The Yankee Does Homework

This year I enrolled in the Evening School Program here at the Seminary. During the August Term I took the prerequisite class, The Theological Education Toolbox, which is an introduction to what a seminary education is like for the seminarians here and what Evening School students can expect. Of course, I have a better idea than most about the seminarians' experience, as I live in the residential section of the campus and eat breakfast and dinner with the on hill seminarians most days. But it was still an interesting overview and would have been helpful when I arrived as a new employee almost two-and-a-half years ago. We also spent one session at the Bishop Payne Library for an introduction to its resources. Again, there wasn't much new for me, as I take advantage of any sessions offered by the library during Employee Development Days and any other time. The head librarian did rise to my challenge and found at least one thing I didn't know (the QR codes at the bottom of most book listings in the electronic catalog).

For the Fall semester I enrolled in two classes, one for the entire semester and one for six weeks beginning in the middle of October. The semester-long class is Dean Markham's Faith in the Triune God: An Introduction to Systematic Theology on Wednesday evenings. I'd been looking forward to taking this class, since everyone I've spoken with who's taken a class with the Dean says that he is a terrific teacher. Two weeks into the class I have to say that their assessment is holding up.

Because I enrolled in the enriched option of the Evening School, which leads to a certificate, I am required to do at least some of the homework/classwork rather than just sit in and audit. The Dean hasn't yet decided what the three of us Evening School students will be doing to fulfill our requirements. In the meantime I am doing the reading sheets assigned for each week's reading. Even if the Dean ultimately doesn't require them of us, I will continue to complete them. I am doing HOMEWORK again! This weekend I took  over the kitchen table as I did my homework. In the last two weeks my dictionary has seen more use than it usually does. I even pulled my old Education for Ministry texts from the shelf to give me some context for some of the assigned readings.

At one point this afternoon I began to wonder how the full-time students do this. Over the last two. weeks I've spent a significant amount of time reading and writing. How on earth would I manage a second class in October, let alone a full load? Then I remembered that they are full-time students. They're not holding down a full-time job. And by the time October rolls around, I'll have established a new rhythm life.

Up, Up and Away!

Today we went to the National Air and Space Museum. Today happens to be the 45th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing, so how could I not have my picture taken next to the Apollo 11 capsule. I remember how excited we were when Apollo 11 blasted off and as it approached the Moon. On this day in 1969 my parents woke us up in what seemed like the middle of the night, so we could see the first men walk on the moon. It seemed like such a promise back then. The future shown to us by Star Trek seemed attainable.

The Apollo 11 capsule is small, the Gemini 4 from which the first U.S. space walk was taken is smaller, and the Mercury 6 that carried John Glenn into orbit tiny. Hanging above the the space capsules is another historic machine--The Spirit of St. Louis, which Charles Lindbergh flew solo across the Atlantic. It is also smaller than one imagines, even though it was never described as a large plane. We also saw the Wright Brothers' machine that first flew at Kitty Hawk and ushered in the age of the airplane.  But I was more interested in the Spirit of St. Louis and the Tingmissartoq, which Charles and his  wife Anne Morrow Lindbergh flew on two long trips. Perhaps because the Lindberghs lived in Darien and still had a
home there when I was growing up there. I also remember reading Anne Morrow Lindbergh's diaries while I was in high school.

The Timgmissartoq exhibit showed the scope of the trips the Lindbergh made by plane in 1931 and 1933 to scout early airline routes. Like most of the exhibits in the museum it provided just the right amount of information without being overwhelming or forgetting that people of all ages come to this museum. The Air and Space Museum is one of the most popular of the Smithsonian museums, as was evidenced by the crowd there today. The only one of the museums I've visited so far that had a similar number of people was the Natural History Museum.

I also enjoyed the Aircraft Carrier exhibit, which included a  fairly extensive area covering the War in the Pacific during World War II. The plane in this picture is a Douglas SBD-6. I took the picture because as a boy I had a metal toy version of  this plane. It is amazing the amount of history here that I remember within my own lifetime or was a part of my childhood. My other favorite exhibit was Legend, Memory, and the Great War in the Air. It tries to dispel the romantic images that make up our current cultural memory of World War I. The reality was a far cry from Snoopy and the Red Baron!

 We had some time before we were due for dinner with friends, so we also stopped at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. Other than the Rodin "Back" sculptures, I was underwhelmed. I think my favorite moment was when a young father stopped at a sculpture with his two sons and asked them what they thought of it. The older boy said, "It looks like a lot of lines squiggled together." (Which it kind of did look like.) The father responded, "All drawings are a lot of lines squiggled together. But what do you think about this?" "It could be a spider," the boy said. Absolutely perfect. One entire floor of the museum was closed for renovation, and the exhibits are spare and spread out, so we weren't there for very long. As we were leaving the Sculpture Garden we passed this sculpture, "Last Conversation Piece" by Spanish artist Juan Munoz. The first thing that came to my mind was "Weebles wobble, but they don't fall down!" A woman behind us said it out loud. We had a good laugh about it.

I still have a list of places I want to visit in the area, but I'm getting there one one.  Well sometimes two by two. Until the next adventure...

A Two-fer

I don't have to tell you where we had brunch today.

After brunch we went into DC. I drove, thank you very much. Dennis directed me a different way than I would have gone, but he knows the city better than I do. We even found a parking space within a block of  our destination. I finally got to visit the National Museum of the American Indian. When we walked into the Potomac Atrium I immediately recalled the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. The outside is slightly reminiscent of the Guggenheim as well, but it does have an identity all its own. The water and landscaping of the grounds create a beautiful oasis not far from the Capitol building.

I'm not really sure what I expected, but the museum wasn't anything like I anticipated. It's very spare and spacious inside. There is lots of seating scattered throughout the building and odd niches like this one, which contains Toward the Sky: The Sacred Rain Arrow, a bronze sculpture created by Allan Houser in 1998. It stood in the Olympic Village of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

We spent the most time in Cerámica de los Ancestros: Central America’s Past Revealed. The exhibit of ancient ceramics from the Central American native cultures focuses on seven specific regions and highlights specific archeological sites in those regions. It was fascinating to see how the different cultures ebbed, flowed, interacted with each other, and either disappeared or survived.

The way the museum is designed is as much about contemplation and reflection as it is about seeing and learning.

As we walked back to the car we decided to stop at the United States Botanical Garden, which was literally across the street from where we'd parked, We just did a fairly quick walk through, and I do want to go back. But not during the summer. It's not really a place to go on a hot and humid July day.

Hiking Along the Potomac

During what has become our regular Sunday morning brunch at Murphy's in Old Town, we decided it was too nice of a day to spend inside at a museum. We don't get many summer days like this--low humidity and temperatures in the mid-80s, at least for the part of the day we'd be out and about. We looked at several options and ruled about half of them out because they involved traveling south on I-95, and driving home in end-of-holiday-weekend traffic mess. We settled on Turkey Run Park, which is up the George Washington Memorial Parkway from Alexandria.

Access to the trail is not well marked, and when we finally did find the beginning of the trail, the map on the board was faded to almost totally white. Not helpful. There are several trails that run through the park, including one that runs along the Potomac down to Roosevelt Island. We stuck to the Turkey Park Loop, although it wasn't always clearly marked either. At times the trail reminded me of our hike in the Bull Run Mountains Conservancy. Twice we had to cross a run, which I managed to do without getting my feet wet.

I find that I have to be pretty careful on trails like this. My balance is off a bit. Part of it is I've lost a fair amount of weight in the past couple of years, which has significantly shifted my center of gravity. Part of it is I'm not as young as I used to be. I may be in much better physical shape than I have been in years, but I'm also 54. Slow and easy makes it to the end of the trail.

Who knew I'd become so much of an outdoor person! I still sit with a good book an play the flute, but I've really been enjoying exploring the marshes and the trails in parks around the metro DC area.

Once More into the Marsh

Our original plan for yesterday had been to go into DC and visit the Native American History Museum. Then I saw a calendar that reminded me that the Folk Life Festival was taking place this past weekend and next weekend. Traffic, crowds, parking issues, crowds. So we decided on a Plan B, which was yet another fresh water marsh, this one in Fairfax County: Huntley Meadows Park. 

The park's history is convoluted. Native settlements followed by European settlers and farming--first crops and then dairy. In the late 1920s there was a failed attempt at creating an airship terminal and historic park. The land then passed to the federal government which used it to test asphalt for highways, an aircraft battery protecting the capital, and finally a research site for radio communications. In the mid-70s the federal government donated it to Fairfax County for park or recreation usage. In the late 1970s beaver moved into the area and built dams which increased the water levels in the wetlands. 

The trails go through and over the wetlands, and there are no rails on the boardwalks. I've never been so close to beaver lodges. Just before we took the picture of me by the lodges we heard a splash on the other side of the boardwalk. We turned around to see a Great Blue Heron hunting in the marsh. We'd seen another one just a few minutes earlier, but this one was only about 10 feet from us. You have to look closely in the picture to the left, but you can see it.

We also saw evidence of beavers at work. It's one thing to see these things on TV but quite another to see them up close and in person.

On a hill overlooking the park stands an odd looking house that gives the park it's name. This picture shows the back side. It was built c. 1825 by Thomas Francis Mason, but there is no record of when its construction began. Nor have historians and archaeologists been able to locate a kitchen on the property. As a summer getaway, the kitchen would have been in a separate building. The Masons were a prominent Virginia family. Thomas' grandfather was George Mason IV who authored the Virginia Declaration of Rights. Thomas was an important figure in his own right.

The house is only open on Saturdays, so we didn't get to look inside. Another revisit added to the list.

More Green Space

 Today we went into DC to see the National Arboretum, which is part of the United States Department of Agriculture rather than the National Park Service. First stop, of course, the Visitor's Center. When I asked what we should see they told us we shouldn't miss the Bonsai exhibit. They were right. These unbelievable trees are displayed simply with enough space between them to appreciate each one individually. We saw one that started training in 1875 and then found one that started in 1856. Unbelievable! A short while later we came upon the tree pictured to the left. Believe it or not, it's a Sequoia. Thee little tea bag looking things sitting on the soil in the pots are release fertilizer each time the plant is watered.

In the National Herb Garden I saw plants that reminded me of cattails, which were pearl millet. I'd read about millet, but this was the first time I'd ever seen it. They also had rice, wheat, and rye planted there. Who knew that many varieties of wheat only come up to my waist! There were several scented geraniums in pots around the knot garden. What surprised me though were the roses. Many of the plants didn't look healthy, so I guess it's not just the rose bushes around campus that are having a bad year.

In 1958 they removed several of the original sandstone columns from the Capitol to make way for an addition to the building. They used marble for the new columns, and the originals eventually found a new home in the Arboretum. They dominate a large meadow that has paths mowed through it. Across the meadow stands the capital of one of the columns on what is called the Capitol Columns Overlook.


The columns are pretty impressive, and they sit on top of a hill with a reflecting pool in front of them. We also walked through the Azalea Collections. Even though it's past their blooming season, the was an oasis of cool on a muggy afternoon. We walked up the Mount Hamilton Foot trail, which takes you to the Mount Hamilton Overlook, one of the highest points in DC at 240 feet. If you look through the trees, you can see the Capitol two miles to the west.

It continues to surprise me how much green space there is within the 68.3 square miles of the District of Columbia. Walking across the meadow you wouldn't know that the Capitol is less than three miles away.

These weekend excursions are what I envisioned doing when I first moved down here a little over two years ago. While I did a couple on my own, they're definitely more enjoyable to do with someone else. And we get in a lot of walking.

Dead Mall Walking

Heat and humidity moved in, and we moved our walks indoors. I've become a mall walker. So far we've been doing most of our walking at Landmark Mall, which is the closest to campus. Originally built as an open air mall in 1965, it was enclosed in 1990. It had three anchor stores, of which two remain--Sears and Macy's. The large restaurants are closed, as are about half the food court spaces. Close to half the retail spaces are empty. What remains isn't capable of supporting it. The city has approved the most recent redevelopment plans, and work is scheduled to begin later this year.

Last night  we walked the Bollston Commons Mall in Arlington. It has very few empty stores, but two of the large restaurants are closed closed as well as some of the smaller ones in the food court. While not as dead as Landmark, there still weren't a lot of people there for a hot and humid summer evening. There are signs that Bollston Commons has begun the decline. We see this trend across the country.

As malls popped up they replaced town centers, many of which were dead or dying, as the social and commercial focus of communities. Some towns fought the building of malls but instead worked to attract some of the same stores found in malls. In a sense those redeveloped streets became open air malls themselves. In other places the old town centers have revitalized and become the vital retail, dining, and residential centers they once were. We're reversing the process.

But it's more than revitalized town centers that are causing the decline in malls. The Internet has taken a large and increasing part of retail spending. It's also affecting the big box bookstores, which in their time pushed many of the small book shops out of business. A process hastened by the arrival of Amazon.com. The internet is changing the retail landscape, and social media is changing the way we interact with each other. Yet it seems we still need places where we interact face-to-face. This probably has something to do with the revival of our old town centers.

So what will become of the mall spaces? Even some of the currently successful ones are adding office and residential space, hotels, and recreational space.They are creating town centers in suburban areas that developed without traditional centers.

But the rest?

A Hidden Gem in DC

 Today's excursion took us to Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens, "the only National Park dedicated to cultivating water-loving plants." It is part of the larger Anacostia Water Trail and was once the estate of the Shaw family. When the family saved the water gardens in the 1930s from dredging and fill by the Army Corps of Engineers, they also inadvertently saved a few acres of fresh water marsh. Congress purchased the original eight acres and gave it to the National Park Service.

Restoration work continues on the marsh. As you can see in this picture, the marsh is once again open to the Anacostia. They have created new mud flats and re-introduced native marsh plants including wild rice, cattail, and two varieties of Nuphar, a plant so ancient that it may be a common ancestor to both the waterlily and the lotus. One of the trails in the park winds through the marsh and takes you to the banks of the Anacostia. You an observe both native plants and non-native plants growing along the trail. At some places you can see where marsh restoration is taking place. Today we saw a small group of kayakers come up the river and detour into the marsh.



On the other side of the park is a boardwalk that takes you out to look over the marsh and where you can see the marsh plants close up.

While the I found the marsh really interesting, the water gardens were fascinating. Waterlilies and lotus predominate in the 12 ponds. We also saw frogs, turtles, geese, and dragonflies.  

The plants are just beginning to flower. The big festival takes place next month, but we got to see a variety of waterlily flowers.

It's hard to believe that this garden and marsh exist within the city limits of DC. Although the number of visitors increased while we were there, it never got very crowded. More people will probably come as the blooms increase.

This area has so many of these places, both hidden and well known. Who knows where the next outing will take me...

A River Runs Through It

One of Dennis' interests is weather. Since we had a great deal of rain over the previous 24 hours, yesterday he checked the Potomac River water levels throughout the day. He often goes down to the river to observe. Last evening he asked if I'd like to go up to Great Falls and see the river. Last Spring we went to the Maryland side of the park. Today we to the Virginia side. It's a pretty spectacular place, as you can see from this picture in the National Park Service brochure. At least until it rains.

We could hear the river as soon as we got out of the car, and this is the falls looked like when we got to the overlooks. You read descriptions of raging rivers, and you see the video that accompanies news reports, but nothing really prepares you for actually seeing it in person.

And this is about as close as I care to get to a raging river!

The walkway you can see across the river is on Olmstead Island on the Maryland side of the park. Since we saw no people on it, we think they must have closed the bridge that gets you to it.

The Potomac watershed is the second largest emptying into the Chesapeake Bay. It includes the Shenandoah, which joins it at Harpers Ferry. We saw a lot of debris--mostly trees, but occasionally things like this barrel.

 

Further down the trail you can get a little closer to where the cliffs usually are.











While we were there one of the Park Police helicopters made several passes over the area. I also saw a Coast Guard helicopter fly by at one point.









A small oasis of calm in the rocks of one of the observation areas.

 










After an early lunch we drove back to Theodore Roosevelt Island to see how things were there. As we drove through Georgetown along the river we could see that the Potomac was high and running swiftly, though not as raging as further upstream. The lower path was flooded on the Roslyn side of the island.

On the DC side the river was literally running over the lower path.

Reminders of the power of nature.

Spring Returns to Alexandria

This evening we went down to Old Town for dinner without a specific plan in mind. We drove down, parked, and started walking. We eventually settled on O'Connell's on the lower end of King Street. In spite of the fact that we had no reservations on a Friday evening, they seated us in less than 5 minutes. It was loud, even on the third level, but the food was good, including dessert. I don't often eat dessert when I eat out these days, but we'd eaten fairly lightly. Besides, we went walking after dinner.

As we often do when we go down to Old Town, we walked to the river front. The water was high and browner than usual due to the heavy rains last night. The forecasters expect it to rise a bit more, perhaps higher than it has been in four years. We'll have to wait until tomorrow to know for sure. We didn't walk along the river as much as we usually do, since we had a couple of stops to make on the way back to the car. Plus Dennis found it a bit chilly with the slight breeze, even though it was close to 70 degrees. After the heat and humidity earlier this week and last night's rain, it felt good to me.

It was the first nice evening--the first nice SPRING evening--that I've been down to Old Town this year. The fountain in front of City Hall was on. People filled the sidewalk dining areas. Street performers were out in force. Familiar ones were in their usual spots--the balloon man, the hammer dulcimer player, and the sketch artist, among others. We also saw some new ones. The most interesting was a trio of young Irish step dancers who set up a dance floor near the entrance to the Torpedo Factory. They wore the most gaudy, even garish, Irish step costumes I've ever seen. Then again, I'm sure the traditional Irish step garb has evolved over the years. And if you're going to dance on the street...

Now if we could just figure out how to cleanse the pollen from the air!

Walking the Trails

Even after living here for two years, I am still learning about what's around Alexandria. I did know about the Mount Vernon Trail, which runs from Roosevelt Island to Mount Vernon in the green space between the George Washington Memorial Parkway and the Potomac River. I've driven past the Belle Haven Park several times, but I went there for the first time this afternoon. Dennis and I went down after lunch to walk the trail.

Lots of bicyclists ride the trail, which was designed with them in mind., but joggers and walkers also use it. For the most part everyone is respectful of everyone else on the trail. Cyclists are supposed to warn people on foot as they approach from behind. About half of those that passed us today either called out "On your left," or used a bell. Some did both. Many did not. Most of the time I could hear them coming, but once in a while one would come whizzing by unexpectedly and startle me. I'm a once and future cyclist, so I understand the issues of riding in urban areas. However, you need to respect others who use the same trails.

As we neared the Alexandria/Fairfax line we passed a piece of concrete. Or pieces. When I see things like that I wonder what was once there. An old sidewalk that once accessed the river front? Part of a front or back yard? What might be left for an archeologist to find in another two hundred years? It's also a reminder of how quickly nature retakes its ground when we abandon it. Or work with it to restore important environments.

Adjacent to the park sits the Dyke Marsh Preserve. During the early 1800s farmers tried to create grazing land by building retaining walls. Because the resulting land proved unsuitable for grazing, the marsh reclaimed the area. But that was not the end of  human impact on the marsh. For many decades in the last century companies dredged the marsh for sand and gravel, and even after the dredging stopped, erosion has continued. For 40 years federal agencies and organizations have worked to develop a plan to restore the marshlands. One of the factors that has focused renewed attention on the restoration process is the number of coastal storms that have hit the area over the past few years. Marshes serve as natural protection for coastlines.

To see the marsh you walk on the old Haul Road, which now serves as a walking trail into the area. Bicycles are prohibited, and pets must be leashed. We passed several folks with binoculars engaged in bird watching. We also saw some of the non-native invasive plants that the National Park Service and the Friends of Dyke Marsh are working to remove from the area. Lots of English Ivy, which I know first hand how difficult it is to eradicate.

At times it is hard to believe how close this is to a major urban area. Then you walk around a bend in the trail, and there's the Woodrow Wilson Bridge crossing the Potomac.

One day I hope to bike from my apartment to this area and even all the way down to Mount Vernon itself. For now, however, it's a short drive to a beautiful area for walking. I logged over 11,000 steps this afternoon.

And there's still a lot to explore.

Packing, Prepping, and More Packing

The last bit of laundry is in the washer, and as soon as it comes out of the dryer I will take it and the stuff strewn on my bed and finish packing. Four bags already sit in the hallway ready to go. I've said before that I can travel for two weeks in Ireland with a carry-on, but three days of Dance Camp and I fill the trunk. This time, however, it feels like I'm packing for two trips, which for all intents and purposes I am. For the first time since I arrived at the Seminary two years ago I am taking more than two or three days off at one time.

Each time I've gone to Dance Camp since moving south friends have said "You need to stop and see me." That just isn't possible in the course of a four day weekend, fourteen hours of which are spent on the road getting to Camp and back. This time I decided to take some vacation time the week before Camp to spend some extended time with Mom and friends. It will also be the first time in two years that I will have more than four days without the Guest Houses cell phone! I spent most of this short work week preparing what my colleagues will need to oversee the Guest Houses while I'm gone. I know they will manage just fine.

Tomorrow morning I will load up the car and head north; head home. And in ten days time I will pack up the car again and head south to home.

The Changing Nature of Filing

Every so often I go through my files to purge them of things I no longer need. Of all the things I've discarded I've only regretted throwing out one, a collection of cartoons I drew while in junior high and high school. This week I started another file purge sparked by rediscovering my Evernote account.

I first signed up for Evernote to track some online research I was doing. Eventually I finished that project and moved on. I found my Dropbox account much more useful for the kind of document storage and work I have been doing. When I got my new computer last month I stumbled upon an Evernote app and decided to take a look at it again. I poked around the internet to see what folks had to say about Evernote. One of the thing I learned was that the smart phone version has the ability to act as a scanner to import documents. So I started going through my file drawers.

The first thing I did was scan several pages of notes from a small notebook I kept when we were creating Renaissance Faire characters. There's a lot of good information there, but it has been a while since we've worked on that project. I now use the notebook for other miscellaneous research, but I don't want to discard the old research. Using my phone, I scanned them into notes and sorted them for future reference. Then I pulled a folder from the file drawers labeled "Cormorant". It contained a lot of my early notes, maps, city plans, genealogies, etc. for a world that serves as the setting for bits and pieces of short fiction that I write now and then. A lot of my concepts and ideas have evolved over the years, and some of the projects sparked by that research (my constructed languages, for instance) are kept in other places. Again there's good information that I don't want to discard at this stage, but I also haven't looked in the folder for a long time. So I scanned and sorted the contents into Evernote notes.

When I got to the last documents I found this 5 1/4" Minidisk between a couple of them. Its slip envelope also contained a folded sheet of paper with a list of document names. Some of them were obviously stored copies of some of the documents in the folder. A couple were from the early years of the Connecticut Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Civil Rights. Some of the document names made no sense to me at all but obviously meant something when I created the list nearly a quarter of a century ago.

 These minidisks were an improvement over the 10" disks used by the Wang system, but they were supplanted by the even smaller 3 1/2" disks. It's difficult to retrieve information from all three of those old floppy disks. (Yes, we called the 3 1/2" disks floppy even though they weren't.) Then came CDs followed by flash drives. Now we're storing stuff on the Cloud. How long will it be before we have to move that information or run the risk of not being able to access it?

And our archiving systems haven't yet caught up with the new technology. Many institutions are still trying to develop systems and protocols for archiving email and the myriad of elecotronic documents that are sitting on our hard drives and online places like Goggle Docs. In 100 years will historians have access to technology that will be capable of opening the myriad of electronic data created in the late 20th and early 21st centuries? Or will they be as inaccessible as the documents on my minidisk?

Microfilm or microfiche anyone?

The Yankee Goes to Chapel

During the January Term one of the chapel sacristans asked if I would consider officiating at Noonday Prayer one day during the term. His face fell just slightly when I said I needed to check my calendar to see if I could and would email him. Later he told me he'd been surprised at how quickly I sent the email letting him know I would be happy to officiate. It wasn't until two days before that I received details about the service, and at 9:30 the night before I learned that a short reflection on the readings was part of officiating. The idea of the homily on such short notice had me a bit nervous, but I managed just fine, and I spoke without notes. I even received compliments from someone I respect as a priest.

A couple of weeks later I related the story to my spiritual director who happens to be the Chapel Coordinator for the Seminary. In one of our earlier meetings we'd talked about my involvement, or lack thereof, in the Seminary Chapel services. Until January, I could have probably counted on one hand the number of times I'd attended services in the chapel, primarily work related. Since February she's asked me to read at Morning Prayer twice and officiate at Morning Prayer once.

Once she scheduled me to officiate this morning's service I checked with her to see if there were any specifics about officiating in the Seminary chapel that I should know. She ran through the basic outline, with which I'm already familiar. Yet I still felt nervous when I arrived at sacristy this morning to check in with the sacristan. About halfway through the service I thought there's no reason to be nervous. I did this dozens of times at the Church Center when I worked there. I've led Morning Prayer on Sundays at my former parish when we were without clergy. I've led Daily Office services at any number of meetings and conferences. So what was it about this service of Morning Prayer?

Over the course of the day I spoke with a couple of the seminarians, and they have experienced much the same feelings when officiating or serving at chapel services. What is it about seminary services that causes this nervousness in those of us who have served in these roles many times before arriving here? It could be attributable to the feeling of being under the microscope of the ordination process, but I'm not in the process, and they have led services in other places as part of their process. So it must be something about being here at the Seminary. If we figure it out, we'll let you know.

In the meantime I expect that my spiritual director will invite me to participate in more chapel services, and I will probably say yes when it fits into my schedule.

The Yankee Plans for Retirement

For the past few years I've joked that they'll have to carry me out of wherever I'm working at the time in a body bag because I won't be able to afford to retire. I was only half kidding.

I entered the workforce as the economy began pulling itself out of the recession of the early 80s. At the time I attended graduate school at the University of Wisconsin and had to drop out because I couldn't find work to support myself and didn't want to to further into debt. I swallowed my pride and called my parents. By the time my father came to get me, I had less than a dollar's worth of change in my pocket. Fortunately, the economy recovered more quickly in the Northeast, and I found work within a month. I was able to buy a used car keep up with both the student loan payments and the car payments. I met someone, and we started to make a life for ourselves.

But after a couple of years the parent company reorganized their U.S. subsidiaries, and they laid off the entire staff in my office. I found work as an office temporary, paid off the student loans and took the money that had been going to those payments and began investing it. I tried another stint of grad school, which put me in debt again. I found a new job, and the pattern repeated itself as businesses in the new economy paid stockholder dividends by cutting staff . Find a job, get laid off, temp for a while, find a new job...

Each time I ended up out of work, the debt increased, and because I never spent more than a couple of years at any one job, I never accumulated much in the way of a pension. After 11 years I also found myself single, which meant less money available to save, as I was responsible for 100% of the living expenses. Including outrageously expensive COBRA payments for insurance coverage whenever I was unemployed.

I'm not trying to tell you a sob story. We take life as it comes. I've been able to keep a roof over my head and food on my table. I've always found work eventually. And I've been able to do some great things over the years. For the last few years, however, retirement looked like something I wouldn't be able to do.

Until this past week. The company that handles the Seminary's retirement plan came to do a presentation and do some one on one meetings with staff members. I gathered my financial records and went to my appointment. It was an enlightening 30 minutes. With some adjustments to my portfolio--well, major ones--it appears I may just be able to retire when I'm eligible to receive full social security benefits.

I'll be working for a few years yet, but it looks like they won't be carrying me out in a body bag!

The Yankee Walks

It will probably surprise many of you that at one point in my life I ran five miles a day three to five times a week. One summer while visiting my grandparents in Chicago I went for my morning run along Lake Michigan. I ran two-and-a-half miles along the lake shore and then turned to head back. About halfway back I stopped and looked around. While I enjoyed being outside, I really didn't like running. I pretty much stopped running on a regular basis and after a couple of years gave it up altogether.

It does not surprise anyone that I am overweight. I have fought that battle for most of my life. I managed to reach a point where I stayed under the maximum weight I'd ever hit. Every once in a while I lowered that top number, but eventually I reached a plateau that lasted for a long time. When I moved to Seminary I made some serious decisions about my eating habits, especially since part of my package includes the same meal plan as the students have. Mostly through portion control (including rarely going for seconds) I avoided the so-called freshman 15. In fact I lost some weight and kept it off. In the past couple of months I've become a lot more deliberate about what I eat, including a drastic cutback in the amount of gluten in my food.

But it takes more than just watching food. It has helped that my office is across campus from most of the rest of the administrative offices. However, I started to walk after work and on the weekends because I needed some form of regular exercise. I began with shorter distances on campus and then increased the distance over time. I now walk what is essentially a 5K three or four times a week. I doubt very strongly I will be running a 5K in the near future, if at all. Never say never, but I'm also not 25 any more.

It helps to be surrounded by supportive people. The Seminary community includes marathon runners, triathletes, budding fitness trainers, and those just serious about their health and fitness. You can always find someone to answer a question about nutrition, types of diets, types of activities, or just about anything else. The first time I walked the complete perimeter of the combined Seminary and Episcopal High campuses, the equivalent of a 5K, these folks celebrated with me.

So I will continue to walk because it's good for me, and because I enjoy it.

Well maybe not when it rains...