I'm Just Visiting This Planet

But it is!  And it's back to school time, for me and for my students.  Tomorrow is convocation and the beginning of the school year at Pace University .  And I'm almost ready to go back.....my own classes ended last week, my fiddle lessons resume in two weeks, and, well, it's that time of the year! Best of luck to everyone for whom September represents the beginning of the new year, and l'shanah tovah to everyone celebrating Rosh Hashanah , as we enter 5773. Anne and I will be joining my father, sister and brother-in-law in Dayton Ohio for my dad's 379 Bomber Group Reunion.   At 91, he must be among the few surviving WWII vets from his squadron,  the 525th.  My sister and brother-in-law have been to these reunions before, but this will by Anne and my first. And I begin my 28th fall semester, the second half of my 29th year at Pace University.  And this December I will mark my 44th year of working, pretty much non-stop since college-a few breaks ...

Right?  It is for me.  I completed one on-line course (New Testament) at the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary towards my coursework to become a Commissioned Ruling Elder in the Presbyterian Church (USA) this spring. Now I'm taking two courses-Old Testament and Polity.  Everyone knows (or thinks they know) what goes on in the Old Testament class, but very few people have a clue about what polity is. Let me just say that both my Old Testament and New Testament professors have us reading The Bible for Dummies .  This book has given me a new respect for "the dummies" series.  I have Religion for Dummies and have found that helpful; The Bible for Dummies is written by two theologians and it is good-simple and to the point. Polity is the procedures by which the Presbyterian Church USA runs-it's what keeps us, if you will pardon the very bad pun, an "organized" religion.  Two weeks into the course and I already have renewed respect for those who o...

December 21 came and went, and the world is still here.  But 2012 is nearly over.  A time to look back and see what was accomplished, what was left undone, and what's next. I got my Medicare card, so Medicare is "next" for me.  And I'm thinking about retiring, so that's another "next," but not until "next" year.  Putting off the inevitable, I guess. And I got called to jury duty, so I know I'll be spending part of January at the courthouse in downtown Manhattan. My sabbatical was filled with surprises: surprise surgery, surprise Sandy.  Not enough rest and not enough done (there's never enough done, I'm afraid- Jennifer Louden has tried to instill in all of us Conditions of Enough but I'm always upping the ante). Winding down a 40+ year career is much harder than I thought it would be.  Twenty eight of those years have been at Pace University, 17 years on the downtown NY campus and now 11 on the Westchester campus.  Fou...

I can hardly wait to see what November brings. First there was my hand surgery, which went quite well, thank you very much.  Now it's occupational therapy twice a week and silicon taped to the scar to get the swelling down. So that was on September 24th, and two weeks later we drove down to Asheville, North Carolina for a few days to visit the Villages at Crest Mountain , an eco-friendly sustainable community under development. For lots of reasons we think this won't work for us, so it's "back to the drawing boards" in our search for where we live when I retire. We got back from Asheville on Saturday, October 13 and more or less resumed our routine (such as it is) for a very short period of time before we started hurricane preparations, which included things such as planting garlic (which is hard if you are trying not to get your bandaged hand dirty) and buying a one burner propane stove. We were prepared for a few days without power; we lost power aroun...

I saw a hand surgeon yesterday, and I'll be having hand surgery on Monday to repair a damaged ulna nerve on my right hand that has gotten progressively worse since I fell down the stairs (running, in my socks, to close windows against a thunder storm) on July 15. For most of our two week vacation in Utah (July 22 until August 5) I wore a  wrist band to deal with the sprained wrist, which turns out to be the least of my troubles. Ten days after the surgery the sutures come out, we go to Asheville for a week, and then I start physical therapy-it could be as much as a year before I get my strength completely back, but the alternative is that I look like Spock and my right hand gets weaker and weaker, so I really don't have a choice.  A huge shout out to Dr Alan Schefer (I have no idea when that picture was taken-he has a nice curly head of hair now) who will be doing the surgery, and I am so grateful to have health insurance to cover most of it. Right hand with pinky stuck ...

Well, I can only recount what this professor is doing on sabbatical.  The list is long and reflects things that suddenly arose, that were neglected, and things on my " someday-maybe list ." On the suddenly arose list is my finger-I fell the weekend before we went on vacation in July and when we returned in August my right pinky decided to go astray-I can't move it toward the rest of my fingers.  An EMG test seems to indicate a damaged ulna nerve, so off to the doctor tomorrow to find out what we do about this. On the things that were neglected, first and foremost is my office at home -not cleaned up in, oh, four years and two months.  I don't have any "before" pictures (too embarassing) but I do have an after, and a picture of all of the recycling sitting by the curb (and that doesn't include the stuff that just plain got tossed. You can see my meditation cushion in this picture, another practice that has been neglected, so I'm ge...

Ah for the days when summer meant lying in the hammock catching up on murder mysteries.  Now it means trying to fit in a few days vacation here and there while I wait for the new dean to accept this job and start. So what am I doing for the next five days?  Going on a retreat-a " Creative Joy " retreat!  Five days of yoga, writing, photography, rest, oh and maybe Zentangles , too! And boy, do I need this!