-$4.95

Back in September, I made my first ebay purchase -- 18 vintage airmail envelopes for $2. My exuberance at my "win" in the online auction world was barely tainted by the fact that no one else was competing with me for them. I can't imagine why. They are very cool.

Some of my friends are living in China this year, and I wanted the envelopes so that I could write to a couple of them. Thin envelopes that say "via air mail" and have short blue and red stripes framing the border are not strictly necessary - in fact the post office doesn't sell them anymore - but they are way cooler to receive.

A girl who buys vintage envelopes will want special paper to go with them. It's sort of the "if-you-give-a-mouse-a-cookie syndrome." I returned to ebay to look for onion skin paper but couldn't find anything satisfactory. Amazon was a bit more help. I would suggest trying Amazon if you ever find you need 500 sheets of the stuff or are willing to spend an exorbitant amount per sheet. I wasn't interested in either option, so I settled on ordering some thinner-than-onion-skin paper (8 lb. paper, rather than 9 lb) through Amazon from one Phil's Stationery. It was 100 sheets for $4.95 which seemed very reasonable, though the shipping and handling fee of $9.75 was excessive.

Amazon warned me that it could be 5 days before the paper was shipped, in addition to the regular shipping time. When a couple weeks passed and the paper still hadn't arrived, I started to get a little concerned. I had just made up my mind to follow up through Amazon when I got this message in my Wheaton email account:

Carol,

I have a package that you ordered from Phil's Stationary sent me by mistake....

Please call me...thank you.

Janet S.


Puzzling.
I called Janet and left a message, and we played a little phone tag. Janet suggested that I come into Chicago where she lives to pick up my package, but I was disinclined. Nor was I willing to send her money for shipping when it wasn't my fault in the first place. She gave me Phil's Stationery's phone number with the imperative, "Call them directly."

I called and discovered to my delight that the proprietors of Phil's Stationery have wonderful, thick New York accents. I didn't mind listening while Phil told me all about the debacle that ensued when the guy usually in charge of Amazon orders was out of town and someone else sent the shipments. He lay the orders out on the table and matched all the packages with the wrong address labels. My small order was the least of their worries, but that didn't stop them from being apologetic and promising to set all to rights. It seemed that Janet had also already called Phil's and agreed to mail me the package if they sent her money. "It's already taken care of. The check is in the mail," they said.

"It's taken care of" is what I communicated to Janet, and she responded with, "Do you want me to throw out your package? Let me know."
No! Please, no! Further explanations.

Quite a few days passed, and I checked CPO regularly, always disappointed. I called Phil's Stationery again to complain that the paper still hadn't arrived and to request reimbursement for the shipping and handling fees I had paid. Phil commiserated with me about the cost. Amazon doesn't make any sense to him. They would mail me a check and if my paper didn't arrive by Monday, they'd send it to me themselves.

Then just a couple hours later, I got a call from Janet:

Janet: Hi, Carol. I got the check from Phil's today.
me: Oh, great! I'm so glad.
Janet: No. No, it's not great. I got the check, but it was for $7 and not $8, and, get this, it wasn't signed. It wasn't signed. And it's ridiculous the amount of time I'm putting into this.
me: Oh no! I'm so sorry. I'll call Phil's - you won't have to worry about this any more.
(and to myself: I sure hope they sign my check.)

On Monday, I called Phil's for the third time. "Hi, this is Carol. I had the order for the thinner-than-onion-skin paper. . . " Ah yes. "Phil" connected me with Fred who is the guy in charge of Amazon orders who wishes he hadn't been out of town that fateful day.

Fred made apologies and explanations in a charming New York accent. Apparently they are a very small, old-fashioned company; they sell paper; they don't know much about these modern internet things. . . Ordinarily, Fred explained, they would have just sent me a replacement shipment of the paper themselves, but Janet had been willing. . . No matter, they'd send the paper to me themselves this time.

After all the hassle, I wanted to make sure that I was getting paper I could actually use so I described why I wanted it.

"I have these friends in China to write to. I bought vintage air mail envelopes and wanted onion skin paper, but this was the closest I could find. Will it work?"
"Oh yeah, oh yeah. It'll do great. It'll hold the ink, and it won't tear. It'll do great. Did you know it's green?"
"It's green? No, I didn't know that. What kind of green is it?"
"Oh, kind of light green. I'd say it's kinda pistachio colored. Hey Bill, what color would you say that paper is? . . . . Oh yeah, yeah. Bill's says it's like mint-chocolate chip ice cream without the chocolate chips."

We were just confirming my real shipping address when all of a sudden the line went dead. I sat with the phone in my hand for a couple minutes, trying to decide if I should call them back or wait when it rang:

"Hey, Carol. This is Fred from Phil's. I'm sorry. I dropped the phone. We're a great company!" Fred promised that he would ship the paper the next day, and I began to check CPO hopefully again.

A week passed.
And then another week.
Four weeks passed and still no paper. (Though I did get a check to reimburse the shipping charge with "Sorry!" written in the memo line.)

I called Phil's for the fourth time a few days before Thanksgiving, nearly two months after I'd made my original order.

me: Hi, this is Carol. I had the order for the thinner-than-onion skin paper. It hasn't arrived yet. . .
Phil: It hasn't arrived yet?! Oh, I'm angry. I'm really angry now.
me: Wait, what's wrong?
Phil: Fred didn't know it when he promised to send you the paper, but the paper that was sent to Janet in Chicago was the last package of that kind of paper in America. So I called Janet. I said I'd send her $15, and she said she'd mail it to you. I figured since I hadn't heard from you, that you'd gotten it. $15 is twice what it would cost to mail the paper, and I know she has the money. The check was cashed! Oh, I'm really angry now! What's your number? I'm gonna sort this out, and I'm gonna call you!
me: Ohh, no, no. Don't worry about it. It's not a big deal. Don't worry.
Phil: No! This is a big deal. This is personal now. I'm angry. I'm calling Janet after the holiday, and she'd better send you that paper. I'm angry. If you hear about a killing in the Chicago area over stationery, you know what happened!

Thanksgiving has come and passed, and then most of December, and I still haven't gotten the paper, nor have I heard from Phil's. As far as I know, no one has been murdered either.

Phil's is out one order of paper and at least $25 worth of shipping costs.
I am short $4.95.
Janet has some thin, green paper she doesn't want, and an extra $15. (I wonder how she'd feel if I gave her a call.)

In the middle of all this, my mother found a few sheets of onion skin paper in a drawer at home. I bought some 98 cent stamps, so I'm all set. I'd even have a story to tell, except I wrote it here instead.

Ein Deutsches Requiem

I meant to post this several weeks ago and I forgot.

Every year, Wheaton College invites alumnus John Nelson back to conduct an Artist Series concert with combined choirs and symphony orchestra. This year all the choirs plus Chicago's Apollo Chorus and a choir from another college plus some professional soloists performed Brahms' Ein Deutsches Requiem. I'd been looking forward to the concert since my high school piano teacher emailed to me say that he'd heard that Wheaton was performing the Requiem and that I absolutely had to go. It was totally worth all the anticipation. I got goosebumps over and over again.

Brahms's Requiem is unique because instead of following the standard Latin requiem text, he collected texts from Scripture, and it is sung in German. The selected texts and translations were printed in the program. It was a very worshipful concert.

If I click on the picture and zoom in, and I can actually recognize some friends who were performing.

Thanksgiving weekend

I had a wonderful, relaxing Thanksgiving weekend in Louisville, Kentucky with the Stam family and some other friends, with plenty of skype calls home to the family I was missing in New Jersey. Kara, Grace, and I left Wheaton Wednesday afternoon to drive through rain and midst traffic to the Stams and arrived late that night.

After a leisurely morning, we drove to Churchill Downs, home of the famous Kentucky Derby, and watched a few horse races. Clara said that some families dress up and have their whole Thanksgiving meal at the races, but there weren't all that many people there that day, perhaps because of the rain.

Here's Grace, Marty, Kara, and me outside the area where the horses are walked before they head out to the track. Perhaps some people have more sophisticated methods, but we picked which horses we thought would win based on their appearances before the race, or perhaps the color of the jockey's silks. I cheered for the bays because I think they are the prettiest. (I'm realizing I base most of my horse knowledge on the Marguerite Henry books I read as a child, with a little Ralph Moody mixed in.)

We spent the first race in a box belonging to some friends of the Stams, but for the next couple races we got up close to the fence by the finish line. It's pretty exciting to hear the pound of their hoofs as they approach the end. "Heartbeats speed up; I have never been so keyed up" and all that.

Here they are approaching the finish line.

And we talked to a man dressed up as an Indian (that's a real timber wolf pelt) who knows all there is to know about Churchill Downs.

Grace and me

We got back in time for tea and just a few minutes before Grandpa, Gram, and Skip arrived from North Carolina. I hadn't known, til just a few days before, that they were coming and was very excited. It had been nearly a couple years since I'd seen Grandpa.

We had our Thanksgiving meal on Friday - there was much cleaning and cooking and preparing all day long, and a good bit of eating too. I was glad for the chance that afternoon to work up an appetite on the tennis court. The Stams all love playing tennis - Marty and Skip both teach - and they (and Grace) were very patient with me. I can't say I show any aptitude, but it sure was fun. My arm was so sore from holding the tennis racquet that I ate very genteelly with my left hand and tried to keep my glass from shaking too much when I drank. Some day I want to take tennis lessons.

After dinner, dessert, songs, and time to share some things we were thankful for, the middle-aged folks went to bed and the old folks and young folks stayed up and played games.

Here's Grandpa and me in the middle of a round of fish bowl.

Kara has been telling everyone for years about how wonderful Waffle House is. It's associated in her mind with good company, good conversations, and late nights. Now the rest of us have good memories of it too:

Tomorrow. Likely.

The next morning we visited The Southern Baptist Seminary where Clara is attending and her dad has taught.

This is a small chapel in the Puritan style. When I stand behind the pulpit almost as much of my head shows, but not quite.

And then we returned back to Wheaton for the crazily busy rest of the semester. It's nice to be able to post these pictures and think back on Thanksgiving without feeling the stress of those looming papers and exams.

Small group and a big dog

The Sunday after my birthday (which was a Very Good Day), one of my small group girls invited us all over to her apartment for dinner and games. Grace, my co-leader, figured out how to use the self-timer on my camera (which I'd recently discovered, but forgotten how to find again), and we took this picture after a wonderful meal, dessert, and rousing few rounds of bananagrams. From left to right: Jessica, Emily, Allison, Grace, Stephanie, and me. Kari, unfortunately, wasn't able to come. These girls come over to my apartment devotedly at 7 AM every Tuesday (I supply coffee) - I've been so encouraged by them! We've all found our study of Paul Miller's book A Praying Life to be convicting and helpful. I'm looking forward to another semester with them, which I hope will include more fun outings together. We also enjoyed a joint chapel skip for hot chocolate at Graham's in downtown Wheaton.

And partially because I'm amused at how bad I am at taking pictures of myself and partially to show how much she's grown, here's a picture of me and most of Lucy. Remember how I used to be able to hold her? I'm growing quite fond of this dog, and I think she likes me too.

3 happy things

1) I finished my papers and exams, and I'm going home tomorrow.

2) Robin, Erin, Sarah, Susanna, and I are having waffles for dinner and watching a movie tonight.

3) My birthday amaryllis bloomed for me!

I couldn't help but laugh at this:

Ferdinand: I do beseech you
Chiefly that I might set it in my prayers,
What is your name?

Quite a pick-up line.

Read what you like.

We read this in Senior Seminar today, and it made me go, "Hmm."

The critical judgment "This book is good or bad" implies good or bad at all times, but in relation to the reader's future a book is good now if its future effect is good, and, since the future is unknown, no judgment can be made. The safest guide therefore is the naive uncritical principle of personal liking. A person at least knows one thing about his future, that however different it may be from his present, it will be his. However he may have changed he will still be himself, not somebody else. What he likes now, therefore, whether an impersonal judgment approve or disapprove, has the best chance of becoming useful to him later.
- W.H. Auden, from "Making, Knowing, and Judging"

Discuss.

I, for one, will be reading what I like over Christmas break.

about Johnson

I've been enjoying Samuel Johnson. For the past hour or so, I've been reading snippets from Boswell's famous "Life of Johnson" which includes plenty of Johnson's letters and dialogue between him and Boswell and others that Boswell remembered and recorded.

Johnson was particularly well known for never missing a chance to make a dig at the Scottish.
From his dictionary:
oats: a grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people

Boswell, a Scot, records a conversation when his friend Mr. Ogilvie (a Scot) was introduced to Johnson. This gave me a chuckle:

Mr. Ogilvie was unlucky enough to choose for the topic of his conversation the praises of his native country. He began with saying that there was very rich land round Edinburgh. Goldsmith, who had studied physic there, contradicted this, very untruly, with a sneering laugh. Disconcerted a little by this, Mr. Ogilvie then took new ground, where, I suppose, he thought himself perfectly safe; for he observed that Scotland had a great many noble wild prospects.
Johnson: I believe, Sir, you have a great many. Norway, too, has noble wild prospects; and Lapland is remarkable for prodigious noble wild prospects. But, Sir, let me tell you, the noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees, is the highroad that leads him to England!"

Two things

I think winter is almost here. I haven't broken down and worn my winter coat yet, though perhaps I'm being unreasonable. I can tell it's winter though because of the cold weather routines developing again. The scarf goes on and I pull my hair up from under my scarf. . . . and then from under my coat. . . . and then from under my backpack. And then I put my hat on, prepared to face the cold. When I come back inside the hat comes off, and I try to bring my hair back down again. I'm so tired of static already.

Today, unfortunately, I dropped an almost entirely full bottle of dishwashing detergent on its plastic top on the concrete floor outside my apartment. Then I stared stupidly, laundry basket in hand, as I watched the blue puddle grow larger and larger. Oh dear. Fortunately, I had a couple old towels that had been hanging out in Robin's car at the bottom of my laundry. They sopped up the stuff, leaving a nice slippery surface, over which I poured a whole pitcher of water and worked at it with another towel. There was a small waterfall down to the first level of apartments. I think my front stoop has never been so clean.

Now I have a partially full bottle of laundry detergent with a broken top sitting in my bathtub. I hate to imagine what would happen if I knock it over again. I might try to transfer the stuff to an empty bottle I found in the garbage. Sounds like a job for tomorrow.

On the upside, my bathroom smells like clean, fresh laundry.

"On First Looking into Chapman's Homer"

I took the English Departmental Exam (and passed) earlier this week and was reminded of this wonderful sonnet by John Keats.

"On First Looking into Chapman's Homer"

Much have I traveled in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He stared at the pacific--and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise--
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

Doesn't it make you just want to run out and read Chapman's translation of Homer's Odyssey? If I were George Chapman, I'd be feeling pretty good.

Old books and a famous astronomer

Today was a bit of an unusual school day.

For the second half of 18th century class, we all trooped down to the Billy Graham Center to Wheaton's Archives Special Collections where there are lots of beautiful old, rare books which we have studied, including Addison and Steele's The Spectator, Swift's Gullivers Travels, and Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. These were all set out on the table for us to pick up and page through, not stuck behind glass as they might be anywhere else. Coolest of all (and also most valuable), was a first edition of Samuel Johnson's Dictionary published in the mid 18th century. I looked up my name - "a song of joy and exultation."

One of my classmates noticed that the cover of one of the books was wearing thin in one spot, revealing a bit of text. The archivist said that printers took all sorts of scrap papers to make the covers and bindings of books. Occasionally, since the covers have worn thin, people have discovered old texts that they had record of but thought had been lost completely. By tracing down other books printed by the same person, they've been able to piece together some old books.

On to the next unusual bit. . .

Several weeks ago my old roommate Donna Grace told me that Dr. Owen Jay Gingerich, the most well-known living American astronomer was speaking at Wheaton College, and that I absolutely had to go. So I did.

The title of his lecture was Truth in Science: Proof, Persuasion, and the Galileo Affair. Some of it went past me, but it was interesting. It's not entirely cohesive in my memory, so bullet points will probably work best. . . .

• I didn't know it, but Tycho Brahe developed a model in which the earth was fixed in place, the luminaries revolved around it, and the planets (except for earth) revolved around the sun. He kept the church happier this way, but it wasn't very persuasive.
• Kepler and Galileo were both supporters of the Copernican model. Kepler was willing to accept the model in part because he saw trinitarian theology in it. He said the sun is like the Father; the outer room of stars, the Son; and the space in the middle, the Holy Spirit. This is pretty bizarre to me. Galileo was a timid supporter of the Copernican model until one January. . .
• When he saw three, then four stars around Jupiter. And then as a few nights passed, and he continued watching them, he realized that they were moons rotating around Jupiter - a mini-model of the Copernicus' theory. He had been taking notes in Italian, and when he realizes this his notes turn to Latin because Latin was the international language, and he wanted to share his findings with everyone.
• Galileo helped change science because he argued for having a coherent point of view (even though they couldn't provide proof yet without Newtonian physics, I think). Dr. Gingerich says we come to fundamental understanding by persuasion rather than proofs, and this is an example of this. And I think he said accepting macro-evolution should be another example of this.

I didn't stay for the Q&A, but walked briskly down to the BGC, thinking I could slip invisibly into class and sit in on the last hour and a half of the New Testament Theology class that I'm auditing. I felt pretty silly when Dr. Perrin said, "Hey Carol. We're finishing in twenty minutes; it's a long story. But glad you joined us." But I did get to hear about how Galatians 2:14 and James 2:24 are not contradictory. And now Dr. Perrin is on a two-hour long radio talk show, that he was just invited to today to talk about a book he hasn't read. I'm glad all I have to do tonight is go to bed.

Also a fortnight ago

This nabbed from Julianna and Jim's blog:

Jul and Jim and baby Gemma were up for a visit a couple weekends ago so on Friday evening I was able to meet my new cousin-once-removed. The next evening Jim and Julianna warmed up in my apartment during the half-time of the girl's soccer game.

Two weekends

Long ago, in the fall of freshman year, I was taking Digby for a walk and met Sydney, a Wheaton grad who lives and works in the area and also loves dogs. We talked about puppy raising and her border collies and went our separate ways. A few months later, we met again and she remembered me by name (I hadn't a clue who she was). Over the past few years, we've seen each other off and on (I babysat for her two girls once), and she's tried to get me dog-sitting jobs, which finally worked out for the first time a couple weeks ago.

I've never been very good at taking pictures of myself.

Baggins and Annie.

Last Saturday, my friend Ruth and I made tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches and cheered on the men's soccer team. It was one of the most exciting games I've been to in my four seasons of soccer watching, but the Thunder unfortunately lost in overtime.

It's a little peculiar to realize that now that I'm a senior I'm beginning a series of "lasts." Last men's soccer game, last class with Dr. Jacobs, last Fall Break Retreat, etc. My last chance to go to my first football game slipped by too. Ah, well.

Gilded toys of dust

On Tuesday I did laundry and washed my ipod. It doesn't work anymore.

This is the most recent in a long line of possessions lost (or now broken) in little over a year. I'd thought myself a fairly responsible, if sometimes absent-minded, person, but I'm developing a bad track record. A few notable entries, the ones in italics are things I lost for long enough that I thought they were gone forever but eventually recovered them:

favorite brown cardigan

beautiful drawings from Guanajuato, MX

off-white cardigan

black fleece

rain jacket

swiss-army knife

Perelandra

toothbrush plus travel case

several favorite earrings

The Case for Life

a favorite scarf

socks. always the favorite wool ones.

Similarly to my last post, this list seems a little less impressive written out. But I persist. Perhaps I've forgotten things. In any case, it's made me think a fair bit about the relative insignificance of the stuff I own. I still miss my brown sweater, but it matters little whether I have one or not. Not to put to fine a point on it, what matters most is that I have Christ. I guess I needed practical reminders of this.

I am trying to hold things loosely in the metaphorical sense, while realizing it probably wouldn't hurt to hold onto stuff a little more tightly in the literal sense.

I've been remembering this verse from All for Jesus:

Worldlings prize their gems of beauty

Cling to gilded toys of dust

Boast of wealth and fame and pleasure

Only Jesus will I trust.

My heart sank a bit when I uncovered my ipod, tangled in my sheets in the washing machine. That's the worst it did, so I'm imaging that having an ipod wasn't an idol of mine, but since then I've been thinking about what my reaction might be to having other, more precious things taken from me, and what that reveals about my heart. It's sobering.

This post is a bit roughshod, but I knew if I didn't write tonight I'd never get back to it. These are my recent musings, friends. I want to relinquish my grasp on what really isn't mine.

Labor Day and Today

Ages and ages ago I went to the Warren Dunes in Sawyer, Michigan with some friends on Labor Day. Looking at this pictures is making me feel a little wistful. I'd like to be sitting on the sand right now, listening to the quiet lap of the water.

We drove up early afternoon, walked along the beach a short ways until we found a deserted dune and settled there. We braved the water, tossed around a frisbee, and romped on the dune. My friend Amy had brought with her a tiny charcoal grill for cooking some bratwurst, so we were well fed too.

I spoke much of the reading I had to do, and did very little of it. I might have made it through four pages of Congreve's "The Way of the World" on the beach, an act or two more in the car by aid of a headlamp. No regrets.

This is my roommate, Robin. She is very cool.

This semester I had a particularly hard time buckling down to do work on weekends, or weekdays for that matter. It was far too appealing to play ultimate, mosey around the farmer's market, walk a dog. . . I've gotten better (or worse?). Saturdays have been full of homework (with scarcely time to blog, evidently). And it's been far too long since walked a dog.

Today reminded me a bit of those first few guiltily pleasurable weekends. Except this time without the guilt (except that I should probably be sleeping now). I slept in a tad, did some reading, visited the French Market with a friend to buy coffee and a freshly made hot donut, read a bit more, lunched, played Ultimate, and read a bit more before dinner and afterwards. Written down, this sounds rather tame. I'm almost tempted to delete it, but I'd rather bask in the extraordinary truth that I finished all my reading for Tuesday and had some fun too.

Language thrills

I am back now from a lovely Fall Break Retreat in Lake Geneva, WI with friends from church. I didn't bring homework with me, which was blissful, so today I will be reading all day long. There are worse fates. I am enjoying a book for my Senior Seminary class on reading called Ruined by Reading: A Life in Books by Lynne Sharon Schwartz. Here are a few quotes that resonated with me within the first hour of reading. More to come, I hope.

Despite all this mental pirouetting, or maybe because of it, I don't remember much of what I've read. My lifelong capacity for forgetting distresses me. I glance at a book on the shelf that I once read with avid interest - Dorothy Gallagher's All the Right Enemies, about the 1943 murder of the Italian anarchist Carlo Tresca - and while I struggle for the details, all I recall is the excitement of the reading. I couldn't give a cogent account of its dense intrigue or social history, yet I have some inchoate sense of the texture and dynamics of the subject. (p. 4)

In truth I have made some tentative steps toward freedom. Over the last ten years or so, I have managed not to finish certain books. With barely a twinge of conscience, I hurl down what bores me or doesn't give what I crave: ecstasy, transcendence, a thrill of mysterious connection. For, more than anything else, readers are thrill-seekers, though I don't read thrillers, not the kind sold under that label, anyway. They don't thrill; only language thrills. (p. 5)

In which I feel vindicated for my frustration with Shakespearean critics

There are indeed a sort of underlying auxiliars to the difficulty of work, call'd Commentators and Critics, who wou'd frighten many people by their number and bulk, and perplex our progress under pretense of fortifying their author.

- Alexander Pope to Joseph Addison, 1714.

Thank you, Mr. Pope.

Introducing Lucy.

Several weeks ago, one of my best canine friends died. Digby was one of the first friends I made at Wheaton. I met him at After Hours the Sunday after the first week of school and came back to his house later that week (perhaps the next day?) to walk him. I've many fond memories of times with him, and I'm more than a little proud that of the many college students that came into his home, I was definitely his favorite.

Digby lived a long and happy life, and now there is a new puppy in the house who I hope will be my friend. Lucy is a Mastiff. She's about 12 weeks in this picture, and now, three weeks later, I can barely pick her up. I'm looking forward to getting to know her better.

Could it really have been six weeks ago?

Each weekend I think, "Oh, it's been so long since I've blogged. I want to post something!" And then the weekend is over, and it hasn't happened.

I should be finishing Henry IV Part One and writing some sort of response and comparison between it and Richard III, but before I do, here are a couple pictures from my time in Maryland at the end of summer vacation.

This visit to Maryland was my first chance to meet baby Laurel. She's very sweet, and William didn't mind me holding her while I snuggled with him and read Richard Scarry's Best Word Book Ever. I always suggest Blueberries for Sal or some other nice story book, but he won't be dissuaded.

Forsooth?

This is why I much prefer reading Shakespeare to reading people who write about Shakespeare:

. . . The sacrificed signifier disappears behind the signified. Is this victimage of the signifier nothing but a metaphor, or is it mysteriously connected to the scapegoat as such, in the sense that it is rooted in that ritual space where the major signifier is also a victim, not merely in the semiotic sense, this time, but in the sense of Shylock or of Richard III? The play of the signifier, with its arbitrary interruption for the sake of a differentiated structure, operates exactly like the theatrical and ritual process, with its conflictual undifferentiation suddenly resolved and returned to static differentiation through the elimination of a victim. . .

Hmm?

Four hundred.

I came across this delightful statement the other day:

A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.

~ Thomas Mann, Essays of Three Decades, 1947

Unfortunately, while this statement may be true, it doesn't imply that the inverse is also true. Alas.

This is the 4ooth blog post since Scattered Wits inception on 12/27/06. Now that wasn't so hard, was it?

There are few hours more agreeable.

Looking at this picture makes me wish it were closer to 4 o'clock. Putting off unpacking with a cup of tea would be even nicer than blogging as procrastination.

On Saturday as I was searching for my college ID card in preparation for heading to storage alone to pick up my boxes, I got a call from Javan. The Port Orchard Miners had just made a pot of tea in Joel's new dorm room. There were fresh peaches too. Did I want to come by? Of course, and I'd bring saltines and nutella along with me. I found my ID buried under a pile of sundry belongings and jumped on the bike.

Yesterday I had tea with my friend Susanna and her mother. It was lovely. I'll be putting the kettle on in about 40 minutes. Who would like to come by?

A Day with Megan is a Good Day

Wedding Weekend

The day after my last day of work my friends Arwen and Nick got married. It was a lovely, celebratory end for a summer in Wheaton.

I got to know Arwen's family a little my freshman year when they were living in Wheaton on HMA. It was great to see her mom and sister again at this bridal shower and also get to meet her mother-in-law (who is wonderful and I wish had also lived in Wheaton on HMA one year. Alas. )

Bridesmaid responsibilities including buying toule and attaching it to bows that would be tied to the pews in the sanctuary. Because of my skill at converting inches to feet I saved us from buying about 12 times as much as we needed. Close call that.

For obvious reasons, Barnabas was left behind bars while we tied bows. He did not approve.

Sometimes Erin and I are a little goofy.

Arwen Grace

all ready, waiting upstairs

Mr. and Mrs. Nick Martin

Kate and Garrett too!

After Mary's and Donna's departures on Sunday, I was left terribly sad and bereft. It was comforting to look forward to Kate and Garrett's arrival on Thursday. They are traveling across the country, visiting friends and support raising to go back to Prague. I never imagined that I could spend my summer in Wheaton and still see two sisters all the way from Europe whom I hadn't seen in a year and a half. We were overdue for a visit.

Kate and Garrett got to Wheaton Thursday afternoon, their arrival a little later than expected because all of Illinois is under construction, apparently. We had enough time for a tour of campus (including a visit to where the Armerding Session was recorded. This is also a wonderful thing, worth sharing) before being back in time for tea. They also got to meet some of my friends from church, play a little frisbee with them, and have some of Wheaton's best ice cream. The black eye that you can sort of see in this picture was caused by a frisbee. I remain indefatigable. We spent most of their visit playing board games - Ticket to Ride and Cities and Knights.

With Mary

It was more than a little special to have a visit from Mary who came all the way from Ukraine to be in our friend Cindy's wedding in Chicago. I was house-sitting that weekend, so I had a car to pick her up at the airport, run some errands, and buy groceries so we could make a lovely meal together. I went downtown with Mary on Friday morning to spend some time together before she had to get ready for the rehearsal.



The wedding was at this beautiful church in Bucktown, a north-west neighborhood of Chicago that looked like a fun place to explore at some later date. I would've had some time, but the train I took into the city was 40 minutes late, so after a bus ride and a walk I arrived at the church hot and sweaty with barely enough time to change into my dress. I forgot to wash the bicycle chain grease off my legs. I guess that's semi-formal.

It was fun to catch up a bit with some of my sisters' friends from Maryland who came out for the wedding. I was even pleasantly surprised to run into a couple from New Jersey whom I didn't realize knew the groom. One of them had kept up with him from their Princeton days, a decade past. There was a good-sized group from Princeton, and as I was dreading a painful farewell to Donna the next day, it was encouraging to think that I can look forward to reunions with college friends at weddings, even years from now.

Back at the hotel, exhausted from a wonderful evening celebrating Cindy and Jeff.

On the water

Like last summer, one of the highlights of this summer was a sail on Lake Michigan.

On the fourth of July, a friend from church who has a sloop took a bunch of friends out on the water. We sailed out of the Chicago harbor, took the sails down, bobbed around in the water (which was pleasantly cool, but not frigid), and sailed some more, spitting cherry pits off the side of the boat. After dark, we watched fireworks from the boat, listening to the distant boom and the pleasant lap of the water against the boat. It was idyllic. I think I had a goofy smile on my face most of the day.

I stole some pictures that people posted on facebook:

There is much catching up to do.

I have been such a delinquent blogger this summer that my mother has asked why I have stopped writing. Perhaps my wits have been especially scattered; the further away they get as time passes, the harder it is to corral them.

This summer I've done quite a bit of house-sitting / dog-sitting for a few families. I like the independence it gives me, and, of course, the chance to be with animals. Despite that, I'm quite content not to relive the long weekend when I took care of the pets of three families who were at a reunion in Kentucky. The weekend began with a huge thunderstorm that knocked out electricity in two of three houses for almost 24 hours, and flooded the basement of one of them. I also worked both Saturday and Sunday for Conference Services that weekend, and found that a half hour lunch break wasn't quite long enough to take care of six dogs, two bunnies, one chinchilla, one tortoise, and a bunch of fish in three different homes . . . and grab a bite to eat myself too.

Gus and Digby have been my friends since freshman year. Digby, in particular, is dear to me. This last Sunday I neglected to greet him as I usually do before heading downstairs for leadership meeting. He came down to the basement, which he never does because he doesn't like crowds of people, to find me and say hi. It's a wonderful thing to be loved by a dog.

August and Bear became new friends. August was hit by a car the day before her family left for the reunion, so she required a little special care. After a few days she was back to almost normal, but if I ever fussed over her, she fixed on me with her beagle eyes and whimpered plaintively.

I lived with Barnabas and his little friend, Pepe. Barney seems such a bumbling, but usually lovable, oaf next to the little chihuahua. Pepe never came running to me in the yard with a dead opossum in his mouth like Barnabas did.

Pepe's not demanding at all. All he requires is to be held all the time. What could be more reasonable?

Other pet-sitting adventures include the morning I realized the chinchilla had escaped and caught him during my lunch break in the bathroom with a pillowcase.

Because I like to share good things. . .

This is a good thing, as is this, if not quite as cool.

When all the sky is clear and blue

Earlier this week, Donna and I babysat for a pastor and his wife from church on their anniversary. They have a two year old, and a boy who is, I think, about five. We played soccer outside together, and he tried to distract me from my job of guarding the goal by calling out things like, "Look over there! A Golden Retriever!" Either he knows me really well, or we have a lot in common.

I am, apparently, way too much fun, because he wasn't eager to go to bed, or stay there. This poem came to mind that Donna and I both remembered from childhood:

Bed in Summer
by Robert Louis Stevenson

In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candle-light
In summer quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.

I have to go to bed and see
The birds still hopping on the tree
Or hear the grown-up people's feet
Still running past me in the street.

And does it not seem hard to you,
When all the sky is clear and blue,
And I should like so much to play,
To have to go to bed by day?


It is now not yet 8 on Friday night, and the sky is clear and blue, and I am sufficiently exhausted to think bedtime wouldn't be such a bad thing. After all, I have to rise early tomorrow to watch the ladies' final at Wimbledon, and somehow at the same time, the Argentina vs. Germany World Cup quarterfinal.

Check the crab trap.

I love the way memory is so closely tied to our senses. Yesterday I visited my roommate's brother's new Golden Retriever pup. The first whiff of that distinctive puppy scent brought me back to my puppy raising days, the same way that the smell of concrete mixing pulls me back to Mexico. Music is tied to memory too. I can't hear a New Boys song without thinking of when Kate was in high school (back when she was Kathy), and she would work on homework and listen to music at night while I, the next room over, lay in bed, staring at the ceiling and thinking about how I. was. not. sleepy.

This week I am house/dog-sitting and just came in from watering the flowers. Winding the garden hose over the hose reel transported me back to British Columbia, and I could feel myself cranking Uncle Bill's aluminum motor boat up from Cowichan Bay onto the trailer. In my mind I can still hear the clinking of the wheel, fast at the beginning, and slower as the boat gets higher on the trailer and the job gets harder. I can feel the burning in my arm from the exertion and am grateful for the safety catch on the crank that lets me take a breather. I won't let Uncle Bill help. With the boat fixed on the trailer, we leave the marina, enough crabs scuttling around in the boat to satisfy everyone, and drive back to the 40 acres with the windows open so we can breathe in the sweet, fresh smell of the farm fields we pass.

I have been pining for the pacific northwest this summer.

On frisbee, in particular

I am adding "being indefatigable" to my list of summer goals as it seems this will be necessary.

I have a new niece!

Laurel Crisan Zuba was born to Ruth and Radu on June 2! She is 8 lbs, 12 ounces, 21 inches long, and healthy. I'm looking forward to meeting her in August.

Now that is a remarkable thing to consider.

I just finished re-reading Gilead for the first time since a couple summers ago. I love that book. There are passages in it so exquisite that they leave me with that poignant mixture of happiness and sadness that I get when I witness something sublimely beautiful - like when I saw Emanuel Ax perform Brahms' Piano Concerto #2 in Avery Fisher Hall or when I see the lights of the Chicago skyline from Lake Shore Drive at night.

Here's a snippet. It's easier for me to share the bits that make me laugh rather than the bits that make me wish I cried easier over books.

I've always been taller than most, larger than most. It runs in my family. When I was a boy, people took me to be older than I was and often expected more of me - more common sense, usually - than I could come up with at the time. I got pretty good at pretending I understood more than I did, a skill which has served me through life. I say this because I want you to realize that I am not by any means a saint. My life does not compare with my grandfather's. I get much more respect than I deserve. This seems harmless enough in most cases. People want to respect the pastor and I'm not going to interfere with that. But I've developed a great reputation for wisdom by ordering more books than I ever had time to read, and reading more books, by far, than I learned anything useful from, except, of course, that some very tedious gentlemen have written books. This is not a new insight, but the truth of it is something you have to experience to fully grasp.

The last sentence brings me particular delight.

(The title of the blog post is a sentence that appears often in the book. I love the things he considers.)

The Perry Mastodon Parade

On Thursday, Wheaton's beloved Perry Mastodon was moved from his resting place in Armerding to his home in brand new science center. Like all good Wheaties and a many children in the neighborhood, I have warm feelings in my heart for this large, dead mammal.

Since I saw this article on Wheaton's website, I was looking forward to the parade for Perry all week. Perhaps this is because I lead a boring life, but I'd prefer to think I take joy in little things.

This was happening during my lunch break. I ate on the quad and watched.

And here's a view of Perry's bonier side.

The website said "visitors of all ages may also enjoy these downloadable crafts," and I took that to heart. I am holding a mask, which is probably not immediately identifiable as such. The white things are his tusks and the orange thing that looks like a tie is actually his trunk. I convinced Betsy, my supervisor last year, to give me a balloon.

This tough looking guy is my boss, Fred. He is great. He and his Harley Davidson buddies, "The Black Sheep," led off the parade.

My hermeneutics prof, Dr Green, played the bagpipes.

Wheaton student and Olympian Nancy Swider-Peltz roller bladed in the parade with her dad while her mom, also an olympian, followed on a unicycle.

Just a shout-out to Wheaton's Arcives and Special Collections.

I never imagined I'd see Perry in front of Williston Hall.

Visitors are not allowed near to the new science center yet. Perhaps come September I'll post a picture of Perry in his new home. Perry, I believe, will be directly below a new Foucault pendulum, this year's senior class gift. The pendulum is to be named after Dr. Litfin. I find this wonderfully ironic considering how often Dr. Litfin warns students against pendulum-like swings with regard to social justice and gospel proclamation and suchlike.