Memory Whisps from Last Week's Travel to the High Country of NC

Before we get too far away from our travels of last week, let me record some memories that I don't want to slip away.  We went to a different part of the North Carolina mountains, near Boone.  We were there for the wedding of my spouse's sister's oldest child.  The wedding was beautiful, of course, but there were other beautiful moments:

--On Monday night, we went to Parallel Brewing in Boone for a rehearsal dinner/party.  Do they brew beer?  I don't know.  Did I taste it?  No.  I wanted wine to go with the pizza.  Was any of the wine memorable enough to make note of what it was?  No.

--I was much more interested in Huzzah Books, which shares the building with Parallel Brewing.  We could go back and forth, which made the party better--more space.

--I also loved lingering among the books, which seemed to be used books from decades when publishers were more serious about publishing.  I found a book of "best new poetry" published in 1960 or so.  The names were fairly familiar and all male, except for Adrienne Rich.

--One of our younger family members (21 or so) was thrilled to find a book by Jane Kenyon.  I was thrilled that she was thrilled.

--We didn't do more in Boone.  We spent most of our time visiting with family members on the front porches of our cabins.  If it had been clearer weather, we'd have had a glorious view.

--I did love seeing the fog/mist move across the land, only to vanish.  Once again, I thought about how humans might come to believe in ghosts.

--I was disappointed that we didn't have a clear view of the night sky.  I wanted that non-light polluted view.  But we did have lovely nights on the porch, watching the mist, listening to frogs and insects.  And we saw fireflies, which I associate with much later in the summer.

--I'm not usually awake much past 8:30 or 9 these days, but for two evenings last week, I had normal-ish adult bedtimes.

--It was great to have a get away that was much closer.  We were home after a 2.5 hour drive.

Beach Sunrises

It's been a time of mostly vacation--and yet, I need to finish a paper for my Lutheran Confessions class that I'm taking and start thinking about Sunday's sermon.  It's been a time of mostly vacation, and yet, I still have 2 online classes that began at midnight.

It's nice to take a walk with different sunrise vistas:

Here's the Facebook post I wrote about the picture:  "This morning's Hilton Head sunrise is winder, sand scoured, with storm clouds rolling in. Only 5 of us on the beach to bear witness."

I thought that yesterday's sunrise would be like this morning's, but yesterday, we had a surprise break in the clouds.  At times, the sun looked like one of those pictures of a distant planet:

At one point yesterday morning, a sea turtle patrol truck drove down the beach away from the sunrise, with one young worker guy hanging out the window taking pictures.  I assume that the workers get to see a beach sunrise every morning.  The fact that one of them went to such an effort to get a picture made me happy.

I've said before, and I'll continue to remind myself that the human capacity for wonder makes me think that humans may survive after all.

A Tale of Three Butterflies

For most Create in Me retreats, we have a community art project, something we can work on together.  Some times, the work stays at Lutheridge, like the cross as tall as a human, made of clear plastic, filled with broken things.  One year, we knotted a quilt for Lutheran World Relief.  This year, we made a huge butterfly, decorated with bits of nature.  I brought it back to my house because Lutheridge didn't really have a place for it, and it had so much glue on it that I wasn't sure it was a good idea to leave it beside a trail to decompose, as we had once thought we would do:

Here's what it looked like at worship yesterday:

It began as a series of fan blades.  Here's what it looked like when my spouse and I first constructed it last week:

I felt a keen sense of failure and despair at this early stage.  My friend on the planning team had sent me this picture when describing what the group had in mind and asking if my spouse could build the base for it:

I wrote to my friend to tell her that we might not have created what she had in mind.  She wrote back the most perfect reply:  "It will look just as it should--a unique community effort."  I so needed those words, to know that I hadn't let the team down.

In the end, I like what we created better.  One friend used the leftover dried flowers that she created for her drop in station.  We used some of the leftover wood circles that had been cut for a prayer project.  We used interesting bits that people found during outdoor time.  

And in the end, yes, it looked just the way it needed to look--many good life lessons/reminders here.

First Full Day of Create in Me

In some ways, the Create in Me retreat is the same from year to year:  Bible study in the morning, workshops, drop in stations with a wide variety of supplies and projects, worship and song, and of course, food and snacks (not all of which have this artist theme):

This retreat came with a coloring booklet and pencils on every table.  I haven't colored mine yet, because I might want to make copies.

Our theme is rooted in nature, so we've spent time in and with nature--including a nature walk yesterday.  We had 20 minutes to spend how we wanted, in nature, even if it was no further than steps from the door.  We had some questions to make us more intentional.

I went to my favorite tree, the maple between the Faith Center and the Dining Hall.  I spent time gazing and looking, looking close up, like I require my first year Composition students to do.  It was amazing.

I had a moment where I wanted to lie on the grass gazing up at the tree, but I decided it was unwise for many reasons.  I made an intentional decision not to take a camera or a notebook, to be fully present with the tree.

I love retreats for many reasons, but one reason is because it forces me to do what I say I want to do:  to be more present.

In the afternoon, we did worship planning.  I am always amazed how we come to the meeting at 3:30 with the barest bones of a worship service, and we have a fully-realized worship service prepared by the 6:45 start time.

We ended the day in the Faith Center, creating and talking.  It was a good day.  Of course, every Create in Me day is a good day--it's a foretaste of what could be. 

Mid-March: Tornadoes and Snow and the Wearing of the Green

Yesterday morning did not go the way I planned.  I thought I would get up, do a bit of work on my Lutheran Foundations class paper that is due on Thursday along with some blogging and head to campus at my normal time of 7:15.  We'd been expecting some stormy weather; in fact, I slept with my cell phone in our bedroom just in case there was an overnight alert.

I got up and looked at the weather websites and the radar.  I could see the cold front headed our way, with a huge line of storms, the kind that show up as yellow and red on the radar.  It was in Knoxville when I first woke up, which is about two hours away.  As I kept an eye on the line of storms, I decided that it was wise to hurry up my preparations and head down the mountain to Spartanburg before the storms arrived.  I left the house just after 6 a.m.

Even though I wasn't traveling in severe weather, it was still a harrowing drive.  It was dark, and I no longer drive in the dark much, so when I do, it's hard.  It had been raining, so the lines on the road weren't as clear, and worse, I could see the lines that existed from the time before the interstate renovations and reshaping.  There was quite a wind, even before the storms arrived.

As I pulled into the campus parking lot, it was daylight enough to see the clouds, which looked threatening.  Sure enough, we had a tornado warning an hour later, just when I would normally be arriving.  Even though we've never had a tornado drill, enough people knew where the safe spot in the building was that we were able to get there relatively easily--and happily, it was a big enough space to hold us all.

I thought of the tornado drills of my youth in Montgomery, Alabama.  We'd go to the hallway of the elementary school and sit facing the wall, with a textbook across the back of our heads and necks.  Our space yesterday was much safer, with a reinforced ceiling, so that the two story building was less likely to fall and crush us.

Happily, we didn't test the building strength.  After 15 minutes, we got the all clear and headed back to what we were doing.  But if I'm being honest, I was a bit discombobulated the whole day.  It was the first day back after Spring Break, and when I got to my classroom at 9, I discovered that the sound wasn't working on the in-classroom electronics.  Happily, the tech person came right away, and I had an activity to do while we waited; still, that, too, was discombobulating.

The drive home was less harrowing but still included rain and wind--and oddly, some sunshine here and there at the same time as the rain and the wind.  By late afternoon, when I was safely home and dressed in comfy clothes, it was snowing, in that beautiful way of snow that won't be sticking around.

And now, here we are at Patrick's Day, a feast day that may mean more to non-Christians than Christians--or perhaps, more accurately, to anyone who needs some festivity in the middle of March, whether that festivity be a parade or special foods (soda bread!  corned beef!  cabbage!) or green beer.  If you came here hoping for a blog post on Saint Patrick's Day, head over to this post on my theology blog.

I don't have special Saint Patrick's Day traditions, aside from wearing green.  Elementary school culture shaped me in that way, with vicious pinching for all who forgot to wear green on March 17; I look back on my elementary school days and marvel at what was allowed.  As with tornado preparedness, we weren't really protected at all.

Mountain Bound after a Good Visit in Williamsburg

Today I have breakfast with my parents in Williamsburg and then head back to the mountains of North Carolina.  I'm not going through the highest elevations, but I might see some snow mixed with the rain that's expected today.  A big cold front is coming through, so I'm grateful not to be expecting tornadoes, particularly when I see the devastation from storms in the middle of the country yesterday.

I've been in Williamsburg visiting my parents, and it's been a good visit.  I'm lucky, in that my visits are always good visits, even ones like back in August, when I arrived to help when my mom suddenly developed life threatening pneumonia.  I'm grateful that my luck continues to hold.

We've done some shopping, picking up some end of winter bargains on clothes--and hey, I'll still get to wear them for the few weeks of winter temps that are likely ahead.  I picked up a pair of festive sandals for a wedding next week-end, along with a festive finishing garment.

We've had great meals.  One of my favorites was the soup supper at my parents' church, one of my church homes away from home.  We had a choice of three soups (corn chowder, vegetable with beef, and chili) and cornbread and sourdough bread.  I love these kinds of soup suppers, and I was glad to be able to be part.

We were there for soup supper because the church does a Lenten Wednesday evening program.  It was meditative and quiet.  We ended with the option to light a small candle from the Paschal candle and put it in the cross-shaped sandbox on a table in front of the Paschal candle.  I wanted to record it, because I liked how it looked.  Is it worth the extra effort to make a sandbox in a specific shape, instead of a big bowl of sand?  Perhaps.  It was lined with 2 layers of heavy plastic, not to protect the wood frame from the flame, but to keep the sand contained.

I didn't take any pictures because I didn't bring my phone to the church.  There wouldn't have been a good way to take pictures, and I wouldn't have wanted to destroy the meditative mood by taking pictures.

On the way home, we stopped at a soft serve ice cream place, the kind that has a small building with a walk-up window and some picnic tables in the parking lot.  It was wonderful to eat ice cream after church and enjoy the freakishly warm weather.

And now to head back, through unsettled weather--the price for a foretaste of summer.

Eclipses and Other Portents

Later this morning, we'll go vote in the primary.  We don't live in Texas, so our primary isn't as interesting.  But it may have an impact on the Senate race in November.  

We'd vote regardless.  In North Carolina, we're registered as independents which means we can vote in either the Democratic primary or the Republican primary, but not both.  Two years ago, I voted in the Republican primary because I wanted Nikki Haley to win.  Today I'm voting in the Democratic primary because I want Roy Cooper, our former governor, to be the candidate in November. 

If we had voted early, we'd have done it at the public library.  Today we'll go to the local Lutheran church, the one where I go on Wednesdays to quilt when I'm not teaching.  I'm glad that the polling place is easy for me, even as I wonder how it came to be the polling place.  My younger self would have done some talking about separation of church and state.  My older self is happy to see church buildings used for the good of the community.

This morning's post will be shorter than usual, not because I'm headed off to vote, but because I'm going on an early morning walk.  I could wait; it's the one weekday where I don't need to be on the road to Spartanburg before 7:30.  But there's an eclipse happening, and although it's cloudy, I'll go out, just on the off chance that the clouds clear.

The moon will look red, and ancient people would have seen the blood moon as a portent.  With a war in the Middle East, we have no shortage of portents.  Still I will vote, and I will look at the sky, and I will hope to be amazed in a good way, not a horror-filled way.

Trolls in the Forest

Yesterday we went to see the trolls at the local arboretum:

I couldn't resist posing with the above troll:

If I was captioning this picture, I'd say this:  "You'd think a woman who spent the last week teaching Christina Rossetti's 'Goblin Market' would be more cautious about strange creatures in the forest."

I'd been hearing about this exhibit since it first arrived back in November, but I never heard that it had a closing date until last week.  The weather last week was far from perfect:  chilly and windy, which made it feel even chillier.  We thought about Saturday, but decided that there would be crowds.  So we went yesterday, the last day of the exhibit.

It was more crowded than I expected, but it was manageable.  Every troll had a small crowd around it, but we were all respectful of the fact that everyone wanted a chance to take a picture.

I was impressed by the variety of ways to get to the trolls.  Some of them were along paths in the woods, which were less accessible to anyone with mobility issues.  But half the trolls were in the garden area along paved walkways.

It was a delightful adventure, and I wish we'd had more time and warmer weather.  In short, I wish I had gone earlier.  But I'm glad to have had the opportunity and happy that my walk in the woods was in search of trolls.

Moonset and Midwinters

I often cannot see the night sky, here in the mountains of North Carolina.  There's usually too many trees that obscure the view, which seems a fair trade most nights.  But in the winter months of no leaves on the trees, I get unexpected treats as I glimpse a star here and there.

This morning there was the delight of the setting moon.  I was working on a poem that I was writing, a poem inspired by an in-class writing experiment that led to some good student writing (see this blog post for details).  I thought I might write from the point of view of the saw mill blade, but instead, I focused on the door frame, the door frame that was once a tree, that sacrificed essential parts of itself to become a door frame.  Was it worth it?  The door frame feels sorrow, much like many adults I know who feel sorrow about the sacrifices made along the way.

As I was writing it, the poem seemed tired and trite to me.  Writing about it now, I think it has potential.  I'll put it away for a bit and see if anything new comes to me.

As I was writing, the setting moon caught my eye, and I thought, I'd probably see this beautiful moon better if I turned off the lights in this room.  And so, I did, and it was amazing, watching the moon set beyond the bare branches of the trees.  The moon was shrouded in haze, so it had more of a Halloween vibe than a December vibe.  I tried to summon a December feeling by thinking about the haunting Christmas hymn, "In the Deep Midwinter."  I thought about Christina Rossetti, author of the words.

I wrote this Facebook post:   "The moon is setting to the west, and I see it through the bare branches of the trees, and I hum a bit of "In the Bleak Midwinter," and think about Christina Rossetti's underappreciated brilliance, like the brilliance of the moon, reflecting the light of those Pre-Raphaelites, transforming that light into something far more focused and incisive."

I thought about trying to take a picture to go with the Facebook post, but my phone isn't as advanced as those that other people have.  The picture would have been more spooky than wintry, if it captured anything much at all.

And now the mountains are the rosy purple of reflected sunrise.  And now it is time to get back to grading, a constant for the next few days.

Hurricane Helene, One Year Later

At this time a year ago, I'd be up and about, as I always am, doing some hurricane tracking, thinking about last minute packing.  A year ago, my plan was to wait for sunrise and then drive to Williamsburg, where I was scheduled to lead a writing workshop at my mom's women's retreat.  A year ago, I thought I might wait until mid-morning to leave, when I expected the worst of the rain from the remnants of Hurricane Helene to be over.

By mid-morning, trees were crashing all around our neighborhood.  Thankfully, none fell on our house, but some of our neighbors were not so lucky.  When I saw big trees across the neighborhood roads, I realized I wasn't leaving in the afternoon.  I asked my neighbor across the street if she thought I could get out of town on Saturday morning.  She said, "I don't think you'll be going on your trip."

She was right.  By afternoon, North Carolina authorities advised that all roads in western North Carolina be considered impassible.  Of course, I didn't know that, because I was trying to conserve cell phone power.  Our power went off just before 5:30 a.m. and didn't come back on for over a week.  Internet and water proved harder to restore.  We did have running water for all but a few days.  We had to boil it, but it did come clear out of the taps, so it was safe for flushing and relatively safe for showers (I was careful not to let any get in my eyes or mouth).  We were without internet for 20 days, and happily, most days our phones could work as a hotspot.

This year, I am in Williamsburg, hoping to lead my writing workshop today.  This year, it is raining, and I'm reminding myself that I am safe.  This year, I'm saying a prayer for all those who will find today a tough day, with hurricane memories and other triggers.

Hurricane Irma Anniversary

On this day in 2017, we'd have been putting our most valuable possessions in the cars and driving further inland to get away from Hurricane Irma.  It was actually not the most panicked I felt in the lead up to that storm.  That moment came a day or two earlier, when it looked like South Florida might get a direct hit from Irma as a category 4 storm.

The folks in the Keys got to experience Irma as a category 4 storm.  We still had plenty of damage, and in some ways, we never recovered.  Sure, we fixed the damage.  But before Irma, we never fully realized how vulnerable that house was to flooding, and how much more likely we would be having flooding as the sea levels rose.

We could argue that it all turned out O.K.  We sold that house in the height of the South Florida real estate boom, and we sold it just in time.  We closed the deal in January of 2022; we wouldn't be so lucky now.  It took longer to move from contract to closing than we were expecting.  Several offers were rescinded when potential buyers discovered how much flood insurance would cost.

I am relieved to be someplace safer.  Even the experience of Hurricane Helene has not changed my mind, although I do see the irony that we left South Florida, which hasn't had much hurricane damage since Hurricane Irma, and got here in time for the worst natural disaster in North Carolina history.  But my hope here is that we've experienced a once in a hundred year storm, even factoring in climate change.  And we had no damage, so we fared better than many.

In some ways, I feel extraordinarily lucky.  I now have a dream job at Spartanburg Methodist College.  Once again, I thought of how much the world has changed since I last taught some of the literature I'm covering this fall.  Yesterday I taught the poetry of Keats, which I haven't taught since the early years of this century.  Back then, I had to do a bit of explaining about how much more communicable respiratory diseases can be than say, bloodborne diseases like AIDS.  Yesterday, as I was explaining tuberculosis, I thought about the fact that we've now had a global pandemic that my students have experienced personally, although I think tuberculosis is more ghastly than Covid 19, at least now.  We have a vaccine to protect us against Covid 19, although who knows how long those will continue to be available under the current regime.

I am in a place now that I couldn't have seen a way to get to back in 2017, when I was assessing possessions and getting ready for a hurricane.  I have a full-time teaching job at a small, liberal arts college.  I am still writing, and just yesterday, got an acceptance (more on that when the short story appears in South 85 Journal).  I live in a part of North Carolina where the cost of living is MUCH cheaper than in South Florida.  Although housing seems to be similarly expensive everywhere, our insurance and taxes are much cheaper here.

I do realize how lucky we are--not a day goes by when I am not grateful.

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.

Thursday Strands: Mountains and Abandoned Summer Camps and a New Version of "Frankenstein"

This morning, I'm a bit tired, and yet I still have two teaching days to go.  So let me collect some strands and see if they make a coherent cloth:

--I am officially done with CPE, although I'm sure I'll continue thinking about it and processing it all for some time.  It was such a mixture of things:  rewarding, exhausting, challenging, on and on I could go.  I feel very lucky to have had a great group of people in the Chaplains department.  I have heard the CPE horror stories, and each day I felt immense gratitude for the people around me.

--Yesterday, the morning view of the mountains was stunning, with swirls of clouds.  I thought, I will miss this view.  Of course, I'll have other views of other mountains throughout the week as I drive back and forth to Spartanburg and Bristol.

--I read an interview with Guillermo del Toro, who has directed/created a new version of Frankenstein.  How fortuitous that it comes out the same semester when I'm teaching it!  It sounds like it will be a movie that is more faithful to the book than past movies have been, but I've been fooled that way before.

--Last night, as I focused on bill paying tasks, my spouse had a YouTube video playing about Thoreau's Walden--it was a delightful listen of snippets from the journal along with some biographical and historical tidbits.  I have no idea what the purpose of the video was; it didn't seem deep enough to have an educational purpose, and it didn't include a lot of personal appreciation.

--This morning, as I walked around camp, I thought of families who have bought old camps.  I thought of the E. B. White essay, "Once More to the Lake," that my Creative Writing class is reading and using for inspiration.  I'm thinking of a book for middle school readers, sort of a Harriet the Spy, if Harriet lived at an abandoned summer camp and was an aspiring naturalist.  Or maybe it's a story for older readers, and maybe it involves a ghost from the 19th century.

A Look Back at Music Week

What a week it has been!  Today is the last day of Music Week at Lutheridge.  The pastor of my South Florida church and his wife have stayed with us.  She participates in Music Week, while he goes off to photograph waterfalls.  My mom and dad have stayed at Lutheridge lodging, but we've seen them every day, often for the evening meal.  My spouse has also participated in Music Week.  I have still been deep in C.P.E., but I have done evening activities:  worship service on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, and the hymnfest last night at the gorgeous St. James Episcopal church in nearby Hendersonville.

The week has zoomed by.  Each morning, I've gone for a walk with my pastor's wife, who is a dear friend.  

We've left the house at 6 a.m., take our walk, had heart-to-heart conversations during our walk, and then returned for oatmeal.  Then I've gone off for chaplaincy training.

One morning on our walk, we noticed a car up the road that had stopped.  As we approached, the car pulled forward and told us to be careful, as there was a mother bear and 4 cubs down the driveway.

I couldn't get a shot of all of the bears, but I am sure that there were 4 cubs.  That made me so happy.  Various neighbors have seen a mother bear with two cubs, which made us wonder about the other cubs.  Now it seems we might have multiple bears in the neighborhood.  I'm glad to see that they've survived.

We are at the midway point of chaplaincy training.  I've spent part of the week writing a document about what I've learned so far and what I hope to learn in the remaining time.  It's a more complex document than one might expect.  We also spent a day in our cohort discussing what we've written and experienced.  A major part of CPE is the processing of it all, and I'm grateful for that aspect.

Summer is zooming by!  In some ways we're at the midway point of summer, but in fact, we're slightly past the midway point.  My online classes that I teach will end in just a few weeks, and my onground classes begin on August 12.

Our houseguests leave today, but my mom and dad will stay for the week-end.  I'm glad that we can all take the time to be together a bit longer, to linger in the midpoint of summer.

Camp Recollections in a Time of Floods

The news has been full of reports out of Texas, of flash floods that came in the darkness and swept campers away--and whole camps that were at the water's edge.  These reports remind me of  Hurricane Helene reports, in the way that there were warnings that got increasingly dire, and then the situation became increasingly dire.  I read about one couple in a campground that went to sleep in a gentle rain and were swept away by the Toe River; one of their bodies has yet to be found.

I am thinking of my own time leading Girl Scouts on a backpacking trip by the Chatooga River.  It was summer, so we slept under tarps.  The  first night there was a terrifying thunderstorm, and we all huddled together, with girls crying to go home, right now, please.  Eventually the storm passed, and we settled into an exhausted sleep.

In the morning, the girls still wanted to go home, and I was inclined to agree.  Happily, our leader wasn't having any of it.  We packed our wet gear, hiked to the next site, and spread it all out to dry, which it did by bedtime.  The rest of the backpacking trip passed with no incident, and in the end, we were glad we stuck with it.

I wonder if those girls heard the reports of cabins swept away and thought back to that storm.  In our case, from what I could tell, the river didn't rise, and the rainfall wasn't abnormal.  I was more worried about lightning than floods--it was a different time.

In that pre-cell phone time, we couldn't have gone home after that first stormy night, even if we had wanted to, at least not easily.  We'd have had to hike back to the place where we began the hike and then had to find a phone and then called the home Girl Scout camp, which was a day's drive away.  By the time they would have come for us, we would have had a day or two of waiting.  Far better to be out on the trail, hiking towards the  pick up point further down the river.  I can say that because no one was hurt, and there were no other threats looming.

Last night, a different kind of camp started--it's Music Week at Lutheridge!  It will be a different kind of week for me; I will miss a lot of it.  But I plan to go to evening events.  Last night was Holden Evening Prayer at the chapel, as the sun set.  It was a peaceful way to offset the news stories about a different camp experience, far away in Texas.

Whirlwind Week

What a whirlwind of a week!  On Tuesday, I felt a bit draggy, with that, "It's only Tuesday" despair.  It's been exhausting and wonderful and overwhelming with some relief thrown in.  Let me capture a few overarching themes and capture some items I want to remember.

CPE Training

Of course, the big news of the week has been the beginning of CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education), the process that trains chaplains to work in a variety of settings.  My setting for this summer is the Asheville VA Hospital, and so far, it's a great place to work.  I've written several blog posts already, so I won't write much more. 

Yesterday we shadowed various people from the chaplain department.  We went on rounds, we visited individuals, and some of us went to groups.  It was great to leave the conference room and to have a day where we did a variety of activities.  By the end of the day, I had gotten all my keys and gotten my Chaplain badge that tells people more about who I am.

Poem Ideas

My work this week gave me inspiration for possible poems.  Let me record them here so that I remember.  The most promising idea is Noah's Wife working as a chaplain in the VA hospital.  Hospital, ark, are they really so different?  I also see some potential in putting Cassandra in CPE training--Cassandra who has spent so much of her life with people not listening to her.  And now, she is training herself to keep silent, which she discovers is not a gift she has.

Wildlife Sightings

Yesterday on my way to work, a commuting route that takes me down the Blue Ridge Parkway, I saw two big turkeys crossing the road, along with at least 12 baby chicks.  Are baby turkeys called chicks?  Anyhow, I was able to come to a stop to let them get safely across.  On Thursday, I had a less dramatic turkey sighting, just one turkey standing by the side of the Blue Ridge Parkway.

My spouse had a much more dramatic wildlife sighting.  In broad daylight, a smallish bear came up on the deck, raised up on two legs, and licked all of the birdseed out of the feeder affixed to the sliding glass door.  The bear then ambled around the deck and then left.  My spouse was inside.

Success in Advocating for a Student

One of my online students from several semesters ago wrote to me asking me for help:  a letter to his current school to help him get the class that I taught to be counted as a writing class.  I was happy to do it.  I had to go back to review the class, since it's not one I taught often.  I wrote a solid letter showing how the class met the writing intensive goals of the student's current school.  Yesterday I heard from the student who wrote to thank me and to let me know that the class had been counted as a writing class--my letter convinced them!  I am always happy for this kind of good news. 

What I'm Not Writing About    

In future years, will I wonder why I didn't write more about the protests in L.A. or the military parade and protests happening today?  Will I wonder why I didn't write more about the Israel-Iraq escalation?  In future years will I see CPE as a life changing experience?  What am I not seeing?

Spring Term: Done at Last!

It is finally here, the moment I've dreamed of, the moment that I was afraid I might not be able to find.  My last set of grades are turned in, as are my last seminary papers.  Let me take a moment to collect some fragments so that I remember.

--People might see the above sentences and think I'm done with work for a bit.  Nope--I need to update course shells for my online courses for summer which start on May 13.  I am still the Synod Approved Minister for Faith Lutheran in Bristol, TN.

--Last week, we didn't go to Bristol because I was at the Create in Me retreat.  Yesterday we were both amazed at how the trees have gone from budding to green.  It was almost disorienting, to go from being able to see far beyond the highway to not being able to see beyond the trees at all.

--But I am also so glad that the trees that were so late to budding and leafing are green now, and not dead, like I was afraid that they were.

--I am remembering USC grad school days--when I was done with classes, both the ones I taught and the ones I took, I'd head to the public library to get reading for fun.  Our public libraries are closed on Mondays, but tomorrow--tomorrow is a possibility.  I have a pile of books to return, now that I've finished writing papers.

I am having trouble thinking of things to say--a bit braindead, after so much grading to meet today's noon deadline for grades.  Let me go for a walk to clear my head.

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 Success of Adopting a Tree in a Composition Class

Before I get too far away from the teaching semester, let me record what went well in English 101 at Spartanburg Methodist College, here in one concise post.

I began the semester with a lot of ideas, but the one I was most committed to was the idea of adopting a tree.  I had in mind we'd choose our tree in early September and that we'd return to it throughout the semester and describe how it was changing.  In the last week of August, we went outside to choose our tree, and I wrote a blog post about it here.

I decided to have us do a few more experiments--once they chose a tree, they wrote directions to it, and then we tested them.  That experience gave us a great way to talk about precise language.

I wanted them to read the work of others who had adopted a tree.  I had saved one article from The Washington Post, and it led me to another article.  We wrote about which author did the better job of convincing a person to adopt a tree.  We talked about the proper way to refer to these two outside sources, and over several class sessions, we talked about how these skills are transferable to writing a research paper.

I didn't realize that I was going to combine all these efforts into one paper.  I thought about having them choose one approach (description/describing a tree, process/writing directions to the tree, using outside sources in arguing that everyone should have a favorite tree, and maybe a creative approach) and write it up.  But I decided that it worked as a larger paper with parts, so I created a handout that told them how to take the informal writing that we'd been doing and turn it into Essay Two.  They also had to write a reflective piece about all the pieces they'd been writing.

What was really cool is that it seemed to deflect plagiarism.  It's hard to have AI write the description of the tree, such a specific tree.  It was the first time I had done this, so there weren't lots of essays floating around, the way there are if I ask students to write about a social issue.

I had a vision of other modules we'd do, perhaps a birding module, perhaps a photohaiku module, along with a research paper where they would find some outside sources to go with ones that I would hand out.  But there was a hurricane, and we got off schedule in all sorts of ways.

We still needed to do a research essay.  I decided to do an abbreviated experience.  Instead of sending them out to do research, I collected materials.  We watched this TED talk by Suzanne Simard about how trees talk to each other.  Earlier in the year, I found an academic journal article that she co-wrote that covers the same subject, but in a much more scholarly way, and I brought that in, along with an article about her that appeared in The Guardian.  We talked about the differences and similarities between these sources, and we did an annotated Works Cited page--part of it we did together, and the analysis of the works, each student wrote on their own (nothing complicated, just a sentence or two).

Then I brought in some additional sources that covered the same topic, including Simard's larger book and a children's book that covered the same topic.  I had them write a small research paper that analyzed which source covered the topic best and/or which was their favorite.  They had to refer to at least three outside sources, and because we had run out of time, I didn't require them to find other sources, although we did talk about how they would do that in future classes, if they had a more rigorous research assignment.

I do realize what has been lost, in our semester long focus on trees.  I love the idea of students choosing a topic and diving deep and learning a lot.  But through the years, I'm less and less convinced that happens, except for one or two students, who have probably been doing that on their own anyway.

In this time of planetary destruction, teaching students how to notice the world around them seems more important than ever.  Exposing students to the ways of being a naturalist in the world, even if they're not going to be scientists--that seems very important to me.  Along the way we did creative approaches too, which I wrote about in this blog post, and I think those experiences helped some of them realize that they do have creative skills, that these, too, can be learned.

Planting Daffodils

Yesterday, I made this Facebook post with the picture below:  "Weather forecast for today and tomorrow predicted gorgeous weather before colder and wetter weather this week. With the help of spouse Carl, a battery powered drill, and a special augur bit, we planted daffodil bulbs along the front yard fence line. Spring Kristin will thank me!"

But there's more to this story of planting daffodils.

Back in the spring, a friend wanted daffodils in her yard.  She's relatively new to homeownership, relatively new to having a yard.  I said, "Well, it's too late for this year, but we could plan for next spring."  We agreed to buy a batch of bulbs together, and we'd put some of them in her yard, some in mine.  Buying in bulk didn't save us money, but it was fun to plan together.

In May, I ordered 35 bulbs which would be shipped in the fall.  By the time the bulbs arrived, my friend was recovering from a medical crisis and would not be planting this year; her situation has added to the variety of grief I've been feeling this fall (hurricanes and changed plans and the changed health of so many around me).

I've been staring at the package for a few weeks now.  It's been part of a list of tasks that I wanted to get done before the cold weather settles in to stay.  I've moved the paint inside; no sense losing hundreds of dollars worth of paint.  I've thought about firewood, but unlike past years, we have enough downed wood that we won't likely need to worry about wood for years.  I've pulled out the winter clothes.

Sunday's forecast was for sunshine and warmth; today will likely be the last day of sunshine and warmth.  So we headed out to plant the daffodil bulbs by the front fence line by the road.  Last year when I first planted bulbs, I got a $6.00 augur bit for the electric drill, which makes planting much easier.  Even so, we were both achy and sore afterward.  My spouse has been nursing injuries since working with a chainsaw back in October, so he laid down on a heating pad after taking some pain relievers.  I stayed up to watch the sunset, but was asleep soon after.

I have always loved daffodils, and I'm so happy to have a chance to plant them.  I do worry a bit about the animals that may dig them up, but it didn't happen last year.  This year, hopefully the squirrels will be more interested in the pumpkins; in fact, I'll leave them at the front fence post for just that very reason.  I put them there as autumnal decoration, but this year, unlike last year, the squirrels took an early interest in them, which is fine with me.

I am thinking about the planting of bulbs as evidence of faith in the future; for me, it's more than just wanting pretty flowers in the spring.  In the spring, bunches of daffodils come up long after the people who planted them have come and gone.  

Hopefully, my daffodils will do the same.