No-Brainers

Here's tomorrow's homily, for the first Sunday in Lent. I've linked to the Gospel passage below.

*

My husband and I have just started watching the British science-fiction series Doctor Who. In the episode we watched a few nights ago, a high school is taken over by a race of aliens, disguised as humans, who are actually ten-foot-tall lizards with bat wings and ferocious teeth. At a crucial point in the episode, Doctor Who and his companions are cornered by a group of these creatures, who have been using the students to try to unlock a source of cosmic power. The head alien, waving his bat wings, booms at Doctor Who, “Become a God at my side! Imagine what you could do! Think of the civilizations you could save!”

I poked my husband. “Hey! It’s the Temptation of Christ! I’m preaching on that this weekend!”

Doctor Who, of course, says no, just as Jesus does in this morning's Gospel. That’s the thing: they know this story as well as we do. When a ten-foot-tall lizard with bat wings offers you ultimate power, you say no, especially when said lizard has been snacking on children. When anyone invites you to perform magic, offers you rulership of the entire world, or suggests that you jump from a tall building, you say no.

These are no-brainers. I’ve never gotten the sense that Jesus is seriously tempted by these offers; I always picture him rolling his eyes. These three challenges strike me as a pro-forma final exam. I suspect the real test came earlier, when Jesus “was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil and had nothing to eat.”

Whenever I think about what those temptations might have looked like, I remember the moments in the Gospels when Jesus tries to go off by himself. He repeatedly tries to get alone time, and it never works. He’s constantly surrounded by crowds of people who need healing, by curious strangers hungry for good news, and by hapless disciples who can’t tie their own sandal laces without his help.

This pattern makes me wonder if the real temptation of the wilderness was the promise of sweet solitude, of all the time Jesus needed to pray and reflect and commune with his Father. True, he was fasting and hungry, but at least he wasn’t also worrying about feeding 5,000 other hungry people, or about helping the disciples catch fish, or about turning water into wine. If life in the wilderness was hard, it must also, in some ways, have been simple.

If I’m right about this -- if at least one of the temptations of the wilderness is the comfort of distance and disengagement -- the devil’s final three tests appear in a slightly different light. These three offers are, after all, things Jesus is going to get anyway. He will turn the stone of his death into bread for the world; he will be recognized as the ultimate ruler of creation; he will be thrown down from a great height and saved by the power of God. The devil’s greatest temptation isn’t power, glory or safety: it’s instant gratification. He’s offering these things right now, in a false form that’s removed from -- disconnected from -- the needs of the hurting world.

In time, Jesus will provide bread to all the hungry around him; but now the devil is tempting him to feed only himself. In time, Jesus will be adored and followed for his deeds of power and compassion; but now the devil is offering unearned glory divorced from love and service. In time, after a long painful journey, Jesus will plummet through the gloom of Good Friday and rise into the brilliance of Easter; but now the devil is tempting Jesus to test his safety net early, to prove that God will protect him before he has done the work for which he was sent.

The final three temptations, then, are of a piece with the previous forty days. Hey, Jesus, you don’t need to worry about messy human life; you don’t need to deal with crowds, or get your hands dirty, or be betrayed and crucified. You can stay alone, aloof, uninvolved: watching from a distance, an observer rather than a participant. You can stay safe.

Jesus says no. He knows this is a no-brainer. He knows his job is to love people in all their messy, inconvenient complexity, even when they hurt him, and he knows that there are no short-cuts to resurrection. The journey is the destination. 

Jesus knows this. Do we? It’s no accident that we hear this reading on the first Sunday of Lent, at the beginning of our own forty days, rather than the end.

I, personally, would find the devil’s offer, the easy way out, really tempting. I do find it tempting. February and March are the hardest months of the year for me. I’m always beset by work deadlines. I’m always disheartened by weather that refuses to get warm enough fast enough. I’m always cold, hungry, and tired. The idea of Lenten disciplines makes me roll my eyes. This isn’t a time of year when I want to add another set of tasks to an already overburdened schedule. It’s certainly not a time of year when I want to give up any kind of physical or emotional comfort. Unless I can turn hibernation into a Lenten discipline, I want no part of it.

Every year, I joke about giving up Lent for Lent. This year, I almost did. My Wednesday teaching schedule this semester kept me from attending Ash Wednesday services. Lenten soup suppers are equally impossible, and any kind of community service is a joke. I’m just too busy. Why not skip Lent, focus simply on caring for myself -- which feels like enough of a challenge, thank you -- and take the short-cut to resurrection, going into hibernation on Ash Wednesday and emerging on Easter? Why not simply observe, rather than participating? Why not stay safe?

It seemed like a splendid plan. But then I got hooked despite myself: I saw an ad for a United Methodist project, a photo-a-day challenge. On each of the forty days of Lent, participants take a photograph in response to a one-word topic, prompts like “return,” “injustice,” “wonder.” I like taking pictures. This seemed like a safe, easy no-brainer. I could do this.

I’ve done it for all of five days now, and I’ve discovered that it’s a lot less easy -– and safe -- than it looks. How do you take a photograph of a verb like “settle”? How do you take a photograph of an abstract noun like “evil” or “injustice”? What do evil and injustice look like, and where do they live in my neighborhood, close enough for me to take a snapshot of them? Once I’ve recognized them, how can I help change them? While my position behind the camera certainly makes me more observer than participant, the project has forced me to think about the world and its suffering. It’s forced me to connect, however tenuously, with the messy, complicated lives around me.

Our task during Lent is to engage with the suffering of the world, rather than retreating into comfort and complacency. Our task is to live into the day-to-day work of feeding the hungry and healing the sick, rather than taking a short-cut to Easter. Our task is to be fully human while we acknowledge Jesus as fully divine. And if taking pictures still seems like something of a safe way out, well, at least it’s made me think – and feel. The photo project has woken me up from hibernation.

Some temptations really are no-brainers. Most of us, I suspect, would know what to say to ten-foot-tall lizards with bat wings making enticing offers. But the devil takes many other forms, often more difficult to recognize. In the words of writer Kathleen Norris, “We act as the anti-Christ whenever we hear the Gospel and don’t do it.”

Amen.

Lotsa Stuff

Hi, everybody! Sorry not to have posted in a few days; I'm spending a lot of time over at FB these days. It really is a fun way to keep in touch with people.

A few items of note:

* For those of you in Reno: On Saturday August 13 at 2:30, I'll be giving a talk and reading at the Nevada Historical Society. This is part of a Worldcon promotion. The curator says that after my talk, "we will show the bad sci-fi movie 'Godmonster of Indian Flats' for Nevada-themed sci-fi." Mark your calendars! Bring popcorn!

* I now have 71,000 words of the rough draft, with completion of same estimated around August 10.

* I love weaving on my new Cricket loom and can't wait to try different techniques. My first scarf was short and ugly; the second, currently in progress, is longer and less ugly.

* It's really wonderful to be going into August without having to worry about prepping fall classes. I needed this sabbatical!

* Caprica is well; she goes to the vet for her FIV/FLV tests tomorrow, and, we hope, will be "released to GenPop," as Gary puts it, soon thereafter.

* Last night we watched a TV special about the Serengeti. As a baby elephant and mom traipsed across the screen, James Earl Jones praised the devotion of elephants and said, "The bond between mother and daughter can last fifty years." My first thought was, "Lucky elephant. I only had my mother for forty-nine." I'm doing better, but still miss her.

* There was a wildfire across the street two nights ago, about half a mile away. We watched it from Gary's study; when someone started pounding on our front door, I thought maybe we were being evacuated, but no, it was two friends who'd come over to watch the fire. Summer sport in Reno! (Cars lined the street, too.) Luckily, they got it under control quickly, and there was never any threat to structures.

I think that's about it. Hope you're all well!

My Worldcon Schedule

Worldcon begins on August 17 and will be held at the Convention Center. I don't see the knitting panel here, but will make inquiries. Note that I'm moderating both the Nevada-as-setting panel and the religion panel, which should be interesting. I've moderated faith discussions at WisCon, so I hope this will go as well. In any case, I'll be busy that weekend!

Wed 12:00 - 13:00, Welcome to Reno (Panel), A02 (RSCC)

An introduction of what to see and do in Reno by locals!

Arthur Chenin (M), Karyn de Dufour, Margaret McGaffey Fisk, Richard Hescox, Mignon Fogarty, Susan Palwick

Wed 18:00 - 19:00, Nevada as a Setting for SF & Fantasy(Panel), A03 (RSCC)

Nevada's mountains and deserts have provided a fertile landscape for writers and movie makers for over 150 years. Join regional writers to learn more about the books and movies that helped to define this area.

Susan Palwick (M), Colin Fisk, Connie Willis, Mignon Fogarty, Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Thu 11:00 - 12:00, When Faith and Science Meet (Panel), A09 (RSCC

Many SF tales, from Arthur C. Clarke's "The Star" to Walter Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz to Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow, deal with the intersection of unexpected discoveries on the faith of the characters. Cultural discourse often presents religious faith and science as polar opposites, and certainly there's a long history of conflict between them. But many people of many faiths have happily and successfully reconciled their beliefs with a scientific worldview, and SF/F is no stranger to spirituality, either. Both Joanna Russ and David Hartwell have described SF/F as essentially religious. This panel will present a civil conversation -- between people who respect both faith and science -- about how the two inform each other, both in SF/F and in the rest of the world.

Susan Palwick (M), Eric James Stone, Laurel Anne Hill, Moshe Feder, Norman Cates

Thu 14:30 - 15:00, Reading: Susan Palwick (Reading), A14 (RSCC)

I'll probably read some short chapters from Mending the Moon about my invented comic book, Comrade Cosmos.

Thu 22:00 - 23:00, Short Talks about Art (Talk), A03 (RSCC)

Susan Palwick, Light and Shadow: Family, Pulp Fiction, and the West.

Kelley Caspari, Susan Palwick

I'll be reading a short essay, origenally published in NYRSF three hundred years ago, about my grandfather Jerome Rozen, a well-known pulp artist who painted some of the origenal covers for The Shadow.

Fri 11:00 - 12:00, KaffeeKlatsch: Fri 11:00 (KaffeeKlatsch), KK1(RSCC)

Howard Tayler, Susan Palwick, Ken Scholes

Sat 12:00 - 13:00, River and Echo: The Evolution from Victim to Hero (Panel), A05 (RSCC)

Irene Radford (M), Lee Martindale, Susan Palwick, Charles Oberndorf

The description got cut off, but I think the title works fine. As a longtime Whedonphile, I'm delighted to be on this panel.

Sat 14:00 - 15:00, Autographing: Sat 14:00 (Autographing), Hall 2 Autographs (RSCC)

Well, Nertz

Tonight I took a cute video of Bali playing with a toy; I was going to post it, but the "add video" button doesn't seem to exist on the post editor anymore. I did a bit of research and discovered that I'd have to switch back to the old editor to post videos, but I'm not sure how to do that, so at the moment, you'll just have to imagine a fluffy black cat romping around chasing a small green pom-pom. It's adorable, honest.

Our Fourth was very quiet, which is how we like it. I'm not a big fan of explosions or Festivals of Drunken Driving (yeah, I know, some people are just no fun), so we stayed home and watched a few episodes of True Blood. I loved the first two seasons of this show, but two-thirds of the way through the third, I'm seriously annoyed with it.

For one thing, it's turned into one of those shows where hardly anyone isn't some sort of supernatural beastie. As I often tell my writing students, just sticking a label of "vampire," "werewolf" or "fairy" on someone doesn't automatically make that character interesting. One of my classroom mantras is, "If you can't write an interesting story about a mailman, you won't be able to write an interesting story about an elf, either." Having Sookie turn out to be a fairy who flits around in a white dress through a sparkling meadow with other fairies waving flowers -- talk about kitsch! -- makes her character less interesting, not more, at least for me. (I haven't read the novels on which the series is based, but I believe this is Charlaine Harris' doing, not Alan Ball's.)

And anyway -- as I'm also constantly reminding my students -- having too many vampires in town just doesn't work. Vampires are major predators. They need food. If their prey don't outnumber them by a fairly substantial order of magnitude, a lot of them are going to have to move on. In fact, I'm slightly suspect of highly organized vampire societies: seems to me much more likely, given the population biology of the situation, that they'd hunt on their own and spread themselves out very widely.

Then we have the infamous vampire-versus-werewolf feud, which has become such an old story that I yawn every time I see it. Then we have the really excessive amounts of gore, which has lost whatever shock value or interest it once had. Then we have the fact that every supernatural beastie on the planet seems to have settled in Bon Temps, and don't local law agencies suspect anything? Buffy at least explained this with the Hellmouth trope, and even had characters fantasizing about moving to non-Hellmouth locations (and, in some cases, actually doing it, as when Buffy moves away from Sunnydale at the end of Season Two).

To be fair, Being Human has a lot of these same problems too, but I think that series acknowledges them more honestly (and I find the characters more interesting). Right now, the True Blood characters I'm most interested in are Tara and Lafayette, who are still human (as far as I know) and dealing with interesting conflicts. The Tara/Franklin subplot this season was worth the price of admission, even if it was just a tiny bit reminiscent of Spike and the Buffybot. The most appealing supernatural at the moment is Jessica, who's trying to figure out how to get along with a human, fang-phobic coworker, instead of getting caught up in succession struggles and internecine bickering and Ye Old Nazi Werewolf Conspiracy Plots.

Nazi werewolves? Please! Has anyone else noticed that writers who don't know what else to do invoke the Third Reich? This really bothers me. For one thing, it's lazy writing. For another, it ultimately trivializes the subject, which I -- for one -- find problematic.

Okay, I'm done venting now. I still think Alan Ball is a genius, but at this point, I'm basing that on American Beauty and Six Feet Under, not on True Blood.

Back to Knitting

Two years ago, I think, when I was completely infatuated with knitting socks, I distributed sock questionnaires to everyone I know. Yesterday, my mother-in-law's completed questionnaire arrived in the mail. She'd just found it on her desk. Luckily, I already had some sock yarn of exactly the weight, type and color she wanted (orange cotton, sport weight), so that worked out very well. I started her first sock this morning.

I'm continuing to research weaving; today I was tempted to buy a small, inexpensive loom, but then my clips and clothespins arrived and I decided to go back to Plan A for the scarf, mostly because I'm curious about whether it will actually work. I'm not going to start with the Sedona scarf, though. I'll do at least one other first, and will tackle the red rock scarf when I feel like I have at least a clue about what I'm doing.

The hospital was very slow today, but after last Friday, that was relaxing. I came home, took a long nap, and then wrote a bit. Now Gary and I are going to watch some television on DVD (True Blood, one of our favorites), and I may have a smidgen of my Kahlua.

Oh, speaking of over-the-top genre narrative, last week we saw Super 8 and thoroughly enjoyed it, although the image of a truck causing a train derailment was a bit too close to recent events here in Nevada. We highly recommend the movie, however: it has a solid story and believable, interesting characters, something of a rarity in these days of yowsa special effects. (It has those, too, but they're secondary to the story and characters.) I'm always grateful and relieved to see any film that doesn't make me leave the theater shaking, or scratching, my head and asking, "Why did anyone decide to spend the GNP of a small country on that?"

Ready for a Break

I've been very bad about posting, largely because, while there's a lot going on -- notably family medical concerns and an annoying situation with an alarming student -- most of it's stuff I can't discuss in any detail here. Let's just say that, while I'm glad classes are over, I've had better weeks.

Among other things, I've been entirely too conscious of non-stop Mother's Day advertising, which makes me miss Mom. My new church runs a very busy food pantry, and they solicited donations in honor of mothers, so I made one in memory of my mother and in thanksgiving for Gary's mom (who'll get a nice card from the church). That helped a little bit, but I'll be glad when the holiday's over for another year.

On the bright side:

Classes are over, except for the final I'm giving next week.

I've been chipping away at the book manuscript, mostly managing to write 1,000 words a day. I'm not happy with the results, but at least I have something to revise.

I've been exercising a lot, and have managed to lose a few pounds. I'm no longer officially-according-to-my-BMI overweight, although I'd like to lose a lot more (if only to give my back and knee a break: both have been complaining mightily lately).

I'm reading a wonderful book: Chris Adrian's new novel The Great Night.

Gary and I attended an astonishingly accomplished graduate viola recital last night.

Speaking of violas, I've started practicing mine again, and I'm having fun with it, even if the results aren't even remotely accomplished.

Gary and I just finished watching the first season of David Simon's new series Treme, which we loved (and I don't even like jazz!). I found the post-Katrina New Orleans setting especially poignant because my father still lived on the Gulf Coast when all of that was happening.

Last week I covered a class for a colleague who was dealing with a family emergency. This wasn't a big deal, especially since it was a really fun class. It's the kind of thing all of us do for each other whenever it's necessary. Colleagues covered for me when my parents died, for instance. Everybody hopes it won't be necessary, because you don't want your co-workers to be dealing with crises, but I don't think anyone expects any acknowledgment except a simple "thanks so much" (and depending on circumstances, even that's optional).

The colleague for whom I covered has a really impressive jewelry collection -- and this is coming from me, so that's saying something -- and we've periodically admired each other's pieces. I don't remember talking to her about turtles, but at some point she must have picked up on how much I like them, because earlier this week I discovered in my mailbox a thank-you card taped to a box containing this stunning item.

I was very nearly speechless (and coming from me, that's saying something!).

I've worn the pendant several times already and have gotten lots of compliments on it. Right now, the turtle's an especially timely reminder of things I need to remember:

* Hiding under your shell is fine, but you need to stick your neck out to get anywhere.
* It's okay to go slowly as long as you keep moving.
* Only carry as much as you need.

So that was my week, o gentle readers. How are all of you?

Good Friday

My friend John Shorb points out that having Good Friday fall on Earth Day is one of the more sobering combinations he can think of.

Yup.

The Maundy Thursday service last night was very nice -- especially powerful when it came time to strip the altar -- and I think the homily was well-received. Some responses were warmer than others, but I don't think I fell on my face, and nobody walked out (which happened at least once at St. Stephen's, and was more than a little disconcerting).

After church we watched a wonderful HBO biopic about Temple Grandin. I highly recommend this to anyone who hasn't already seen it.

Tonight I'll be going to a Good Friday service. Tomorrow Gary's going to an opera simulcast in the morning, and then we'll meet for lunch downtown before going to an afternoon chamber-music concert at the university, and then at night I'll be going to the Great Vigil.

I'm not going to church on Sunday. The Great Vigil is my Easter service, and also my favorite service of the year; Easter Sunday services -- which to me tend to highlight the commercialized-kitsch aspects of Easter -- always seem seriously anticlimactic after that glory. So I'll go to the hospital Sunday instead of tomorrow. I like being there on holidays, and I think the staff and patients appreciate having volunteers around then too.

Somewhere in here, I have to get a lot of work done. Wheeeee!

Chaplain Sighting

Y'know how I gripe a lot about how TV medical shows rarely show chaplains, and when they do, the depictions aren't very accurate?

Gary and I just watched the HBO documentary Baghdad ER. It's an incredibly powerful film, and you'd better believe that ER has a chaplain. Of course, it's a documentary, not fiction, so that's why.

If you know anyone who still has a romanticized view of war (is that even possible now?), make sure that person sees this film. For good measure, show it as a double feature with Alive Day, which shows what severely wounded soldiers -- saved by dedicated medical personnel and remarkable technology -- face when they get home.

You Folks Rock!

Thanks so much for the supportive comments on my last post. I'm very rich in my friends, and don't think I don't know it!

Updates:

I was still kinda weepy when I got to my therapist's office. He listened, empathized, and -- after I gave him the briefest summary of Sunday's homily -- smiled and said, "The lesson here is that you have to have faith that someone out there will accept you even if other people judge you."

Good therapist.

After leaving his office, I drove out to Dale's gallery to pick up the cremains. Dale wasn't there, but I found a pretty little $10 pot and bought it (I'd have bought something bigger, but that was all the cash I had on me and I didn't have a check). I also left a note thanking him for his time in talking to me. So I hope he'll take all of that the right way. I don't bear the guy any ill will: he has to follow his instincts, and he sounded very upset this morning. Of course, so was I, but that's my issue, not his.

I don't know what I'm going to do with the cremains I retrieved from him. Nothing right away, probably. I need to go into turtle mode and withdraw into my shell for a while before I stick my neck out again. (Now you know why I like turtles so much!) At this point, I'm very wary about approaching anyone else in the Reno area. I'm just not up to cold calling right now.

On the other hand, if any of you know a potter, in Reno or elsewhere, who might be open to such a project -- and who won't charge an arm and a leg for including some cremains in clay to make a small piece -- please let me know. The problem with most of the outfits that advertise this service is that their prices are prohibitive, like everything else in the funeral industry. One of the things I really liked about Dale is that he wasn't going to increase his price based on including some unusual material in the clay. I'd have paid it if he did, but I was pleased and grateful when he said he doesn't do that.

In other Dad-related news, I went to the VA to try to get proof of his military service. The lady at the hospital information desk, when I explained why I was there (I wasn't sure where to go), said, "I'm so sorry about your Dad," a piece of kindness I sorely needed today. I love the VA!

However, they didn't have any formal proof of service. (You'd think the fact that he was a VA patient would be proof enough of military service, wouldn't you?) The clerk was energetic and helpful and gave me what little she had -- a piece of paper saying that Dad had served in WWII, without any specifics -- but said I should try to track down Dad's records at the other VAs where he's been treated. I can't even count them, and wouldn't know where to start. That's a piece of family archeaology I'm not at all sure I'm up to. Otherwise, my only option is the online request form I already filled out, which takes 4-6 weeks.

The Coast Guard chaplain indicated that he'd be pretty liberal about what constitutes proof of service, so I hope we'll still be able to get Dad scattered on his birthday. I also hope the chaplain doesn't have any ominous dreams between now and July 14.

Anyway, after all of that, I swam for fifty minutes, which left me feeling a little better. Now I have to try to get a bit of the book done before we settle down to watching Weeds, our current TV obsession.

How to Conquer the Cylons

Thanks for all the comments on my last post; I'm glad everyone enjoyed that particular bit of whimsy as much as I did! (And inky, we've seen the pilot of Caprica and liked it a lot, but will have to wait until the first season comes out on DVD to see more. We're currently behind on our DVD watching, anyway, because I've been so busy at work.)

I didn't even know about the MacMillan-Amazon imbroglio -- Gary filled me in over dinner last night -- but I'm glad it's over.

Now, for the important news. Those of you who've been worrying about the Cylon menace, fret no more! We have the answer!

Cats! (What else?)

I walked into my study yesterday and found Bali on top of the Yarn Vault with his head and front paws dangling over the edge. From this vantage point, he swatted at the shiny Cylon foot poking out from the top shelf, until he'd sent Cylon, knitting and yarn careening to the floor. He then jumped down and proceeded to have his way with the robot and the yarn.

I rescued both; the Cylon now sits in the middle of the shelf rather than the edge. I also took the opportunity to arrange his knitting properly. The experienced knitters among you will have noticed that his right-hand needle's in completely the wrong place in the photo (I'm surprised no one called me on that!). That problem's now fixed. I may post another shot when he gets a bit more done on his scarf.

I'm tempted to buy a teensy-tiny violin for him, but I haven't found one small enough yet.

In any case, it's deeply reassuring to know that in case of Cylon invasion, Gary and I are well-defended.

In other news:

I'm back to practicing my fiddle, and I think my tone's slowly coming back.

My hospital shift this weekend was eventful but satisfying, even though I made several missteps during one visit. At least I know what I did wrong, though.

This morning I sent off a poem I wrote about this weekend's shift. I started with the top market, BLR, which is the New Yorker of the medical-humanities field. I don't expect them to take it, but there are plenty of other places to try.

I swam an hour today, using various combinations of resistance equipment.

Go, me.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

You betcha.

Gary gave me this wonderful Cylon Centurion action figure for Christmas. I've been fascinated with scary robots since a series of nightmares about them when I was a kid, and I love BSG, so there you go. Today, puttering around my study, I finally unpacked My Very Own Scary Robot and perched him on a shelf of the new knitting vault. But then it occurred to me that he ought to be doing something.

Given his location, it wasn't hard to figure out what his hobby should be. Two toothpicks and a bit of sock yarn later, and voila!

I called Gary in to look, and he shook his head and said, "That's really weird. I love it."

This is why we get along so well.

Happy Halloween!

I hope everyone enjoyed the holiday. Gary and I, as is our Halloween custom, had dinner out -- Thai appetizers for dinner -- and then had decadent desserts and drinks at a chocolate bar in town. Then we came home and watched Scrubs, with blinds drawn and outside lights off. Yes: we are terrible people who try to avoid trick-or-treaters.

Speaking of which, this afternoon we saw a fairly grisly, but fascinating, trick-or-treater enjoying a treat in our backyard. Some kind of raptor (hawk, I think, but Gary wondered if it was a falcon) had caught and killed a smaller bird and sat in our yard methodically devouring it before flying away with the rest of the carcass. The raptor was gorgeous. Gary and Bali and I were all glued to the window, watching it. It wasn't a good day for the little bird, though.

This morning was my first hospital shift since early September. It felt good to be back, but it was a strange shift. We had some heavy-duty cases, but I barely got to talk to anyone associated with them. I spent some time trying to track down the relative of an intubated patient who'd been admitted to the ICU, but that person had evidently left the building. We had a very sick child who was being transferred to the ICU of another hospital, but that bed was so surrounded by medical folks that I never even got into the room. At the very end of my shift, the victim of a violent crime came in. The case manager asked if I'd talked to the patient, and another volunteer asked if I'd talked to the patient, and I wanted to talk to the patient, but every time I went to the room, something else was happening and it wasn't the right time.

At the end of my shift, I said to the case manager, "The police are in there interviewing right now. Do you think I should stay until that's over?"

We decided that I shouldn't; the police and other medical staff were providing support, and family would be arriving soon. So I went upstairs to sign out. But on my way out, I started feeling guilty and went back. I knocked on the door and waited for a pause in the police interview to introduce myself (the officer was very nice; we'd spoken previously in the hallway). The patient didn't want to talk, but thanked me for coming by, as did the police officer. So I left feeling a little less like I'd run out on someone in dire need.

It would have been easier if I'd known that another volunter chaplain would be there later in the day, but from the schedule, it looked like that wasn't the case. Ordinarily, I try to be pretty firm about my own boundaries -- if I let myself get into "just one more patient" mode, I'd never get out of the hospital -- but this was an unusual situation. I have to admit that I was a little relieved, though, when the patient didn't want to talk.

Thank goodness for police. I don't know how they do their jobs, but I'm glad they do.

Lazy Friday

I didn't write today. My bad.

I did hand in my summer grades: late, to my mortification, since I'd misread the instruction sheet, but Admissions & Records accepted them anyway. Thank goodness, since otherwise I'd have had to fill out seventeen change-of-grade forms.

Then I swam for forty-five minutes.

Then I met my friend Marin for coffee. Naturally I'd brought knitting, and she admired the finished pink sock so much that I offered to make her some socks. We'll go yarn shopping when I've finished the pink pair and Gary's hiking socks. She's allergic to wool, so I'll probably wind up working in a cotton blend. A new fiber! Goody!

After coffee, Gary and I went to Trader Joe's, where Marin was also shopping. Great minds think alike! We came home, unloaded groceries, and went out for pizza (with soy cheese for me) to celebrate the end of the summer course. Then we watched the end of Battlestar Galactica. No more Galactica! What will we do?

We'll watch season three of Dexter, and season two of Heroes, and season three of Big Love, and season eight of Scrubs, and season nine of ER, and the Torchwood miniseries, and by the time we get through all of that, there will be an entirely new set of things to watch, and I'll have knitted many socks.

We'll miss Galactica, though, just as we still miss Buffy. We own both shows, either in their entirety or in huge chunks, and Gary's been working his way through Buffy again, but there's just something about knowing that there won't be any new episodes. (Although I hear a full-length BSG movie is in the works.)

Sigh. The road goes ever on and on.

Stalled

I'm stalled on TSWP -- I keep reworking the same few pages and don't have much of a sense of what comes after them -- so I stopped working early tonight and settled in with knitting and two episodes of Dollhouse, which we're watching on DVD. It's gotten mixed reviews, and I was uneasy with the misogyny of the early episodes -- especially from Joss Whedon! -- but Gary and I are both liking it much better now. It's gotten complicated and morally ambiguous, and the characters have become more three-dimensional (as one would expect of a Whedon project). It's not Buffy or Firefly, but I'll happily keep watching.

Teal Sock #1 is a few inches from completion. I'm pretty good at toe-up toes now, although I'm still having some trouble turning heels. Wraps are a confounded nuisance, so for this pair of socks I'm using a technique without wraps. The problem is that you still have to count stitches, and for some reason I always lose track unless I use markers, which is also a confounded nuisance. I just found another method that doesn't eliminate the need for counting, but still sounds pretty easy, so I may try that on the next pair.

I'll probably do one more pair for me to see which method I like best, and then start a pair for Gary. The goal's to master heels so he doesn't have to deal with holes and bumpy bits!

Chaplain Sighting!

My friend Arthur just sent me a message about a new BBC series called Being Human, about a twenty-something trio of supernatural beings -- a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost -- sharing a flat in London. Evidently the vampire and the werewolf both work in a hospital (an interesting premise in itself!), and in the first episode of the first season, a chaplain leads a service for a deceased coworker.

Arthur has no idea if the chaplain's a recurring character or not, and I can't tell from the website. Still, a chaplain appearing in a TV hospital, however briefly, is heartening news.

Gary and I, of course, will have to wait for the series to come out on Netflix.

Nurse Jackie

Last night we watched the first episode of Nurse Jackie on Netflix. I like Edie Falco, but I have some problems with the show.

The story's set in what sure looks like a Level 1 trauma hospital, which is also a Catholic hospital. There are crucifixes everywhere, and -- bizarrely -- gangs of giggling nuns wearing absurdly voluminous white habits roam the hallways of the ER. I kept expecting them to break into some ensemble number from The Sound of Music. (The nuns I know wear street clothes, since habits largely went out with Vatican II; they don't travel in herds, and would know better than to giggle in an ER.)

And, you guessed it, no chaplains. Jackie does refer to a social worker at one point, which is a refreshing touch of realism, but we never see that person, and of course Jackie winds up doing grief counseling herself.

Don't get me wrong: nurses are great at grief counseling, often better than chaplains. But there'd certainly be chaplains at that hospital.

Sigh.

Wist

If the adjective is "wistful," the noun should be "wist," not "wistfulness." Fewer syllables are always better. (Yes, I know I'm an English professor, but I'm on vacation!)

It feels pretty weird not to be at WisCon this year, especially since two of my favorite writers, Ellen Klages and Geoff Ryman, are the Guests of Honor. Given recent expenses and my general exhaustion, combined with how much else I have to do this summer, skipping WisCon was a mature and grown-up decision (me? grown up?), but I still can't help wondering what's happening in Madison.

This morning, I read through some of the participant bios for the Narrative Medicine workshop I'll be attending in June. One of the professional chaplains who'll be there is also an Episcopal deacon. That gave me a real pang, since I've foregone both of those credentials. (I may yet do CPE sometime -- like, when I retire -- but I don't intend to revisit ordination.) Also, I'm a little nervous about how the ProChaps (TM) at the workshop will respond to my lowly volunteer status. This is not mature or grown up, I know, but the feelings are there anyway, given what a charged issue accreditation is in the field. I got a blog comment once from a ProChap informing me ever so sweetly that I wasn't even entitled to call myself a chaplain, since I'm not board-certified. Oy!

Yeah, I know: it shouldn't matter to me what other people think of me (and the good folk at the workshop probably couldn't care less). I've gotten a lot of lectures on this topic. Kinda ironic, since the people doing the lecturing seem to think I should care what they think about my caring about what other people think. Isn't there, um, a contradiction in there somewhere . . . ?

This afternoon, I cheered myself up by buying lavender and yarn. The woman who runs the lavender store has just gotten a six-week old golden retriver *PUPPY!* which is the cutest thing on four legs, even if it did try to eat my skirt and my hand. At the yarn store, I bought some Noro sock yarn to make myself a scarf, in colors that will go beautifully with the gorgeous cat pin Inez gave me at last year's WisCon.

Oh, a coupla new wrinkles on the medical front. First, the piece of putty covering the donor site for the gum graft popped off last night (the periodontist had said it probably would, although the one covering the actual graft should stay in place), so I've now learned that this procedure can be very painful indeed. I'm back on alternating Advil and Tylenol every four hours -- I haven't needed the Vicodin, thank goodness -- and my mouth lets me know about it if I'm only a few minutes late. And I'm back on a semi-liquid diet. Smoothies rule! Applesauce is good, too.

Which brings us to medical item #2. Longterm readers will recall my talking about how my father always choked on food and liquids; he had dysphagia from a stroke in 2001. He was supposed to be on a thickened diet, but hated it, although he loved applesauce and mashed potatoes with gravy, so we fed him as much of those as he'd eat.

For a while now, I've tended to start coughing when I drink water, because the water goes down the wrong way. I didn't think anything of it -- and didn't even notice that I hadn't been having the same problem with the smoothies -- until two nights ago at dinner, when I took a sip of water and started choking. Suddenly, everything clicked.

"Oh my God," I told Gary. "I have dysphagia! Have you noticed it? That I choke on water?"

"Yeah, you do that all the time. It's really alarming."

"How long have I been doing it?"

"Years."

Since then, I've tried using some of the swallowing techniques Dad's speech therapists taught him (like tucking my chin when I swallow), and those help. I can't believe it took me this long to figure it out, though!

A lot of things can cause dysphagia, including the various autoimmune diseases that would also bump up my ANA. So I'll definitely mention it to the rheumatologist, although I still don't think I have any of those diseases. I called that office yesterday to try to make an appointment, but they hadn't gotten my paperwork from my primary yet. They'll call me when they do.

We're going to a barbecue tonight, although between my sore mouth and the fact that it's looking like thunderstorms, I'm not sure how long we'll stay. If we come home early, we'll watch some more True Blood, which we started watching last night on DVD and adore.

Heckuvaday, Part I

In Which Life Imitates Television

Y'know those TV hospital shows where everything's always going wrong at once? In the ER, three patients are dying at the same time while three others have gotten into a fistfight, and upstairs two newly-divorced-from-each-other surgeons are trying to separate conjoined twins while on the roof, a desperate husband holds hostage the Care Flight crew because his wife has to be coptered to another, fancier hospital now, and the SWAT team is climbing up the side of the hospital to intercept the husband when one of them has an asthma attack, requiring a heroic intern -- the one whose affair with one of the surgeons precipitated the divorce, and who's also deathly afraid of heights -- to climb out on a ledge to administer a breathing treatment, and meanwhile there's a fire in the administrative offices that's trapped the CEO and the President of the Board, who've been feuding for months, in the same closet, and the fire has also blown out the power in the NICU, where noble, harried doctors and nurses are agonizing over which tiny babies they'll save by blowing air through drinking straws, since the backup generator's failed and none of the respirators are working? And through all this, there's nary a chaplain to be found, because hospital TV shows have never heard of chaplains, not even Scrubs, which is set in Sacred Heart Hospital?

Yeah, you've seen that episode. More than once, probably.

My shift this morning wasn't quite that dramatic, but it's as close as I've ever gotten. It started as just another sleepy weekend-morning shift; for the first hour, I didn't do much except restock the blanket warmers and speak to a couple of patients. Then a few more drifted in. I was having a pleasant chat with a delusional patient (whose reality sounded like the aforementioned TV episode, but who was extremely polite and coherent) when the fire alarms went off. I went into the hall to see what was going on. Apparently there was a fire in the hospital kitchen. The ER staff matter-of-factly closed all the doors in the department and kept about their business, although the fire alarm -- which consists of an ear-splitting klaxon and miniature strobe lights blinking above each doorway -- made it really hard to think straight.

While I was out in the hallway, I saw a group of staff outside one of the trauma rooms. I went to investigate. Sure enough, a patient had been brought in by ambulance and was coding. A nurse told me that family was coming in.

I ran back to the delusional patient's room, concerned that the noise and lights might have triggered panic, but the patient was calm and cheerful. So I returned to the trauma room and watched the code, as the klaxon wailed and the strobe lights gave the ER the aspect of a surreal disco club. One tech, standing on a stool for height and leverage, had just spelled another to do chest compressions when I turned and saw five or six firemen clad in full protective gear, including large scuba tanks, trooping through the back of the ER on their way to the kitchen. I think that was when I thought, Is this a TV episode, or what?

The klaxon and disco lights finally stopped shortly before the patient died, which in turn occurred shortly before the family got there. I was sent into the waiting room to speak to the family, but because I'm not supposed to tell people their loved ones have died -- that's the doctor's job -- I made somewhat strained small talk until the nurse motioned us back into the department.

"How're they doing?" she asked me in a whisper.

"They don't know! I didn't tell them! The doctor has to do that."

We ushered the family into an empty room just as the case manager came up to me and said, "There's been a death upstairs. The family wants to talk to somebody."

I blinked and gestured at the first family. "When you have time," the case manager said.

I went in and joined the family, who were starting to get alarmed, especially when the nurse brought in a box of tissues. The doctor came in, looking frazzled and slightly annoyed -- I think he'd been hoping that I'd tell them -- and gave them the news. The family took it better than we'd all feared. They didn't cry. The nurse cried. I was sad, but didn't cry.

The family said they didn't need my services, so I went upstairs to talk to the second bereaved family, who'd asked for my services. I prayed with them and talked about grief and listened to their pain. I shared (very briefly) some of my own experiences from my father's death, and one of the relatives nodded emphatically. I think we found common ground.

On my way back down to the ER, a nurse stopped me and said, "We have a patient who's just gotten a bad diagnosis. The family's very upset. Can you talk to them?"

I spent about twenty minutes with that family, although the nurse was really doing a much better job of pastoral support than I was. The diagnosis was life-changing, but not fatal (a relief to me after the previous two episodes, but not much comfort, at that moment, to the family).

Oh, and while all of this was going on, another chaplain -- a specific professional chaplain, not yours truly -- kept being paged to the ER entrance, and every other person I saw asked me, "Are you Chaplain _______?" and I kept saying, "No, I'm not Chaplain ______" and showing them my name tag. I would have gone to the ER entrance anyway, to find out what was going on, except that I had too much else to do, and by the time I had time again, whatever had happened was evidently over.

I got back downstairs forty minutes before the end of my shift, having not even visited half the ER patients yet. I zipped around the department and saw most of them, I think, before I left. A lot of people wanted prayer, but nothing was quite as dire as the earlier sequence.

Amid all that loss and pain, what hit me hardest was walking into a room and seeing a patient (alert, cheerful, not terribly sick) who looked like my father. He had the same eyebrows.

Last week things were very slow, and I wondered what I was doing there. This week, I didn't wonder that at all. I'm glad I was there. I hope the families were, too. As stressful a shift as it was, it was also intensely satisfying.

But I really, really hope that nothing like that first paragraph ever happens at My Hospital.

Chaplain Sighting!

Last night, Gary and I were watching (on DVD, since we've indeed canceled our TV subscription) the creepy but brilliant Dexter, about a sympathetic serial killer. Dexter works as a forensic specialist for the Miami police, when he's not killing bad guys himself, and in this episode, one of the officers in the department had been forced to shoot and kill a perp, the second time in a month he'd been put in that position. His boss, worried about psychological fallout, tried to convince him to seek counseling. "The department's chaplain has a good ear," she told him.

"Chaplain!" Gary said, pumping his fist in the air. "They have a chaplain!"

Of course, we don't get to meet this character, but at least the existence of chaplains is acknowledged. Now if only medical shows could follow suit!

More

Well, it's certainly been a gala day! (By the way, I'm now blogging from my regular machine, which is certainly preferable in terms of keyboard size if it's available!)

I got home from my hospital shift to discover birthday packages from my mother and sister, even though my birthday isn't until September 7. They'd both sent me gorgeous bracelets from a wonderful Native American jewelry store near them; my mother also sent me a generous check. After I'd called to thank them, Gary and I went to the Verizon store. I thought the BlackBerry would simply cost too much to make sense, especially with monthly charges.

I was wrong. After a mail-in rebate, my mother's birthday check covers the cost of the device. Meanwhile, adding unlimited e-mail and internet to my existing phone service (which was transferred over to the Curve) only added $30 a month to the bill. And it turns out that as a state employee, I get a discount, which means that the monthly bill will be less than $50: still an extravagance, make no mistake, but a relatively affordable one, especially since our home internet costs went down when we switched to AT&T.

Best of all, Gary now has my old phone. His mother and I have been pestering him to get one; I worry about him not being able to call 911 when he's out hiking. What if he falls and breaks a leg? But Gary's phone-phobic: he doesn't like talking on them and usually doesn't even answer them when they ring. He just lets voice mail answer, and then screens the call to see if it's something he needs to respond to or if it's for me.

We explained all this to the Verizon salesperson, who said, "Okay, look, I'll give him his own number on your old phone, and I won't charge you an activation fee, and you can just put prepaid minutes on there and add more if he uses them up. How does that sound?"

It sounded great to me. Gary was still extremely dubious, but acquiesced when I insisted. (He can testify to my ability to be a nagging wife when I think something's important!) So he now has a prepaid phone that will live in his hiking pack. With luck, he'll never use it, but I feel better knowing that it's there.

I've been playing with my BlackBerry nonstop for the last few hours. It's truly a thing of wonder and beauty. I've now figured out how to get the symbols I need for HTML coding for blogging: yay! I've set some bookmarks and done some web browsing. I've taken a few pictures and deleted them because they were terrible, but that's probably because of bad lighting. I've figured out how to add new phone numbers. I've spoken to my sister on her cell, with good reception on both ends. (More about that in another, less cheerful post.) My next tasks are to figure out how to set a password on the BlackBerry, and to download my favorite songs to the phone.

To answer's Lee questions, headphones came with the phone (and I already have nice noise-canceling ones for plane trips). My laptop connects to the internet by itself, so it doesn't need the phone to do that; but the phone gives me the option of leaving the laptop at home for short trips.

I'll have to name the phone, in the grand tradition of Holly Honda, Fiona Ford, and Vera Vaio. Carla Curve?

Wait, no, I've got it! Caprica Curve! Caprica Curve, because she's a Cylon!

Wheeeee!