Three crocuses

The crocuses and daffodils have been pushing through the earth for weeks now, even in the worst of the cold. I have worried about them but they keep going. In front of my house I am not sure whether we are dealing with the one or the other, since the landlady planted the bulbs, so I will have Surprise Flowers. For now, there are green shoots getting higher and higher. Nothing has bloomed yet. But I just went on a walk back in my old haunts, the paved road through the woods on campus, and stopped at a friend's house to say hi, and lo, there were three crocuses blooming at her doorstep.

Speaking of old haunts, the college has finally fixed my old house. So the insurance must have come through and the structural damage must have been less than severe. There is no longer a blue tarpaulin over half the roof and there is a new piece of roof. I don't know what's happened inside.

I am glad to be living off campus and much prefer the privacy I have here, but I miss the old house, the house itself.

Naturally, they will rent the place out at a higher rent than they were renting to me. I don't know this for sure, but it's the way of the world.

I am grumpy about the way of the world (and the bureaucracies and the powers and principalities). The crocuses, though, are beautiful.

Slowing down

Although there is a bit of administrative catch-up for me to finish today, the Guilford semester is over and I am at home a lot, slowing down, getting enough sleep at last, returning to the gym, and trying to recover from one of the more stressful semesters in recent history.

As +Maya noted a couple of days ago, I am in blog slowdown mode. It is not easy, in that I love the company and whatever creativity I can muster and love reading the creative efforts and news of others. But drawing inward in this holiday season has been my plan for a while and I want to keep to it, for the sake of my health and sanity and also to finish up some writing I have had to neglect these past few months.

I'm not totally disappearing: I will be posting this Sunday's sermon, which will be about Mary our sister, the mother of Jesus, but I will be blogging much less between now and mid-January. Please keep me in your prayers, those of you who pray (I welcome good vibrations, thoughts, and incantations from those of you who do not and messages of cheer from any and all of you) and do keep checking in here. Her Grace the feline bishop may make a few appearances, either to keep you posted or to show off her wisdom and beauty.

+Maya Pavlova says: I've been too busy getting extra sleep to write an Advent pastoral letter, but this would have been its theme: "Advent Alertness and Winter Sleep." I am living both. Mmmmmrrrrrrrrooowwwwwww.

Peace out.

Pray for the OHC monks of Mt. Calvary, California

I read last night on my friend Paul's blog that Mt. Calvary, the California residence and retreat center of the Order of the Holy Cross (Anglican Benedictines) was devastated by fire yesterday.

Both Paul and I have ties of deep affection with the OHC monks, he with the Santa Barbara crew and I with the smaller crew at the Priory in Berkeley, which has recently undergone the process of dismantling and merging with the California and West Park, New York monasteries. You can read about the fire and the monks here, chez Paul. Very sad news, though thank Godde all the brothers are safe, so the loss was of things and not flesh.

Paul also reflects on impermanence in this post.


I have been pondering those realities of the "stuff" we carry around and our attachments to it since the tree fell on my former house, as I continue to go through things rescued and moved haphazardly.

I also had horrid nightmares last night, but they were largely about the biennial faculty evaluations and pre-tenure review at school.

In another dream, I walked all the way from Boston to a women's monastic retreat house on Cape Cod, but it took only two hours and for some reason my parents (who generally would not go near a monastery) were meeting me at the retreat. And the road looked familiar. Apparently I had walked it before -- perhaps in another dream, which I remembered inside last night's dream.

Pray for the brothers of the Order of the Holy Cross, who keep their core of contemplation, but who are human as we all are, and who have been displaced by violent weather in the form of wind and fire.

My friend Richard is an Associate of the order, as are several other friends, and I have been pondering making that commitment myself for a few years now. (Though the St. Helena Breviary is more to my liking --more on the Order of St. Helena here-- but I have an abiding love for the Benedictines, and for some reason their communities of men feel welcoming and comforting to me. There's probably some deep psychological reason for that, or maybe it has to do with my being hetero, but ultimately the "why" doesn't matter.)

Grant peace and comfort, O giver of life, to all your children displaced by fire, that they may find shelter through the hospitality of their neighbors and know anew their dearest home in You. Through Christ our strength and our salvation, Amen.

Greetings from Chicago

It's only going to get more busy, so while there is still time, a little update:

1. The weather is clear and gorgeous and almost warm. We had a spectacular view flying down over Chicago at night with the city's grid landscape all light up.

2. It took me as long to get from O'Hare to the hotel downtown as it did for the plane to fly from Greensboro to Chicago.

3. The hotel staff calls me "Miss." (In Greensboro it would be "Ma'am.")

4. The hotel is a maze. I've gotten lost twice already, and I am a veteran of much girl scouting with a good sense of direction.

5. I went in search of food and found pappardelle with vegetables and some kind of fancy-shmancy parmesan. I almost ordered room service but it was the same food, only pricier, and it's already bad enough. So I suffered through the noisy half-closed hotel restaurant. Question: WHY do semi-chichi places feel they have to blast rock music through their eateries and lounges? You can't heard yourself think. With this statement, I am officially an Old Fart.

6. I have run into several friends and colleagues already. The conference officially begins Saturday but there are a gazillion pre-conference meetings. There are relatively few of us around, though. Tomorrow night and Saturday it will get truly crazy.

7. I left my name badge and other registration stuff at home because the study at my new house is only half set up and I was rushing to leave after my 4 p.m. class and changing cat-sitter plans. Stupid, stupid. For once I had registered early and had all my paperwork. I even rescued it carefully when the house thing happened and put the AAR registration materials envelope with my folders of Very Important Stuff That I Moved By Hand. It's not an enormous big deal, since the registration people will have me in their computer, but it does mean I will have to stand in line. And I might not have as pretty a nametag. Big crises I can deal with -- it's the little stuff that gets me.

8. I also left the eat-at-the-airport yogurt at home in its cute little pot with the plastic spoon I had carefully put with it, hence my need to rustle up dinner when I arrived here. Oh well.

9. There is construction on Wabash under the El. There is always construction somewhere in downtown Chicago. Wait, I haven't been here in 15 years, this generalization won't work.

10. I ran into Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim (who are married to each other) and had a lovely chat with them. They invited me to the Religion and Ecology Luncheon tomorrow. They've been at Yale for three years and are happy there. We knew each other in Berkeley. They are also leading an afternoon session with this description:
This session will feature the new film Heart of the Universe with Brian Swimme. This is the first film to offer a comprehensive narrative of the evolution of the universe and the earth. The film draws on the best of current science blended with a poetic sensibility that evokes awe and wonder. This symposium will be led by Brian Swimme and Mary Evelyn Tucker, who together wrote the script and the accompanying book.

I know this will be wonderful and groovy, but I think I will just go to the lunch. Tomorrow is for the Art Institute and working on my paper and also for remedying my registration materials problems, and then at 4 p.m. is the annual meeting of the Feminist Liberation Theologians Network (FLTN, this is the land of acronyms, as are most professional organizations or clusters of organizations) and we're off and running.

In case I don't write again for a while: Saturday morning (another pre-conference meeting) is the Society for the Study of Anglicanism (SSA). Topic: "Christ and Culture: Post-Lambeth Perspectives." (I just added a whole paragraph here and decided to delete it for reasons of diplomacy. What I will say is that I'm not sure I want to spend an entire morning on Lambeth postmortems right now.)

At the same time are a forum on religion and violence, a panel on "Presidential Politics and Religious Rhetoric", a meeting of the Society for Buddhist/Christian Studies with a focus on Merton this year (boy, that one is tempting), and the Presidential Address at the Society for the Study of Christian Spirituality (Mary Frohlich, Catholic Theological Union, Chicago on "Under the Sign of Jonah: Studying Spirituality in a Time of Ecosystemic Crisis") , a Global Ethics and Religion Forum on "The Role of Religion in a Just and Sustainable World" with six panelists from different fields, and numerous other sessions. And that's before the official beginning of the AAR.

All for today. Peace out.


Photo of a little something from "Iconic Chicago Chocolate Maker Fannie May" (dixit a local business rag), whose newish store I (in the airport van) passed on Wabash.

Friday cat blogging: Maya in the new place

We are having a somewhat gloomy day at Acts of Hope, weather-wise and otherwise. The resident human, being the queen of delayed reactions, has finally been feeling the impact of the last couple of months with the Great Tree Disaster, the precipitous move, the unceasing onslaught of work, the gazillions of boxes to unpack (remember they were packed in haste -albeit by the moving company- so the chaos factor was high and the labeling accuracy low), six nearly simultaneous deadlines (four of which the aforementioned human did not meet and still has hanging over her increasingly grey head), and several other stressors. There is also the advent of shorter days. Seasonal Affective Disorder, anyone? (Try this. I'm serious.)

The resident feline, on the other hand, is cheery, with the occasional trace of post-traumatic reaction when someone moves furniture or shuffle boxes around. Her Grace does have her favorite napping spots, though, set up by her Canon to the Extraordinary.

When we first moved, she headed for the Canon's pillow every day and sometimes every night. Here she is either opening her eyes from a nap because of the sound of the camera or still freaked out by the move. Behind her is the headboard to the Canon's grandparents' bed, which the tree disaster broke into bits. But it's easy to lean the rescued headboard against the wall and make a plain ol' cheap bed look fancy. We have saved the pieces of the old bed and maybe some day we can have it fixed. We're not holding our breath.


Now Her Grace has migrated and has found other soft spots. She has a perch in the bedroom and another in the living room. Here's the bedroom one. The piece of furniture is the landlady's and instead of having it in a corner, we have it in front of the window. The windows here are much higher up than the windows in the old place. With this particular perch Miss Maya can be up against the window as she likes to be, thanks to these nice open shelves. At first she napped on the bare shelf, quite happily, but now there is an old mattress pad, nice and soft, for her leisure. It's not pretty but it's comfy.


Here's the living room one. The Canon is going to have to move the cushions, one of which belongs elsewhere, but she has held off in the interests of feline episcopal stability, and for about a month this has been the main episcopal seat in the house. Note the sage napping pose.


This is an all-purpose cathedra (bishop's seat). It is good for napping and also for watching kitty tv, of which there is plenty: birds, squirrels, rain, and now a few falling leaves.

It is also good for keeping a lookout for the Canon when she returns home.

Next to the Feline Bishop Extraordinaire is a makeshift curtain of Indian print with elephants on it. We think the Canon to the Extraordinary has had this piece of material since college, but we're not sure. For now, it works to give the living room some privacy.

We took down the landlady's curtains for a variety of aesthetic reasons. The windows are, as they say, butt-ugly, and we are going to get new window treatments, we just haven't yet. (One more thing on the list.) But the old window treatments had to go.

This window is not much of one since it is where the air conditioner lives (the old place had central air conditioning and big picture windows) but it does provide a great place for +Maya Pavlova to jump onto, and sometimes when she is up there, once she has finished looking out at the leaves and the bugs and the birds,

she poses.


She wants you to see both profiles. Aren't they handsome? Is this not the most regal feline bishop you have ever seen, even on top of an air conditioner in a butt-ugly window? Not for nothing is Maya Pavlova the Right Reverend AND Right Honorable.

Here you can see she can still look a little freaked out. Bishops are human, er, feline too, you know. Remember your bishops are breathing feeling animals.


Mostly though, she's okay.

Click on the photos to enlarge them. Especially this last one.

Give to the emperor...

... or as the old translation says, "render to Caesar..."

I haven't preached in a few months, since a while before the tree fell, as Kevin has very kindly not bugged me about getting back on the rota, but we recently had a convergence of my volunteering and his asking (he just got back from CREDO, the same program Padre Mickey went to --different place, different group-- and Caminante will go to next year, and from there had to go almost directly to Clergy Conference) and I am on for Sunday.

I have my thoughts about the several lessons for the day, but I am curious about your collective wisdom on the "render to Caesar" passage. So how 'bout it, campers? Your thoughts.

I'll start: Doing biblical study is a little like doing detective work. The Gospels are not a reporter's account. They tell us as much about the communities that produced them and the communities for whom they were intended as they do about what was going on in Jesus' day. I remember being in a group of people in which one person (an older Presbyterian woman) said the meaning was obvious, and another offered a different, equally obvious to him, interpretation. The fact is, this is one of those texts with which we have to wrestle, in today's context of today's empire. What is certain is that the text points to a preoccupation of the early Christian communities -- their relationship with the empire in which they lived. Remember, too, the last few Sundays, where economics shows up as a major theme. Here we have both economics and politics. And, as always, the kin(g)dom of heaven.

This is the context in which to place the election, the economy, and everything else. But I don't think the answer is a simple formula.

So, have a look. Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest. Then go to the Comments.

P.S. One rule: I will not allow simplistic interpretations of or misuse of "Pharisees" as "hypocrites" or "bad guys." For more on "Pharisees" and Christian (including progressive Christian) misuse of the term and its promotion of both theological anti-Judaism and antisemitism, see some of Sarah Dylan Breuer's fine reflections on the topic. For Jesus and some of his followers, the Pharisees were family. The disputes with them were internal. We have treated them as if they were disputes with the greater powers of the day, ignoring those powers --those of the Roman Empire. The greatest Pharisee, after whom Jewish campus centers are named? Rabbi Hillel, of precious wisdom and revered humility. Nuff said. Read what Sarah wrote. She's the biblical scholar.

Matthew 22:15-22

The Pharisees went and plotted to entrap Jesus in what he said. So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, "Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality. Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?" But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, "Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me the coin used for the tax." And they brought him a denarius. Then he said to them, "Whose head is this, and whose title?" They answered, "The emperor's." Then he said to them, "Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's." When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.

Fall break

It is fall break at the college where I teach. I've been sleeping, cooking, continuing to unpack and set up the house, and as of yesterday in the late afternoon, catching up on church work -- and taking lots of quiet time. Also writing three or four posts, which will show up when I finish them. They include a passage on community and prayer from When in Doubt, Sing and a post called "Phun with Phyllo Dough." I also have to finish a report for school, but after that, no school for a week. The solitude is heavenly.

Her Grace the Feline Bishop Extraordinaire is deep in her afternoon nap.

The Adorable Godson is not feeling well and I may have to go in search of another happy chicken. Stay tuned.

Resting up at Acts of Hope

We took part in the Blessing of the Animals at St. Mary's House this morning, and a fine one it was, with a splendid sermon by two-legged Kevin. Kevin's four-legged companion Andy was also there, full of fine doggie optimism.

We will write about all this in time. Right now, one of us (the two-legged one) has been dragging her posterior for a couple of days and feeling ill (started right after the Veep debate...) and is taking a sick day tomorrow, and the other (four legs and fur) is fast asleep after much running around inside the house and a brief, unplanned escapade outdoors.

The two-legged one has made and eaten quantities of chicken soup. The four-legged one would leave her no peace and eventually got a nice piece of chicken breast. Yes, she is spoiled, but she is a bishop and she is entitled.

More when we can. Peace out.

Photo: +Maya Pavlova in her new digs, a week or two ago. She is on an improvised soft perch balanced on the top of the back of the living-room sofa in front of the window. Improvised curtain is behind her, made of Indian fabric with elephant pattern. What you can't see: stacks of boxes and mess. Better tonight after another few hours of straightening and unpacking. Right -- we're still not fully settled in.

Below: Button that arrived in the mail Friday. Buy 'em here.

30 days.

Brought to you by your daily ¡Si, se puede!

Activated till the polls close on November 4.

Two from today's Times

Mother of Acts of Hope (age 90 - her birthday was the weekend I moved after the Great Tree Disaster) highly recommends this op-ed by Bob Herbert (photo left), "When Madmen Reign."

When President Bush went on television last week to drum up support for the bailout package, he looked almost dazed, like someone who’d just climbed out of an auto wreck.

“Our entire economy is in danger,” he said.

He should have said that he, along with his irresponsible Republican colleagues and their running buddies in the corporate and financial sectors, put the entire economy in danger. John McCain and his economic main man, Phil (“this is a mental recession”) Gramm, were right there running with them.

Meanwhile, back home in France...

This fascinating report, also published in today's New York Times, speaks of Catholic schools as havens of interreligious tolerance and companionship.

In France, which has only four Muslim schools, some of the country’s 8,847 Roman Catholic schools have become refuges for Muslims seeking what an overburdened, secularist public sector often lacks: spirituality, an environment in which good manners count alongside mathematics, and higher academic standards.

No national statistics are kept, but Muslim and Catholic educators estimate that Muslim students now make up more than 10 percent of the two million students in Catholic schools. In ethnically mixed neighborhoods in Marseille and the industrial north, the proportion can be more than half.

The quiet migration of Muslims to private Catholic schools highlights how hard it has become for state schools, long France’s tool for integration, to keep their promise of equal opportunity.

Doxy and Jasper stop by, Part II

We said we'd complete the meetup report within days, but we didn't say how many days!

+Maya Pavlova has not been feeling up to writing and I have been writing bureaucratic things and guidelines for student assignments. In honor of Rosh Hashanah, we are returning to reflection and study and prayer, and in honor of Eid al-Fitr and Rosh Hashanah we are pondering the goodness of feasting with friends. So, a brief update.

Doxy stopped by lo those many days ago on her way from here to there, and with her was the handsome Jasper, on whom I have a big doggie crush. Yes, moi, the cat person. This curly-haired black canine is irresistible. He has a big doggie smile and happy doggie energy and when I got in from work around 1 p.m., Doxy was already there with him, introducing him to my somewhat suburban lawn. (I knew I had moved to semi-suburbia for a reason!)

We have not yet introduced Jasper to +Maya Pavlova. It's not that we don't want to, but +Maya, who, according to the shelter, gets along with just about all sentient beings (well, she kills bugs and a year ago she went after mice in the old house, though the first time she and the mouse just faced off in an empty bathtub) was still shaken from the move, my house was full of boxes and would not have been welcoming to a bouncing dog, and Jasper is still full of puppy energy, though he is now over a year old. So Doxy and I have continued the practice of Doxy meets Maya, Jane meets Jasper, and Doxy and Jane hang out together with one or the other of the animals, or sometimes neither one.

In this case we had a little Jasper time, a little +Maya time, and then repaired sans four-legged friends to the local Chinese/Thai/fusion/much better than P.F. Chang's, thank you very much restaurant and chattered away about the usual topics. The visit was short but lively.

Acts of Hope wants to know: When do we get a fresh Jasper photo on the Wormwood's Doxy blog? Master Jasper's fans are way overdue. Throw us a bone!

Padre Mickey meet-up

I had a great dinner last night in Asheville, NC with the one and only Padre Mickey de Panamá. Yes, we have pictures, or rather he has, in his magic digital camera. Red Mr. Peanut Bank and Gallito Mescalito, the devoted and inseparable pair, sat with us (we on chairs, they on the table) and with their new conversation partner, whom I introduced to them and whom you will see when the photos go up. The waitstaffpersonwoman was very tolerant of our silliness and we gave her a big fat tip. We had excellent food, too. It involved several different kinds of chutney.

Send prayers to Padre Mickey, who is at one of those Episcopal clergy thangs (CREDO) for the week, and stay tuned for his return, when (we hope) photos will appear on El Padre's blog.

Special thanks to the blog friends who recently sent a lovely gift to the Jane Tree Disaster Recovery Fund. While I have used part of the gift for myself last week (a massage is a fine thing when you are achy and tired from moving and stressed out), it seemed appropriate to spend a chunk of it toward the Big Laughing Dinner With Mickey. Thank you! Bless your hearts. You contributed to laughter, merriment, and Sabbath time.

Theology for deacons and running for the hills

Holà all -- I am finally taking a day off. After teaching the first class of the theology course for our diocese's vocational deacon candidates today, I will drive away from the not-so-big city for some peace and quiet and fresh air. At the end of my time off I will drive a little farther and meet up with my buddy Padre Mickey de Panamá, who is coming through this Southern region on his way from here to there. We will have Sunday evening dinner and tell funny stories and who knows? Perhaps there will be a surprise appearance by Gallito Mescalito. Stay tuned.

Deadline time again

I'm not asking for much: I would just like to have some period of time when I am not being evaluated by some person or committee and when I don't have a deadline to meet.

I guess that's called "vacation" or "retirement" but don't they make jobs (or vocations) without either of these, in which you can just do your work?

All right, that was the "dream on" section of the post.

Just a note to all y'all to let you know that posting will, once again, be scarce, because I have two deadlines to meet right now, immediately if not sooner: 1) the Dreaded Fourth Year Evaluation (not its official name) for which I have to finish up my long and specific self-evaluation document with responses to anonymous student comments from the college evaluation forms and 2) a proposal for an Interdisciplinary Studies upper-level course ("Religion, Ecofeminism, and Environmental Justice" - have taught it once before but not in that special category on an interdisciplinary capstone) that needs to go through a committee and which is not optional -- we really need one of those courses in our department and this requires writing a long proposal answering very specific questions about how the course meets pedagogical and academic requirements.

That's on top of the usual teaching and related activities.


And once again I am behind on the Episcopal Café writing, which is what I would really like to be working on all week, along with the first of the theology classes for the Deacon Formation Program, which I teach this coming Saturday. I did get the blog up for the latter (open only to class members and other authorized persons) and of course made a link there to the one and only Ormonde Plater, who teaches us so much about diaconal history and ministry. (Why do Roman Catholics spell it diaconal and Episcopalians spell it deaconal? I may be a seven-year-old Anglican, but I still spell it diaconal. Force of habit, and it doesn't look right to me the other way.)

So, I may or may not post this week, but check in once in a while, and meanwhile all y'all go wish some good health to JohnieB, who recently had a little hospital episode related to his kidneys, and to his feline companion, Miz Scarlett, who is even more skittish than usual. Both of them have a move in the offing and their abode is about to be topsy-turvy for a while. Caminante is also packing. Her feline friends are taking note. And +Maya Pavlova and I are still in boxes at the new place, speaking of topsy-turvy, though we have a functional kitchen and bedroom and she, the feline bishop, seems to be her old calm and calming self. Me, I am managing. Lord, have mercy. I'm taking 36 hours off this weekend after teaching the deacon candidates and am running for the hills, literally: off to the mountains on Saturday.

P.S. ¡ Si se puede !

Back in broadband-land

Haha! Humongous Cable Company told me I had to use its cables to get My Internet Provider Whose Address I Have Had For A Decade. Aforementioned Internet Provider initially told me there was no way to connect to the internet from my residence at high speed except by satellite, which I could not do because the dish would disfigure my landlady's nice yard and garden; also, I knew they had to be wrong. In the last week I have had at least five LiveChats with Internet Provider and several phone calls with Cable Company and Internet Provider. We at Acts of Hope are persistent. I knew there had to be a way to keep my ever faithful internet address with Aforementioned Internet Provider AND get a broadband connection, and so there was. In the end it was simple: we moved our DSL account here once we got a telephone land line.

So we're in business. Blogging from home! Woo hoo. Life is good. Also, the Right Rev. and Right Hon. Maya Pavlova and I both got lots of sleep last night, and an afternoon nap to boot.

Kliban cats website is here.

Now I have to get lots and lots and lots of work done, but at least I don't have to go into the office at bizarre hours any more to work online.

Why, you ask, do I work online so much? 'Cause we have these course websites on the college internal system, kind of like blogs really -- we use the open-source program Moodle, which is the same as the program Blackboard in other institutions -- and to simplify life and save paper and enable me to give students quick feedback online, I shifted to having all short assignments uploaded to the Moodle sites for the courses I teach.

Of course when you only have dial-up that messes up your life big-time. In addition to this, we have roaming profiles at work, and we can't get into those from home without high-speed and some kind of special software I didn't need when I was living on campus and plugged into the college network at home. So between that and the other delays occasioned by the Great Tree Disaster, I've been way behind on my work and the students aren't getting the timely feedback they need. (I got low ratings in past years in the "timely feedback" category on the student evaluation forms, so I have to work on this extra hard.)

Also, I am setting up a new blog (closed to the public, sorry) for the theology component of the diocesan deacon formation program, which I start teaching next weekend.

And there's Race, Justice, and Love, the blog for the Anti-Racism Committee, which I have neglected for the last month.

And then there's the Episcopal Café, for which I write regularly, except that I had to skip last month because of the Great Tree Disaster.

At home, though, we are also low-tech: we have no dishwashing machine or microwave and we have lots of books, and though Her Grace loves to press the buttons on the fax machine (which is not yet set up, but we'll get to it), she is a live creature and requires no buttons, beeps, wires, electric current, or ultrasound waves to purr and play.

For which I give thanks to Godde.

[photo of Maya Pavlova coming here soon.]

Dial-up update: the bishop gets her toys back

It is a joyous evening for the Right Rev. and Right Hon. Maya Pavlova, FBE. A former student of mine came to finish unpacking the kitchen while I attended to other tasks, and in one of the boxes with kitchen and other household things was a little basket full of the Maya Pavlova toys -- a couple from the shelter which came with her when she joined the household, and some newer ones which she had pushed under the couch and which surfaced during the move. (The movers laughed sympathetically; there are always kitty toys and other goodies behind people's sofas. We also found at least three of my pens and one ethics book. Stop laughing. It is a very good book by Margaret Farley.) So now there is a toy mouse at my feet and periodically the house resounds with the bell of a plastic rolling ball. There is also the matter of the little catnip-stuffed ball; oh, we do love that one.

Your feline bishop has also increased the nap time and I have been giving her extra food every day. She is still skinny but less skittish.

Me, I am working long hours. There are colleagues in my classes observing my teaching because the dreaded fourth-year evaluation is in process; I have to get up early tomorrow and work on my self-evaluation. I am of course behind on correcting student work and since we still don't have broadband at home, I can only work on the course websites at the office, though I am attempting a blog post here. The broadband saga continues. The Adorable Godson, who is a techie, and who has been in the middle of a move himself, helped me with something for which I need broadband but not the broadband itself, though he may be able to help with that or at the very least commiserate. He understands some of the mysteries of techitude, or at least some of the ones that elude me. I just want to know why it is so damn complicated for me to keep my former e-mail address AND get a high-speed connection. The Evil Time Warner is, however, installing the cable tv box on Friday. I will have a million useless channels along with the all-important C-span so I can watch election coverage straight up with no seltzer and no obnoxious anchorpeople. But I still won't have my internet connection. Soon, soon, we hope.

And then there's Sarah Palin.

Disaster and recovery update, +Maya edition (and a question about digital cameras)

Keep up the prayers, o canine, feline, and human friends and fans of +Maya. When I left the house early this morning, Her Grace was, for the first time of a morning since we moved, napping in the living room (such as it is - she was on top of a large unopened box) and opened her eyes to look at me but did not move, which is a very good sign. She has several times napped in the afternoon and stayed put, but in the morning she has tended to do a lot of bopping around. So we are making progress here and moving toward restoring the sacred rhythm of feline naps.

I have also increased the food dose slightly since Her Grace appears to be burning extra calories with all this leaping in and out of cupboards and on and off and into and out of boxes. She is a slender sort and I am not too worried that she will turn into a Fat Cat, on the contrary.

Special thanks to our brother bishop +Clumber for his encouragement and to Maggy and Gabby, Kitten's crew, for feline prayers, and to Ms. FranIAm for ongoing holy accompaniment.

As soon as I can find the camera in this mess, I will take photos and have them developed (onto a CD as usual) and post them.

Still no digital camera -- I really must invest in one next time I have a few bucks; any advice from all you fine digital photographers out there? I want something cheap but good. And I've never used a digital camera except once or twice when someone asked me to take a picture of them, so I know nothing about connecting it with blogging. I do have a lot of experience with regular cameras, though. Digital cameras are still a mystery to me. It looks like you don't even look through them the same way, so how do you focus on detail?

Disaster (and recovery) update, weekend edition

Dear friends of Acts of Hope,

We are fine, just busy --and we have been away from the intertubes a lot. The conference on the racial history of the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina yesterday went very well and well over 100 people attended, including all three of our bishops, all day. It was worth all the hard work. I will report on it in due time. I got home from there and went to bed at 8 p.m.!

Say a little prayer to Saint Laika for our feline bishop. She has lost some weight in the last ten days since the Great Tree Catastrophe (so have I, but I needed to and she didn't!) and still has a worried look in her eyes and has not yet fully relaxed. A friend and I unpacked some more stuff this afternoon and the shuffling of boxes had Her Grace scampering all over the place. Some of it was play, but some of it was fright. She is enjoying her window perch and she does sleep, but I am not sure she has been getting enough deep-sleep naps yet. Poor Maya Pavlova - moving is hard on cats. I think she'll be fine; she is eating and using the kitty litter and she knows I'm there, but this whole thing has been unsettling for her. Poor sweetie. She does purr now and again, so we're not talking state of shock here, but she's not quite back to normal.

For that matter, neither am I! But we're getting there, and a long night's sleep last night helped. The kitchen is almost unpacked and settled and there is less chaos in the living room.

Tonight it's time to read student work and prep for tomorrow morning's class. I am briefly at the office to use the high-speed connection and the college network. Back home soon with my feline friend and some student work to read. We did get our phone connection yesterday (land line - the cell has been a life saver between Tree-on-House-Day and the present) and can use dial-up for e-mail in a pinch, but I probably won't blog from home till high-speed is set up there. (Boy are we spoiled.)

Yes, there will be a Doxy and Jasper post, Part II. Patience.

Jane in the 'burbs?!

These last three years I have managed to isolate myself somewhat (by living on campus) from the suburbia that is the landscape on this side of Greensboro. Well, no more.

I will have a lot to say about this when I finally have a high-speed connection at home (next week, we think - the Evil Time Warner came by sooner than the sales department had predicted, in the form of a nice man who said that the little old house is indeed cable-worthy) but for now, I am trying to get out of Panera Bread, my WiFi home away from home, which is actually pleasant, but freaking me out and filling me with nostalgia for the sidewalks of Berkeley and for the Cheeseboard and Acme Bread. Those don't have WiFi, though. Sorry for the run-on sentence before that last one.

I am an urban girl. Rural I can do. It's the suburban Southern Sprawl thing I can't quite get used to. But I am thinking of this as a reporter/anthropologist/sociologist and that makes it interesting. I just can't quite believe I live here.

Blog flashback on a related topic: Foot people and car people (May 2007)

Disaster update, cont'd

I have ordered phone service and will have a land line by this weekend, if not before.

Internet is more complicated for reasons with which I won't bore you and which have to do with the location and wiring of the house. But in a pinch I will be able to use dial-up once I have the phone connection up and running.

Excerpt from a letter to my family:

Had an 18 hour work day yesterday. Nuts. Better today, only one class, went to get hair cut this a.m., called the massage therapist who usually books weeks in advance but miraculously had an opening for tomorrow afternoon, put out a couple of fires (metaphorical, don't worry) re: Saturday's conference, bought a chocolate swirl cheesecake (downtown near hairdresser, famous cheesecake store in Greensboro where I never go but everybody loves) as a thank-you for the Facilities staff here, drove back to campus, dropped off the cheesecake with a thank-you note, dropped by the old house (where there are workers nailing boards on the roof to protect the inside in a more semi-permanent way than the tarpaulin of the past week) and am now hiding behind a closed door at my office catching up. Still trying to figure out how to get high-speed internet at my new place, which has some quirky wiring access issues. Studying Native Americans and Puritans in the 16th and 17th centuries this afternoon in class. Then I get to go home, probably by 6 p.m. Hurrah.

Still really tired (the usual Wednesday longest-day-of-the-work-week stretched out an extra three hours) and sleep-deprived, but hoping for an early to bed night today and/or tomorrow. Certainly will have one after the conference Saturday. +Maya Pavlova still has a worried look in her eyes when she is out and about, except when she watches the new Kitty TV Channels (one channel per window) at the new house, at which point she is entranced. Lots of entertainment for her, most of it with wings. As far as I know she got her sleep yesterday, though I wasn't around to see it.

Must go online and figure out the Evil Time Warner, since I couldn't get a decent or coherent answer out of them yesterday when I reached them on the phone. I ordered phone service online, though, and it was much better. Feh. Who needs TV. Maybe I'll ignore Time Warner Cable for a while.

Note to Earthlink subscribers: the live chat customer-service staff is speedy, helpful, and coherent.

A picture is worth a thousand words

I'm standing inside the bedroom here. That's the sky you see. The grey dusty debris was waist-deep before the disaster recovery people came. It also had tree branches in it. My buddy Noel from church took the photo the morning of the move, Sunday.

But that was only one room and the rest of the house was fine, though the night the great tree fell (two and a half feet in diameter, that tree trunk!) we cleared every last thing out of the two adjoining rooms right away because of concern that the roof and ceiling would collapse there too. As it turns out, they did not.

The t-shirt, as FranIAm has noted, says "There are two means of refuge in the world: music and cats." (Albert Schweitzer.)

With apologies to dog people, who know that dogs are equally a means of refuge (or more, I know, I know, but I am a cat person).

The tree, by the way, did not fall because of lightning or a big storm. Apparently what happened is that at the end of two days of steady but sometimes soft rain following a period of drought, the nearby pond and a little gully or ravine overflowed and loosened the soil around this big live tree, and boom, onto the house (and onto another half a tree which also went whomp on the house) it went.

P.S. Spoke with Mimi in Louisiana last night. They lost water. Not fun. Compared to what Mimi and her family and so many neighbors have had with displacement and loss of power and now water (at the place to which they relocated, not their original home!), I have just been on a picnic.