Summer ended three days ago. Upon my return to campus on Monday, the dam that was holding back the work broke and the everything came spilling out in full force. But before I get there, I want to head back a couple weeks to my California vacation. It's more pleasurable to ramble about that than to think about the work I need to do before the semester begins.
It's always fun to head back to San Diego and see people. I drove out on Thursday morning, stopping in Murietta for lunch and hanging out with my former roommate (and his wife, three kids, his dad, and his mother-in-law). This was an unplanned stop. It occurred to me as I was driving that I would be passing through his city, so I called and it happened that he had the day off. Lucky coincidence, I guess.
I arrived in San Diego just ahead of the traffic, and stopped by the supermarket for some supplies. There was a GCF potluck that evening, and I had decided to make stuffed mushrooms. I've decided that stuffed mushrooms is my new generic appetizer for random social events. They're tasty, easy to make, and extremely forgiving. The use of cream cheese as a base for the filling ensures a lot of flavor, and I think any reasonable combination of foods will work in almost proportion. I made it with bacon and onion, and added some cayenne for some heat. My only mistake was that I added the extras to the cheese while it was too hot, and melted the cheese. The remedy was just to throw it in the fridge for a couple minutes, and it all worked out okay.
Apparently, GCF is growing again. It's sort of the ebb and flow of any student group. My head is a little bit fuzzy on the details, but my recollection is that the focus has shifted back towards community (away from integration) and this is connecting with the sudden influx of new students. The potluck seemed well attended to me, but apparently it was actually a somewhat small showing relative to how things have been. I got to catch up a little bit with the old-timers (every year, there are fewer of them hanging around).
On Friday morning, a group of us went to a soup kitchen in downtown San Diego. As far as soup kitchens go, this was a highly organized affair. Instead of being a chaotic scramble, everything happened in an orderly manner, with clear instructions, and a sensible structure. The knives were dull (as they always are) and the cucumbers were gigantic (18 inches long, 5-6 inches in diameter).
The only odd moment for me was the devotional. Before I go any further, I'll point out that this soup kitchen is run by a church and uses the church facilities. If this were a generic soup kitchen with no religious affiliation, it would be less weird. Anyway, the second half of the devotional used a story from a book called "Welcome to the Wisdom of the World." The devotional expressed a "God is everywhere" pantheistic perspective, which is a clear violation of the Judeo-Christian understanding of the distinctiveness of God from His creation.
The rest of the afternoon (and early evening) was spent playing "Through the Ages," which is a civilizations-type board game. It's an extremely fascinating game, with a rich sense of strategy, but it took about 6 hours to play. I'd play it again, if I had the chance, so that's an indication of how much fun I had. What is frustrating to me is that I had something like a 20 point lead going into the last couple rounds and managed to lose by about 30 points. The lesson I learned was that the endgame heavily favors infrastructure.
Dinner that evening was originally intended to be an elaborate event, but because of the timing turned out to be a simple (but tasty) meal. The menu was fried rice, catfish, asparagus, with blueberries and dulce de leche gelato for dessert (the gelato had made previously -- "dolce de leche" means sweet milk, I think, and it's a caramelized milk product).
Saturday morning was a brunch with more GCF friends. It occurred to me during that conversation that I was really back among academics. It's not every day that a discussion about the non-commutativity of linear operators can arise naturally in a conversation. That was the first time it happened during that trip, but it wasn't the only time. My geophysicist friend and her family will soon be working in Menlo Park for the USGS, and I have to remember to try to visit them when I'm up there.
I drove up to Long Beach that evening to spend the night with my brother. The next morning, I went to church with him. I'm continually fascinated by visiting churches. Every place has its story, and its own expressions of worship and community. The church had a 1980s vibe to its construction. (I don't actually know whether it's a 1980s style construction for churches, but that's the image that comes to mind.) It was very rectangular, with lots of exterior-facing classrooms.
The main room (sanctuary, I guess... but it's more like an auditorium) was large and extremely wide with lots of international flags hanging from the ceiling. It was speculated that perhaps the church has a history of being missions-focused, and that's the reason for the flags. That makes sense to me. I guess it's common for the church to have moments where people wander all over the place during the service to lay hands on someone and pray -- in a structured manner, not people randomly standing up, walking around, and touching people.
I found the sermon to be a little bit wandering, but apparently that's how everyone feels the first time. There's clearly an underlying theme, but the pastor sort of wanders around as he goes. There's a part of this that I guess is a reflection of the church itself, as the pastor is someone who grew up in that church as the son of a previous pastor. He mentioned in the sermon that he's going back to school to pursue some theological degree, which is something he recognizes as being important to his ability to minister to people.
From there, it was off to Campus by the Sea on Catalina Island for family (and faculty) camp. I actually don't have a whole lot to say about the camp. I had a lot more experiences of intellectuals speaking intellectually with each other (sentences involving the words homogeneity, matriculation, and phenomenologist - and I don't pretend to understand that last one).
One food thing that I want to note is that on Thursday evening there was a banquet night, and the hors d'oeuvres included goat cheese and a grape on a toothpick, where the goat cheese was drizzled with olive oil and fresh cracked pepper. I would never have thought of using goat cheese with grapes like that, but I guess I've also never been to fancy meals where you have a cheese course (which is sort of the logical place to end up with that combination).
I had a good time overall, and my takeaway from that time is simply to do more reading, both devotional and intellectual (if such a dichotomy is legitimate). So now I've got a stack of books (though some have yet to arrive from Amazon):
The Good and Beautiful God (James Bryan Smith) -- Devotional reading
Axiom (Bill Hybels) -- Leadership reading
The Challenge of Jesus (NT Wright) -- I'm not sure whether this is devotional or intellectual, but I'd suspect it's intellectual
The Next Christendom (Philip Jenkins) -- Historical reading
The Divine Conspiracy (Dallas Willard) -- I'm expecting this to be in between devotional and intellectual
Becoming Sinners -- Ethnography written by the advisor of one of my GCF friends; this is driven more by curiosity than anything else
With a little discipline and a little luck, I'll have finished reading these by the end of the academic year.
Which brings me back to the present day, being swamped with work. In three days, I've had three meetings (one meeting for the math remediation program, two regarding the upcoming interim president decision), and discovered that I need to prepare for four presentations (two for faculty development, one for the families of students during orientation, and one to the Board of Regents regarding the math remediation program -- which may require a trip to Reno for a 5 minute presentation), extra paperwork (more math remediation stuff), plus I still need to finish preparations for the upcoming semester (syllabi and course webpages). And then there's a faculty senate meeting on the first day of classes, and thing related to the search for another math professor, and hopefully finishing up that article...
Goodbye, summer. I look forward to seeing you next year.
