Didn't learn it when I was a little girl

About once every five years, I try again to make biscuits. I don't mean the kind that pops out of a can and I don't mean drop biscuits (the kind I make several times a month). No, for some reason I've got the insane idea that I should be able to learn how to put together ingredients, cut biscuits in circles, and have them come out looking something like the ones at Bob Evans. Or something close.

Apparently, this is a basic skill, so basic that it's assumed of every good cook. The problem is that I was never taught this one when I was a little girl, and apparently my mother doesn't know it either.

So this morning, to make things simpler, I got out the Pioneer Baking Mix and the milk and tried again. And I got the usual result: A big, adhesive, gooey mass that sticks to everything, refuses to stay together, and definitely cannot be cut into circles.

The drop biscuits were delicious.

Late-breaking

Somehow I'm obsessed with this. I watched three or four YouTube videos on making biscuits. None of them showed an adhesive gloppy mess—all of the dough appeared to be fairly smooth, dry, rounded stuff that could be handled. The presenters could actually pick it up off the table.

I'm wondering. Is this one of those recipes that simply cannot be cut in half? Have all of my various attempts (different brands of premix, different cookbook from-scratch recipes) specified far too much liquid?

I did get the idea that, like meringue, the specific requirements are incredibly fussy and precise—and something one only learns by trial-and-error over dozens of tries. Cooks.com, usually a storehouse of reliable, matter-of-fact recipes, launched instead into sort of a mystical essay filled with "perhaps" and "maybe." So here's where I am:

• The temperature of the shortening is extremely important. It should either be very cold or room temperature, depending on the teacher one is following. Apparently this eliminates Pioneer from the race, because the shortening and the rest of the ingredients will always be the same temperature.
• I didn't use a pastry blender, and that's a mistake. Most of the recipes demand one of those.
• I was supposed to have cut the shortening in until it was the size of peas. Or maybe the size of rice. Or maybe smaller. Depends on the recipe. Certainly, the boxed mix won't allow me to do anything like that, so another reason it won't work.
• Apparently it's a big deal to make a cup-shaped depression in the middle of the dry ingredients and put all the liquid in there at once. I simply dumped it in. That's another reason for today's failure. I was only working with a cup and a half of dry ingredients, so I didn't really have room for that cup-shaped hole.
• One thing I did get right was that I avoided handling the sticky, gloppy mess too much. Only the old 1933 Bisquick recipe says to "Beat dough hard for 30 seconds to make it tighten up enough to handle." The rest seem terrified of any excess handling. I didn't twist my cutter either, but I was working with something that resembled a combination of Elmer's glue and white cake frosting.
• It was a little frustrating to see the serene lady picking up the neat rounds from her cutting board and laying them deftly on the cookie sheet. My biscuits were a lot more like yesterday's chocolate chip cookies. When I could get a spatula under them to lift them, they pretty much wadded up.

Tomorrow's another day. I'll measure out some Crisco tonight and put it in the fridge. Tomorrow I'll go with the chilled shortening option. Then the next day I'll try the warm one.

Really cooking

Did cooking marathon today. I promised to take a meal to a church family (recently out of hospital), and it just sort of got away from me. Of course the church family is getting my usual—an enormous pot of fairly mild chili. And that's not much of a meal, so I made some wheat bread to go with it. One loaf is about as much trouble as two, so I made a loaf to take over to Joel and Heidi, just recently back in town from South Carolina. And a meal really needs a dessert, so I threw together some chocolate chip cookies from a mix. Then I realized that I had nothing for my own lunch, so it was time to boil some pasta and throw some basil pesto on top.

The poor stove doesn't know what hit it. It's been working hard from about 9:30 to 2 p.m. And that's not even counting Jared's three loaves of bread and my pan of brownies for the church Christmas party on Saturday.

The Word from USA Today

In case you missed it in either USA Today or reprinted in the Mansfield News Journal, this article about church hospitality suggests that eating at church is the "next big thing," and likely to be a real healing influence.

I'm not sure why, but the coffee-and-cookies after church at GFC really doesn't work quite the way it's supposed to. I doubt if it's bad memories—few of the current members remember the awkward announcements when this idea first surfaced (coffee was free for guests but members were expected to pay). Maybe it's the lack of places to sit? Maybe it's the crowd around the window? For whatever reason, the coffee bar isn't fostering the congregational meeting and mixing that we need so much.

The USA Today article seems to be talking about much more substantial food, too—both quantity and quality. Starbuck's is a hard act to follow.

But that's another subtopic

I've always had a deep love for botany—no doubt beginning back in my Boy Scouting days, and nourished by college professors like Barry Commoner. Aside from my distress at (and, alas, complicity in) environmental destruction, global warming, etc., one thing that always strikes me when I look at a plant in its environment is that this is really good stuff! The way a plant or animal is put together and interacts with its environment is beautifully orchestrated, carefully adjusted, and extremely elegant. As a very minor illustration, the BBC website today had a video of octopus tool-making.

Somehow, though, when we Christians get together, our food, music, and most of our other preparations have to be last-minute, low-quality, unplanned, and slapdash, or they are not "of the Spirit." I'm not convinced.

Late-breaking comment

This morning (Tuesday, December 22) I looked back at this comment and sighed. Sunday morning was supposed to be a big, well-organized Christmas extravaganza. Dozens of people put weeks of work into it. And the worship team, whose job it is to lead the congregational singing, didn't get around to making a list of songs for the PowerPoint team until about 9 a.m. Two of the songs were new ones that nobody knew and nobody had the words. But of course, if you listen to the Christian radio station you know them anyhow, right? But hey, if you play guitar, you can't think things up in advance. It's just not spiritual.

One more snipe at electronic money

I looked at the calendar today and realized that I probably should have a paycheck from Ashland University. Their pay schedule is irregular, and they have been trying unsuccessfully since September to get direct deposit to work for me, so I figured it was about time (again) to do some searching.

I guess I'm obsessive, because I stayed on the project for an hour and a half. After an hour of trying every search term (and search engine) I could think of, I just gave up and sent an e-mail to my secretary. Then I thought of a few more ways to conduct the search—all of which failed. Apparently the schedule just isn't published anywhere except in the paper copy of the adjunct manual, which is only available by request  because of the expense of printing the thing. So now I know that on the 18th I need to drive to Ashland to pick up the check that they won't mail because of the expense.

Ashland isn't alone. NCSC, which also has a very irregular (and late) pay schedule doesn't make it available either. Theirs is easy to remember, though. If I work an 8-week summer session, I get paid in weeks six, eight, and ten. Approximately. If I work there next summer, it's anybody's guess, though, because they have gone to the arcane world of direct deposit too.

The University of Akron seems to have things nailed down better than the others. Direct deposit works flawlessly, and I can even find out online when they have paid me, except, of course, for the last paycheck of the semester. You see, the pay advice is available on a server that's only available to employees, and because I'm an adjunct, my contract terminates about three weeks before the final paycheck is issued, so of course I can't check to find whether (or how much) I got paid. Because I don't work there any more.

And the lady at Chase Bank thought I was silly for wanting the simple days of paper checks and paper check stubs.

Blog Changes

You'll notice the new look, of course. I had several HTML links in my posts, and the old template didn't make them show up too well. I tried a couple of ways to fix it, but ultimately a different template was the best choice.

The most interesting change, though, is that I've enabled comments. I keep seeing readers from interesting places, and I'm curious who they might be. No, your comments won't appear instantly. I've got to approve them (that way I'll cull out all the ads for tooth whiteners and penis expanders—if those overwhelm me, I'll have to enable that irritating thing where you decipher the scrambled word).

Anyhow, I'd love to have conversation here.

Why we don't need men's groups

I had a lot of extra time yesterday, waiting for students to pick up their portfolios, so I did some reading about loneliness in America. One article claims that loneliness is contagious, like the flu. Lonely people, it says, tend to make others feel lonely, then cut ties with the group—and the process continues as the newly "infected" people make others feel lonely, then leave too. It's like a sweater unraveling. Another article points out that one in four American homes is a single-person dwelling, and that over a twenty-year period, the average number of people the average American discusses "important matters" with dropped from three to two, while a quarter of all Americans have nobody at all to discuss "important matters" with.

But what has all this to do with Grace Fellowship Church? Nothing much, I'd say.

We don't see the phenomenon of grumpy people spreading toxic emotions, then dropping off the edge of the group, do we?

Which brings me to men's groups and to social events in general. Years ago, lonely farmers and their wives yearned for social interaction, so they would go to church, organize potluck dinners, get a Grange going, have square dances, and so forth. If you think of 19th century farmers, you frequently come up with group ideas: barn-raisings, quilting bees, and the group of men who gather on the courthouse steps in Millersburg to simply talk. My uncle, who has lived all his long life in a small town near Wooster, gets up every morning to have breakfast at 6 a.m. with the same gang of cronies he's eaten with for four decades.

We do very few of those things (and we always feel awkward when we try) because we simply don't need them. For years, GFC was taught (sort of informally and quietly) that friendship bonds between men were only appropriate for those who weren't married yet; a married man was to shun all of his former connections because his wife needs 100% of his attention. Do you need to talk with someone about your future plans or job fears? You've got a wife. Is sexual temptation an issue? Talk with your wife. Would you like to just kick back and tell a couple of jokes? You've got a wife. Not only does nearly every man over 25 years old have a wife to talk with, but nearly every important person in the church has other peer groupings. The elders have other elders. The music ministry people have other music ministry people. Not only that, but many of the men in the church have started their own businesses and work with other Christian men.

The needs of men in this church—at least the men who count—are already taken care of. No need for men's groups.

Now, I'm somewhat at a loss to explain why women need groups. They always seem to have something going: retreats, prayer groups, worship meetings, and so forth. Maybe the answer to my question is sort of graphical. Imagine an old-fashioned wagon wheel, minus the rim. Just the hub and the spokes. The women are the cohesive hub, tightly bonded together, caring for one another's needs. Each woman has a spoke attached: her husband. There's no rim, so the husbands don't have any natural association with one another, but that's OK because they have their wives. And that's the picture of the church.

I'm having trouble fitting the single men into this model, but maybe that's OK because there aren't many at all (three or four over 25 years old), so the majority of the men's needs in the church really are being met. As I read back over the article by the two psychiatrists in the Utne Reader, though, I keep hitting quotations that resonate and I'm not too sure what to do with them:

We treat socializing as if it’s a frivolous diversion from the tasks at hand rather than an activity that is essential to our well-being as individuals and as a community.

Parents who don’t have relatives or friends to help them gain perspective on their offspring are more likely to over-scrutinize the strange, quirky symptoms that are part of normal childhood development and to start wondering if their child will grow up to be a strange, quirky, and abnormal adult.

Loneliness was never the goal. It’s just the spot where too many people wind up. We get stuck because the world we have wandered away from is so frantic and demanding. We get stuck because we have dreamed about lonesome heroes who stand defiantly apart. We get stuck because we feel left out and stop looking for ways back in. We should remember that the outside was not meant to be our final destination.

Facebook flop

I've been told that Facebook is THE killer application at the moment. NOBODY uses e-mail any more. NOBODY does AIM. NOBODY reads blogs (which makes this an incredibly private exercise here).

So I caved in a few months ago and got an account. It wasn't exactly the hottest experience of my life. There was something like a 25-word limit on posts, so people would say things like "I'm eating popcorn and relaxing." Then the reply "I like this."

Deep, man!

Well I gave up on it for a while. Then today I finally had some time and went back. I read a few posts and tried to post one myself. Well the reading part went OK, but apparently there's a trick or two I don't know when it comes to posting things. My comment disappeared altogether.

I'll keep trying, though I don't think I'll buy Facebook for Dummies. If 100 million of the nation's dimmest citizens can figure out how to say, "I'm drinking Pepsi now," I'm sure I can eventually figure it out too.

And I'll probably follow the strategy I used recently with a friend. I had something to say to him, so I sent an e-mail. Then when I talked with him on the phone, I told him that I'd sent the email and that he should read it.

Late-breaking news

I've had a few extra hours, so I think I finally figured out 80% of Facebook. Their problem, obviously, is that they hired the same guy who designed the Windows desktop—the one who decided that the best way to shut off your computer is to click "Start". It doesn't help, either, that the software has several nearly-identical areas to post in (and the posts sometimes copy between them—and sometimes don't) or that the names of these sub-areas change from time to time. Thus:

• They used to call it "The Wall" but now it's "Profile" and if you post a comment there, it will appear elsewhere, but other people's comments there are not visible elsewhere.
• "Home" has a "News Feed" and a "Live Feed" but they are apparently the same. They seem to have a lot of the same content as the Wall (aka Profile)
• "Status Updates" seems to pick up comments other people put on their Wall, but it doesn't pick up anything I wrote.
• The Mansfield, Ohio group seems to pick up things that local people in my friends group have put in their Wall.

It's all incredibly complicated and redundant. I can't imagine why this Byzantine piece of software has taken the world by storm. Maybe the weirdness is the reason Twitter is so popular.

The end has come

I'm finally done! The grades are posted for both schools, and I am officially unemployed! At least until January 11. Feels pretty good. I spent Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday holed up in my apartment grading portfolios, and (of course) drove to Akron during the first really nasty piece of weather this winter.

The drive was OK, but difficult, with blowing snow, poor visibility, and high winds. I kept snoring along at a mere 65 mph in the 65 zone, while people passed me as if I were standing still. The question ran through my head: why is a snowstorm good for 80 mph? And then I figured out the answer. Between the bitter weather (15 degrees and a high wind) and the dangerous driving, the State Troopers aren't going to do much ticketing for speeding. So of course! We put the hammer down and drive somewhere close to a century.

I'm still working, though. In my mind, anyhow. I'm prepping for the next semester, wondering what to do with my classes. That will wind down, but I probably ought to keep the pressure on anyhow. After January 1, I might be too distracted to do much preparation.

Am I Alone?

I'm sitting in my Akron office, grading papers. It's a tiny room (about 15 by 12 feet) that contains three desks, and I'm supposed to share it with five other people. I'm alone here now, though, and have been since I showed up at 10 a.m.

A student comes tentatively to the door. She asks for one of my office mates. She looks around the empty room and asks, "Is she here?" Yes. She's just invisible at the moment.

Another student comes to the door. He peers around too, then asks if my office mate is in the room. Yep. Hiding in the filing cabinet.

Back Again

Thanksgiving vacation is over. I'm back at home and ready for the final run of academic work.

Tools of the Trade

Bought my 14-year-old nephew a fountain pen yesterday. He's writing a book, but he won't let me see it. I figured that we writers need to stick together and he needs a good tool to write with, so there it is, a student Lamy pen.

I think adults often forget the impact of small acts of confidence and small encouragements like that. I should try to remember too. When I was about eight years old, my aunt, who was teaching elementary school, asked me to do a drawing. I did a picnic with all the food and dishes laid out very neatly, and I labeled it "Picknick."

She praised the drawing and pointed out that my misspelling made sense. After all, "pick" is a word, and so is "nick." Somehow I remember that fondly all these years later.

Mama Jackson

Lots of folks may scorn the idea of Mama Jackson's candy bag. It's not spiritual. It's not health food. It promotes at least one of the deadly sins (greed). When the kids are thinking of the candy bag, they aren't focused on singing or dancing or speaking in tongues or something.

But you know, when the kids grow up and return to the church, that candy bag is one of their fondest memories.

Years ago, when I was still involved in youth ministry, I remember an article in Group magazine, a professional magazine for youth group leaders. Someone wanted to find out why Church A had poor attendance at their youth groups while Church B was doing extremely well. Charismatic leaders? Great music? Thoughtful programs? So they asked the kids and got a simple answer.

Pizza.

And every time I tell someone from outside the church how rarely we eat together and try to describe our BYOF (Bring Your Own Food) church picnics, I receive the same puzzled look. My mother gave me the look this morning. I might have been describing a ceremonial bloodletting from the look on her face.

Anyhow, as I've been getting into cooking more and more—getting good with breads and cookies—one question has crossed my mind: When will I ever have a chance to do this kind of baking for someone else? I don't have an answer. And I get pretty tired of eating from the same batch of brownies for a week.

I've strayed from my point. I was intending to end this with a suggestion that the church begin thinking of food in the same light as music. Put the same amount of effort and money into congregational eating as we have in congregational singing, and appoint a Food Czar. And my nomination would be Mama Jackson.

Cupertino weather

Why, oh why, when my computer's weather reporter cannot organize itself, does it report weather from Cupertino, California? Or Orlando, Florida? Never New York or Washington. Or Chicago. Or even Los Angeles.

Getting angry

I'm pondering the students around me in the Student Union—OK that's unfair because these are the lunch bunch and the time-wasters on the day before Thanksgiving—and I've got conflicting thoughts.

Ever since Plato and Aristotle, teachers have been lamenting that today's crop of students are lazy, useless drunks. Go back to Brideshead Revisited and you see a classic example from the 1920s. University professors are always frustrated because we are idealists and our students aren't. At least not in the departments we value.

But I need to get angry, get sharp(er) and demand excellence. I need to expect it, even of the Ashland football players. And I need to stop rewarding mediocrity. At least in Ashland the trend is started. Only about half to two-thirds of my students will pass the class, and that's because the others didn't show up, didn't turn stuff in, and didn't develop the skills necessary to write on a level appropriate to a high school graduate.

Next step? Ask for more, especially of the more able Akron crowd.

While I'm getting angry ("energized" would probably be a better word), it's time to sharpen up some other areas of life. Housekeeping. Mentoring Jared. Involvement in church. Why shouldn't I/we strive for excellence and become angry when we accept less?

Almost Free

As of about midnight last night, I am caught up with all the major grading. Minor stuff (looking at a few online homeworks) is still in my future, but I've got a very full briefcase to give back today.

Ashland is so finished that all I need to do is grade about two dozen final exams (written by someone else's students) and give back the results.

Akron isn't much more complex.

So tomorrow morning, I get to drive to Washington, using the old backroads (no Interstates for me unless I'm out of options). It will be a little sad and weird because I'll miss doing the big Christmas/Thanksgiving thing at mom's house. My sister will be in town, bunking with our brother, and I'll be in Mom's back bedroom of her new apartment. It won't be the same as past years, but I'll take a deep breath.

Ready for vacation

Fall semester is so draining, especially with as many courses as I teach. Today's crop of students was particularly irritating—absolutely no sense that they intend to learn anything in my class, or even to have any courtesy for the other students.

Thanksgiving is looking very appealing.

I think next semester, I'll simply ask disruptive students to leave the classroom.

Social blunder

My Ashland students are writing their final in-class paper at the moment. The topic, prescribed by the Department, is "discuss how you have developed as a writer and student over the course of the semester."

One of the students asked, "What if I don't think I've developed?"

He must not realize how much that sounds like "your teaching has been ineffective." Anyhow, his grade is just a couple of points under a "pass" at this point. Maybe he didn't really change all that much.

Deadline

I promise this is my last word on men's ministries (for a while at least).

I'm seeing a problem with Jerry's "post high-school" group. When is a person too old? And how does a leader eject a too-old person?

The high school group has a natural ejection process. Almost. When high school ends, many of the recent graduates just hang around for the summer, but many of them go away to a different town for college. Problem solved—almost. There have often been students who never left town and simply wouldn't stop attending the high school group. Their friends are there; they feel like kids; and there's nothing else for them in the church.

Voilà! A new answer! Post-high school group (presumably the "kids" up to about 21 years old). But then what?

When I was in college, I attended such a group at a local Presbyterian church. One of the guys looked a bit older than the rest of us, but then again, the group had several engineers from McDonnell-Douglas. So I wasn't too troubled. He drove a really cool car. It was a 1952 Hudson Hornet, in perfect condition. I asked him how he got the thing, and he told me that after he graduated from college, he bought it with the first real money he earned. New. Fresh from the factory.

Mixed Emotions

In between teaching and grading, I've been doing a bit of reading about men's ministries. I've got sort of an emotional turmoil as a result.

Of course, like most people, I watch high school kids' ministry and ask why we can't have anything like that. Why can't we have fun, interesting, important events? Why can't we have close friendships? Why can't we actually deal with issues more important than getting new tires for the car?

Then I read some of the websites for organizations that promise exactly that sort of thing for men's groups. And I get wistful. I can't imagine anything like that happening here. It would require no less than a complete paradigm shift for a modern Ohio church to see the value of men associating with one another. The status quo (a church of women, children, and teenagers with men on the edges sort of facilitating things) works just fine, and there would be enormous political difficulties if men began to become empowered in any way.

I'm going to keep reading, thinking, and even praying, but don't expect to see anything on this blog. This idea has to fly under the radar.

Mixed Purposes

One of those moments of revelation happened recently. I was looking online for material about writing definitions and ran into some material about defining small groups (from a sociological perspective). Here's what they had:

• A primary group is a small group of people whom we associate with by living together with them.
• A casual group is a small group of people whom we associate with for companionship and friendship.
• A therapeutic group is a small group of people who are interested in changing their behavior, values, and attitudes.
• A problem-solving group is a small group of people who have a specific goal of finding a solution to a specific problem.
• An educational group is a small group of people who are interested in becoming educated on a certain topic.

And suddenly it all came together! The church small groups I've been in (men's and mixed) have tried to be almost all of these, usually in the same evening. We say we're a group of friends (casual group), but the main purpose of the beginning of the meeting is worship (probably some group classification such as "task-oriented"), then we switch to educational, and finally to therapeutic as people pour out their griefs and pains.

In my experience, the one definition that gets short-changed is the "casual group"—of the many groups I've been in, I can't think of more than one former group member I'd seek out at a church coffee hour. For the most part, we came together to get something done, and when it was finished, we went our ways.

Men's Ministry

When I got home last night (too late to do any more grading), I got to thinking about men's ministry again. There seems to be a new crop of showy, commercial attempts to fill this gap in church life (Promise Keepers is only the most visible). Lots of products for sale, mainly books and conferences.

I looked through the websites for several Mansfield churches, and, as I expected, They all have something special for kids and many have something special for women, but men's groups are rare. I only found one or two. It's tempting to visit those churches and find out what they've got.

(Slightly off the subject: back in the Youth for Christ days, we had a good handful of high school ministries going, mainly attended by guys. Even that group fell into the children's ministry trap, and ended up focusing on inner-city children below ten years old, totally forgetting the high school ministry—except for the prison ministry part of YFC.)

End of the day

I'm sitting here at the church, waiting for Jared to be finished with his Bible study. It was supposed to end at 8 p.m., and now it's 8:20. That's about typical, I guess.

I had hoped to get back to the apartment and finish grading about six papers before bed, but I'm not so sure of that now. The grading cycle is very wearing on a teacher, both because of the sheer work and because (especially this late in the semester) I feel like a failure looking at the wretched quality some of my people put out. I've got to keep telling myself that 13 weeks isn't enough time to work many miracles. Keep saying that. Especially when the miracle recipients aren't exactly interested in the process.

So here I sit. I think I'm sort of on the wrong end of the various liberation movements. Back in the day (which means about 1965) men were considered to be the "normal" people and everything was tilted toward them (back in 1965, "men" wasn't exactly "us" yet for me). Now I look at the church (and ours isn't that different from many other churches) and see that there's a lot of emphasis on ministry to girls and women. Lots aimed at elementary school children, junior high kids, high school kids, and (new this year) the odd post-high-school age slot that might have gone to college (perhaps about 20 to 25 years old). Notice anything? Anyone left out?

Yes, I know that adult males are seen by the paranoid hystericals as a threat. And I know that we're dull, but necessary because we earn much of the money and drive people places. It would be nice, though, if there were some way for us to get in on things. Maybe something more than the annual Men's Prayer Breakfast (that occasionally misses a year or two).

Springerle

I decided to get into baking this year, and (as is usual with me) I dove into the most complex recipe available. Springerle cookies—hard, anise-flavored German cookies with images imprinted in their faces.

My mother always made them, and my brother misses the things terribly. The cookies were a basic reason behind my purchase of a KitchenAid mixer, though I've found other uses for it too.

The recipe calls for "four cups of all-purpose flour," and I decided to be gourmet about it and shunned the store-brand flour. Instead, I bought something called White Lily All-Purpose Flour. That sounded gourmet.

All went reasonably well until the end of the mixing process. It just didn't look right. I called my sister, and she confirmed that Mom always complained that the dough was like cement. Mine was like soft frosting. I scooped it back into the mixer bowl, got out the flour bag, and then chanced to look at the side of the bag. There's a substitution. To use this flour in ordinary recipes, you have to use more—something like half a cup more in my recipe. I kept adding flour by the handful until I got something approximating cement and went forward with the process. They are out of the oven now, cooling. I wonder if I'll be able to get them off the cookie sheet.

It turns out, by the way, that White Lily is a Southern specialty, mainly used for their extremely light biscuits. It's not really a general-purpose flour at all. Who knew?

Somnambulists

Christmas is here, and so I played one of my favorite music videos for my students, the Trans-Siberian Orchestra's version of "Wizards in Winter." I darkened the room and pumped up the volume.

Half of my students sat through it staring at their desks. Only one or two actually saw the thing. Nobody actually thought it might be enjoyable or fun or anything.

Here's what they missed (my copy has much better quality than this YouTube version) Christmas Lights

A couple of nuts and bolts

I mentioned Grace & Peace Fellowship in a previous post. Here's a link to their homepage. I was there at the beginning, in Ted and Gladys Smith's living room on Washington Street, back in the days when one had to walk up to a stranger's door on Sunday morning and simply open it (because the talk and noise inside was too much to allow people to hear door knocks) to attend Sunday worship.

I've added a label, "church food" to the bottom of my church food posts (duh!). Click that and you can ignore all the rants about electronic banking, etc.

Next Step for Queen Mary

That whole "everything is a sacrament" idea came from reading Robert Farrar Capon's books, for example Supper of the Lamb. It really does change the way I look at such disparate things as marauding deer and encroaching weeds.

One of my enduring memories of Grace & Peace Fellowship, the church in St. Louis where we had 52 potluck dinners every year, was that nothing was fake. We had real china dishes, not paper plates. Squeeze margarine was forbidden. Bread was the genuine stuff. Dinner was more than a way to get fed after church; it was a theological decision to share our lives and express our understanding of the Kingdom of God. And "potluck" really meant potluck. There was no arranging. Nobody assigned main dishes, etc. Whatever people brought we ate.

One problem we had, which is similar to a problem in Mansfield, was quantity. People like to think of a potluck as a free meal. More than once at our local church, I've seen a family of four show up for dinner with a two-cup portion of green beans (or sometimes two cans of beans still in the can!) as their potluck contribution. It would be interesting to see what supper is like in that house. Do the four people somehow get by on the equivalent of two cups of beans? Or do they eat something else? Perhaps more.

Next question

Let's assume we've got the idea that God actually likes the natural creation and likes the idea of people sharing food. What's next?

Perhaps I've been unjust in accusing national radio personages of preaching isolation, but the message came from somewhere. One of my friends tells me that a church elder approached him at his wedding reception (this was a decade ago or more) and said, "Now it's time for you to dump your friends and concentrate on your wife." My dear friend W was a frequent companion for coffee, evenings of TV, and hikes in the park. Then he found a wife and I never heard from him again. And anyone who has been to a GFC potluck remembers the whole idea of "family tables," particularly if you have been told that you can't sit with someone because they are trying to reserve a table for their own family.

Now the threatening question: does an emphasis on hospitality split and endanger families?

It is really difficult to have a rational discussion on this one, particularly because the conservative side of the USA spends a lot of attention on paranoid, hysterical rhetoric. It seems that absolutely everyone who isn't on my Form 1040 is an enemy. Everyone is aiming at undermining the core of MY family. Nobody is on my side. I need to be very bristly and keep everyone on the other side of the door. Maybe with a gun.

Nothing could be much further from the spirit of the New Testament. The New Testament believers seem to have been open, friendly people who would share their belongings with others, people whose lifestyles were so attractive that nonbelievers were attracted even before the theology and tracts began. Apparently, they actually thought God would take care of them when they spent their money and time on strangers.

Or consider the example of Jesus. He had close friends and was such a frequent dinner guest that the more "proper" religious folks were scandalized. It wasn't just the preaching. Religious authorities objected to his social life. He acutally liked being with people, even the less clean ones.

OK—now the real next step

Few of us actually know anyone. Even among fellow church members, a dinner invitation would be a frightening matter of picking a random name from the church directory. So we need something a little less intimidating, something that doesn't seem to challenge the encapsulated nuclear family structure. The next step must:

• not make me feel like I'm going to be judged
• not raise the defenses of those who are afraid that everyone wants to invade their family space
• feel natural—at least to some extent
• somehow build on existing relationships
• somehow be an on-ramp to something more.

The one-shot "dinner with a stranger" thing last summer was a pretty good idea, but it only happened once. How about something continuing—perhaps as simple as having coffee after church in a place where people can actually sit down? Maybe even with generous cupcakes and muffins?

Turning the Queen Mary

One friend responded to my post about church hospitality and said it would be like "turning the Queen Mary." I hope the comparison isn't too close because the Queen Mary has been immobile since 1967. If a ship isn't going anywhere, it can't be turned.

I can think of a lot of places to begin, but one is a change in our attitude toward the meaning of stuff.

What, exactly, does the physical universe mean?

A lot of Christian answers have been proposed, many focusing on the Christian's task of avoiding "the world, the flesh, and the devil."

Neo-Amish Abhorrence
Some of us have taken the attitude that asceticism is the way out of the world-flesh-devil trap. White bread is always better than chocolate cake—on a moral level. Doing anything just for the fun of doing it is to be avoided because, at root, a Christian must avoid all frivolity. I don't know what it would be like to get an invitation to this sort of household for dinner because dinner parties are, by definition, fun, and to be avoided.

Didacticism
Everything is here to "teach us a lesson." A trillium isn't just a beautiful flower, The point of its structure is to give us something to use in teaching people about the Trinity. Dinner with this crowd is like a Seder service. Everything has a meaning, which must be exhaustively (and exhaustingly) explained.

Recruitment ploy
The only point of life is to bring people into the Kingdom, so everything is part of a great advertising come-on. It's all very similar to those Ponzi organizations like Amway. We're only interested in getting you in. God's only interested in getting you in. Dinner with these people is wonderful, but once you sign on the dotted line, you're pointless. No more dinners. (Note: Does this sound like the way churches use the "Alpha Course"?)

It's all burning soon
In some people's view, the entire physical universe is some sort of short-term experiment on God's part. It's pointless to worry about global warming because the world won't even be here in another five years. So drive your Ford Expedition. It's God's will for us to dominate and use up the natural creation. I suspect that dinner with these folks would have an enormous abundance—even waste—but there's not a great deal of respect for stuff in this view. This one doesn't seem to see God's love for his creation, and easily goes to Wal-Mart and craft show accumulation. Dinner? Pre-packaged mixes.

Everything's a sacrament
Christians over the ages have battled about the number of sacraments. Seven? You're Roman Catholic. Two? A Protestant. Dozens and dozens? Perhaps you're an Episcopalian. Saint Augustine defined a Christian sacrament as "a visible sign of an invisible reality." If we really follow that one up, coffee, brownies, and a friend is some sort of sacrament, a sign of God's love and provision. And if we get off the theology that sees God as a grim, nasty preacher and begin to see him as he really is—a lover—we've got something. His first words after creating the earth were "Mazel tov!" ("Good luck has occurred.") And, being Jewish, the next obvious thing to do would be to pour a glass of wine to celebrate.

Shifting from Episcopalian to Presbyterian, the first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism is "What is the chief end of man?" The answer: "Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever." I like the "enjoy" part of that, and surely part of the "glorifying" is to love what God loves. To be really blunt, God loves wine and bread and a good dinner and friendship.

Moment of Revelation

Christmastide is here, and along with it all the great music. One that I love listening to is Sir John Tavener's "The Lamb." Spooky, haunting choral music. The versions I have are included in collections that have a lot of Latin, so I never did listen closely until this morning. It's William Blake's poem, "The Lamb."

Another "Oh My Gosh!" moment.

(Yes, yes, I know. You all knew all of this already.)

Terrorism vandalism

At the risk of overdoing things, I share my thoughts on terrorism.

Apparently (though I don't want to add to the jump-the-gun hysteria) that Army doctor is guilty of killing 13 at Fort Hood. And according to some witnesses, he shouted a Muslim slogan as he began his attack.

I began wondering about terrorism just after the September 11 attacks, and I asked myself just what they were attempting to prove. Classic warfare, for example the US attacking German positions during WWII, focuses on taking out military targets to achieve military objectives. We blow up bridges so troops and equipment can't come to fight us. More recently, and more problematically, we use rocket attacks to attempt to kill the leaders of guerilla armies.

But what was the September 11 attack trying to achieve? What would the Army doctor's attack accomplish? Nearly 3000 people died on September 11, but there were certainly a lot of New Yorkers (and Americans) left. My internet connection faltered slightly because Web had a major hub in the World Trade Center. Discover Card gave a grace period of about a month to cardholders because so many records were screwed up. That's about it. The USA was nowhere near being brought to its knees. Fort Hood, one of the largest military installations in the world, has more than 33,000 people. Killing a couple of dozen, none of whom were exactly key to the operation, didn't cause a hiccup in the ongoing military operations.

The closest analogy I can come up with is schoolyard vandalism. To the twelve-year-old mind, the best response to a teacher who is giving a bad grade is to let the air out of her tires. That's certain to deal with the child's problem in spelling. And of course, it will deal a death blow to the entire educational enterprise and the child will have peace. Nope. And the child is probably smart enough not to claim credit for the tire vandalism because he knows he'll simply be sent to the office.

Yes, Muslims in the Middle East are victims of terrible privation, some of it at the hands of Israelis and Americans (and lots of it at the hands of fellow Muslims who differ only slightly in some theological fine point). And yes, the concept of tribal warfare is high on their list, so any member of their tribe has a right to kill any member of our tribe and it's somehow a fair transaction.

But ultimately, this bloodletting is about as reasonable as breaking the school's windows because the child can't learn the multiplication tables.

The beat goes on

Yesterday was payday at Ashland University, so I asked a colleague how they tell us about our direct deposits. Easy. They send an e-mail a couple of days before the actual payday. The problem was that I didn't get an e-mail.

So off I went to the business office, and there was my check, waiting for me.

Enemies and hospitality

I've been thinking deeply about hospitality and the lack thereof in the Mansfield church.

When I moved here from St. Louis, way back in 1977, I was coming from a tradition where hospitality was one of the treasured characteristics of the local congregation. We had a potluck dinner every Sunday, 52 times a year. Parties were common. People would go to each others' houses for dinners, for dessert, for an evening of board games, or for an evening watching TV together.

None of that happens in Mansfield. I doubt if, throughout the congregation, more than six shared dinners happen in any month. Maybe there's one potluck a year. Maybe we miss a year. (We do use congregational meals as fundraisers: big pots of generic spaghetti for $5 per person.) To be perfectly fair, there's a congregational dinner in March (catered) and many years a Christmas and/or "Halloween" party. But often those don't happen.

Why so little action?

Some would say it's because people are too busy, and I can believe that. Nearly everyone home schools or has kids at the private Christian school, and both are extremely time-consuming, but I don't think that excuse covers those whose kids are out of school.

Dr. Dobson and some local leaders have pushed the idea that family is so primary that absolutely any outside activity is wrong (and of course, having a friend over for dinner is a deduction from the intense one-on-one time of the family).

Some say that entertaining is too expensive—though the price tag for a pot of coffee and a plate of brownies from a mix isn't that high.

And of course, there's the pietistic thread in the local church, saying that no human activity is worthwhile unless it's specifically (and didactically) religious. Thus we have all those past barbecues that turned into hymn-singing evenings and the New Year's party that's just a prelude to a prayer meeting. And to tell the truth, there are just so many of those meetings that a person can stand in a month.

But I think there's a more basic reason we avoid hospitality.

I think it's fear.

We've been soaked in the idea that outsiders are a threat, and we've bought it. Of course, there's the threat that if one were to invite a Jew or a Muslim for tea and cakes, somehow there would be a theological battle or perhaps the Christian faith would be shown up as false or something. So of course the Jew and Muslim are off the guest list. And if we invite the nonreligious neighbor in, he might do something nonreligious—might tell an inappropriate story or something. And if our kids got to know that Jews, Muslims, and the nonreligious can occasionally be interesting people, our kids' faith would be weakened. They wouldn't see the Christian faith as the only lifeboat in a sea of terrible people.

But that's not what I want to talk about.

We're afraid of other Christians. Not just the demon Catholics or the accursed Presbyterians or the heathen Lutherans. Our very own kind.

I've been told that people are afraid to come to my place because it's an apartment (which means "tenement" which means "housing project" which means you'll get knifed in the hallway). One of my few visitors asked to see the expiration dates on the food I was offering. I've never had enough money for a cleaning lady, so my carpet is needing shampoo right now.

And of course, almost every fellow church member I can name has some sort of food allergy, food fad, or some other food fetish going. One can't be anywhere near anything artificially scented. Another must never eat anything containing any form of sugar. Yet another exists entirely on mangosteen juice. And of course, there's an implied judgment (you put SUGAR in your cake???). It doesn't take much of this stuff before a person simply locks the front door.

I know others have suffered similar insults. Chapters such as Romans 14 and I Corinthians 8 really don't carry much weight around here. It's sad, really. "Keeping oneself unstained from the world" by avoiding all human contact outside the nuclear family is kind of boring.

Aveo

What's red, made of tuna fish cans, comes from Korea, and smells like a newly-cleaned men's room?

My rental car.

Score one for Wallace and Gromit

The Discover card bill finally posted this morning.

Hmmm. Let's see. Friday to Wednesday = five days for electronic transfer. Speed of light?

Why do I do these things?

This is yet another episode in the "online banking saga."

The lady from Chase Bank called again on Friday to urge me to pay all my bills online blah blah blah. I gave her the whole nine yards of my difficulties, complaints, and experience—that the online banking experience is slow, unreliable, and generally a pain. She promised to stop bothering me.

I felt bad. And I felt curious. So against my better judgment, I did all the stuff to pay my Discover bill online. Sent them over $200. That was Friday. As of Monday, the money had come out of my bank account. Tuesday evening, though, it still hasn't gone into the Discover account. It's stuck somewhere in cyberspace.

So I guess tomorrow I'll call the lady back and ask her to track things down. They do guarantee that it will work, after all.

I think Wallace and Gromit have lost this round. Maybe I needed one more attempt to convince me that the paper check is still king.

One lingering question concerns timing. When I post grades online, the students can see them instantly. The second I click "OK" they can find out how they did. Except for a few poor programs, most e-mail moves within a minute or so too (then there's the one that takes an hour or more). So why on earth should wire transfers of money take a week? If I had mailed the payment to Carol Stream, Illinois (Discover's billing office) on Friday, the check would have been there Monday or Tuesday, and the payment would have posted 24 to 48 hours faster than electronic transfer.

Assuming this one works.

$2000 gone missing

I was in a panic tonight after using the ATM. I knew how much money was supposed to be in my checking account, and the ATM slip said it was less. A lot less. Like nearly $2000.

Fortunately, before I phoned anyone to call them names, I got home and found the latest account statement in my mailbox. Problem isolated: a missing deposit. Where did it go??? UAkron direct deposit, usually very reliable.

Another statement from another bank. There's the money. Apparently I'd changed over the direct deposit last June and forgot that I'd done it.

Now if I can only find my missing fountain pen.

Finally getting out of jail

It's nearly three weeks since I began to feel ill. I think it was the flu, but not the swine variety. For about two weeks, I moaned, coughed, and dragged myself around with zero energy. Just barely enough of me to get the minimum work done.

I'm better now. The upside is that I can actually go places and do things. The downside is that I'm still so behind in basic stuff like grading papers that I have to do marathon sessions (often lasting until 9 p.m.) to try to catch up. And I am caught up! (Unless you count about half a dozen revised papers and a pile of short homework quiz-type assignments) It's 11:34 a.m. now. By 12:30 I won't be caught up any more. The first of 75 papers will come in.

But I'll make it. Tonight, no work in particular. Tomorrow, I'm off to the gym for the first time in three weeks. Then Saturday, I begin grading again.

The Tin Goose

According to Father Capon (author of Supper of the Lamb, among others), a tin goose is an article of kitchen equipment that is manufactured primarily to be sold, not to be used. His number one candidate is the electric stove. Not a bad nominee, though I don't mind electric ovens. Just not the stovetops elements.

I've got my own list, and it's going to grow.

Glad Wrap and Saran Wrap. It looks so fine in the ads, and I know that somehow, somewhere people actually make it work. They must. When I go to the coffee shop, I see muffins and bread that's been wrapped in some kind of clear plastic. The problem is that the stuff I buy simply won't stick to anything once it's come off the roll. My best shot is to use masking tape.

Most kitchen choppers. Flimsy devices made to sell on late-night TV. They claim to allow you to cut up an onion, but they don't actually do anything at all.

Teflon pans. First they lose their non-stick quality, then they begin to flake into the food. Why wasn't cast iron good enough? In daily use, a Teflon pan works for about a month.

The average knife. No more needs to be said.

Most kitchen coffee grinders. A batch contains fine powder, good ground coffee, and whole beans that the machine can't be bothered with.

Guilt

I've been getting tension headaches, and I notice, of course, that they are worse when I've got a pile of papers to read and haven't finished them. Genius that I am! I've agreed to teach six classes, 117 students, and they turn in their papers on very similar schedules. At ten minutes per paper, that's a mere 19.5 hours per cycle, but I can't realistically grade more than six or so at a stretch without going nuts. That's 19 or 20 bursts of activity, enough for at least eight or ten days!

But why? Why do I obsess with making everyone perfect? Nobody else does! Why do I feel that students are all telling one another (and me) that I'm doing a poor job if I don't return things in a few days?

Well they do, but it's mainly because they are fascinated with grades. "I got an 82 on this paper. What can I do to raise it to an 83?"

Relax. Ignore the tension headache. Tell the students, one by one, how to make one thing better. Remember that they don't know how you did it with the last class. Remember that you don't have to be perfect.

After all, even with the disastrous teaching of Miss Ruddle (yes, that really was her name) I've turned out to be a damn fine writer!

It never ends

Ashland University, desperate to save every penny, has instituted a mandatory electronic direct deposit scheme for paychecks. Like they spend a lot to send me three paychecks a semester.

I'm always suspicious of these Rube Goldberg ideas, and this time confirmed my suspicions. Today was payday, and (after half an hour of rummaging around to find out where on the Internet my pay stub resides) I discovered that I don't actually work here. So now someone is trying to find a copy of my contract. The next step, I'm sure, is to figure out what to do with me. Am I a new hire as of 9/25? Do I get paid for the work I've already done? Maybe they will simply do what NCSC did the time they lost my contract: write a new custom contract with pay periods all adjusted a month later than everyone else's.

I'm getting really nostalgic for the days (which were before my time) when employees lined up outside a paymaster's window to get cash in little brown envelopes.

Still Obsessing

As I keep wondering what to cut from my budget, I realize just how much money I'm spending due to forgetfulness. I wonder if it's old age finally creeping in. Or does everyone do these things?

July: Went to visit Joel, and didn't stop to think that South Carolina would be warmer than Ohio. Our July temperatures were topping out in the low 70s. Theirs in the upper 90s. Forgot to take shorts with me, so the first stop was Target.

August: Teaching at NCSC meant I had to provide my own computer for PowerPoint slides. Theirs was too infested with viruses to work. So of course, as I left school, I forgot to take my Apple dongle with me. Have to have it to plug into a projector. Cost $20. Got angry enough that I bought two so I'd have a spare for next time (this is the second time in a year I've lost one). And of course, buying one meant I had to go to Legacy Village, have dinner there, and buy something at Crate & Barrel.

September: Got to U Akron and discovered I had left my computer power adapter home. I need to do about six hours of slides, etc., there, so a battery wouldn't quite make it. Actually, a second power adapter isn't such a bad idea, but I wasn't hoping for the Chinese counterfeit that the school computer store sold me. Still, I was out $70.

I'm sure there are other examples, but it's kind of depressing to think about them. I won't use a black umbrella any more because I left a beauty in my car (black carpets) when I sold the last one. Now I make sure I have an umbrella that doesn't match much of anything.

$10 a day

I've been looking at my finances, and wondering just how much I'm overspending my income. This only works because I had some money saved up, but now I'm trying to live on current income. It isn't working. On average, I'm apparently overspending my income by about $10 a day. Yikes! Time for some economies. Likely candidates (sounds like what a LOT of people are doing)

• Eating fast food. I do a lot of that, because I'm away from home for five lunches and two dinners a week. Got to d something there.
• Haircuts. Yes, Great Clips does a terrible job, but for the moment, I don't have the money for a $25 haircut. Go to the Great Clips chop shop.
• Buying unnecessary stuff. OK, I bought three pair of shoes last year. Probably only needed one. Ditto for shirts.

Can all this be $10 a day? Do I really need to give up on gourmet coffee? Will I think twice before buying a friend some expensive gift?

A good thing

It's a good thing I showed up at church this morning. I was having a lazy day and almost stayed home.

This was the Sunday for granddaughter Lili's dedication. I hadn't heard about it in advance, or I might have dressed a little better, and as it was I sort of squeezed on the edge of the proceedings, but at least I was there.

Welcome or not.

Sometimes you just have to count

I've been getting really grumpy about Akron parking, so I kept track of the actual search time last Tuesday. It was about 13 minutes. Sure seemed longer.

At the gym they play a local radio station (Y-105) on the PA system, and one of the songs has an incredibly repetitive refrain. I'm not too sure what it's saying, exactly (poor sound quality), but I think it's "This is just a summer love." Or maybe "This is just a rubber glove." Or maybe "It's a bitchin' mother bug." Something like that anyhow. It comes back again and again, so today, while doing a particularly mindless exercise, I counted. It's only 20 times in the song. If the typical Top 40 song runs about three minutes, that's only seven times a minute, hardly more often than once every ten seconds. Sure seemed like more. Maybe because the station plays that song three or four times an hour. But anyhow, now that I've actually counted, I realize that the song isn't any more repetitive than some of the things we sing on Sunday morning in church. (And with seven syllables in the refrain, actually repeats a longer section than some of our worship songs do.)

Things change

So here I am on Labor Day, at 1 p.m., wondering what the rest of my day will bring. It's a rainy 65 degrees, which is OK with me because I got out to the bike trails yesterday and the day before. It's always nice when the temperature shoots up above 75 in Mansfield. I love those early Fall days when we flirt with the low 80s, but never make it all the way to 85. Clear skies are such a rare treat here, too, and the last two days gave us plenty of those.

For years and years, Memorial Day and Labor Day were the occasion of big, elaborate family picnics at the Vega household, complete with a mandatory game of "Death Croquet." (Let a crowd of young teenage boys loose with wooden balls and hammers, and watch what happens.)

Things have gotten quieter and quieter as the years have wound on. People have moved out of town, gotten their own families. Mansfield isn't the sort of place where adults make friends with each other, but this isn't the time/place to have a lot of regrets. I've learned to love solitary activities (night bike rides on the B&O trail, for example), and my teaching is very consuming, so I'm enjoying this alone day. Listening to Peter Nero jazz, planning on braising some steak later, and perhaps spending time with friend Jon, who has touched down for a brief visit between cities.

Lazy Day

Things will pick up on Friday because 45 of my students will submit papers that day, but for the moment, things are pretty calm here. The semester is off to a pretty good start at both schools, the weather has warmed up enough that I can wear short-sleeved shirts again, and life is pretty fine.

I think I'm still stressing about the beginning of school. After all these years, the opening of the semester gives me stage fright. I have trouble sleeping at night, get headaches, and do a lot of those little non-helpful things (eat too much, etc.). Labor Day weekend is the transition, I guess.

Since mid-summer, I've been stressing about a student named Jihad. I was sort of expecting Jeff Dunham's "Achmed the Dead Terrorist." Fortunately (and predictably) the guy never even showed up. He'll turn out to be one of those who stay on the books to perpetrate a minor scam with financial aid, then ask me to sign a withdraw form at the last second. I say I won't do it, but usually cave in at the last minute.

One pleasant side effect of the new school year is that I'll probably blog more. I set up blogs for my Akron classes, so I have to log in and check them frequently. The blogs won't actually say anything because I didn't set up a grading scale or require the students to write there. And, as we all know, if it isn't worth points, it isn't worth doing. I was probably the same way when I was a student. And after all, the students today have been trained to do precisely—and only—what their teachers tell them to do. (They remind me of a comment from the first Men In Black: "You're everything we've come to expect from years of government training.")

Anyhoo, things will be better. Today the temperature is expected to hit the mid 70's (53 now) and I'm going to hit the bike trail.

Yikes moment

I keep seeing those ads by Internet pages: "Lose weight by following one simple rule." I got curious, though I assumed they were selling something.

The product is named Colon Cleanse Turbo. That's enough to terrify me already, and being a very imaginative person I should avoid picturing it.

Just don't go to that train of thought.

It's Chronic

OK—I've just finished my third day of working at UAkron this fall.

The first day I cruised around the parking garage I've used for years, and found nothing, then went to an obscure lot behind the church and got the last place available.

The second day I went to that obscure lot and it was full, so I went to an even more obscure lot behind the BP station and got the last place available.

Today I cruised seven lots—took 45 minutes doing it—before I found the last place available in the law school lot. The garage behind the former Polsky Department Store had people parked in every aisle so there was only the width of one car to drive. Not once, but twice, I shut off my engine, got out of the car, and walked over to negotiate things with students whose cars were nose to nose. At one intersection we had north, south, and east nose to nose with several cars behind each.

I think it's official. The parking situation is chronic and unbearable. In the short term, I know now that I have to add two hours to my commute to allow for finding a parking place. In the long term, I'm wondering if it's worth the agony to teach here at all. But the alternative, NCSC, can't come within $5000 of the money. Sigh.

Hospice

I went shopping in Mansfield last night. It was like visiting a cancer ward.

One stop was Office Max, for school supplies. There were four customers and two employees in the store. The woman ahead of us in line was buying a laptop computer, and I guess I should be pleased (after all, it was probably the only one they would sell this week), but it did take a while. The cashier seemed to still have her training wheels on. Apparently they just weren't used to selling anything that expensive.

Forward to Macy's to get an umbrella. Two customers were in the men's department (and the other obviously wasn't serious), so I had the undivided attention of the sales lady, who spent a good fifteen minutes showing me the finer points of the merchandise.

Forward to dinner. Jared wanted Chinese, and I wasn't too keen on that idea, so a food court seemed like it would work. Nope. The Richland Mall Food Court only has two eateries left: Chuckie Cheese Pizza and a forlorn Chinese booth (at least Jared got what he wanted). The food had obviously been prepared a long time ago, and there were only two things to choose from.

It was all really depressing. I feel as if I should take a tax deduction on everything I spent there for "charitable contribution."

Start of Semester

Things actually went very smoothly on the first day. At Akron, I found a parking space after only half an hour of looking (pretty typical for the start of the fall semester). Everything works (in terms of computers and so forth). I did lose an adapter for my Apple laptop, which meant an emergency trip to the Apple store in Cleveland, but that wasn't really a big deal.

Altogether, things look pretty fine.

Except for football.

At Ashland, football is the engine that drives the entire campus. It's easily the most important thing going on, both in terms of capital investment and numbers of people involved. And, like most schools, Ashland has a policy that varsity athletes get an excused absence when the team is on the road. So I got an e-mail recently with the list of players leaving next Wednesday. Sixty-five players, listed in random order, three across, first name before last name. And I'm supposed to compare this list with my forty-five students. I complained, and found out that they are not in random order. They are listed according to jersey number! Now that is helpful.

Not.

BOGO

My current nomination for "Irritating Coined Word of the Year" is BOGO.

Usage: On signs outside businesses we see "Widgets! BOGO Free!" It stands for "Buy One, Get One." It's been around long enough that we now see signs that just say, "Lipstick BOGO."

I never really did understand why they can't price that as 50% off, but it guess they do it to move old inventory. I mainly see BOGO on signs outside drugstores that are trying to unload cheap cosmetics.

Sort-of Church Dinner

Sigh!

We've got another of those bring-your-own-food church dinner things tonight. I'm always tempted to just stay home, and I usually give in to the temptation. Yes, they solve a lot of problems:

• Our church potlucks never had enough food. If a family of four brought a side dish, they would bring exactly four servings, then load their plates liberally from all the serving dishes. And there were always freeloaders who brought nothing.
• Conservative churches are very big on food-fad people. One cannot eat any sugar. Another only can live on mangosteen juice. Yet another is convinced that the chiropractor's list of forbidden foods is gospel. So the BYOF (Bring Your Own Food) approach works for them.
• And since this church cannot possibly organize anything complex, the BYOF approach means that (at most) someone is going to have to organize paper plates, weak coffee, weak lemonade mix, and a clean-up crew.

It's sad, though. Any sharing of food is strictly ruled out. If someone shows up and has misunderstood the BYOF rule, he is welcome to drive to Taco Bell and get something to bring back. That's incredibly dreary. Incredibly unwelcoming. And it all makes me wonder why I don't just have my own food at home, then show up for the program.

End of Blackadder

I've always enjoyed the Blackadder series on YouTube. It's Rowan Atkinson being a whole lot more intellectual than ever was as Mr. Bean—lots of quick, scathing wit. If you're not familiar with the series, the basic idea is that Atkinson's character (Blackadder) begins as a member of the minor nobility during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. His descendants (and the descendants of his idiot companions) keep reappearing down through history.

Anyhow, the series was enough fun on YouTube that I got a copy of a DVD from the public library. It's apparently a pretty popular series, because the only one I could find was the very last one, set during WWI. Great fun. Blackadder kills (and eats) a carrier pigeon that was bringing orders to attack—and learns that the pigeon was the general's only boyhood friend (thus getting himself sentenced to death by firing squad, only to slip out of that one at the last second).

In fact, that's the whole point of the series. Through unlikely turns of events, Blackadder is always finding himself at the point of disaster, only to escape at the last possible second. He's the only thinking person on the screen; his manservant Baldrick is the walking definition of "numb" and his lieutenant is the kind of idiot who keeps writing war plans to an uncle in Berlin.

All was great fun until the final episode. The soldiers are ordered to go over the top, and Blackadder's attempts to wiggle out keep misfiring. Long-time fans keep expecting a last-second solution to his problem, but then things go all pear-shaped. The men begin talking about how their sunny hopes for a quick end to the war have been destroyed. Almost everyone they know or care about has been killed. (Historical fact: something like one in every eight men in WWI survived uninjured. In most units, over half of the men were killed.) Out of options, they finally go over the top into no-man's land, armed with rifles and handguns, and the final credits show a field of poppies in a field in Flanders.

Lost the House

I guess the sale of Mom's house has hit me harder than I expected it to. The deal finally closed Tuesday, and I've been in kind of a funk ever since. Yes, I did get a lot of the miscellaneous small stuff from the house—a green chair, a mirror, and some plants. No, I didn't particularly like the way Mom decorated things. She tended to be a hybrid of 1950's chic (she really did like aluminum drinking glasses) and Better Homes & Gardens antique collector. But dammit, the place was my home base for my entire adult life. It was a tasteless split-level in a suburb that pretty much defined the Washington sprawl, but it was also a place of natural beauty, of enormous silences, and of long memories. The spare room of Mom's new apartment just isn't the same, even with furniture from the old place.

Thursday Thots

Becky did a long post on Facebook, which makes me think I should explore that site more. I've pretty much ignored it because I don't have that many pictures of myself drinking beer at a party and because a 120-character "Thot-of-the-moment" ("I'm eating Cheerios and feeling good about my day") never seemed to be worth my trouble. But Becky's post is several paragraphs that actually say something. I didn't know Facebook could do that.

Today, I'm off for a four-day whirlwind trip to Washington. I do enjoy the drive, but it will be sort of hectic. Not the leisurely vacation time of past years, alas. Brief time with my mom and sister (who will be driving up from Texas), retrieve a chair from Mom's house before the place gets sold, then back to M'field.

While I'm gone, Jared will be watching the place. He's got a new job at a kennel, which means he's always oh-so-fragrant ... and the apartment is too.

Random Stuff

More than Ultimate?

I parked next to a Mercury Grand Marquis Ultimate Edition today. What will they do for an encore? What will they do if they make a car that is better? "Ultimate Edition Plus"? Maybe there is a good reason that some cars just have numbers and not evocative names.

I fear for my hair

Got a haircut yesterday at a place my regular hair person refers to as a "chop shop." I came quite close to leaving before the big event though—all the women seemed to be sisters. All were overweight (the impression wasn't helped by their identical black nylon smocks). All had dark hair in the "bedhead" style (which looks to me like too much oil and too little shampoo). All had Mimi Bobeck eye shadow (in different colors: green, blue, pink). I asked myself whether I could trust my head to these people.

Opera in my life

So friend Joel is now back in South Carolina. I'm still in an opera mood and have been listening nonstop to the Kevin Kline version of Midsummer Night's Dream which, as you remember, has almost nonstop Italian opera. I've got it circling through my head.

Wallace and Gromit

I wrote some checks this morning and finally figured out what online bill-paying is like. Wallace and Gromit. Remember the episode in which he has a motorcycle in his garage and an automatic starter? It's a foot that comes out of the wall and pushes down on the kick-start pedal. How about the shopping trolley that navigates to the corner store to get cheese? It's all in the same category as a half-hour episode with a million dollars in equipment so I can avoid writing a check.

Time-Saving in the Electronic Age

Sure, I'm a nut on electronic things. That love affair is growing sour.

I didn't flinch when I got the notice from U of Akron that I had to give my students mid-term grades but the computer couldn't handle things, so I had to e-mail them all. One by one.

I'm sort of keeping track of the latest meltdown in electronic bill-paying, and wondering just what I have saved, either in time or in money. As I write (5:00 p.m.) I've been working off and on for 48 hours to get a $305 bill paid. The money has come out of my bank accounts. $305 from FirstMerit and another $305 from Chase. It just didn't go into Toyota. I've already spent something like four hours on this project, and now I'll have to deal with straightening out the mess tomorrow. Maybe another four hours? I can only hope.

My friend Jon Weaver says he refuses to use anything now except a paper check because he doesn't want to deal with the problems. I'm with him on that.

Sometimes the old "tennis shoe network" (just carry it over there) is better, even though it's not so cute and fun.

Last night I spent an hour troubleshooting to get a file to move via Bluetooth from one of my computers to another. I could have just loaded it onto a flash drive. But no. I had to use the fancy thing that took over an hour.

Today I learned my lesson. I needed to pay my Target bill, so I drove to the store, walked in, and wrote a check.

Electronic customer service

I guess this one is all my fault. The trip to South Carolina sort of distracted me and I didn't send out checks on time to pay bills. The Obvious Electronic Age Answer: pay the bills online!!! After all, I still had 48 hours.

Electric company bill worked instantly. Cell phone account worked—sort of. Sprint thinks they got the money, but my bank doesn't think they sent it. Car payment? Total disaster.

After logging into the website, setting up an account, answering all the weird questions, putting in my account numbers and everything else, I thought I had succeeded. I checked back 24 hours later and still owed them the money. Phoned the woman at Toyota Financial and she said there was no record of me ever doing anything (though I was welcome to make a payment through her for a $10 fee). My bank says the money never came out of the account. I raced downtown to another bank where I have an account and asked what we can do to expedite a payment. They very helpfully set me up for online payment (apparently pushing the money works better than pulling it). And guaranteed that the money would be there within 24 hours. Back to the apartment. Digging through an obscure corner of the Toyota website, I discovered that the original payment is "in process" and will be made tomorrow too. Two payments for Toyota. Cheers!

The moral of the story:

1. Online bill payment is slow. I would probably have been better off driving to the dealer and handing someone a check. Figure at least three working days (not counting weekends and holidays).
2. Online bill payment can be very expensive. Sure, the electric company did it for free, but Toyota financial wanted $10. Citibank wants $15 to allow an online transaction.
3. Reliability is questionable. Did it work? Didn't it? Keep checking back, folks.
4. Online bill paying is very time-consuming. I can write a check and pop it into an envelope in five minutes. I can pay a bill online in ten, but that doesn't count the time wasted in returning to the website to make sure it actually worked, time on the phone to straighten out things, and (at least with the car payment) time to drive downtown to ask someone to expedite a payment. The time discussion doesn't include the initial fifteen minutes per bill that's needed to set things up, either.
   
5. Customer service reps are variable. Sprint's phone people are wonderful. They need to be because the guys at Best Buy really don't know what they are doing, and the phone support people at Sprint have to keep straightening out screw-ups. Toyota's people haven't a clue what they are talking about.

The lady at Chase Bank was really eager to get me to set up online bill paying. Said it would save me so much time and money. Let's see.

• Six bills @ fifteen minutes set-up time per bill (one time) = 1.5 hours
  
• Six bills per month @ 10 minutes each = 1 hour per month
• Add another five minutes per bill to check whether the payment posted = half an hour per month

Annual time investment to pay six bills online = 19.5 hours. Money saved on stamps = $15.84. My rate of pay = 81 cents per hour.

Back again

My other faithful follower (Inkling) has been urging me to write again, so I'm going to give in and do it.

Things got complicated here. I had a beautiful idea to spend the summer working on fall courses and live on savings. It was all going very well until I got a phone call at 1:30 in the afternoon on Monday, June 22. "Have you forgotten something?" No, I hadn't. I had applied to North Central State College to teach a couple of courses, but they didn't get back to me, so I assumed that they didn't need me. Well, they had gotten back, but they used a secret, private e-mail account that I had no access to, and included the message "If you have problems with this schedule, let us know." I didn't get back to them, so they assumed I didn't have problems. The bottom line is that I've been furiously slamming material together for literature courses for the last couple of weeks.

I did have the good sense, though, to take off the weekend of the Fourth and visit friend Joel in South Carolina. I didn't even take papers, books, or laptop. It was wonderful.

So now I'm back, teaching, grading papers, trying to pull my material together for Ashland. I guess the Spring semesters will have to wait.

Ahh Summertime

I have pledged to myself that this summer will be different. I usually run hard from about June 1 until May 15 every year (with a significant gap at Christmas). Part of the hard running, of course, is that I have usually spent something like five weeks every year in Washington DC, which does cut into my time here. That's going to change now. Mom doesn't have the enormous house which needs gardening and everything. And somehow, sleeping in her back bedroom at the senior residence isn't quite so appealing.

Anyhow, I'm here in Mansfield, probably unemployed for the duration, at least until the end of August. So what do I do?

Lots of cleaning. My apartment suffered from my depression and burnout this year, and summer is always my time anyhow for carpet shampooing and all that. So I've been working hard most afternoons. Bought myself a tiny carpet shampooer too—gotta help the economy in China.

I haven't exactly been unemployed either. Almost every day I work on material for the autumn courses. I've got all the "nuts and bolts" stuff figured out (basic course schedules, policies, etc.). Now I'm going to take a deep breath, find some of the books and papers I read in grad school, and rethink what I do with these guys. If I hit my goal, I'll have both fall and spring semesters essentially nailed down when the end of August rolls around.

Finally got back into the gym too. And the bike trail (33 miles yesterday). Maybe that's why I feel so tired.

Aphorism

As a moth is attracted to a flame, so is an adolescent male foot attracted to a newly painted wall.

Ho Chi Minh's birthday

Yup. That's today, May 19. Back when I was an undergraduate, we had a massive celebration every year for his birthday.

Well, actually it wasn't quite like that. The real history is a bit different. A couple of years before I got to Washington University, Dr. Riesenberg was having lunch with some students in Wohl Cafeteria and said something like "you guys are such wimps that you can't even start a decent food fight," and heaved a plate of pie across the room. The resulting food battle caused mass devastation (the cafeteria was a modern design, surrounded on all sides by plate glass windows).

It was during the Vietnam war, but apparently the date was just a coincidence.

The food battle became the stuff of student legend, so the University had to do something to minimize the damage the next year. Their plan was ingenious. They set up a fake student organization, the "Student Liberation Front" (not the same as the later political organization) and used it to funnel money for a water fight. It didn't cost much, after all—mainly a lot of water balloons, a few posters, and some surgical tubing (makes a great water cannon). For 29 weeks of the school year, the SLF did nothing whatsoever, then it came to life for the water fight.

The FBI got wind of it and spent weeks watching an organization whose main activity was ordering beer and pizza.

Probably the height of the insanity was my senior year, 1968. Campus police cordoned off the South 40 (dorm area), a low-lying area was flooded about six feet deep, and a TV crew showed up.

Alas, the schedule has changed now. The students have been home working for two weeks and nobody even remembers who Ho Chi Minh was.

Now I know why

I often wonder why I cannot communicate with my students. Now I know why.

A few days ago, I sent that e-mail about the Petition 2493 hoax. All I did was to add this message to the top of the hoax letter and click "reply all."

This is one of those evergreen urban legends that floats around christian circles. The FCC has pointedly denied that it exists (http://www.fcc.gov/mb/enf/forms/rm-2493.html). Focus on the Family says it's a hoax (http://www2.focusonthefamily.com/focusmagazine/christianliving/a000000143.cfm) and Snopes (the organization that looks into urban legends and the like) says it's false (http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/fcc.asp).

Actually, the FCC has received over 30 million enraged communications from christians who were duped by this particular piece of fiction.

The pastor's teenage son has added his name to the bottom of the message I sent and forwarded it to dozens of friends. Did he even notice my paragraphs? I doubt it.

FCC Petition 2493

I may have just made a few enemies. I just got one of those breathless e-mails from the youth pastor at my church, saying that the atheists are going to get preaching banned from television. After a strenuous 90 seconds of Internet searching, I found a denial from the FCC, a comment from James Dobson's Focus on the Family that it's fake, and a detailed discussion from Snopes.com of its status as an urban legend.

So I sent this to the youth pastor. I clicked "reply all." So all two dozen of the people he sent this to have my reply.

Wonder how this will come out.

No More Recycling

I just lost my last recycling place.

Recycling in Mansfield has always been an elite affair anyhow—it's the kind of thing for fancy people who drive Volvos, eat tofu, and say "He and I saw the cow." (Not "Me and him seen the cow.") It's an extra-cost option for people who live in single-family houses. Not available to apartment people.

The Mansfield problem was always money—only one company is really in the scrap business, and they could never figure out a way to make a profit selling scrap plastic and cardboard. It's cheaper just to bury everything.

Because of this, I always used to truck everything to Ashland (with just a twinge of guilt) because they had a public recycling bin. No more. When I arrived with several bags of material today, the whole thing was gone, with signs warning us not to leave material behind.

I suppose recycling is the victim of the global economy. Most of the market for scrap used to be China, but with the economy slowing, there is less market for cheap Chinese junk merchandise and the packaging it used to come in. So I guess I will, with a pang of regret, take my aluminum cans, plastic bottles, and cardboard back to my apartment, put it in the dumpster, and vow to use less stuff in the future.

Still here

People keep looking in, and that's very gratifying. I'm snowed under at the moment, grading my last few papers. With luck, Akron gets finished tomorrow and Ashland early next week. Then I can blog again.

UPS: The ongoing story

Rather foolishly, I ordered something from the West Coast, a keyboard for the church's new Mac Mini. I haven't seen the keyboard yet, but I've had plenty of interaction with UPS.

Wednesday, I was home, grading papers. Didn't even have the music on. I heard a little sound like the door rattling (maybe it was the wind) and discovered that the UPS man had stuck a "no response" notice on my door.

Of course, I was irritated. I did a little Internet checking and discovered that there's something called the UPS Phantom Delivery (Google the term to find some great commentary). Essentially, it's a delivery attempt in which the driver doesn't actually knock on the door—simply sticks the notice on and goes away.

Now I've been down this road before, and one problem with UPS is that there's no way to actually talk with a human there. The e-mail complaint box just has check boxes. However, after a little searching, I did find an obscure way to actually write an e-mail message to them, which I did.

Thursday, I got a phone call at 6:30 a.m. Could I accept delivery today? Well no—I actually had to go to work. How about Friday? I've been down this road before. If I say I will be there after 2 p.m. and they promise delivery between 2 and 6, they will attempt delivery at 10 a.m. and take it back to the warehouse. I pointed this out to the lady on the phone, told her that the phantom delivery is obviously an attempt by drivers to get paid for more work. I promised to be home for all 24 hours of Monday. I also put a very detailed explanation on the door of my apartment, complete with a large arrow pointing to the bell button.

Here I am in Ashland on Friday morning. I'll be back there by 1 p.m. We'll see if they try to deliver the thing today. Or maybe they've already done so.

All this for a $20 part. Next time I'll demand USPS.

---

Update

They did show up on the appointed day, and this driver was candid enough (after my neighbor across the hall agreed with my complaint) to say that the "phantom delivery" (ring the bell and run) is a genuine problem of several drivers.

Glad for my Mac

The whole Apple thing is almost a religion, and I've tried to avoid being obnoxious about it. Everyone knows the jokes about having a Mormon or a Jehovah's Witness on the doorstep.

But it's difficult, given the agony of doing very ordinary things on a Windows machine. The last gasp of the church's old Windows machine was the 45-minute project downloading eight PowerPoint songs to my flash drive. Then I talked them into a Mac Mini.

I should have learned my lesson, but no. I had to tempt fate. Today I've got my students writing a brief final essay, and I suggested that the ones in the non-computer classes could use their laptops and load their papers onto my flash drive. What a mistake. Ignoring the fact that the simple act of plugging a flash into a Win machine starts a 3-minute installation process, the thing was still a nightmare.

1. Click "Save As"
2. Find the picture of the computer and click that. Then scroll down and find the fairly obscure picture of my flash drive and click that.
3. Computer says the flash drive is empty, which is odd, but perhaps it just means empty of docx files. Type a name for the file and click "save."
4. Computer response: "File not found."

Now this is the point where the Apple user begins to lose his mind. I wasn't searching for anything. I wanted to make a new file. But the computer couldn't find the file that hadn't been made yet.

Maybe I shouldn't blame Windows, though. After several different fruitless tries, we plugged the flash drive into a different USB port and everything worked. Windows could recognize the first port enough to say that something was in there, but not enough to say what it was. Maybe the problem was cheap hardware after all. The whole project only took fifteen minutes.

They're baaaack!

Over the Hedge was a good movie (not great in the sense of Stardust but still pretty darn good). I never knew it was a print cartoon too! Yep! Here's the link to Over the Hedge.

Springtime in Ashland

We got hit with it big time today. The temperature is 80, the sky is blue, the cherry blossoms are full and fragrant. Cute girls with long blond hair are walking hand-in-hand with tall muscular boys, exchanging a quick, chaste kiss before they must separate to go to class. (No snogging here, and somehow the non-cute people got put in some cupboard today.) It's a scene directly from Pleasantville, except that things are in color. Redbuds are at their peak today.

Even Archway Cookies is back—today's flavor had a lot of cinnamon (you can smell it as you drive up Claremont Avenue). We thought we'd lost them, but (as this Wall Street Journal article says) they came back from bankruptcy, complete with their mascot, Archie. Whatever Archie is.

More on Street Treats

I guess I should have learned my lesson from my years working for Joe. NEVER post anything on the web without first doing a Google search! It seems that the world of trademark identity hasn't come to street vendors, so if you Google "Street Treats," you get a company that has vending machines full of dog biscuits. Nope. That's not the sandwich I love. With a hyphen, you get a company that runs those soft ice cream trucks (complete with an annoying melody that plays when you hit the website). Still not my beloved sandwich.

I have no idea how they managed it, but my Street Treats is the only private stand-alone food concession allowed on the University of Akron campus. The Union has a Subway and an Aunt Annie's Pretzels and (of course) a Starbuck's, but this one is away from all that, out in the open near the Polymer Lab.

It's an odd visual experience. On the left, as you approach, three or four large yellow-brick buildings from the 1950s. They look like government buildings or (better guess) geology buildings. Maybe the quest for clean coal is valuable, but they don't rate much in the pizzazz department when it comes to architecture. On the right, a small dormitory left over from the days when Akron was 100% commuter and only a few dozen hardy residents lived on campus. In front of you, the pride of the campus, the garish Goodyear Polymer Center, rising twelve stories into the air, covered with reflective glass, and containing two classrooms. And square in front of you, a little red trailer with a red umbrella and a line of people waiting for the two hard-working employees to make their sandwiches.

Ah those sandwiches! Always pita bread. Several meat choices: steak, chicken, hot dog (never tried that one), or gyro meat. Sauces: overpowering steak sauce, honey mustard (my favorite) or "gyro sauce" (I don't think the locals can pronounce tzatsiki). Provolone cheese? It'll cost you an extra dime. Veggies? Of course: lettuce, tomato, and raw purple onion.

Get a bottle of iced tea (and don't forget the spork.) Sit in the sun and watch the odd combination of nerdy engineers, goofy freshmen, and skateboarders walk by.

I lost my last chance.

Things have been pretty quiet around here since I put my phone number on the Federal Do Not Call List. It's a bit lonely, actually. I used to return home to at least four answering machine messages, offering me a chance to refinance my home, escape my credit card bills, or (my favorite) take advantage of the LAST CHANCE to pay for an extended warranty on my car. Things have gotten so quiet that I actually answer the phone now. That's how I got into this:

Her: I'm calling to offer you a chance to extend the warranty on your car.
Me: Ah yes! You folks call several times a day to give me one last chance to put a warranty on a car I sold three years ago.
Her: click

I shouldn't feel too bad, though. Political organizations and charities are exempt, so I still get those bogus "surveys" from the Conservatives: "Are you aware that Barack Obama favors allowing absolutely anyone to perform an abortion on absolutely anyone else?" (No, and neither is Obama aware that he favors this. Don't you love people who try to promote righteousness by telling lies?)

Spring on Campus

Spring in Akron. All the things that seem so normal to me (and so odd to others).

Blimps

Nothing in the world sounds like a blimp. Slow, piston-engine propellers, but not as big a sound as a helicopter makes. They hover low over the campus, make a turn, then go back. Over the years, I've become sort of an expert on blimp handling (at least an expert in watching them from the ground). The slightest breeze really shoves a blimp around, so they are rarely pointed in exactly the direction they are going. They fly to advertise, so they are rarely very high either, like about a thousand feet. And always with an American flag flying from the tail. They're so common that people don't even look up any more.

Chicken pita sandwiches

Yes, Street Treats is there right through the winter, through snow and sleet, but I can't quite bring myself to wait in line for a chicken sandwich when it's a blizzard, so these semi-Greek delights are mainly a warm-weather thing for me. One friend, visiting campus with me, called the sandwich "orgasmically great." I don't think I'd go that far, but they are good.

Street light sculptures

When I first arrived at Akron (seems like a lifetime ago), I noticed three things: the incredible blue sky, the smell of bread baking (Wonder Bread is just at the edge of campus), and the odd little sculptures on the tops of the street lights on campus. They seem to be cobbled up from left-over TV antennas, and at first I thought they were some sort of microwave communication system, but no. They all have little wind-chime bells, and most of them are made to look something like the human form. They have the general feel of a sophomore art project, but they have been there, tinkling away, for at least eight years now. And again, yes they are there all year around, but I only notice them in the summer. In the winter, I'm so intent on getting to class that I can't be bothered with beautiful or whimsical stuff.

We only have two more weeks of class, and the campus is at its best in high summer. That's a shame. So few people are there for the lawns, the flowers, and the Dorothy Martin fountain. I don't know who she was, but her name is attached to a modern fountain that flows rather than splashes. She's not turned on yet. I guess frost is still possible. Today a student was up on top of the pillar, playing with his girlfriend's shoes there while she giggled and shrieked.

---

Jon phoned today and I told him that I'm in the middle of my usual springtime funk. How could I get through an entire semester and tell my students so little? How could they make so little progress? How could we be such a failure? But that's only half of the story. One of my Ashland football players (who was in my Developmental class last spring) has turned out to be a fine writer, and asked my permission to name me as his favorite teacher at a halftime ceremony tomorrow. I need to remember that one when I get depressed.

Speaking of which—

I got my course list from the community college and decided to go ahead and ask for some courses, but on my terms this time. I'm going to ask for literature courses. The "current-traditional" approach (which is Composition jargon for "old-fashioned") favored there is pretty far from what I want to do with beginning English classes. And I never get to do any Literature courses. So I'm going to ask for courses that will make me happy.

And a voice from the past—When I looked at the e-mail from the college, one of the names in the "To" list caught my attention. One of the high-school boys in my Youth For Christ group from years back. Small town. Small world.