Thursday, July 2, 2009

written the following day

On Thursday, I went to Harrodsburg, about thirty minutes away. Twice. In a row. Morgan and I are part of a vegetable co-op and Morgan is on a pick-up rotation which means every certain number of weeks, it’s her turn to go pick up all the boxes of veggies in Harrodsburg for all the families and individuals in Wilmore who are a part of this co-op. I had time free, so I decided to go with Morgan to Harrodsburg and we made it all the way there before realizing Morgan had forgotten the empty boxes she’s supposed to swap out for the full ones. Which meant we drove all the way back to Wilmore, picked up the boxes, and then went back to Harrodsburg. Fortunately, this part of Kentucky is stunningly beautiful at this time of the year. And for a Northwesterner to call someplace stunning, that means something. Kentucky is beautiful in a different way from the Northwest, but it is green and full of trees and I love it. Well, the scenic piece of it, anyway.

Through this co-op adventure, I am learning a lot about vegetables. We’re getting vegetables I’ve never cooked with and some that I’ve never even heard of or seen. I was not aware that carrots could come in any variety besides orange, but apparently you can grow them in white and purple, too. Not sure if they can be grown in any other color. This is the first time I’ve ever seen a naturally grown onion, straight from the earth to me and I was strangely excited to learn that green onions are in fact just the tops of regular onions and that when the onions grow to be the normal size of an onion, the green parts are huge! And then there is kohlrabi. Ever heard of kohlrabi? It is, I later read, a vegetable that is a bit of a mix between a turnip and cabbage, which means it has more of the look of a turnip with the taste of a cabbage. It’s a fascinating piece of food to figure out. I’ll end here with a picture.

Wednesday, July 2, 2009

written the following day

I got paid to take pictures today! It was fantastic.

Today was July 1^st, the beginning of the fiscal year, at least for most academic calendars, which means today was the day the new Asbury president starts his job. The school did a bit of a celebration for it—first a chapel and then a picnic out at the president’s house—and I was asked to photograph the events. Here are a few pictures from it.

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

I went back to the porch today, and it was a little bit of heaven. Porches are interesting. They teach you fascinating things. I once heard, I think on the radio somewhere, that neighborhoods with front porches on their houses tend to be safer than ones without. At least statistically speaking.

Porches are where stories are told and where stories are made. Today, I practiced on my guitar, an instrument I’ve owned for enough years now that I should know how to play it, but lack of discipline has made it so I still don’t. But in the midst of playing instruments and reading books and magazines, we take moments, maybe even minutes or hours, to look up and lazily observe the view from the porch, and this is how we learn about the places we live.

Though the college is a school just the same as the seminary is, it is not mine, not in any sense of the word, so I see it differently than I do my own campus. I watch it as I watch the street and the sidewalks and the pieces of town that happen within view of that porch. I watch the students on the maintenance crew diligently keeping up the grounds. I see the townspeople with their children and their pets and maybe just each other. I watched a young man with quite the extensive spiked Mohawk skateboard down the sidewalk and disappear between two of the buildings on the seminary campus. I can see the mail arrive at the seminary, the employees walking to and from their offices to their vehicles or maybe to lunch. I see visitors and townsfolk come and rest under the shade of the great oak trees in the front courtyard of the college campus. I can see the calm tranquility of Wilmore moseying through its daily course and I’m learning sometimes it’s good to observe what’s yours from a place that’s not.

It doesn’t seem that big of a jump to spend time at the college campus across to the street as opposed to the front steps of my own campus, and yet it feels like a world of difference. I don’t think it is my imagination that the college campus has a much more positive energy. It is true that my lack of ownership and responsibility to anything on that campus may have a roll in that, but it cannot be denied that there is a happiness and a hopefulness there that I do not feel on the seminary campus. Not my happiness, but certainly a happiness that has an effect on mine. There is a hesitancy at the seminary, a strong one. A hesitancy to trust with reckless abandon and believe in the impossible. There is fear which is tied to the past, the recent past and a sense of hurt that needs healing. All of this affects the spirit of the campus, and simply by walking across the street, I feel as if my load is lighter, as if my dreams reclaim their vividness, as if my eyesight regains perspective. I feel like myself.

When the school year comes around and the students come back, I won’t be spending time on that porch. It is theirs to have and theirs to enjoy, but it’s nearly two months before that happens and I will enjoy the time I have to consider life differently from one side of the street to the other.

Life can happen from the view of the front porch and life can happen on the front porch. May many stories be made and told in these chairs on this porch at this dorm.

For now, I will meander on over throughout the next days and see what more this porch has to teach me, because there’s a lot more I’d like to learn.

Monday, June 29, 2009

My friend Morgan invited me out for pizza tonight at a funky hippy type pizza place in Lexington along with another friend of hers. I’ve only been to this place once, but I enjoyed it and have been hoping to go back. But I declined the offer. Surprisingly, because I wanted to stay in Wilmore.

Yesterday, while on a stroll to Cluckers, our only gas station, to get a Dr. Pepper, I was surprised to see new rocking chairs on the porch of Asbury College’s women’s dorm. Ten of them, in fact, and all from The Cracker Barrel (where everyone around here gets their rocking chairs, including me). I would like to note that ten of those babies in one shot is not cheap. I gazed at them as I walked by and could hear them beckoning to me, so I made a plan to spend as much time as I wanted there today. College is not in session, and the students are not occupying the dorms, so I had free reign.

So I woke up, fixed myself some breakfast, got dressed, took my hot tea and my Gandhi autobiography and strolled on over. Today’s weather was perfect, the most similar it’s been to the Northwest all summer. Tomorrow should be even more so. As I wandered up and across the street, I saw some of the city workers laboring away, noticed the cars parked along the sidewalk and for the first time this summer I thought, “This is a good life.” While others worked for hours, I simply rocked in the white painted woven seated chair and enjoyed the breeze as I read more of Gandhi’s words (more, because I’ve been reading this for two summers now—I’m on summer number three), drank my English Breakfast Tea and occasionally looked out over both campuses. The sun was wonderfully bright today and warm but not unpleasant. I have not been able to find myself a pool I can lounge around in, yet, but I got the porch I’ve been longing for for the past few weeks now, and it was everything I needed it to be.


This evening, as I sat on that porch, I looked out over the tranquil little town of Wilmore. It’s summer here, which means it’s quiet because the students are gone, or at least a lot of them are. A small group of college students, probably around for summer campus work, sat on the college’s wooden benches and chatted. Here and there a car would come up the drive. Townspeople meandered with their kids or walked with their dogs or simply walked alone, taking a needed break, I’m sure, for some exercise and solitude. An older couple wandered through the campus throwing Frisbees (what for, I couldn’t tell, because they weren’t throwing them at each other, just throwing them, hitting a lot of trees in the process). And I thought to myself that at this time in my life, Wilmore is too quiet, but at another time, later, when my life someday gets crazy and full and room to breathe will be a precious commodity, an evening like this in a place like Wilmore will be a welcome break, and I came to understand what this town really has to offer. Peace. It does not offer action. It does not offer change, progressive thinking, or a variety of career opportunities. It simply offers peace. Today, I graciously accepted. And tomorrow? Well, maybe it’s time to finally learn how to play my guitar. And I think a rocking chair on a front porch is not a bad place to start.

My guitar

Sunday, June 28, 2009

written the following day

It appears that I need to do a better job of reading directions. Today, I debated going to church, something I’ve not really been interested in for the past number of weeks. Actually, I debated going to mass. I’m less than thrilled or impressed in any way with the protestant churches around here and seem to find the only pleasant place to be at mass (or at the Friends’ Meeting, but that does lack in the Jesus focus I find I enjoy). But as I woke up, I decided to postpone the idea because I really wanted to get my church history exam essays done as quickly as possible, because they were due by midnight.

Well, except, they weren’t due by midnight, at least not this Sunday at midnight. They’re due next Sunday at midnight and the questions I thought were due next week were actually due this past Friday. Oops. Needless to say, by the end of Sunday, they were all done, which was nice because it freed me up for the possibility of utilizing the new rocking chairs I discovered to day at the college. More on that later, hopefully.

I also made sure to call my mother, as today is her 52nd birthday. Marilyn may tease me about my lack of daughterly instincts, but I do make sure to make the right phone calls on the right days! My mom and little brother and my mom’s husband just returned from a trip to Disneyland with my aunt and uncle and my cousin and her kids, all of whom met up with some other cousins who have just recently relocated to Southern California. This is my mom and my little brother.

Saturday, June 27, 2009

written the following day

Success! Today, I was productive! As well I needed to be. On the tail of yesterday’s post, I am working on an essay exam for my online church history class, and one of these days, it needs to be done.

Back home, I used to do a lot of my homework in coffee shops, usually either Coffee Cottage or Chapters. A lot of people did homework that way. It is the Willamette Valley, after all. Coffee shops abound in the Portland area and Newberg was no exception to that rule. I spent a lot of time in those places.

I’ve been missing coffee shops lately. Well, maybe I’ve been missing them most of the time I’ve been here. Not Starbucks or Panera coffee places. Real places. Local places, with good flare and character. I’ve found a couple of places like that, one of which is probably only a ten minute drive away, so for this day, I borrowed Morgan’s car and spent much of my day at Main & Maple, a coffee shop in the nearby town, and forced myself to actually do some work. I’m happy to report that it all went well. Of the three essays I have to do, I completed one and almost completed another. Shouldn’t take long to finish all the rest of things.

Following my time there, Morgan and I went on a bit of a search for some dinner and ended up at a small Mediterranean place in Lexington. I had a falafel sandwich and have to say, it was delightful. I also tried an appetizer which was cold and wrapped in grape leaves. That was a little less delightful and while I’m glad I experienced it, I may choose to not experience it again.

I will say this: America—you’ve got nothing on the foods of the world. Nothing at all. Well, except maybe you do have a little something on the Brits. Unless you’re comparing pastries. And then nothing.

Friday, June 26, 2009

written the following day

I am resentful that I have to do homework on my summer vacation. I’m resentful that I have to take classes so that I can get financial aid so that I can stay in the dorm because I can’t get a job in Wilmore that pays enough to pay any kind of rent that allows me to live anywhere at all but the streets (and without reliable transportation I can’t work anywhere else). Today, I had homework. On Sunday, I have an essay exam due—three questions, each at least one page. And today I needed to do it, so instead I distracted myself with many meaningless things in order to avoid it, because to sit down an attempt to do it is like admitting defeat and forces me to acknowledge that I do in fact have homework on my summer vacation and that I’m very resentful of that fact. I am not the only one. Morgan and I threw little mini fits because of it. Homework on summer vacation should be outlawed and credits toward graduation should simply be given away. I would even pay to get credit for simply being on summer vacation.

SV501 Syllabus
Class Objectives:
1. Get up whenever you finally wake up.
2. Turn on your computer (or wake it up); check your email, check your Facebook, check your MySpace if you have one, and even Twitter. And then check any other sites you may access on a regular basis.
3. Eat breakfast, unless you don’t want to (but it’s recommended).
4. Get dressed. At some point.
5. Brush your teeth. Maybe. (Definitely, if you’re going out.)
6. Watch TV. You may do this at any point.
7. Do something you really enjoy—exercise, read, write, take pictures, research, do math problems, sit on your ass and stare into space, watch TV, or find a pool or some body of water to float around in for an unspecified amount of time.
8. Eat lunch at three o’clock…unless that’s breakfast.
9. Go somewhere, if you feel like it.
10. Sit and think.
11. Do something spontaneously.
12. Go to bed at some point. Repeat.

Required Texts
Calvin and Hobbes. All of them.
The Compact Complete OED. Because it’s just fun to use that magnifying glass.

Assignments
What are assignments?

Grading scale
If you can’t get an A, you don’t deserve to have a summer vacation.