Continuing Education

I love my iPod (thanks, Mom!). Obviously, I use it to listen to music and podcasts, and it's a great tool for playing the flute. But those of you who follow my Facebook posts or Twitter tweets know that I'm also listening to lectures and courses from iTunes U. I've listened to lectures about J.R.R. Tolkien and Johnson's Dictionary.

This week I finished a course available from Open Yale Courses, Diana Kleiner's course on Roman Architecture. I listened to it on the train back and forth to work, and then I'd check out the pictures provided as part of the course material online. I enjoyed it so much that I sent Professor Kleiner an email:

Dear Dr. Kleiner,

I've just finished listening to your course on Roman Architecture on my iPod. Thank you for making it available. The lectures have been my commuting companion for the past few weeks, and I found them both enjoyable and informative. Your enthusiasm for the subject comes through quite clearly on the audio versions of the lectures. I also appreciated being able to go online and look at the pictures you discussed, and often I was surprised at how closely I could visualize what you described without the pictures in front of me.

Thank you again for a great experience.

Sincerely,

Jeffri Harre

Much to my surprise, I received a very nice reply from her:

Jeffri--If I may?

Many thanks for your note. And what you say is very high praise--if you can actually visualize what I am talking about without seeing the images! That said, I'm glad you also checked the pictures out online because I think they came out very well and certainly offer an enhancement. And, in any case, as the saying goes: "a picture is worth a thousand words."

Thanks again for writing and all best.--Diana

Now I'm listening to Professor Dale Martin's Introduction to New Testament History and Literature. Although after four years of EfM, I seem to be a bit better informed than some of his students (the lectures were taped during actual classes), I am learning a lot. I recommended it to my current EfM group and will recommend it to next year's group as well. There's also an Introduction to the Old Testament that I plan on listening to next.

One of the nice things about the Open Yale Courses is that they make available some of the supplemental material for the courses. Check them out.

Peace,
Jeff

First Faire Of The Season

Here I am at 9:00 a.m. ready to drive Rachel and myself to Guilford, CT for the first ever Robin Hood Faire. It was on the small side, but if it's successful, it will grow. It's put on by the same people that put on what they're now calling King Arthur's Fall Harvest Faire, so we saw a lot of the same vendors and acts.

But there were some new ones as well. One of our favorites of the new vendors was Jessica Walters' Willowsong Designs. This was her first faire, having appeared exclusively at craft shows before. She does marvelous things with polymer clay, including whimsical dragons. She said she thinks that renaissance faires really are more her target audience. She hopes to be at the Southern Connecticut Renaissance Festival in Danbury next month. She will definitely be at the Fall Faire. We look forward to seeing more of her work.

Among the acts we hadn't seen before was Blackenshear. Here he is with the last bit of his Curious Magic show. Yes, that is a balloon banjo, and yes, it actually plays--even Beethoven's Ode to Joy.

Some of the story line, especially the joust portions. Things should improve as they get more experience under their belts.

Thirteen days and counting to the next faire!

Peace,
Jeff

Nuts Are NOT My Friend

In the months before my diverticulitis attack nuts had become a staple in my diet. They are a great source of protein and "good" fat. Because they take a fair amount of time to digest, they're also good to snack on before going to bed, so you don't wake up ravenously hungry and wondering why your blood sugar plummeted. So when I learned that I had diverticulosus, which is the actual condition, I wondered how I was going to replace the nuts. I was relieved when the doctor told me that current thinking was that nuts weren't a factor in causing diverticulitis. Nor tiny seeds. What I needed to avoid was things like popcorn, sunflower seeds, and pumpkin seeds--all large seeds.

A couple of weeks ago I had painful day and wondered whether or not I was going to have to go back to the hospital. Fortunately, it cleared up. Then Wednesday night I started experiencing the pain--and other symptoms--that felt like what I experienced a couple of days before I went to the hospital. Yesterday, I thought I might end up going to the hospital this morning. Fortunately, the pain started to ease, and this morning I woke up feeling a whole lot better. Some extra fiber and water yesterday and today seems to have cleared it up.

Looking back, the only common link was a snack of nuts a few hours before the symptoms began.

So I guess I'll be eliminating nuts from my diet.

Not a happy camper.

Peace,
Jeff

Be More French

"Be more French," I can still hear Mlle. Ware telling me, as she often did during my years at Rockford College. Sally Lo Ware, one of two french professors, became my unofficial advisor and as much of a friend as a faculty member could become with a student. My official advisor was Dr. James Schmitt, the German professor. I was the only French major AND the only German major in my graduating class. It made for an interesting three years!

What Mlle. Ware was encouraging me to do was to loosen up and enjoy life--be less like my German forebears. "Be more French," she told me just before I left to return home for Grandpa's funeral. Don't be afraid to cry was what she meant.

For the most part, it became a running joke between us. Especially given the focus on literature that makes up most of a modern language major's study. I was not fond of the literature of the Romantic period, either in French or German. From Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther to Bernardin de Saint Pierre's Paul et Virgine, I suffered through my 19th Century lit classes in both languages. I thanked my lucky stars when I was able to take the fall semester of Survey of English Lit, which ended before the Romantic period.

My loathing of things Romantic carried over into music. For the most part, it seemed to me, the Romantic repertoire for flute consisted of arrangements of Franz Schubert's lieder or filling in as birds in the tone poems of the period. Nor was there much written by the more well known composers of the period. What little music from that period that I was exposed to, I disliked intensely. I found myself drawn much more to the Baroque period. One music-major friend referred to Baroque music as "mathematics for musicians." It was not a compliment. All that precision and mathematical exactitude, she moaned. Well, it certainly wasn't the mathematical aspect that drew me, but precision? Maybe it's the German side of me.

The one exception I found was Gabriel Faure of the late French Romantic period. For some reason his music struck a chord. Mlle. Ware would have been pleased to hear me play Sicilenne or the Berceuse (neither of which was originally written for flute but have since become flute standards). "Be more French!"

In an attempt to broaden my horizons, or at least my repertoire, a few months ago I added music from a variety of periods to my Amazon.com Wish List. For Christmas a friend of mine gave me the Music Minus One Romantic Classics for Flute & Piano. Of course, it includes arrangements for three of Schubert's lieder and Faure's Berceuse, but there were a couple of surprises. Two excerpts from Robert Schumann's 3 Romanzes and Johannes Donjon's Pan (Pastorale). I was particularly taken with the Donjon piece, and when I decided to start working on it. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it won't take much work to get it performance ready. I've also played through the Schumann pieces, and although they'll take a little more work than the Donjon, I could have them performance ready within a relatively short period of time.

And I like them.

Mlle. Ware died a few years ago, but I can still hear her.

"Be more French."

Some Pictures from the NOERC Meeting

Here are a handful of pictures from the past couple of days. Enough to give a small flavor of what I've been doing. First, our trip to Philadelphia.

This is the front door to the Bishop White House. That's the curator telling us about the architecture and what they had to restore and rebuild when the Park Service took over the block.


And here we are listening to the curator.


And here we are in Bishop White's study. They were able to restore it pretty accurately because when the bishop died, his family commissioned a painting of the study as it was then. Some of the books are actually from his collection, and the rest are based on what an educated man of Bishop White's stature probably would have had on his shelves.

This afternoon Bishop Edward Lee, retired bishop of Western Michigan, visited with us and told us a couple of stories about Bishop White. One was about a time when Philadelphia was dealing with one of the epidemics common to cities of the period. City leaders came to Bishop White, a man of great influence in the city, and asked him declare a day of penitence and prayer. The good bishop, who counted among his friends prominent physicians of the city, told the city leaders that first they would have to clean the city streets AND institute a regular cleaning and pick up of garbage. Only then would he declare a day of prayer. They did. He did. And the city then had the first sanitation program in the States.

One of our members commented, "And bishops have been cleaning up crap ever since!"

Four of my NOERC colleagues having a discussion during one of our breaks.

These are the kinds of meetings the upper management at the Church Center don't seem to understand. Technology is great, but even if you can videoconference, it still doesn't replace in person, face-to-face interaction.

And how did I manage not to take any pictures of Christ Church while we were there???

Peace,
Jeff

Historic Philadelphia--Episcopal Perspective

This morning after breakfast we drove to the Haverford station and then took the commuter train into Philadelphia. We got off at East Market and made our way to Church House, the offices of the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania. Most of our group took cabs, but four of us walked to the corner of 4th and Locust where the Church House is located. That probably doesn't tell you a whole lot until I tell you that we walked past Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell. Yes, we were in the heart of historic Philadelphia.

We spent the morning at Church House learning about new resources from Church Publishing and then had lunch. After lunch Henry Carnes, the formation and education person for the diocese (his job description, as with many of ours, seems to be a moving target) arranged for us to tour the Bishop White house. The house isn't open on Tuesdays, but he arranged for a private tour, which was led not by a regular National Park Service guide but by the curator of the historic homes in the National Park Service District. It made for a much richer tour than we might otherwise have had.

Bishop White was the second bishop consecrated for the Episcopal Church, after Samuel Seabury of Connecticut. However, White was the first bishop consecrated by English bishops after an act of Parliament allowed him to be consecrated without swearing an oath of allegiance to the king of England. Bishop Seabury was always a little leery of his own consecration, which took place in Scotland at the hands of non-juror bishops (those who hadn't sworn allegiance to the English crown). Bishop White was also the first Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church while also serving as the Bishop of Pennsylvania AND as the rector of Christ Church Philadelphia.

Which is where we visited next. Founded in 1695, the current building, only the second on the site, was completed in the 1750's. We learned about the history of the church and more about Bishop White. We also learned about the renovations taking place at their 1911 Neighborhood Hall building--the first since the building had been built. Once the renovations are completed, it will once again serve as a vital resource to the community at large.

We stopped at the Bleu Martini for a drink before dinner at the City Tavern. The Bleu Martini wasn't historic, but it was fun. The City Tavern is historic, and the food was pretty good.

We were back to the St. Raphaela Center by 9:00 this evening. We did a lot of walking, and the weather was perfect for it.

Tomorrow we have a couple of workshops and our annual meeting. There are also other things on the agenda, but I'll be leaving for my brother's around 4:00 or so in the afternoon.

Peace,
Jeff

From The Sublime To The Ridiculous, Or The Ridiculous To The Sublime?

This weekend I was up in Woodstock, CT for the Lavender Country & Folk Dancers' Spring Dance Camp. Beautiful setting, good friends, good music, good dancing, some meaningful conversations, and a missed opportunity. Someone asked me to go for a walk with him after breakfast on Sunday morning, except that it wasn't very clear that's what he was doing. By the time I realized that's what he was asking, it was too late. I mended that fence after lunch, though it really didn't need mending. Now I have to figure out just what this dance we're doing is...

Usually I take the Friday and Monday of Dance Camp weekends as vacation days. That means I'm not rushed to get out of the City from work and get to camp by 5:00 or 6:00 in the evening. I can take my time packing Friday morning and take my time getting to camp. Monday serves as a "re-entry to the real world" day. I didn't get the re-entry this time, because I had to drive to Philadelphia (well, Haverford) for the National Organization of Episcopal Resource Centers (NOERC) annual retreat/meeting. So last night I came home and unpacked the Dance Camp stuff. This morning I packed for the conference plus a visit to my brother & his family. I returned the rental car (four people plus dance camp luggage would not have fit in my little car!), had the oil changed in my car, ran a couple of errands , and left for Pennsylvania only 15 minutes after my target departure time of Noon.

So much for a gradual transition from camp to real world.

It was actually a decent day for a drive, in spite of the humidity. There was little traffic except for the usual slowdown on the Cross Bronx Expressway, and I arrived at my destination in about three hours, including a stop for lunch.

So, here we are at the Saint Raphaela Center of the Handmaids of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The rooms are clean, if a little crowded by the furniture in them. The meeting spaces are good. The food is well-prepared. There are no fans in the rooms. It may be a sleepless night.

Tomorrow is a field trip into Philadelphia.