about The Bhagavad Gita: "I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds." Once we had a crew of guys come to cut down a tree. The leader with the shaved head took off his shirt and tattooed across his back was the same line; it was a big tattoo--I could read it from inside the house. On that same day, from the gay guys' apartment complex on the next street, I could hear disco music, The Village People and Donna Summer, in an endless loop, interrupted by the buzzing chain saws from the tree crew. Some day I'll use these details in a poem or a short story. Or maybe having recorded them in my blog, I won't feel the need to use the details elsewhere.

I thought with the film Oppenheimer, more people might know the history, but the significance of this day can get a bit lost.  I hadn't remembered until doing some digging this morning that the explosion was scheduled for this date because Truman had an important meeting with Allied leaders in Potsdam on July 17. Bomb as savior?

Oh, so many poetry possibilities! There's the desert aspect, the prophets that so often emerge from wilderness areas. There's the fact that this part of the country has become a detonation point for various immigration fights through the last four (or more) decades.

Those of you who have been reading this blog and/or my poems for awhile now will be saying, "Haven't you already explored this poetic terrain?"

Indeed, I have. Yet I think there may be more to do.

But for today, let's look back.

This poem was first published in The Ledge in the early part of this century:


Ash Wednesday at the Trinity Test Site


I didn’t develop a taste for locusts until later.
Instead I craved libraries, those crusted containers of all knowledge,
honey to fill the combs of my brain.

I didn’t see this university as a desert.
How could it be, with its cornucopia of classes,
colleagues who never tired of spirited conversations,
no point too arcane for hours of dissection.
I never foresaw that I might consume too many ideas,
that they might stick in the craw.

I never dreamed a day would come when I preferred
true deserts, far away from intellectual centers.
No young minds to be midwifed,
no hungry mouths draining my most vital juices,
no books with their reproachful, sad sighs, sitting
in the library, that daycare center of the intellect.

The desert doesn’t drown the voice
the way a city does. No drone
of machinery, no cacophony of crowing
scholars to consume my own creativity.
In the desert, the demand is to be still, to conserve
our strength for the trials that are to come.

Here, the earth, scorched by the fissile
testing of the greatest intellects of the last century, reminds
us of the ultimate futility of attempting to understand.
The desert dares us to drop our defenses.
In this place, scoured of all temptations, all distractions,
the sand demands we face our destiny.

If the World Ends Tomorrow: Planting a Tree, Baking a Cobbler

I was not expecting this morning's top news story:  the U.S. bombing a nuclear site in Iran.

Martin Luther said that if the world was ending tomorrow, he would plant a tree (did he really say that?  does it matter? the sentiment is still interesting).  I would bake something yummy.

Of course, the planting of a tree implies a faith in the future that a baked good may not symbolize.

If you are in need of a yummy baked good, I highly recommend this recipe for peach cobbler from the Smitten Kitchen website.  You don't have to peel the peaches, and the topping is easy and forgiving.  In the baking, it forms a crispy outside which doesn't get soggy.  It can probably work with a wide range of fruit; I combined peaches and blueberries, and in the autumn, I plan to prepare it with apples.

So maybe a baked good does imply a faith in the future:  summer stone fruits for a cobbler today, apples in a cobbler in 6 months.

And if you wanted a piece of weightier theology, go to this post on my theology blog.  Today's healing of the man possessed by a Legion of demons led me to think about all the demons that scream at us.

Here is how that sermon ends:

In these uncertain times, our mission is more important than ever. Drown out the shouting of the demons and their demands. Listen for the voice of Jesus. Tell the good news of what God has done—and what God will continue to do, the making of all things new. Remember what the Psalmist declares: “For dominion belongs to the Lord, who rules over the nations.” (Psalm 22: 28).

Saturday Snippets with Apocalyptic Reading

Some part of me thinks it's now mid-July; Thursday's Juneteenth holiday has fast forwarded that part of my brain.  Let me capture a few moments from the past week that I haven't already captured.  

--I've made it through two weeks of chaplain training.  I am still exhausted by the end of the work day, but happily, my spouse foresaw this development, and he's patient.  I am glad that I don't have little children.

--Last night was one of those nights where I couldn't even focus enough to sew or sketch.  Happily, I was still able to read.  Usually I choose something light, but last night, I turned back to Mark Lynas' Six Minutes to Winter:  Nuclear War and How to Avoid It.   I bought it a month ago, read the part that I read as the LitHub excerpt, and then put it aside, where it got buried under a stack of papers.   It is one of the grimmest description of nuclear aftermath as I have ever read, even grimmer than the movie Threads.  It was so grim that it was almost not scary.  It's not exactly new information--after all, we've known about the possibility of nuclear winter for decades now.  But the book spells out in detail what that would mean in a way that I haven't seen before.

--I was happy to turn my attention to Paul Murray's The Bee Sting, nominated for the Booker Prize in the same year as Paul Lynch's "Prophet Song."  Maybe I'll spend the summer reading 2023 Booker Prize nominees.

--I spent part of Thursday stocking up on groceries:  nuts, flours, beans, some canned goods like tomatoes.  I have plenty on hand for lunches and dinners.  My breakfast remains the same:  oatmeal with nuts and dried cranberries, and I'm well stocked for breakfast too.

--I have bought a few more clothes and an extra pair of Saucony running shoes.  Most of my shoes are several years old, and I need more cushioning.

--I am trying to get two sermons ready for tomorrow, since I will be at the hospital on the last Sunday in June.  Yesterday I wrote a draft of next week's sermon by hand as I ate my lunch.  I'll be interested to see how it stands up as I type and revise today.

--On Wednesday, I wrote most of my Noah's wife (as in Noah and the Flood in Genesis) as hospital chaplain poem, again by hand during lunch.  I am pleased with the draft, and here, too, I look forward to seeing how it holds together when I type and revise.

--Here's one stanza of that poem:

She has already witnessed

the end of the world,

the disaster that destroys everything.

She can be a non-anxious 

presence to everyone in the hospital.

She has seen worse.

--It is time to get ready to go to the Mills River Farmer's Market.  The Saturday before Hurricane Helene, I bought a basket of tomatoes from my favorite farmer, and he said, "Just bring the basket back when you can."  After Helene, I couldn't get back to that market, and it might not have even been open.  But I'd like to return the basket if I can, and I'm not sure what my Saturdays will look like for the rest of the summer.

A Great Teaching Day: Nuclear Apocalypses and Civil Rights Primers

Yesterday was a great teaching day, although I didn't fully savor it.  I had several seminary projects due last night, one of which was a presentation, so that stress was simmering in the background.  My commuting has gotten a bit nightmarish, with slow downs and stops that add an hour to my trip home.  By the time my seminary class started, I was more stressed than normal.

So let me savor the teaching day here.  In my Nonfiction Writing class on Tuesday, we sketched out the remaining class days--there are only 6 of them, or there were on Tuesday.  My students wanted to think about propaganda yesterday, so we began with the Daisy ad from LBJ's 1964 presidential campaign, the ad which combines a cute toddler pulling apart a daisy with a nuclear explosion.

I knew that we were going to discuss the ad, so I spent yesterday morning watching this video that compares The Day After to Threads.  It talks about The Day After as a form of propaganda/teaching.  We only watched the first part, because I didn't want to expose them to Threads, which is quite graphic and gruesome.  We had a good discussion.  The students had never seen either film, but the commentary was understandable (as we watched it, I wasn't sure that it would be).

Then I went to teach my American Lit survey class.  It was the day to discuss Martin Luther King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail."  I wanted to use some music to set the mood as they came in, so I cued up this album (by the magic of YouTube):

I had the CD cover on the screen, and one of my students walked in and said, "That looks like they're having fun."  Hmmm.  So I used it as a later teaching moment.

I've actually seen the real photograph--there was a display of Civil Rights photo at the Ft. Lauderdale Museum of Art.  As I recall, it's part of a three part set.  I said to the class, "What you can't see on this side is the firehose of water being aimed at peaceful protestors."

We talked about protest, about the rights guaranteed by the Constitution, about the unjust situation that King described in his letter.  We talked about modern issues of injustice that need our attention and how we might affect change (write letters, protest, run for office, write a poem or a song).  I talked about how the Civil Rights protestors of the 50's and 60's came from a church background and what that meant.  And then to conclude class, I had them write about the best way to do that, while we listened to two songs from the album, "This Little Light of Mine" and "(Ain't Gonna Let Nobody) Turn Me Round."

It was a good mix of history, modern politics/issues of social injustice, civics reminders (your legislators will take notice if you write or call, and they may change their minds), literature, and song.  It was less a focus on literature than most class meetings, but it felt important.  And it will lead nicely to Claudia Rankine's Citizen:  A Lyric on Tuesday. 

Fire in the West, Snow in the East, and a Mighty River in Between

In later years, will I wonder why I only paid attention to sea level rise and flooding as signs of impending doom?  Will I wonder why I didn't write more about fire?

Frankly, with the exception of the Hawaii fire, most of the fires that have captured national attention have seemed to explode in places that were remote and more like wilderness than city spaces.  But the fires that have exploded across the Los Angeles area seem a harbinger of something new.  There was no brush clearing that needed to happen.  There was no building in ill-advised areas.

I will confess that my attention has been captured by an impending winter storm much closer to home.  I am happy that Spartanburg Methodist College made the pre-emptive decision to move to remote learning tomorrow when the storm is expected to arrive.  The timing of the storm made it hard to decide exactly when to close, and so they are taking the safer course of action and having us all work from home.

Every time my school does something that shows a level of care for the people who work and study there, I am struck with sadness about how many places I've worked where there was no level of care and concern.  I think of how often I've reported to Florida schools, even when we were under tropical storm force conditions.  Oh, sure, we were told that we didn't have to come in, but it would be a vacation day or a day without pay.

I have spent the morning toggling between a variety of tasks:  work for my online classes that I teach at a different school, weather reports, news coverage of various apocalypses, and Huckleberry Finn (the novel, not the character).  Today in my American Lit class, we begin with that novel, and returning to it, I'm struck by how much it encapsulates various issues that American Lit and American history will grapple with, are still grappling with.

I plan to begin the class by asking how many of them have ever backpacked, camped out over night, went on a canoe or kayaak trip, headed west with no plan for where they were going (OK, maybe not this one).  I look forward to the conversations we'll have.  The energy in the room was good, and I think starting this way, by thinking about how we currently feel about spending time in the wilderness, might be a good entryway into the novel.

And then I'll come back here to my mountain house and bring some firewood inside, just in case the weather gets worse than expected tomorrow.

The Apocalypse Gal Weighs in on the Election

Now that I've had a bit of time to process these election results, let me make a post.  Here's my overall take away:  we are headed into hard times.  We were always headed into hard times, and while the shape of those hard times may be affected by the Trump presidency (and the outcomes will be), the election of Harris would not have avoided those hard times.

You may say, "Yes, Apocalypse Gal, Kristin, you always think we're headed into hard times."  That's true, and I'm often right in the overall drift to hard times, if not the particulars.  But let me elaborate:

--In the past two weeks, bird flu was found in people who didn't have close connection to farm animals, in two people who lived together, which makes some scientists think it's airborne in ways it hasn't been before.

--In the past two weeks, bird flu was found in pigs.  Pigs are the animal where flus combine and become more transmissible.

--It is unseasonably warm as I write this (60 degrees in mid-November!), and we are on track to have the hottest year of human life on earth so far.

--There are wars and rumors of war.

--Just this morning, I read that the German governing coalition has collapsed.

So, the shape of the hard times coming, as I see it, involves flu and war and climate change.  No one will be able to make those things go away, and we've seen that most humans don't have much capacity for navigating countries to safety.  It was always going to be a rough 4 years, no matter who won.

Let the Republicans see what they can do.  Let the Democrats dream of something different to present to voters in 2028.  Let us see what happens.  Let us get our vaccines; there is a bird flu vaccine already, so that's good news.  Let us figure out how to make our communities more resilient against all the climate change threats that are going to intensify for us and for our children and grandchildren.

Someone needs to keep the longer view in mind.  It might as well be us.

Wreckage and Ruin on the Way to Church

Yesterday I made the trip to Bristol, Tennessee, where I preach and preside at Faith Lutheran each Sunday.  Yesterday I left at 6:50 a.m.; I took a book with me, in case I got there very early and needed something to do.  Google Maps told me that the optimum route would take me 2 hours and 10 minutes; it took me 2 hours and 45 minutes.

My spouse couldn't go with me yesterday because he's been recovering from the ways his body has been protesting all the chain saw work he did earlier in the week.  I was feeling anxious, so I decided to print the Google Maps directions, in case I got to a part of the backcountry roads and lost cell phone service, which I assumed would mean losing GPS.

I started on I 26, with signs that said the road was closed at exit 3.  I took the exit that got me to US 19, and that road was a 4 lane highway, straight and wide, with only one truck on it.  I thought, well, this isn't too bad. There were trees blazing with autumnal color, and I thought, you wanted to experience autumn in the mountains--here you go.

Then I got on NC197, a two lane road, but still not bad.  There were piles of debris here and there, a tree down here and there.  I was behind an 18 wheeler and a box truck, but that was fine--I wasn't going to be zipping down these roads because I knew that they had only just been restored.

I got to Green Mountain, where the road ran by the North Toe River, and I saw so much devastation.  I know I didn't take in the full extent of it because I was focusing on the road, which looked like it might crumble out from under us at any moment.  The road had stacks of trees on either side, and I am fairly sure that crews just cut out the middle parts of fallen trees to be able to access the roads.  On the other side of the river, railroad tracks had buckled and twisted, like some huge child had a temper tantrum.

As I went up NC226, up and up the mountain, I saw portions of the mountains where every tree had been flattened.  Yet there were other sections in the next curve of the road that hadn't been touched, trees in full autumnal glory.  The road got curvier, and I felt increasingly anxious--there was no shoulder at all, and the 18 wheeler truck ahead of me felt free to use both lanes to navigate the curves.  What if there had been oncoming traffic?

Eventually, I pulled into the parking lot of Faith Lutheran.  I felt frazzled, but took some deep breaths and pulled myself back together again.  Just 20 miles earlier, I had been in Elizabethton, Tennessee, where a different river had overswept its banks and destroyed everything in its path.  And here I was in Bristol, where the community was largely unharmed. 

When I think of October, I think I'll remember this feeling more than any other:  how can some of us suffer so much damage, while others of us (me, for example) emerge relatively unscathed?  

On the way home, my smart phone routed me down I 26, and I decided to follow its instructions.  If I was turned away and had to backtrack, I had time.  The road was closed at exit 3, at Irwin, NC, but the detour was clearly marked.  I got back on I 26 and went back across the mountains that way.

The damage at Irwin was as catastrophic as the news reports made it seem, with wrecked roads and houses no longer there, swept away when the Nolichucky River rose.  I remember last winter when all the leaves were down, and I realized what the true contours of the river were, how some of the houses weren't too far away from that wide river.  I think those houses are gone now.  

There weren't many of us going across the mountains, but as I got closer to Asheville, traffic increased.  I got gas at the station near my house.  It's always crowded, because the price is cheap, but yesterday was worse than usual.  I was glad to get home; I've been through hurricanes before, and I know there's a point when the "we're all in this together" phase of recovery shifts to despair and rage as the pace of recovery takes so very long.

At the end of the afternoon, with no fanfare at all, we realized that our internet had been restored. I spent the rest of the day, expecting it to go out again, but so far, it has held.  I'm still boiling several pots of water a day, but that inconvenience is so minor, compared to the wreckage and ruin I witnessed yesterday.

A single picture and even a series of pictures can't really do justice to the scale of the wreckage and ruin.  Neither can these words.  I've seen article after article that tells of people swept away in the raging rivers.  Those words, also, can't make sense of it all.

On some level, humans aren't equipped to make sense of destruction on this scale, whether caused by nature or caused by humans.  But as with the pandemic, it makes sense to create a record of what I've seen.  It may never be important to historians, but it's important to me to bear witness.

Viewing the Apocalypse

Last night, after a long day of trying to pull the house together for our Music Week guests that arrive today, we settled in to watch The Last of Us.  I got the whole first season on DVD from the public library.  I hesitated to start watching the series because I was worried that we would stay up all night watching all the episodes.

I needn't have worried.  It was good, I guess.  But when the first episode ended, I decided not to watch the next one.  I want to keep watching, I think.  But as with so many TV series, I had heard such good reviews and felt a bit underwhelmed when I finally watched it.

I felt the same way about Station Eleven, where I didn't even finish the first episode.  This morning I wondered if perhaps my tastes are changing--am I no longer in the mood for a good apocalypse?  No, I still like the idea of apocalyptic story lines.  Do I no longer have the attention span for a series as opposed to a movie?  I don't think so.  Hmm.

As I watched the first episode yesterday, I thought about the quick beginning of most apocalyptic scenarios.  The world is normal, and then suddenly everyone is attacking everyone and burning up the city and there are soldiers trying to keep order.  

I suspect the end of the world will be a much slower event.  I remember some electrifying emotions at the beginning of the pandemic, as I kept track of rising numbers, at first writing them down on an envelope that I still have somewhere.  I remember thinking about how I've been waiting for this moment, that moment when the new disease, the new weapon, the new war comes.  And it has all unspooled in a much slower way than I expected.  We've had a disease that inspired a quick response in terms of vaccine development.  It's still unspooling, but even with no vaccine, the mortality rate is not nearly as high as the diseases that are often imagined for apocalyptic scenarios.

Similarly, the war in Ukraine has been less apocalyptic than I was expecting, although I'm sure that Ukrainians would disagree.  And I do realize we may not have gotten to the end of the world part of the war yet.

I'm also thinking of watching Cold Mountain a few weeks ago, an apocalypse of a different sort, the war begins rather suddenly, but then the end of the world just grinds on and on.  I remember the scene where the Civil War soldier shows up at the home of an older woman along the way.  She has herbs drying in her cozy cottage, and she rubs a salve into his wounds which seems to heal him much more quickly than he had been healing.  I thought, I need that recipe!

On Independence Day, my neighborhood friend and I briefly talked about politics before moving on to more pleasant topics.  I said that I dreaded the bad times that I thought might be coming, but that I had advantages that others wouldn't have (like a house that is paid for and money in the bank and my skin color and my older age), that I thought we would be safe in our corner of the mountains.  My friend said, "If anything happens to Social Security, I'm not sure what will happen."  I am not eligible to collect those benefits yet, but at this point in the life of our nation, I'm inclined to start collecting at the first minute I am eligible.

All of my reading and viewing should remind me that it's almost impossible to plan for an apocalypse.  It will almost always unspool in ways we don't expect.  Still, it's impossible for my brain to stop planning--which may explain my love of the genre.

The End of Spring Term 2024

In some ways, this week has been the first week of summer break.  In some ways, it's felt more like the end of spring semester.  I've been waiting for grades, and this week, the last of them finally came in.

I've had some grades for several weeks.  My internship class was pass-fail, so once I completed the assignments, it was easy for my instructors to submit the passing grade.  My paper for Systematic Theology was graded a day or two after I turned it in, and I was happy to get my grade of A.  Even after 9 months of Systematic Theology class, I still wasn't completely sure that I was creating Systematic Theology.  And in fact, creating a complete systematic theology, in the way that the best systematic theologians have done, would mean I'd be writing multiple volumes of books, not just a paper or two.

This week, I got my Foundations of Worship class grades.  I had gotten grades throughout the term, so I was fairly sure all would be well.  But it was a relief to get grades for the last assignments I turned in.  I had to go back to the assignments to even remember what I wrote, so that I could fully appreciate the comments, that's how long it had been for some of them.  I was happy with what I had written, and so was my professor.

I turned in my last big paper three weeks ago.  It was for Environmental History of Christianity (EHC) class, and in some ways, I was covering some of the same territory as I did for my Systematic Theology class.  I wanted to talk about the ways that Substitutionary Atonement Theology has failed us.  For the EHC class, I talked about how our ideas of salvation leave us willing to let the planet die, since we're just waiting to go to Heaven.  I got an A on that paper.

But more important to me, I restored my hope.  In my paper, I talked about our failure of vision, but I reminded the reader (and myself) that we worship a God who takes the worst kind of brokenness and transforms it into beauty.  I found myself asking myself if I really believed in the possibility of resurrection--not the specific resurrection of Jesus, but resurrection in general.

The answer:  yes, yes I do.  Here's how I concluded my paper:

Throughout the centuries, Christians have declared their faith in a God who can work miracles and bring redemption to the grimmest of situations. We are facing such a situation now. Christians have looked at the history of the planet and pointed out the places where God takes brokenness and transforms it into beauty. Our faith is built on those stories of transformation, and the world is desperate to hear these stories too. Christians have preached and proclaimed that they believe in the powers of God and the powers of resurrection, and the coming century will test that faith. Christians can create the rituals and theology that will help explain and guide humanity through desperate times. Christianity is a religion that has supported humans through the biggest challenges throughout history. We are called to do likewise now.

We may feel like we’re too late. N. T. Wright assures us otherwise. In Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, N. T. Wright says, "What you do in the present--by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself--will last into God's future. These activities are not simply ways of making the present life a little less beastly, a little more bearable, until the day when we leave it behind altogether . . . . They are part of what we may call building for God's kingdom" (page 193, emphasis in the original). Wright goes on to reassure those of us who are prone to apocalyptic thinking: " . . . what you do in the Lord is not in vain. You are not oiling the wheels of a machine that's about to roll over a cliff" (p. 208). Jesus, too, issues this promise in John 8: 31-32, 35-36: “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free. The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed” (NRSVUE). We are resurrection people, free indeed. Let us move forward in faith, developing a new theology for this time, trusting in God’s promise that the forces of death and destruction do not get to have the final word.

Apocalyptic Inspirations

Our house is sounding very 19th century, very tubercular, lots of coughing, as we are both fighting off colds.  This week-end, I've often thought of John Keats, who got up every morning, coughed up a bit of his lungs, and then went to work writing the poetry that he knew he didn't have much time to write.

I've spent part of the week-end reading, since it was a low energy week-end, with both of us fighting off colds.  When the Booker Prize was announced back in December, I wanted to read Paul Lynch's Prophet Song; I'm all in for a good tale of dystopia.  But I knew the library wasn't likely to have it in time for me to read it before my fall semester kicked into high gear, so I promptly forgot all about it.

I'm not sure what reminded me that I wanted to read it, but I was able to get it easily from my public library.  At first I thought I wouldn't be able to tolerate the lack of publishing niceties, like paragraph breaks and quotation marks.  I adjusted to the very long paragraphs much more easily than the run together dialogue.  

There were parts of the book that I skimmed over, in part because it was difficult to follow, in part because I was ready to get on with it, to find out how it all turns out once the building dread is done.  Perhaps at some point I'll go back to see what I missed.  But life is short, so probably not.

I know that I will be thinking about the ending in the weeks and months to come.  I was expecting something devastating, and I don't think it's much of a spoiler to say that I was not disappointed.

The book is poetic in places; I am not the first to recognize the similarity to Cormac McCarthy's The Road, about which I said that it was the most breathtakingly beautiful prose about the apocalypse as anything I had ever read.  In terms of plot, though, Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower is the best dystopian novel I've ever read.  In so many ways, Butler's book is the best book I've ever read.

I woke up this morning wondering if someone could create an apocalyptic narrative in poetry form.  I know the answer is yes.  I don't think it will be me, but wheels are turning.

So far, those turning wheels are producing lines, not sustained poems, and certainly not a sustained narrative.  But I'm happy for poetry inspiration of any kind.  There are so many days when I do not feel like "a real poet" anymore, whatever that means.  It seems the publishing world is collapsing on many fronts, and poetry has always had a precarious perch in the publishing world.

So let me celebrate my inspirations where I can.  Let me close with some lines that came to me this morning, lines that may become a final poem--or several different poems!

One stays near the coast,
freedom in the form of a boat.
One disappears into the mountains.

---

You have placed your faith
in tangerines, bright baubles
in a battered, wooden bowl.

---

Your house has several heating
sources but who will purify
the water raining down from a sooty sky?

Sowing Seeds

Yesterday after my walk, I went to the library, where I picked up two apocalyptic books:  Parable of the Sower by Octavia Buter and Five Years After by William R. Forstchen, the fourth novel in the series that started with One Second After, about an explosion in the earth's atmosphere that creates an electromagnetic pulse that wipes out electronics, electricity, and most of the conveniences of modern life.

Part of me just wants books I know I will enjoy, which is why I return to books I've already read and enjoyed, like Parable of the Sower.  But yesterday, I started Five Years After, which is not a book I've read before.  I did read the other books in the series and enjoyed them immensely.

I went back to the 105 pages of my own apocalyptic novel.  I started it in summer of 2019 and picked it up again in winter of 2021.  I stopped writing it for a variety of reasons, but mainly because I wasn't sure where it wanted to go.  I still don't--but I do think it has a lot of potential.  Maybe I'll play with it this summer.

As I'm thinking about the novel today, I see that there are 3 characters from the protagonist's past, and each one will offer the protagonist a choice about the future--and because it's an apocalyptic novel, the future is rather bleak already.  Will she choose creativity or love or working to overthrow the government?

I came across this line in the manuscript:  "Older feminist activists kept records about which doctors would help, back when abortions weren’t legal."  I wrote that line in 2021, back when I thought the abortion question was mostly settled.  It makes me wonder what else I think of as mostly settled that might be suddenly restricted.  Sigh.

We're supposed to have more rain in the coming week than we've had in the past month, so I decided that yesterday was a good day to sow the quarter pound of wildflower seeds that I bought last year.  For the most part, I simply scattered them across the yard.  When I say yard, I really mean our patch of dead leaves and pine straw and forest floor.  Some parts get more sun than others.  We'll see what happens.

As I sowed the seeds, I thought about the parable of the sower, both the one in the Bible and the one by Octavia Butler.  I thought about seeds and soil and the fact that most wildflower seeds swept away by the wind aren't going to land in perfect potting soil mixes.  

I'll be intrigued to see what develops this summer:  with seeds, with reading, with writing an apocalyptic novel.

Eschatology: Protests and End Times

It is a strange moment in history--or maybe it won't be at all.  Let me capture some thoughts, so that in later years, when I wonder why I didn't write about _______, maybe I can reconstruct.

--It's been a week where more campuses across the nation join the protests that have been happening at Ivy League campuses.  From what I can tell from a distance, these protests are pro-Palestinian, but some of the protestors have tipped into ugly, ugly antisemitism, some of it tinged with misogyny (and some of it dripping with misogyny).

--I think of anti-apartheid protests on campuses during my student days.  No college commencements had to be cancelled, not any that I remember.  The demand to divest from South Africa seems more doable than the demands that today's students are making.  I do realize that I'm biased.

--I think of my history of teaching, and how few radicalized students I've had.  Far more common was the discussion that we had during the Iraq war in 2004, where a few male students decided to join legitimate companies that would send them abroad as mercenaries--what did we call them then?  Why can't I remember?  They didn't want to join the military because the pay as a mercenary was much, much better, and the time period required to commit was far less.  They were aware of the danger, and they were aware that their ability to earn really good money in a short period of time was very limited.  They saw it as an opportunity, and some of them took it; I have no idea if they survived.

--As I heard about various administrators at campuses making a variety of decisions, I have been so glad that I am not an administrator anymore, even though I've never been an administrator at a college where students were going to demonstrate and shut down parts of campus life.  As with the students who went off to be mercenaries, most of the students I've known have had to work multiple jobs and juggle family commitments.

--Last night, as I saw the news that USC (the USC in California, not my alma mater) had cancelled graduation, I was attending my last class meeting of Systematic Theology.  We were all on Zoom, and I thought about the fact that we were talking about the doctrine of Eschatology and all the ways we've interpreted the End Times both as Church and as individuals as the U.S. seems to be inching closer to all sorts of End Times.

--I was already expecting this summer to be full of bad news, but I was expecting hurricanes and other types of bad weather.  We've had about 420 days (13 months) of record breaking ocean temperatures, with 2023 being off the charts, and 2024 being even higher.  I am so glad that I don't own a home in a hurricane or flood zone anymore.

--I am also glad that I don't live in Chicago.  I am glad that I'm not going to be at the Democratic National Convention this summer.  Will it be a repeat of 1968?  Or by then, will we have issues with China taking all of our attention?

--Perhaps I have China on the brain because I just finished 2034, a book which has a confrontation with China as the apocalyptic trigger.

--My spouse wanted to experiment with glass etching paste and the tiles that we're using in our bathroom.  So yesterday we went to Michaels, got supplies, and spent a fun afternoon seeing what the supplies can do.  We did some experimenting with strawberries, creating a sauce for our grilled chicken.  It was delightful to have some creativity time on a sunny, Spring afternoon before my last Systematic Theology class in the evening.

Sunday Snippets to Capture a Week in Home Repairs and Fiber

I am not sure what my writing morning looks like--but there are hard deadlines ahead, like needing to be on the road by 7:30 to drive across the mountains to preach and preside at Faith Lutheran in Bristol, TN this morning (the service starts at 10, and all are welcome).  Let me record some thoughts before they slip away:

--Yesterday for two of my online classes that I teach, I sent out an e-mail reminding them of their last assignments.  Their last day is Friday, April 19.  As always, when we get to the end, I think about how it feels like just yesterday that I was entering dates into the syllabus thinking about how far away April seemed.

--Yesterday we went to the big box home repair stores early-ish in the morning, around 8.  They were eerily deserted, very unlike South Florida stores would have been on a Saturday morning.  I'm relieved, don't get me wrong.  And I still had to wait to get my paint color mixed, but it wasn't because there were 10 people ahead of me in line.  The paint guy had gone off to do something else, and it took awhile to find him.

--We are making progress on the house.  We go in a spurt, get things done, and then progress lags for a few weeks (or more).  We could blame this cycle on all kinds of things:  supply chain issues, shortage in dependable workers for things we can't do.  But as I look back over our whole lives, it's always been this way.

--On Friday, I made this Facebook post:  "Carl is distressing paint, the tile crew is listening to salsa music, and I have workplace training videos about workplace discrimination and harassment playing through my earbuds. These laws are not new to me, although this year, it's a different company that has created the training videos--listening to them with salsa music playing is surreal."

--And then two of the training videos wouldn't load.  Sigh.  I tried not to think about the fact that the last time I had completed these kinds of training videos, it was for a different school (same group of workers though, working on a different part of the house), and I got paid for my time, and I was able to access the videos and take the quizzes.

--I am so tired of being subjected to these videos that show all the ways that humans can be awful to each other in the workplace.  But I am glad that I am no longer the administrator who must make sure that everyone has done the training.

--I have been feeling stuffy for weeks:  is it because of drywall dust or allergies or a cold or paint fumes?  Yesterday when my throat started feeling scratchy, I took a Covid test, just in case.  It was negative.  So that's good.  This morning I'm back to feeling stuffy, but not throat scratchy.

--I went to the computer this morning wondering if we were at war with Iran, if the electronics would be working.  Or maybe this week-end's confrontation between Israel and Iran will be that kind of little thing that looks like it will lead us all to apocalypse but doesn't.

--I was sad to hear of the death of Faith Ringgold, but happy that she had a long, productive life.  And I am so grateful for all the work that she did to make people take fiber and fabric arts seriously.

--I was lucky to see her work periodically, and once, in a small gallery, where I could get close.  But what I remember most about that trip is the Art Appreciation instructor telling her students to pay close attention to the work and saying, "And Dr. Berkey-Abbott is a fiber artist too."