Harbingers of Hard Times and Vaccines

Yesterday afternoon I got a pneumonia vaccine at Ingles, our local grocery store.  On the face of it, that's not such a strange statement, not a statement that is a comment on modern life.  But let me make a few comments.

And yes, writing about a vaccine might seem like a topic too mundane for a blog post.  But my arm has been aching all night, so it's on my mind.

Getting a pneumonia vaccine wasn't in my plans until recently.  I'm turning 59 in 2 weeks, so I'm not in the group recommended to get a vaccine.  My spouse got one, after his doctor (also my GP) recommended it.  He's a heavy smoker, so he's in a vulnerable population.

Because my spouse is a heavy smoker, the Ingles pharmacist determined that I was eligible for the vaccine.  Lo and behold, my insurance covered it.  I am always surprised when my insurance covers anything, although these days, my insurance covers a lot.  I think of all the years I spent at crummy jobs because at least I had health insurance.  I am grateful that my health insurance is no longer tied to my job (thank you President Obama!).

I decided that it was time for me to get a pneumonia vaccine when a friend got very sick with pneumonia; she's only a few years older than I am.  She had a friend who had Covid and then developed pneumonia--and died!  I feel like I did a decade ago when suddenly I knew many people who were being diagnosed with shingles, and I decided to get the vaccine the minute I was eligible.  

Do I really know that many people who are coming down with pneumonia?  No.  But I feel surrounded by harbingers of hard times ahead, and whatever protection we can get is worth it.  A vaccine is such an easy dose of protection.

I returned home from the grocery store feeling very lucky.  I can go to the grocery store and get a vaccine along with my groceries!  I thought about a time that I wanted to get a tetanus shot ahead of hurricane season, and it was impossible to find.  The South Florida grocery stores didn't offer it, and my doctor didn't have it.  They just didn't think it was important.  I ended up going to the health department where everyone was puzzled ("Did you step on a nail?"), but they did have it, and I did get it.

Back to hurricane watching--speaking of feeling like hard times are just ahead.  We are likely to see Hurricane Beryl become a major hurricane; it's already the furthest east developing storm in June since 1933 (that humdinger of a hurricane season, worst ever).  A major hurricane in June hasn't happened since the 1960's.

Saturday Scraps: June Winds Down

It's been a whirlwind week, in some ways, a slow week in others.  Let me collect some scraps from the past week:

--I've completed some of the chores that come along with modern life.  I'm primarily thinking of the car registration, which requires a safety inspection.  I was able to get both cars inspected on Thursday afternoon, after I got annoyed with myself for wasting so much time during the day.

--I tell myself I've wasted time, but that's not true.  In any given day, there's a certain amount of mindless scrolling through social media and online newspapers.  But I don't waste as much time watching TV as I once did.

--This week, as we've watched TV of the mindless variety and TV of the well-written variety, I've gotten lots of sewing on my quilt done.

--I also went to quilt group on Wednesday.  I helped assemble two quilt tops; the Janome machine is a wonder.

--On Tuesday, I went to both our neighborhood happy hour at Sierra Nevada Brewing Company and my seminary class.  I'm looking forward to Mondays in August, where my neighborhood group will be exploring breweries in Mills River, and for most of the Mondays, I won't have a seminary class to attend.  On Tuesday, my time was tight, so I didn't drink, but it was good to see people and spend time together.

--Today is the two year anniversary of our purchase of this house.  I have no regrets.  It's been good to have a place to live that is paid for, even if it needs a lot of work.  It's a solid house, more solid than we knew when we bought it--a happy turn of events.  It's been a good investment.

--It's been interesting, living in a house in a residential community that's part of a church camp.  During 9 months of the year, it's fairly quiet, downright deserted.  During the summer, we don't hear noise from the camp at our house; the traffic noise from a major road nearby drowns out all other noise.  But my daily walk takes me through the camp, and it's a different experience during the summer, seeing groups of people doing camp things (swimming, walking to the dining hall, playing games in grassy areas).

--Despite the joys of summer, I'm yearning for autumn, even though autumn will be very busy with more teaching and more seminary classes to complete.  Let me continue to work on appreciating the present, even as I'm looking forward to seasons to come. 

The Morning after the First Presidential Debate of 2024

In later years/decades, perhaps I'll wonder why I didn't write more about that first debate of the 2024 campaign.  To be truthful, I only watched a few minutes as I was getting ready for bed, within the first 15 minutes of the start of the campaign.  I only saw Biden speak.  It was painful.  We switched to the peaceful music that we sometimes let play while we drift off to sleep.

This morning, much more well-informed people are offering much more developed opinions than I am able to do.  I am aghast and depressed.  Thomas L. Friedman offered this opinion in his New York Times essay to explain how important this race is, an opinion I share with no hesitation:  "Because this is no ordinary hinge of history we are at. We are at the start of the biggest technological disruptions and the biggest climate disruption in human history."

The campaign season is long, and much can happen between now and the election, and many of the possibilities are horrifying.  Like much of the U.S. citizenry (and probably much of the world), I cannot believe we are having these same two candidates again.  Both have huge flaws.  I think Biden has been a good president, but I worry about the toll that four more years will take.  In many of his policies, Trump seems to think it's still 1982.  I will refrain from commenting on other problems that both men have as candidates and as humans.

I vacillate.  I am most often thinking that none of it matters, that climate change is accelerating, and our situation is changing in ways we can't even perceive right now.  But then I think about the hinge points of history, and how various humans have made a clear difference.  I don't know that either man will be capable of that.

I did not intend to write so much about politics this morning, particularly since I didn't watch the debate.  I didn't watch the debate in part because I didn't want to fill my head with negativity right before sleep.  I should have followed the same advice this morning.  Ugh.

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.

Low Energy Monday

I am off schedule this morning.  It would be interesting to go back through this blog and see how often I am off schedule on Mondays.  It often takes awhile for my Sunday to catch up with me, and I am surprised to find myself tired on Mondays.

We are also having summerish temperatures, which disrupts my sleep, regardless of air conditioning.  Air conditioning helps, don't get me wrong.  But I much prefer a lovely winter bedroom, when the outside temp is cool, and I am snuggled in flannel (flannel pjs, flannel sheets).  The overnight temps are much cooler here than they are other places, but it's still humid.

Yesterday left me more wiped out than usual.  I decided that with the early sunrise in summer, I would get my walk in before we left for Bristol at 7:30 a.m.  That was successful:  a lovely walk.  Yesterday was a longer day at church, with sandwiches and ice cream sundaes after worship.  It was delightful, but it put us home several hours later than usual.

I did some reading on the deck in the late afternoon, which was both delightful and left me too warm.  I feel like I never cooled down enough for a good sleep.  It's strange that I often have disrupted sleep both on the night before Sunday worship and the night after Sunday worship.

Happily, these days I can adjust my schedule on Mondays.  I'm not sure what happens when my schedule picks up mid-August.  Perhaps Mondays will be low-key days in my classroom.  Or maybe teaching will give me energy.

Morning Rambles and Brambles, Evening Concerts

When I was walking around camp early this morning, I heard a deep voice say, "Good morning."  But I didn't see anyone.  I called out, "Good morning--but I don't see you."

The person who owns the voice waved, and then I could see him walking down a path through the forest, the path that runs from the upper craft lodge to the lower lodging spaces for campers.  I recognized him as a counselor, and he didn't seem alarmed to see me.  I was surprised.  This year, campers leave on Fridays, and I have assumed that the counselors would be sleeping a bit later on Saturdays.

As I continued on towards the lake, I thought about hearing a deep voice booming out of nowhere and how my thoughts went to all those Biblical accounts of God speaking out of an non-embodied space.  I thought of hymns about people answering God's call.  I thought about how few call stories there are that involve women late in midlife.

Elsewhere in my walk, I ate the first black raspberry of the season.  I thought they were blackberries last year, but my plant identifying app tells me otherwise.  I am not hopeful about this berry season here at camp.  The few berries that are ripening are very small.  I keep wondering if that fact tells me something about the upcoming winter, but it probably just reflects erratic rainfall.

To get to this morning's berries, I had to scrabble up a small embankment and then try to hop back down without falling.  I did have the thought that I don't really like berries enough to risk a fall.  But it also made me happy that I could do it.

So far, it has been a lovely week-end.  Last night, we sat on our deck and listened to the radio, by way of streaming the station on a computer.  It was the opening night concert of the Brevard Music Festival.  Sure, we could have driven over to Brevard; it's only 30-40 minutes away. There were still tickets, but the cheapest ones were $35 each. 

But in a way, it was lovely to be on our deck, with wine and some nibbles, and the pot of petunias I bought earlier in the day.  It was wonderful to watch the light shift and to have candles.

Of course, the sound would have been better at the actual festival.  We have a fair amount of traffic noise from the main road beyond the trees, and I usually forget that we do, until I'm trying to hear something.

I suppose I should get to the main work of today, creating a sermon for tomorrow and creating the communion bread for tomorrow.  But there will also be treats, like the watermelon that I bought yesterday.  Here's hoping it's a good one!

When RevGalBlogPals Meet in Person

One of the joys of last week's intensive that I haven't written much about was the chance to meet a blogging friend in real life.  In a time that feels very long ago now, there was a group called RevGalsBlogPals, a group for clergywomen and people who support clergywomen.  We blogged about all sorts of things, some of them church related, some not.  There were all sorts of support groups and there were conferences and fun outings.  I was sad to see it end, and like so many things in my life that end, part of me understood and part of me was baffled.

I've continued to see various RevGals in the online realm, but last week, one of them came to the intensive.  I knew that Diane Roth had started the program, but I lost track of her progress; in retrospect, I should have sent her a message in advance so that it was less awkward on that first day.  I saw her nametag before she got there, but I wasn't sure how to say, "I know you online, but I'm not sure if you know me."  Sure, in retrospect, I should have just said that, but I was worried I might sound like a weird stalker.

Happily, Diane took the first step, and she did it during the pre-dinner meet and greet, which meant that we could spend the rest of the intensive as friends, not as people wondering how they knew each other.  On Friday at lunch, she asked what I was planning to do during our free time.  I talked about going to the library, and she wanted to go to an independent bookstore.  She tries to go to independent bookstores as she travels, and I'm happy to support bookstores too.  I had a car, which she didn't, and I'm familiar with Columbia.  It was a recipe for a successful outing to All Good Books in Five Points.

And we did have a successful outing.  The bookstore had a great selection of books, and we both found one to buy.  I was happy to find Susan Rich's latest book; I love supporting poets and independent books by buying books from bookstores.  

Alas, we didn't have time to buy a coffee or to explore Five Points.  We had to get back for more instructional sessions, which after all, was the reason we had come to the seminary campus.   I was happy to post this picture to Facebook, happy to be part of my favorite subgenre of FB posts, when online friends meet in real life and realize that they are just as delightful in person as online: