Signs of the Season

On my way to the downtown postoffice this morning before work (note to self: try to avoid the postoffice at 8:30 a.m. on Mondays from now on), I noticed that the annual Christmas banners are now hanging from the lightposts on Wooster's main streets. Today is Halloween. Hmm. What about Thanksgiving? I know that the stores anticipate the seasons, but the town fathers and mothers?? However, Karen is even better at anticipating. Last night, she told me just how she wants to dress up for Halloween 2006. Sigh. H-ween has never been my favorite holiday, but at least most adults who want to continue the celebration can do so on their own (I'm thinking of a favorite Atlanta nephew in this regard :)). We have 365 days to reach a compromise between her exuberance and my bah-humbug. In the meantime, I guess I'd better get cracking on my Christmas shopping if I want to have it completed before Advent--my usual but elusive goal. Thank goodness for amazon.com.

Putting the Garden to Bed

It's one of those rare Fridays when I don't have too much grading to do nor too much prep (though S.S. beckons and some work for Tuesday's class). I'm between a talk given last night to WCF on the church and poverty--in 35 minutes, no less--and the annual church missions conference (the highlight of our "liturgical" year :)). And so, because there will be so few Fridays without rain or snow remaining in the semester, I am spending today domestically, both outside and in. I'm putting the garden to bed for the winter, always a hard thing to do because the color of the flowers brings so much immediate joy. They are at their ragtag end, however, except for a few hearty annuals, so out they come. The leaves are falling, but the WCFers won't rake them until much closer to their pickup time. (We pay them in fall conference scholarship money--our backyard bordered by two huge oaks and two large maples plus one cheerful ginko is way too big for us two old folk to manage by ourselves.) Six energetic first years can take care of the mountain of leaves in no time flat. This year I am going to try something new, however, in the flower department. I am going to plant bulbs in the outside planters, store the pots in the garage and bring them out for early color in the spring, all according to directions from a local nursery. Perhaps that will shorten the winter some.

On the inside, I am making a big pot of vegetable beef soup and a pot roast and a loaf of bread in the breadmaker. We've had none of these for months, but the cool bite to the air makes them seem just right. I might even have enough to get us through the week and perhaps even have some guests. There's just not enough time today to make applesauce, but I'm going to have to get at that fall Friday task soon too.

Movie Recommendation

Since I go to movies maybe twice a year and spend my cultural capital at kids' movies with Karen to boot, this is not the blog to come to for movie recommendations. However, I'll risk my non-reputation by recommending "Wallace and Gromit: Case of the Were-Rabbit." Our whole family became W/G fans ten years ago when introduced to the zany pair by dear friends in Cambridge (England). One reason we like them so well is that their humor works on so many levels and appeals to all of us. Karen roars at the slapstick and the rest of us enjoy the subtle visual and verbal puns. (Not that the rest of us don't like the slapstick as well.) Anyhow, if you need to find a way to spend a dreary, blustery, rain-spitting fall afternoon, try Wallace and Gromit. The NYTimes gave it rave reviews as well, just in case that matters to you :) Reuben, if you're reading this, take note: You don't have much time before the kids in your family will outnumber the adults and Lucas will be getting the jokes as well. Take Tina now!

Off to G.R.

Fall break has finally arrived! We spend each break with Karen, so after Chuck's classes and my appointments with all of my FY students, we head northwest. Just in time for the unusually warm weather of this fall to turn bitter cold and rainy. Perhaps even frost. We probably wouldn't have been able to work in the yard even if we had been here though there's lots to be done to prepare the garden for winter. Despite the forecast, Chuck is taking is golf clubs (and an ear warmer and gloves and layers of sweatshirts, etc) with him. Hope springs eternal for one last time on a course until next spring. We will wind up the month of birthday celebrations with Karen (a month because she got presents while she was home in September, the staff allowed her to open a package before her birthday, the actual day, and now our arrival. She loves the Olive Garden, so that's where we'll go Sunday after church).
I can't write much about my class' time at the juvenile attention center because of privacy concerns, but suffice it to say that this will undoubtedly be the highlight of the semester for most of my students (and me too). In our debriefing with the other class yesterday, comments about the hopelessness of these young people's situations, even in this rescue kind of place, and their own privilege reveal that even in two sessions, our students learned a lot about themselves and their society. Some of them wish they could continue on in a volunteer kind of relationship. (Not easy to implement.) I am beginning to feel proddings towards that kind of interaction myself once we are retired.

Revise, Revise, Revise

Although the weeks are full to overflowing this time of the semester, it feels like the weekends are running together. Last weekend Parents' Weekend (oops, now renamed Family Weekend)--this weekend Homecoming. From noon til midnight today, Chuck is going to go to the alumni soccer match, put in an appearance at the football game/band halftime, time the regular soccer match (as he does all home matches), pop into the Wooster Christian Fellowship reunion, and then deal hands at a big Texas Hold'em poker game. (He's already had worship practice.) I will take in two of those events--the football/band and the WCF reunion and then come home to finish preparations for Sunday School tomorrow.

Anyhow, weekends, plus my Fridays, are the only time I can think about my on-going writing projects, if I can squeeze them in among the paper grading and class preps. Yesterday I received some encouragement to continue with my comparative Bible/Qur'an study. Or rather, encouragement to keep on working. A wonderful man with many years of experience in IVCF whose passion is ministry to ethnic minorities has read my study, and we've worked since late summer to find an hour in which we could discuss his evaluation. Boiled down to its essence, his advice is for me to turn it inside out (or upside down or backwards to forwards). Because he had little context for the Quran studies per se (in fact, he said that his primary experience with the study was learning that he didn't know enough....) but then found at least some of that context and commentary in the leader's notes, he feels that I should shape those notes into seven chapters, always with the overarching thesis that they provide, not debating points or apologetic resources, but entree into dialogue. Then the studies could be an added gift at the end, resources for those who want to have dialogue (which is why they might buy the book anyhow). When I told Ellen, she immediately concured. Now this is a daunting task, especially since there is no guarantee of publishing it even in that form. There are many books on the market that set out the differences between the two religions and I would have to be extremely careful to show how mine might be different. It's in the tone, the approach, the love for the dialogue partner....Am I up to the task? Not until next semester, surely, when the weeks for me at least (though not Chuck) are less busy because I do not teach even though the weekends still often run together. Even more important, in the language my brother has been using on his blog recently, do I have the call to do this? Or the call combined with the ability.

Revise, revise, revise. That's what I tell my students.

A Good (and Yummy) Time Was Had by All

Last night seven young men, all clad in jeans and black shirts or sweatshirts (is it an obligatory costume?? :)), took over my kitchen to cook a Pakistani meal. This dinner had been several months in the planning (around the return of an old friend from Pakistan, but that has not happened yet) and finally Al. and I decided that this weekend, when other COW students were enjoying Parents' Weekend, would be the best time. It's also Ramadan, when they fast from sunup to sundown, so this meal had to be timed to be ready by sunset but not before. After a trip to Cleveland to get halal meat and other more humdrum Pakistani spices and mixes, four fellows arrived about 5:45. I gave them a tour of my kitchen and its supplies and they began chopping and mixing etc. Three more arrived later (two of whom, probably wisely, stayed out of the kitchen). While large under normal circumstances, the cooks were bumping into each other in it as they turned from counter to stove to sink. I asked them if their mothers had taught them to cook, but no, it seems that necessity is the mother of invention and the internet the facilitator of learning. Am. had learned from the internet and the others had learned from him. The ingredients were not strange for Americans--chicken (butchered by halal butchers), potatoes, rice, tomatoes, oinons, hot peppers, garlic and ginger paste. But the combinations--now that was special. The fellows filled my Thanksgiving turkey roaster with rice and chicken and some spices (and they nearly cleaned it out!!). Some delicious flat bread accompanied another chicken and hot pepper dish. I don't know how they fried the potatoes, but they were fantastic with a South Asian kick to them. My friends J and R, lovers of everything Arabic-related (Urdu counts!! besides one of the fellows is in J's FYS), brought a salad and I had made a berry cobbler and a British custard to pour over it, designed to make the guys remember their British-style boarding school days. At exactly 7:05, yesterday's sunset time, they helped themselves to dates and offered them to us. That was the signal to begin the feast. When they had taken the edge off their hunger, they asked to be excused to pray--we found a big enough space for all of them to pray as a congregation in our basement. (And yes, many of them are well aware of our Christian convictions.) Only after prayers did they return to the tables--which I had set with the best dishes and silver and fall decorations--for seconds and for dessert. My Pakistani FYS TA from last year, whose company we all missed, had written from his new home that I should make the fellows clean up! But that wasn't hard. It was harder to shoo them out because they didn't want to leave a mess so that I could finish up what they couldn't do. They are super young men and I hope they know that they are always welcome for feasting and conversation at the Hampton home.

Coming Today to a Website Near You...

Coming Today to a Website Near You...
...my review of Crescent & Star, a journalistic account of turn of the millenium Turkey.

http://www.urbana.org/resources.biblio.detail.cfm?RecordId=742 This is on the Urbana webpage.

(I can paste it in, but I don't know how to make it a true link. One of my ever helpful daughters had better teach me soon :))

I have come to the conclusion that my genre of strength is the book review. 400 annotations for Honey, and everything that I've published about Islam is a bookreview. Hmmm....

Still have not lost hope that the comparative Bible/Qur'an study might one day see actual paper book published status though stubborn belief in its value, exceedingly great patience and a willingness to revise and revise and revise is part of that process.