Thursday Night Hymn Festival

Last night we all headed over to St. James Episcopal Church in Hendersonville, about 15 miles away.  We trooped over there for the Music Week Hymn Festival.

Why did we need to change location?  In part, because the organ is better.  In part, because more people could come.  In part, because we've always done it this way, at least for the past decade or two or three.

Last night, at times, the organ took center stage.  Even if you think your church has a magnificent organ, it's likely 2-5 times smaller than the organ at St. James.  I know this because my mom is an organist, and at her last church, she was the organist who helped do a capital campaign for a new organ.  I thought it might be the same size as last night's organ, but she said it's about a quarter of the size.

David Cherwien was the organist and director of the Hymn Choir last night.  He showed us all the ways the organ could perform, and I was happy with the way the music illuminated the hymn itself.  At times, I wanted less organ and more singing, but I am aware that my preferences don't reflect the whole of the attendees.

Many of the hymns were familiar, but some were not.  Almost all of them came from the ELCA hymnal, the ELW (which stands for Evangelical Lutheran Worship).  As always, I am struck by what a wonderful resource that hymnal is.  Like my brain, like a computer, I don't use nearly as much as is there.

Last night, with every hymn, the audience had verses to sing; some years, the hymnfest is more like a concert, but not this year.  I thought about how unusual it is for me to sing in a group where I cannot hear myself singing--what a delight!  I took the picture above before the pews filled, and because it's Music Week, everyone was singing.

It's been a week full of delights, and I'm sad to see it come to an end today.  Happily, we are likely to be able to come to Music Week again next year.  I feel very fortunate.

Music Week Begins!

Yesterday was the start of Music Week at Lutheridge.  This year, unlike last year, I can be around for more of it.  I plan to go to the choral group (adult choir) rehearsals, so that if my Dad needs anything, I'll be there to help.  Plus, I don't mind being there when rehearsing is happening; in fact, I find it fascinating to see how a conductor trains, motivates, and shapes a choir.

We will be eating most meals at my house, and I have bought and prepped accordingly.  I'm still not completely sure of how many will be here, but I'm ready for a crowd.  Dining hall food during the summer is not designed for adult eaters:  think chicken nuggets, corn dogs, and school cafeteria quality pizza.  I have sandwiches of all sorts, plus a selection of chips, yogurt cups, fruit, and an amazing variation on carrot raisin salad that I made yesterday.

I have a lot of carrots, so I grated roughly 4.5 cups, a task which made me very happy for my food processor.  I didn't have raisins, so I roughly chopped 3/4 C. of dried cranberries.  I made a dressing of 1/2 cup mayonnaise and 1/2C. sugar plus a squeeze or three from a lemon, all whisked together.  Wow!  I am never buying this salad from a grocery store deli again.

Last night's meal was burgers, a choice of turkey or beef.  We had corn on the cob, and of course, chips.  It was delicious, and a good reminder that simple meals can work.

I am also going to hope that repeat meals can work.  Tonight I have a variety of elements to make Mexican possibilities, like burritos or nachos or the filling put on top of a salad.  Tomorrow night we might repeat.  Maybe we'll add in a baked potato, depending on how much I want to heat the kitchen.

After dinner last night, we went up the hill for orientation in the Faith Center and then further up the hill for evening worship in the chapel.  It was a Vespers of sorts (Evening Prayer on p. 309 of the ELW), but with more singing.  

We ended with a piece of music we had just learned at the end of orientation, Ana Hernandez's "If In Your Heart."  I was surprised at how easy it was for even a novice like me to learn (go here to buy the sheet music).  It's a Christmas song of sorts, but perfect for a close of day worship service.

The words are deceptively simple:  

"If in your heart, you make a manger for love's birth,

Then God will once again become a child on earth."

The lines are repeated in various vocal ranges, and it's just stunning.  This recording will give you an idea, but it can't replicate how it feels to be in a small chapel at camp, surrounded by skilled singers, with fireflies beginning their own evening song.

Songs and Other American Experiments

It's Tuesday, and I began as I almost always do on a Tuesday, reading Dave Bonta's Poetry Blog Digest, which almost always takes me in interesting directions.  This morning, it's been a bit of a trip down memory lane, courtesy of Shawna LeMay's blog post which mentioned Bruce Springsteen's "Downbound Train."

She quoted lyrics, which I didn't remember from the song:

"Now I work down at the car wash
Where all it ever does is rain
Don't you feel like you're a rider
On a downbound train?"

So of course, I went in search of the song, which instantly catapulted me back to the fall of 1984, when the album Born in the USA came out.  I bought it at Wal-Mart, along with a fan for my dorm room.  A few weeks later, my boyfriend went back to Memphis where his mom needed him.  He'd been wearing my DC101 (a rock radio station) jacket that my sister had won somehow and given to me.  That jacket smelled of sweat and the Players cigarettes that he smoked, and I wore it all fall, feeling sad as my smells replaced his.

It was a different time, the results of a different election, daylight in America, brutal regimes across the globe, and when people wonder why I'm not as hopeless in 2026 as I might be, it's because I remember past time when I couldn't imagine how humanity would survive--and here we are, surviving this history that is not repeating but rhyming, a slant rhyme, to be sure, or maybe just a history so full of allusions that it's hard to read.

I wrote so many letters in the fall of 1984, actual letters on paper, back when long distance phone calls were expensive, and the only phone I had was the one at the end of my dorm hallway, where those of us with long distance relationships talked to distant loves.  My half of the correspondence filled a dresser drawer.  My boyfriend's letters took up a shoe box.

I married him anyway.  And now, here we are, decades later.  On Sunday we watched some PBS presentation on the American experiment, featuring Ken Burns talking about his documentaries.  It was fairly recent with the focus on the Revolution in 1776, and my spouse bleakly said, "It's all over."  I think he meant the grand experiment of freedom, and I said, "No, it's not."  I was talking about the American experiment of revolution and self-governance, with piercing awareness of all the ways that the foundational documents of the USA have not borne fruit--and all the ways they have.

We were well into the second bottle of wine on Sunday, so we didn't discuss further.  But it's a conversation we've been having since 1983 when we first met, so we didn't really need words.

This morning, some lines came to me, as I've been reading and writing:

We are half drunk with disappointment,
fueled by sundrenched picnics and longing,
and you declare the great experiment
dead, and I say no.

Schooled on Springsteen
and Woody Guthrie,
and the songs of enslaved people,
I know that times have always been hard.

I've begun the poem, but I don't know where it leads--like so many elements in my life.  The YouTube algorithm has given me delightful songs from the Springsteen starting point.  It's been a delightful morning, as Tuesdays so often are, rooted in the words (and rabbit holes) of others.

Notes from an Off-season Beach

We are at the beach in a slightly off season, here in mid-May.  It's warm enough to work up a summer-like sweat in the late afternoon.  But my morning walk today had a chilly enough wind that it was almost unpleasant.  Let me record a few other observations.

--Being here in mid-May means that the only children who are here are younger than elementary school age, which translates into lots of cute toddlers.

--We are also here with lots of older people, the ones with either very flexible vacation times or retired people.

--I am likely in the same age category as many of these older women, yet I am working from a different jewelry sensibility:  a nice way of saying that I love colorful glass beads that aren't very valuable, and I'm surrounded by precious gems and metals that are.  I am not wearing jewelry on vacation, and I'm in the minority.

--I have started judging restaurants by their playlists.  High marks go to Poseidon for having 3 Queen songs, including the more obscure "Hammer to Fall," which I am listening to in my earbuds right now.  What a great song--and it still feels very relevant.

--I do realize that "Hammer to Fall" was released as a single and went up the charts.  When I say it's more obscure, I mean that it no longer gets much airplay.  We're much more likely to hear "Somebody to Love," when we're out and about.

--A different musician performs by the pool each day.  Yesterday the musician could play steel pan drums, guitar, and saxaphone, but he didn't always know the song lyrics.  Strange to hear his version of Sting's "Englishman in New York," which didn't sound very English-y, and we're far, far away from both England and New York.

--Yesterday was my last Lutheran Confessions class.  It was a good class, and I learned a lot, although I'm not sure that much of it will be useful in my future life.  I love the idea that the creeds are not like a pledge of allegiance, but more like a love song of the early Church, more like a hymn than a confession of faith.  It seems counterintuitive--we say we confess our faith using the words of the _____Creed.

--It's been a good week, both bittersweet and tiring and inspiring.

Easter Sunday Wrap-Up

I am listening to Sting's Nothing Like the Sun.  I am remembering a time that seems long ago now, the first year of grad school, and we were off for Easter, probably just Good Friday and maybe Easter Monday.  I was making hot cross buns with a recipe from The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book. While the dough rose, I scraped together my last bit of money and went to the local record store, Sounds Familiar, where I bought the double LP, three songs each side.  I spent Easter week-end enthralled.

Yesterday was different, rainy and dreary for most of the day.  I was happy to see the rain--it's been far too dry.  As we do most Sundays, we headed across the mountain to Faith Lutheran in Bristol, TN.

It was a good Easter Sunday.  It's a small, country church, so we don't have what suburban or city churches experience, those folks who show up only for Christmas Eve and Easter.  We are more likely to have brand new visitors on Christmas Eve, not Easter, and even then, it's only one or two.

The church felt full, though, in a similar way yesterday.  It's one of the few days when all members are likely to come, along with some friends and family members tagging along.  In addition, the folks who aren't members but come here and there--they were there too.  It was joyful and a bit noisy.  It was also raining outside, so we don't have as many pictures at the chicken-wire cross covered with flowers; some folks did put flowers on the cross, despite the rain.

We lingered a bit after worship, but it's not the kind of church that has coffee hour afterward, much less an Easter brunch.  Off we went, back across the mountain.

As is often the case for me as a grown up, Easter afternoon was low key.  I felt more wiped out than usual.  Happily, my life is set up so that I can go to bed super early, which is what I did last night.  At one point, I woke up and saw the red streaks of sunset, but not even the possibility of a glorious sunset was enough to rouse me.

This week may be hectic, but it's one of the last full weeks of the semester for me; next week I'll be out on Friday for the Create in Me retreat.  The week after that is a full week again, and then on April 27 and 28, we have the last class day.

That gasping sound you will be hearing across the next few weeks will be me coming up for air.  But these last weeks of busyness feel different--the end is close at hand.  And then, beyond that, summer!

Early Morning Music and the Writing Tasks of the Day

Once again, my writing time is fragmented by all the writing I'm hoping to get done this week-end:  tomorrow's sermon and a meditation for Wednesday night, next week's sermon and a meditation for the last Wednesday in March, and my short paper for Lutheran Confessions class which is due on Thursday.  I can get it all done, but it doesn't leave much time for other writing, like poetry writing or blogging in depth.

Yesterday I also worked some doctor's appointments into my schedule:  our annual eye exams and my 3 month dermatologist exam.  After my melanoma, I'll be going to the dermatologist every three months for the next few years.  Yesterday I had some spots zapped, along with three spots sent in for a biopsy.  Now that I've had the weird melanoma that didn't look like a melanoma, we're both a bit spooked and erring on the side of more information.

By the end of yesterday, I was a bit overwhelmed, so I unplugged for a bit.  This morning I woke up with "Ophelia" by The Band in my head.  I heard it while I was waiting for my skin exam.  My dermatologist has a great playlist, and she told me that she had it done for her exclusively.  There aren't ads, and it's a great mix of music across all genres.

This morning I did a bit of a deep dive into some music by way of YouTube, which has an algorithm for me that I don't resent.  I wanted to see if I was remembering correctly that it was The Band that did "Ophelia," and then I wanted to hear a few more songs that I remember from that Greatest Hits album.  And then there were others, including a dance-in-my-seat session to "Hold On!  I'm Coming."

It was a great way to start the day.  I should probably do it more often.

Snippets from the Last Holiday Week Away

We spent the week between Christmas and New Years Day with my parents in Williamsburg.  My spouse and I arrived on Saturday, and other family members arrived on Sunday.  We were at my parents' place until Tuesday, when we packed up and went over to Ford's Colony, the Marriott resort in Williamsburg.  My mom had Marriott points that would expire at the end of the year, and we agreed that it could be a fun change of pace.

It was!  It felt like being away, and yet my parents didn't have the travel time that they usually do when we go anywhere at the holidays.  We did a few resort kind of things, like playing Bingo.  But it was really too cold to do much, like get out and walk the trails or go swimming.  I've already written about some of the things we did instead, like watching Chariots of Fire and going to see a Vegas-style magic show.

Let me capture a few other elements of the Williamsburg part of our winter break before they slip away.

--Before we left, on Christmas night, we watched Too Hot to Handel:  A Gospel Messiah.  It was amazing, both on its own and as a way to finish Christmas day and transition to surgery day.

--I've written several posts about my December 26 surgery.  Here's the short version:  I had a shallow, wide melanoma that had to be removed in a hospital.  The surgery went well, and the recovery was easier than I expected (not much in the way of pain or bleeding or interfering with daily life).  The tissue got sent to pathology, and the report came back:  "Clear margins."  Hurrah!

--A week ago, the Sunday after Christmas, we decided to do church from a distance.  My mom and dad and I watched the worship service of Lessons and Carols at home.  There was a moment where my mom was changing clothes in the adjacent room, and my dad and I were singing "In the Deep Midwinter."  I thought about Christina Rossetti who composed the poem which provides the words for the hymn.  I thought about how I've taught her poetry in my literature classes and how I used the hymn for a seminary assignment.  And then I thought about how remarkable it is to be singing it with my dad, he in his 80's, me just turned 60.  I want to remember that moment.

--We had lots of intergenerational engagement, which was grand.  At one point, we played pool in the Billiard room as we waited for everyone to get packed for moving over to Ford's Colony.  I couldn't play because of my arm surgery, but happily, we had others.  The younger generation mentioned having a games night.

--On our last night together, we tried a game that one of us got for Christmas, where there are gibberish words on a card with clues, and all the participants try to make sense of them.  That was mildly amusing but ultimately frustrating.

--One of the younger members suggested Charades.  One of us pulled up a Charades app on the phone, and we had an amazing hour of acting out words.  Happily, it wasn't complicated:  the app chose words that we all knew, like Bride or Fishing.  We were all able to play, from the teenagers to the elders in their mid-80's.  We all stayed engaged for hours, and it was the kind of treat that was all the more incredible, since we all knew what a gift it was.

Homespun and Spinning of All Sorts

My writing time is about out--but happily, I've written a rough draft of Sunday's sermon.  And I didn't have a unified blog post in mind.  Let me just collect some fragments.

--I've now had two days of commutes back home with construction and 2 days of commutes back home without construction.  The days without construction feel like I fly home.

--The local (Anderson, SC) classic rock radio station, 101.1, has a promo going from Nov. 17-21, where they are playing classic rock, A-Z, with songs from each letter of the alphabet, along with an obligatory contest (each time the alphabet letter changes, one can text for a chance to win tickets to a concert).  So on my Monday commute home, I heard Steely Dan's "Deacon Blues," and on yesterday's, we were to the G's, with the Who's "Getting in Tune."  These are songs that I haven't heard in decades, and yet I can still sing along.

--I realize that radio stations these days have programming done from a central location, but it still makes me happy to listen to a list like this one.  It makes me happy to have a d.j. who says, "This one is my favorite Steely Dan song" and goes on to give some human sounding reasons and memories.  I am guessing that in the future I'll be hearing a chatbot pretending to be a human in the not too distant future, if there are any radios with d.j.s at all.

--We've been watching the new Ken Burns documentary about the Revolutionary War; we've finished the second episode.  It's not all brand new to me; I went to K-12 schools that spent a lot of our time in history classes studying this time period.  But it's put together in interesting ways with intriguing synthesis and analysis of what it means to us today.  

--As we've been watching, I've been sewing by hand, putting scraps together into log cabin patterns.  I have numb finger tips because I've been sewing a lot more this week.

--As I listened to the segment on the resistance of colonial women who decided to weave their own cloth (homespun!) and take themselves out of the King's economy, I thought about the gorgeous fabrics moving through my hands.  I feel like there should be a poem there, but I'm not sure, so let me record it.

--Today is an easier day at work--it's a writing day for my students, which can be done in class or outside of class.  I'm available in my office.  It's an approach that I've adopted from my colleagues, so I'm not going to be seen as slacking off.  Most places where I have worked would not have approved of the need for this kind of "let's get caught up" kind of day.  I'm glad to be here.

--And there's a Town Hall in the middle of it, the monthly update from the president, the meeting that has coffee and food beforehand.  I am so happy to be at a place that keeps us updated and keeps us fed and caffeinated along the way.  I'm so happy to be at a place that trusts faculty members.

When You're a Jet

My spouse has discovered an MGM channel, which I think shows mainly classic movies.  Last night when I came out of my Zoom meeting, he was watching Fiddler on the Roof.  At first I thought it was a remake of the classic film of 50 some odd years ago.  But it was the original.  I caught the end, as the family and the community trudge across a bridge to what is next, and the younger family members decide that going to Poland will get them safety.

I thought of the history of the 20th century, how this decision to go to Poland likely means that this branch of the Jewish family will be wiped out.  I watched that column of Jews leaving the village and thought of all the displaced people in our own time, particularly the people of Gaza and the people of Ukraine.  Life feels particularly fragile now, but it's always been fragile, safety an illusion.

I confess to feeling that the ending was rushed--everyone must leave the village, there's a bit of discussion after dismay, and then everyone packs.  I was startled when the credits started to roll.

And up next, West Side Story, the original film, not the remake.  It, too, felt like a remake, a highly stylized one.  It's an interesting concept, a rumble, but with choreographed dancing.   I half expected the expert dancers of my youth, John Travolta and Patrick Swayze to make an appearance.

Long ago, I watched this film with my mom, and then she pulled out the LP of the soundtrack.  We often would watch a movie together and then spend days enjoying the soundtrack together.  A few years later, on a Sunday afternoon, we'd watch A Star Is Born, the Streisand-Kristofferson version, and she had the album, which we enjoyed together, even though much of the music wasn't to either of our tastes at the time.  

I realize I'm lucky to have grown up in a house with all sorts of music.  My dad loved folk music and jazz, and my mom decided that my dad was worth her time because he could intelligently talk about classical compositions, specifically Handel's Water Music.  We had music lessons and choir, and we made all sorts of music, both as individuals and as a family and as larger groups we belonged to.

I thought of this early training during West Side Story, as one of the Jets sings, "When you're a Jet, you're a Jet all the way, from your first cigarette to your last dying day."  I am grateful to have had this early musical training and grateful for good movies which still bind us together.

Poems and Chocolates and U2 on a September Tuesday Morning

It's been a strange morning, strange but satisfying.  I began it as I do most Tuesday mornings, by reading Dave Bonta's weekly Poetry Blog Digest and exploring some of the blog posts.  Rachel Barenblat's post includes an amazing poem, which made me weep.  It's the perfect poem for a week of shootings, and sadly, multiple shootings is a hallmark of almost every week these days. 

I also wanted to hear U2's "Shadow and Tall Trees," so I went to a YouTube site, and after each U2 song has come another.  But they've all been from the early years, The Joshua Tree and earlier--such powerful music!

Some of it I haven't heard in decades.  I'm getting deep cuts from the October album for example.  I remember it as an album that I bought and didn't really listen to much; I wanted to be listening to War, and so I did.  And yet, I remember the songs still.  I don't listen to music that way much anymore.

I am also struck by the way the lyrics twine together contemporary politics and ancient religious texts and concepts.  Wow.

As always, this music takes me back to earlier falls:  the autumn of 1983 when I first bought a lot of this music on vinyl (War and October and Boy), the autumn of 1984 when I had The Unforgettable Fire in constant rotation.  That music made me think of listening to my own recordings on cassette as I drove across South Carolina to see my grandmother in Greenwood, SC.

Those memories made me think of her Whitman's Sampler and the time I got one of my own, on sale, at a local drugstore, during the spring of my last year at Newberry College.  Finally I could eat as many of the chocolates as I wanted!  My grandmother only ate one at a time, spaced out across many days, making that box last as long as possible.  It will surprise no one that being able to eat as much of the box as I wanted in one sitting was not as satisfying as I always imagined.  Ah, the heartbreak of grown up life!

I've been trying to write a poem out of it all, and I'm a bit haunted by thinking that I've already used this material but I can't remember if I really have or if I thought that it would make a good poem.

I've continued with the poem composing, and I like this line:  Sugar soaked mouth unsatisfied

I've also done some sketching and noted the way a mostly dried up marker looks like tree bark on the page.  That, too, seems like it should be a metaphor for something, but in a different poem.

I woke up this morning thinking that I was going to blog about reading Mary Shelley's Frankenstein this past week, and being struck by how it speaks to our current conversation/argument about generative AI.  Frankenstein seems timeless in so many ways.  Last year I read it for a seminary class, and the isolation of all the characters was what grabbed me.

I feel so lucky to have this life, and I'm amazed that I managed to stumble into it, being able to teach undergraduates in a small, liberal arts college in South Carolina, just up the road from my the small, liberal arts college where I spent my youth listening to U2 and reading British lit and dreaming of being a poet myself.

Papa Don't Preach and the Other End of Age

My recent singing of Prince's "Raspberry Beret" with different words (which I wrote about in this post) led me to some additional thoughts:

--I needed to snap myself out of a morning funk, so I sang Madonna's "Papa Don't Preach"--softly because I was at my parents' house.  No, this is not one of my usual go-to songs to snap myself to a better mindset.  But I heard it on my long drive to Williamsburg on Tuesday night and it's stuck in my head.

--The line about keeping my baby led me to do some math.  If the speaker in that song had kept her baby in 1986, that baby would be 39 years old, and let's assume the mom would be 16 or 17 years older, so 55 or 56.  I thought of the papa in the story, who likely now needs some assistance in his twilight years.  I thought of a short story, but that's been done to death. 

--I'd love to create a poem, but again, not around the issue of elder care or teenage pregnancy.  I want to write about caring for aging parents when we're all just flabbergasted that we've become this old.  In their minds, they're my age.  In my mind, I'm 32.  In some ways, we're reverting back to my adolescent years, with lots of focus on who should be eating what.  There's body shaming, both the kind we did during my adolescence, and the shame that comes with aging bodies that know exactly how old they are and lose no opportunity to remind us.

The Poetry of the Playlist, for Reviewers and for Students

I have spent a delightful morning pondering Bruce Springsteen--we are almost to the 50th (gasp!) anniversary of the release of the Born to Run album.  Born in the U.S.A. was my Springsteen entry point in the late summer of 1984, and then I got Born to Run later that autumn, in November.  I liked it alright, but I don't think that any other Springsteen album has captured my heart and imagination like Born in the U.S.A.

On the NPR program Fresh Air, I listened to this interview with Peter Ames Carlin, which explored the making of Born to Run--a fascinating glimpse of the creative process.  Before I listened to that interview, I read Peter McWhorter's piece in The Washington Post (hopefully a gift essay to read throughout the ages) about the Springsteen playlist that he listened to seven times--that's all of Born to Run, plus eleven songs:  “Rosalita,” “Prove It All Night,” “Brilliant Disguise,” “The River,” “Spirit in the Night,” “The Promised Land,” “Backstreets,” “Badlands,” “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” “The Rising,” and “New York City Serenade.”

By listening to the playlist seven times, he gained a new appreciation for Springsteen, particularly the poetry of Springsteen.  He has some interesting insights about poetry and the 21st century person:  "My Bruce immersion teaches me that the reason poetry on the page is such a rarefied taste in America today isn’t that Americans don’t have a taste for verse. It’s because there are pop music artists whose lyrics scratch that itch, just as Edna St. Vincent Millay and Robert Lowell once did. Taylor Swift’s music fits into the same category for me, as well as for many people over 40 I have spoken to about her work. I hear her songs as poetry; the music’s job is just to help get it across. And that’s what I hear when I listen to Springsteen: I hear poetry, and I hear Americans’ love of it."

There's also an interesting discussion about why and how the music of Billy Joel is different than that of Bruce Springsteen, and it boils down to the music that shaped them, folk music for Springsteen and Broadway for Joel.

I got some interesting ideas for teaching as I was listening, so let me capture them here:

--During a poetry unit, have students do something similar for the pop culture of their choice.  What scratches the poetry itch in ways that traditional poetry might not?  It could be music or theatre or a movie or a social influencer.

--Have students create a playlist or a watchlist of their favorite artist or artists and an essay about what is revealed by listening/watching across the list.

--Have students imagine the works that are important to them now, and how we'll think about them 50 years from now.  They could write about how the work has shaped them now and then imagine themselves 50 years from now.  Will the work speak to them differently?

Catching Up to Calendars and Beyond

I've been doing some early morning grading--it's the last week of my online classes, and grades are due early next week.  And then it will be on to the next term, which starts August 15; my onground classes start earlier, August 12.

As I was writing the last of my weekly e-mails that I send out to remind students of what work is due on which day, I thought about that day, which seems so distant now, when I chose these due dates for assignments.  For my online class that started in May, I chose the dates back in early March--and now, here I am, arriving at a future that I envisioned in the chilly days of spring.  It's as if that calendar has now caught up to this one, or perhaps the other way round.

For a moment, I thought back to March, when I was feeling a bit overwhelmed at all that I had to get done.  And I did get it all done--hurrah for me!  I was feeling a bit apprehensive at my ability to get my CPE training lined up for summer--and now, here I am at the last full week of CPE.

I do realize that it may not always be this way; life does not always move smoothly.  I am always aware of all that could disrupt my plans, primarily illness and death, but let us not forget geopolitical upheaval that might come our way, not to mention severe weather.  That knowledge has kept me focused, and perhaps trying to do too much.

Yesterday as we filled up our gas tanks using our Ingles fuel points, I head a Hootie and the Blowfish song.  I came back and looked up some YouTube videos.  The one for "Hold My Hand" took me back to the last time I heard a Hootie song on a grocery store sound system.  It was Publix, in either a pre-pandemic year or in the first pandemic year, and I came back to my office to look up the video for "Hold My Hand."  It made me homesick in such a visceral way and for so much:  grad school years, the University of South Carolina, old houses made into cheaper housing which grew more and more ramshackle through the years, various neighborhoods in South Carolina.  I remember feeling marooned in South Florida, so very stuck in place.

It boggles my mind, how much has changed.

Christmas Carols in July

Yesterday a group of us walked off campus for lunch.  As we were walking down the hill to the gate, one of us shared that "Amazing Grace" can be sung to the tune of "Oh Little Town of Bethlehem."  He sang the first line to demonstrate:  "Amazing Grace, How Sweet the Sound."  We continued to sing the rest.

I said, "It's like Christmas caroling, only different."  A man walking in front of us said, "You guys sounded great to me.  I can barely manage to walk to my car in this heat, much less sing."

It made me wonder how various groups might respond to a Christmas Caroling in July kind of event.  Would patients like it or would we confuse them?  I had a vision of Christmas cookies and decorations, but that might be because I love Christmas.  I don't want to make extra work for people.

I'm thinking of Christmas in July week at camp, specifically at Lutheridge.  It's one of the more popular weeks.  If I was choosing a camp week, that would be the one I would choose.  Even when I was a kid, I would have chosen it.  The only thing that might have been more appealing would be a Left Alone to Read camp week, which as far as I know, doesn't exist.  Why go to summer camp to read?

Those of us who love to read know why.  You could ask the same thing about Christmas at camp, too, of course.  Why Christmas or reading when you could be hiking or canoeing?

It's a larger question that some of us keep coming back to--what is the purpose of camp?  There are many answers, and we don't have to choose just one.

In fact, for future viability, it might be important to choose them all.

The Boss and Me

I have noticed that I am standing up straighter as I make my rounds during the work day.  Sadly, I still have a fairly hunched over posture when I sit at the computer.  I also try to smile and project a peaceful presence throughout the day.  

On Thursday,  a much older man said to me, "You look like somebody who knows she's the boss."  I smiled, and he said, "No really, you look like the person who's in charge of this place."  I said, "I assure you, I am not the boss."  It was a kinder interchange than it sounds here on the page.

In some ways, it felt evolved--instead of being complimented on my looks or my smile, the man might have been complimenting me on something career related.  But it also made me think of that whole pre-Covid movement for women to claim their authority, to act more like men who were in charge, that whole Bosslady trend that spawned a billion TikToks and memes and merchandising.  I am not the Bosslady, nor was meant to be, to paraphrase Shakespeare or T. S. Eliot.

As I took my walk back to the elevator, I thought about other ways I could have responded.  I thought about Bruce Springsteen and all the song lyrics I could have offered in response:  "Tramps like us, baby we were born to run."  But I suspect that most people wouldn't get that reference.  I thought about how I would be happy to be more like Springsteen, a man who really is the boss in so many ways.  But his touring schedule would be exhausting.

I thought of Bruce Springsteen yesterday as I was taking a walk around camp.  Because I had the federal holiday off of work, I went later than usual.  I saw the campers gathering for Morning Watch, and I heard the blast of music, the opening chords to Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A.," an interesting choice for Independence Day.  I thought of politicians who have tried to co-opt the song without listening to the lyrics.  It is such an amazing song, and it was my Springsteen entry drug.  I remember buying the record that contained the song (yes, on vinyl) in the early days of fall semester 1984, where I was at Wal-Mart buying a fan for my dorm room that had no air conditioning.  I have never loved another Springsteen album the way I LOVED that one:  all the songs are great, and there's a narrative arc (or maybe it's just a theme that connects them all) when one listens straight through.

The playlist for the campers' Morning Watch went to John Mellencamp's "R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A.," a much happier song lyrically.  And later, I heard them singing "The Star Spangled Banner," voices drifting down the hill to where I stood at the berry brambles, eating as many black raspberries as were ripe.  

It was a perfect start to Independence Day 2025, which included hamburgers AND hot dogs, a watching of Independence Day (which I had not seen again since I saw it in the theatre on the week-end it was released), and a neighborhood potluck.

Maundy Thursday with "Graceland" and Treats

Yesterday was a long day, but I knew it would be.  I also knew that I have Good Friday off from both teaching and part-time preaching, so it wasn't as hard as it would be if I had to be getting ready to drive to Spartanburg right now.

My Nonfiction Writing class is spending our last few days listening to music chosen by the class and analyzing it and perhaps writing the last essay as a review of the music or an exploration of the process.  Yesterday was Paul Simon's Graceland, which we listened to straight through with a break for treats that I brought.

I wanted to do some sort of them to the treats, so I made sugar cookies, some in the shape of hearts (much of the album revolves around love) and 4 female-ish shapes (think gingerbread girl with a skirt).  On the female shapes, I put sprinkles on the feet for the song "Diamonds on the Souls of Her Shoes."

I thought about the idea of Graceland, the home of Elvis, and decided to make peanut butter cookies and bring in bananas, because Elvis' favorite snack was peanut butter and banana sandwiches.  The grocery store had the greenest bananas I've seen in awhile, so I got the ripest ones, which would still be too green for people who prefer their bananas ripe.  My students didn't mind.

I had forgotten how wonderful it is to sit and listen to a work of music straight through.  And what a powerful work Graceland is.  I've been listening to it since it first came out in 1986, and I've memorized almost every song.  At times, I had to sit and focus on not crying at the beauty of it.

It was wonderful to listen to the music with my students who were so attentive and so appreciative.  I'm feeling phenomenally lucky this term; all of my classes have been mostly wonderful.  In most semesters, there's a class that is not, with one or more students who are openly combative or dismissive or resistant.

I had a similarly good American Lit class, even though all of our energy is waning.  I told them that I had to let them go a bit early because I had to be in Bristol, Tennessee to preach and preside at Faith Lutheran for Maundy Thursday service at 7 p.m.  Several students said, "You preach too?"  I was happy to be able to quote Walt Whitman to them:  "I contain multitudes."

Then I drove home, typed in the revisions to my sermon, printed it (you can read it here), and we were off to Bristol.  It was a good service (more in this blog post), and while the drive home across the darkening mountains felt long, it was uneventful--unlike the Ash Wednesday drive home which included a fire on the mountain and blowing snow at the higher elevations.

Here, too, I feel fortunate.  I get to do preaching work I love with a great congregation--and I get paid! 

Today will be a quieter Good Friday.  I don't need to be in Bristol, since Good Friday is the one day out of the year where there can be no consecration of the bread--fancy theology talk for "I'm not needed today."  They will have a Good Friday service and a Saturday evening vigil service, and I'll be there on Easter Sunday.  Later in the day on Sunday, my spouse's brother and wife arrive.

I will do some grocery shopping today, some writing, some grading--all the typical Friday things.  I was able to get a room for my in-laws at Lutheridge, so I don't have quite as much prep work to do, but I still need to think about food.  And I have a final paper and presentation for my Monday seminary class, so there's that, too.

I'm in the part of the week-end where the time still feels expansive.  May it continue to be so.

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. 

New World Order

When I'm on the road by myself, I usually have NPR on, and when I travel on Friday, as I did yesterday, many of the NPR shows are doing news of the week retrospectives.  In the morning, all the commentators expected the afternoon meeting between Trump and Zelensky to end in a minerals deal and perhaps a vision for a path to a peace treaty.

By afternoon, it was not to be.  I first heard about the contentious meeting on a BBC show carried by an NPR station.  It was oddly comforting to hear the discussion in clipped, British accents, even as the subject of the discussion was so catastrophic.

As I listened to Trump and Vance shouting and Zelensky try to get a word in edgewise, I felt that careening disbelief that I've felt so often in the last few weeks.  Really?  Grown ups talk like this?  And then I wondered how we came to have audio.  I imagined some brave White House employee sneaking a recording to a British reporter.

Nope--it was all televised, and later, when I watched the footage, it seemed like a pre-planned spectacle.

It's an astonishing moment that I would never have imagined.  A Republican president embracing . . . Russia???  I came of age during the reign of Ronald Reagan, who must be spinning in his grave.  It's hard for me to imagine how any of this ends well.  I already miss the peace and prosperity slipping through our fingers.  I know, I know, it was peace and prosperity for Europe and the U.S., with proxy wars fought around the globe.

I can imagine any number of scenarios about where the world lurches from here, and none of them are good.  As I was driving, my apocalyptic brain kicked into overdrive yesterday, and I sang "Dona Nobis Pacem" to quiet it.  I'm amazed by how well that works.  This video offers a beautiful rendition, with footage from a cathedral.

I switched over from NPR to a classic rock station just as one song ended and the next started:  "Cult of Personality."  I smirked, but as the afternoon wore on, I did wonder if the d.j. was being deliberate.  I heard "Highway to Hell" and "Sunday Bloody Sunday" in short order.  Hmmm.  I realize that my English major brain makes all kinds of connections that might not have been intentional.

Last night we went outside to see if we could view the planetary alliance.  I think that we saw it, but as with the playlist that might be making a statement about political struggles, I wasn't sure.  Still, it was good to look up at the sky and to remember how brief our geopolitical struggles are in the long term--still not a comfort when I think of what those geopolitical struggles likely mean for the rest of my life and those who come after, but a cold, planetary comfort nonetheless.

Writing and Recording a Protest Song

Yesterday was the last day of my seminary class that studied protest music, which meant my song was due.  On Monday, I finished writing it.  I had lots of ideas and lines and verses, but on Monday, I made final decisions.  I'll post the lyrics below.

I did change the song through several revisions. I decided to keep the focus on one person's experience, instead of trying to cover people working in heat, people losing their possessions to fires, and all the other ways climate change wreaks havoc. I decided that one of the verses I created made a better refrain. It was fun, looking at all the possibilities, choosing what made the song stronger.

We had to present them in class.  We could perform live or have a recorded version to play.  I have some musician friends in town for Music Week, so I had a vision of having them accompany with my song that uses the tune of "Poor Wayfaring Stranger."  I didn't think it would work for them to be with me live for class--that would have meant that they would have to miss worship, so I decided to record.

We did a few practice rounds and came up with a plan. One of our houseguests, my Florida pastor, was the videographer.  We did one recording outside, but decided there was too much traffic background noise.  We came inside and got settled into a new location, with the musicians seated in chairs.  That recording ended in laughter when my spouse knocked his violin bow to the floor.

The next take was the one that I posted to my YouTube account.  You can view it here.

I was surprisingly pleased with my voice.  Sure, there are a few notes I flubbed, but I am sure that we could have recorded 20 attempts and that would still be the case, although the note would vary each time.    It's hard to know when to keep trying for a better version, when to say, "Well, this is probably as good as it's going to get." I suppose as with writing, there comes a moment when one says, "Well, if I had 2 more weeks, it might improve, but this is the final draft right now."

I expected to feel insecure about my voice, but my voice was better than I expected.  I was distressed about how heavy I looked (because I am in a heavy phase of my life right now), but I knew I couldn't lose 50 pounds in time for the recording.  I don't really have clothes that disguise my weight, if such clothes exist.  I may say more about weight in a later post, but for now, let me focus on the fact that I sang well, that my support network pitched in and made this project a joy.

And let me also remember how cool it was to present our projects to class.  We're a class of seminarians, and most of us aren't musicians, so there wasn't that kind of pressure.  Our teacher had already told us that we'd be graded on our effort, not on achieving a standard of perfection, so we were able to take risks--singing this way was risky-feeling for most of us, based on what we said in our first night introductions.

Last night, we presented our work and supported each other.  We had a variety of approaches.  One woman used a hymn as her base, and one woman used "Grand Old Flag."  Some of our protest music was mournful, some angry, and some tried to invoke hope--all of them were inspiring.  Some of us sang, while others chanted or did more of a spoken word approach (which was consistent with the songs we studied).

It was a great way to learn about what it takes to write a protest song, and I'm glad I went with that approach (we did have an option to write a short, analytical essay).  I have enjoyed the class, and I'm happy that I took it; it's hard to believe it's over, but such is the nature of summer classes.

The lyrics:

Higher Ground

Sung to the tune of “Poor Wayfaring Stranger”

Verse 1:

I am a poor, wayfaring stranger

Sleeping in each national park

And yet I am no forest ranger

I have no home, I need an ark.

Refrain:

Clouds of doom / are hanging o’er us

We know that time is running out

There is no longer a safe shelter

Of this hard truth, there is no doubt.

Verse 2:

I have no home, because it flooded.

I have no car, because it drowned

I am now headed out for safety

I need to go to higher ground.

Refrain:

Clouds of doom / are hanging o’er us

We know that time is running out

There is no longer a safe shelter

Of this hard truth, there is no doubt.

Verse 3:

I’m hoping for a mountain cabin,

A place that’s far away from sea.

The mountains are so much colder

But it’s a safer place to be.

Refrain:

Clouds of doom / are hanging o’er us

We know that time is running out

There is no longer a safe shelter

Of this hard truth, there is no doubt.

Singing Together, Singing By Ourselves

I am happy to report that the second class meeting of my seminary class in protest music lived up to the promise of the first week.  Our professor does have a PowerPoint, but unlike some other professors, he does not read from the PowerPoint.  We cover the material that's in the book, but so far, it hasn't left me saying, "I could just read the book."  We listen to the music and discuss it, but not in the depth that a music appreciation class would offer.  The book offers a more in-depth dive into the history that prompted the creation of the music.

One thing that's different from other classes:  we sing together.  It's an online class meeting by way of a Zoom session, so it's not what you might imagine, a group of seminarians with a guitar and folk songs in a physical room.  The professor, who is also a professional musician, has a keyboard as part of his set up, so he sings the song and plays it.  We students keep ourselves muted and sing.  Well, some of us do.  I realize that not everyone knows these songs.  

Last night we sang "This Land Is Your Land," "We Shall Overcome," and "If I Had a Hammer."  We also talked about why some of us grew up singing these songs in elementary school, while others didn't.  My professor's theory is that there was once was a core group of songs that many of us knew, from singing them around campfires and such.  I thought about what a wide range of songs I knew and how I came to know them:  church choir, camp, parents who had music playing in the background throughout much of the day, radio stations that played a wide range of music.

I didn't offer my theory:  those of us who went to elementary school in the 70's had teachers who thought those songs were important and taught them to us.  I had music classes in school, taught by people who were once hippies, radicals, and organizers (or people who knew these types).

We talked about what children sing now, perhaps Disney songs, but it was late in the evening, and we didn't spend much time on the topic.  I did spend some time thinking about my childhood and music, thinking about elementary schools that once had music as a class period.

I've also been thinking about my classmates, some of whom are so much younger, who have never heard of this music, and perhaps this history.  I feel lucky to have been educated when I was, with such a wide variety of educational experiences.