An Unfinished House

Ok, I know I've been lax in blogging, to be honest I'd thought to give it up; really the last thing I feel like doing at the end of a long day of grading, reading and lesson planning is to start writing. What's more, I have to believe that after such a long hiatus the only person left on the planet that checks this blog with some regularity is my mother. That being said I've decided to try and give this blog-writing thing one last shot; if nothing else than for a repository of my own personal memories and photos. What better way to start then, than with Duke and his birthday. It wasn't much of one actually, he came to church with Jojo and I this morning, left for the afternoon to play soccer and then came back to the house to watch me lesson plan. We had previously made plans to go to the beach and eat seafood with his family but his mother had to work today so he asked that we wait until this Saturday when she'll have a free day to join us. I love this kid mo...

  No really, I am.  Tomorrow, I begin my blogging in earnest. Tonight, I plan my lessons.

My dear friend and indefatigable supporter, Nelmi Artiaga, died last Monday. From what, no one really knows. She had been fighting chronic illness of some sort or another and had been in and out of the hospital for the past year. I am told that this past month she lost a tremendous amount of weight, bled profusely from random orifices and simply stopped eating. Nelmi leaves behind 4 children, 3 of whom are under the age of 15, and a serious void in the Los Laureles community. Always aglow with joy, always a servant, always eager to chat - Nelmi was dearly loved by everyone in the community and people there tell me that already the place seems a little deader without her laughter and quick wit. For my part, I balled when I got the call from her sister last week. Nelmi was one of the first adults to befriend me and her friendship was rock-solid; when I lived in the community she would stop by the house occasionally just to check-up on me, when ugly and false rumo...

I'm a sentimentalist at heart and can rarely be content with the way things are "in-the-moment". In my heart I have this constant nagging suspicion that the present state of things is an aberration, a fall or slide of sorts from a more perfect time when things were more as they ought to be. I often feel as though the organizations I choose to associate with are in their death-throws and that if I could only wind back the clock a bit I might be a part of something that were in its heyday. I feel this way about my beloved city of Williamsport, about the recreational Summer swim team that I'm currently coaching, about the Mennonite Church at-large and my own home congregation, about our public school system here; heck I even get the feeling sometimes that the Lycoming Creek that flows through the City is less full than what I remember as a child. And I don't wish to turn back time to a specific date, though I do get the sense that I would have loved living in ...

I know it's been a long a time since I've written and whilst there is news from Laureles to recount I want to take a moment and post a quote from a book on the history of education that I'm reading. Out of context, this will mean nothing for most of you that happen to read this. In context though it is profound and chilling and has reverberations for my own "next step" in life. For that reason alone I feel that I need to get it down somewhere so that I might have it handy and referrable in the near-future. If your interest is piqued by the quote, drop me a line, if not, stay tuned and a report from Laureles shall be forthcoming. With only niggling reservations, the Fabian brain trust had no difficulty employing force to shape recalcitrant individuals, groups, and organizations. Force in the absence of divine injunctions is a tool to be employed unsentimentally. Fabian George Bernard Shaw established the principle wittily in 1920 when he said that under a Fabian fu...

I asked once, to no one in particular, how I might respond the first time I discovered that one of my boys had gone and impregnated a girl...or worse: " Rain & Death In The Garbage Dump ". The other week I surprised myself at the way I responded; though to be honest, there's only so much response one can give at a distance of 3000 miles. Cristian has not impregnated anyone, at least not that I know of. He did though, at the mature and responsible age of 17 decide that it was time he took a wife. Last week one evening, while their respective families were in church, Cristian's girlfriend Lezmy, packed up her few meager belongings, leapt from her bedroom window (her aunt was in the other room) and trekked up the hill that separates her family's home from that of Cristian's. By Laureles custom the two are now married -- at least until one of the two decides that they aren't any longer -- but that's also a Laureles custom; there will probably be a ch...

A little bird alighted on my window sill the other day - he ran hither and thither on the roof in front of the window, allowed me to photograph him briefly and then fluttered off.   I spend a lot of time staring out my window, often wishing I were like that bird; able to flutter off on a whim, content to let the breeze blow me where'er it might.   It's a form of escapism I know; for some it's Middle Earth, others it's Gossip Girl, mine though is a combination of coffee, cloves and The Shins whilst staring out the window or in the warmer months, sitting out the window, and wishing I weren't here.    It's not an entirely unproductive passtime to be sure. I strike deals with God, make life decisions and approach true inner-peace. Escapism though is not a conduit for living in the present.   For much of this past year I feared moving beyond my window gazing into interaction with others. I feared being drawn into their lives and by de...