A friend of mine recently finished writing her dissertation.  She started doctoral work a year after me.  I was feeling a bit envious, but Tua said I should think of what I did or accomplished in 2009, even if I didn't finish my dissertation.  So, here goes:

After only one year on vestry, I became Senior Warden of my church. Which, in a church without a rector, is a big deal.

I presented a paper at SBL and it kicked ass.

I applied for a professorship.

I got to the point where I can identify every tree species on our property, almost all of them in the winter as well.

I improved my tracking skills.

I got my driver's license.

I got my preaching and LEM licenses.

I took a knitting class.

I planted and tended a garden.  So the tomatoes were blighted.  Everyone's tomatoes were blighted.

I raised chickens from 1 day old and didn't lose a single one (even the deformed ones).



Anything else?

Early Sunday morning, at about 3.00 am, I awoke to the howling of coyotes. Really their sound is somehow a mixture of a bark, yip, yodel, and howl, very different from either wolves or most domesticated dogs. It is a high ululation, an uncanny, almost eldritch dialogue between wild animals. And these coyotes – there were at least two of them – were very close, so close that I got out of bed and tried to open the window in case I might be able to lean out and catch a glimpse of one of them. The window, unfortunately, was frozen shut. But the sound of my wrenching at it alerted the animals, who stopped calling for a while. That meant they were even closer than I had imagined. Eventually they started conversing again. Tua had awakened, perhaps sensing that I was excited or simply not in bed next to him, and I worried aloud to him that our barn door has such a flimsy closing mechanism – surely the coyotes would get in once they smelled the ducks and chickens inside? He reassured me that our birds were safe, and the two of us listened in silence to our neighbors’ conversation. At last I went back to bed, but it was after 4.15 when I finally drifted off, still listening to the sound of coyotes, howling.

Yesterday I followed coyote and fisher tracks for about a mile around our hills. It was a good day for scat.

Stolen from beachpsalms - thanks, beachpsalms !

What I wrote for my church's newsletter, the Ambassador, for January (pre-edit!):

We speak of the New Year as a time of new beginnings, and then we often find things going on same as they always have, business as usual.  Rarely does a new year offer as many new beginnings as does this one. Our community here at Christ Church will begin the process of transitioning from one leadership model to another, call forth parish leaders to form and support a Covenant Group, take on new tasks and challenges as we live into our baptismal covenant in new ways, both spiritual and practical. It’s a little scary, as any new undertaking can be, but it’s filled with joy, hope, and promise.

The Incarnation can be our model. In the Incarnation, God takes on the form not only of a mortal human being, but an infant as well. The power of the incarnate God is not one of force, but rather the power of vulnerability. Much of what Jesus accomplished among us he accomplished through his vulnerability: his suffering with the poor, speaking for the powerless, dying with the economically and spiritually downtrodden. In his infant form he offers himself to us, asking us not to follow him as an army but to hold and nurture him as a family. The southern folk-singer Pierce Pettis sings, “The child who played with the moon and stars waves a snatch of hay in a common barn. In the lonely house of Adam’s fall lies a child, he’s just a child, that’s all. Crying, ‘Let your love cover me, like a pair of angel wings. You are my family, you are my family.’ ”

We at Christ Church bear the name of Christ the King, a triumphant name. But where we are now is with Christ the newborn. We are fellow mortals, fellow travelers. We are his family. And as God had the incomparable temerity to enter mortal life with us, let us cultivate the courage to walk with him, without any armor but our human skin, to meet the challenges and joys of ministering to each other and to the world. Amen.

If you like good fantasy and haven't read Garth Nix's Abhorsen trilogy (Sabriel, Lirael, Abhorsen), you have such a treat ahead of you! And now apparently the rest of us do too! I re-read the trilogy this past week, and was lamenting that there were no more, and Tua told me that Garth Nix is writing a book about Chlorr of the mask (a character in Lirael and Abhorsen). I checked out Nix's blog on Amazon, and found that he is also writing a sequel to Abhorsen that takes place a few years after that book ends - so hopefully more Sabriel, Nick, Touchstone, and Sam (and, of course, Lirael)! The book about Chlorr, Clariel: The Lost Abhorsen, will hopefully come out sometime next year, and the sequel to Abhorsen in 2011.

On top of this, I found out that Laurie King's next book about the kick-ass Jewish biblical scholar Mary Russell (she is also the wife of Sherlock Holmes) is coming out a week before my birthday. I am in biblioheaven.

bruorton is better; we're going to have lunch in the cafeteria and then head home, where I wil do super-last-minute revisions to my paper so I can print it out before I leave early tomorrow morning. I'm calling in absent from my knitting class to spend the evening with Tua and just relax.

Thank you all for your thoughts, prayers, and e-hugs! :)

 Tua's at home reading a book he needs to review for class Monday.  A 6-page review, if you can believe that!  I'm an editor for book reviews, and 6 pages is super long.  Oh, well, maybe they do longer book reviews in anthropology circles.  Anyway, he's hoping to finish the book today and write the review tomorrow.  I hope we get some time together besides when we're asleep.

I'm in Randolph eating salad and catching up on all the email I've ignored this week.  I got two colds in a row in the last two weeks, with a short respite for last weekend, when we had our Day of Action on Climate Change celebration at Church (Saturday) and I had to preach (Sunday).  They both went well - Tua did a teach-in on the effects of climate change on Vermont, and he was fantastic.  We rang the bell 350 times, everyone doing at least 20 rings.  Good triceps workout!

Things are more low-key this weekend.  Tomorrow is All Saints Day, and I'm remembering Lori, Wyn, Leonard, Miriam, Isabelle, and Aaron.  I'll see you all again someday.

To keep myself sane this fall, I joined a knitting cass in Montpelier.  It gets me ot of the house once a week, is an excuse to drive all the way to Montpelier, a city I love, and forces me to interact with other people.  My first class was this past Wednesday; I had cramps, was recovering from a cold, and had very little voice, but I went anyway to remind myself of the basics - casting on, knitting and purling, etc.

It was pretty fun, although the instructors have dubbed me "the shy one," since I didn't talk.  We started on a dishcloth, which is a good first project - no one cares if you make a mistake on a dishcloth!  There were two patterns, a simple one and a basketweave one, and I'm doing the basketweave.  It turned out that I've been knitting longer than anyone else in the class (since I was 12 or 13), even the instructors (who both learned to knit 4 years ago).  However, I know nothing about following patterns or doing anything beyond the basic stockinette stitch, nor have I ever kitted in the round, so there's a lot to learn.  Next week we're starting a hat.

It's been a long time since I've been in a group of women, and it was not as refreshing as I'd hoped.  In the past I've sought out feminist groups, and even founded one, and I'd gotten into the habit of thinking a group of women means a feminist haven.  So the heteronormativity of this knitting class took me aback.  It seemed almost aggressive, the assumption of husbands and children and traditional gender roles. 

In other news, Chunks just caught another mouse (she got one yesterday at around this time, too).  At our vet's advice, we let her kill and eat them; as Dr. Martin said, "mice are a whole food!"  However, I think my in-laws think I'm hard-hearted since I no longer ty to save the mice and release them outside.  (They were taken aback by my suggestion that we eat the guinea fowl, alas.  Apparently their interest in local and sustainable food doesn't extend to animals, since they'll order factory-farmed meat in restaurants.  Hmm.)

Anyway, those are the highlights of my week.  Last week I emailed Chapter 2 of my dissertation to my committee; only heard back from one out of three.  Feeling a little discouragd there.  At least I've got my knitting to fall back on.

Ben just came over to tell me that Jim Douglas has announced that he will not be running again for governor.  Callou, callay, o frabjous day!  (Although I didn think that, as the only governor ever to have two vetoes overturned [much less two in the same legislative session], he would definitely be defeatable.)

Progressives and Democrats, start your engines!