providence in real life

Now Playing: "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers" soundtrack by Howard Shore. Track 14, "Breath of Life".

A small note about the incident in ACAC this past week: It turns out that the attacker was carrying two guns when he walked into ACAC. He tried to fire both of them in the midst of the fight, but for some strange reason, the bullets jammed in both guns. Someone managed to knock the guns away before the attacker had time to fix them.

No one was hurt.

Thank God for His providence!

This day was too long.

Now Playing: "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" soundtrack by Howard Shore. Track 9, "Many Meetings".

This morning, Rachel and I ran, as usual. The sky was clear and rang with light. I ate an orange for breakfast while I read e-mail, the juice fountaining over my fingers through the thick white skin. I practiced my flute for an hour and then went to Music Theory. In Music Theory, we discussed rhythm—slightly more complicated than our past class periods. I had to pay attention. :o) In Honors, Rachel managed to steer the conversation to the subject of Prince Hal in “Henry IV”. Though this is our last class on the play, we still hadn’t discussed Hal. Dr. W also returned our papers. Mine was not perfect, but satisfactory. After Honors, Rachel, Kathryn, and I walked outside in silent camaraderie, enjoying the warm sunshine. I had my flute lesson at eleven o’clock. It went fairly well, though not as well as I’d hoped. I need to practice more (as always). Some of the rhythms were incorrect in my etude, which was ridiculous because they were relatively simple. Also, I was having difficulty playing pianissimo in the highest register. Dr. R played my flute to see why this was the trouble. The first thing he said, after he’d blasted out a diva-like B3 (two octaves above middle C), was, “Do you realize how much sound this thing can make?” But we discovered that the upper register is whiskery, and he suggested holding the flute out at an angle because of the odd way the headjoint is cut.

After my flute lesson, I emerged to find Crystal, who’d just come from her voice lesson. We strolled over to the cafeteria together. We met Jenny, Daniel, and Austin in the cafeteria. A couple of Crystal’s friends joined us. Later, James, Eleanor, Alisha, and Tara cycled through as well. Jenny was bubbly and energetic as ever. I sat and laughed at her and chatted with Crystal, and generally just enjoyed being with the people around me—teasing Jenny, asking Crystal about her studies, etc. Austin invited us over to his apartment to watch “Master and Commander” on Friday, but I had to decline regretfully. I lingered until the “three musketeers” were done, and we walked out together. Jenny laughed about classes—she wanted to go play sand volleyball instead of going to class, but she had to meet with her professor right after class. The sunshine through the sycamore leaves patterned the girls’ faces and their feet on the sidewalk.

Back in my room, I spent the afternoon studying: reading Book 2 of Paradise Lost, writing up a statement of proposed research and community service for TURC, doing music theory homework, and calling the Ls to talk about setting up a time for poetry tutorial this semester.

After I finished working ahead in Music Theory, I felt desperate to go outside. I packed my notebook, Schaff, my Bible, and my journal into my knapsack and marched off to the cafeteria. I asked for a to-go box and packed a PB&J sandwich, cucumbers, carrots, a very green banana, crackers, dried cranberries, and a cookie—green things seemed fitting for the outdoors. I walked outside and sat down with my back against a sycamore tree on the lawn. The tall sycamore tree made a pavilion with a towering oak tree and an elm tree, their branches throwing shadow on the lush grass. I read Acts and stared across the lawn and thought, enjoying the food. The air itself was life. The evening was still, without yesterday’s wind, and there was a certain tenseness to the air. A green fly with a gold head buzzed over my little cup of jelly. The banana was far too green for anyone to eat. I managed to scratch off some of the peel, but the first bite I took filled my mouth with a nasty powdery feeling. So I just ate the cranberries and my cookie. Relaxed, watching the shadows and the light and the blue sky.

As I sat, half-dreaming again, Jenny H. snuck up behind me and wrapped an arm around my shoulder. “Hi, Jenny,” I said, half-laughingly, half-wearily. “Can I join you?” she asked. “I’m not interrupting?”, gesturing to my Bible. “No, no,” I said, “I was just thinking.” She sat cross-legged on the grass beside me, and opened her own Styrofoam box, which contained a salad. She asked me about my day, and I gave a vague answer. I inquired about hers. She told me about the Psychology of Trauma class she’s taking. “I’ll be praying for you,” I promised. We sat for awhile in silence. I stared off into space, down the lane between the trees. “You look pensive, E--,” she said. “Yes… well…,” I said. I delicately told her a little of the question that has been running through my mind these last days. She listened sympathetically. Katie dropped in to say hi, and to ask Jenny about the Bible study tonight. Five minutes later, Crystal hurried past. “E--, do you know what time it is?” she exclaimed. I looked at my watch. “Yes, yes,” I sighed, and collected myself. “Bye, Jenny,” I called over my shoulder.

Crystal and I marched determinedly to Oliphant for Poetry and Poetics, arriving just after Dr. G and Dr. J entered the room. As we stepped into the classroom, Crystal asked, “What did you think of that assignment to write a poem?” I stopped dead in my tracks. “An assignment? I didn’t see any assignment,” I said, with a dreadful sinking feeling. “Yeah. See,” she showed me the poem she’d written—a humorous mockery of Ezra Pound. “Oh. That’s good,” I told her, trying to be cheerful and pointing out lines I liked. Dr. G assured her (and me, by inclusion) that we shouldn’t stress out about missing assignments in these first few weeks because WebCT will change, and it will trump the syllabus. Still, I scooted down in my desk miserably. I kept telling myself that God was teaching me not to be so self-reliant, and to rely on Him more. But class was miserable anyway. Dr. G and Dr. J spent the first hour-and-a-half giving us a whirlwind lecture of Western poetics from Sydney to Olson and beyond. I felt as though my mind couldn’t contain all the information they threw at us. And the rest of the class seemed to feel that way, too, because whenever the professors asked questions, uncomfortable silences were the only result. Modern poetry is so obscure—whenever the professors would pull up an example and ask the class to explain it, everyone would be silent. Occasionally, someone would interject, but I felt as though whenever I interjected, what I said was wrong, just like my WebCT post about reading poetry aloud (I was the first one to post on the discussion forum on WebCT, and my post engendered a storm of disagreement).

The professors let us out for a five-minute break at seven-forty. I ran outside and paced the grass for a little while. Swallows danced across the pale blue sky, their wings scooped perfectly to the dome of the horizon. My mind felt thick, and my heart, tired. For the rest of class, we broke into small discussion groups. Each discussion group was assigned one of the poets we’d read this week. My humiliation was compounded by the fact that somehow I’d missed some of the Pound readings. Not only had I missed an assignment, but I hadn’t even done all the reading. Thankfully, my group (Crystal and a chap I didn’t know) was assigned Baraka. However, Baraka turned out to be hardly better than anyone else. We discussed his poetic statements and how they worked out in his poetry. He's a very angry poet--writes some incredibly nasty stuff.

After class, I lingered behind to listen to Crystal discuss the poetry assignments with Dr. J and Dr. G. They’re much more relaxed about it than I would’ve expected, which was a little encouraging. But as soon as we had put the dark bulk of Oliphant behind us, I flung my arms wide and swung myself in a circle on the sidewalk, my knapsack dragging me outward and inward at once, like a planet on its orbit. “Glad to be out of class?” Crystal laughed. “Yes!” I said. She requested that I walk with her to the John (the boys’ dorm) to pick up a jug of milk which she’d been storing in Kevin’s refrigerator. I agreed since she wanted me to come so that she wouldn’t waste time there. As we walked across the dim lawn, we watched groups of people playing sports on the intramural field. Huge swarms of insects danced around the lights like bubbles caught in a current. On the way, we met Jenny S. and Ange, and we paused to chat.

When we reached the John, Crystal opened the door to me. We walked right into the living quarters. The doors to the halls are open, unlike in Lottie, where the doors are locked. The halls smelled, not like nail polish, popcorn, shampoo, and perfume, but like sweat and dirt. David and Asher came up beside us, and Crystal announced to them that this was my first time to be in the John since my school tour (which was true). David and Asher both tried to persuade us to play socketball, but I refused. “Cinderella has to go to bed,” I laughed. “Bed? What’s that?” Asher inquired, peering at me foolishly. I wrinkled my nose at him. He jumped in front of the door to Kevin’s room and announced that Kevin was in a state of undress. But Kevin cracked the door behind him and winked at us. “Come on in, girls,” he invited. He was, in fact, perfectly dressed—just in the process of putting in his contacts. Crystal grabbed her jug from the refrigerator, and we marched out. Asher stalked behind us, glaring at us over his glasses sternly. “This is my look I give people when I’m not happy with them,” he said. “Come play socketball!” David shouted as we left the building.

Crystal and I walked across the lawn to Lottie, laughing at the boys. Our feet sank deep in the soft, damp grass. Killdeer skimmed over the lawn, piping their distant, cold cries. At Lottie, I found a note, “Welcome Back, E--!!!!” written on my door, and a fat envelope shoved under the door with a long letter inside. As I opened the envelope, a perfect origami crane fell out, its bright orange wings patterned with delicate white sunburst designs. I perched it on my desk, its wings and tail uplifted, as though in the midst of leaping into flight.

But my heart was too heavy for a long time....

After awhile, I settled down to write this entry. Pacing through the rest of the day pushed chaos to the back of my mind. Then Rachel came in from Bible study. She gave me my copy of The Enemy Within. Alisha has kindly started two non-freshman girls’ Bible studies: one on Wednesday nights, and one on Fridays at noon. I can go to the second one, and it starts this Friday. Rachel asked how class had gone, and I told her, as sanely as I could. I asked about Bible study, and she cheerfully listed off the things they’d discussed, and the people who’d been there, etc. Now we’ve both settled down to writing. She’s reading e-mails. A pair of Japanese girls talk animatedly in the hall outside—lilting syllables, nasal, rippled and purled into one another. My eyes blur dim lights outside with night, light and darkness fuzzing into fragments.

Afternoon is my favorite time of day.

Now Playing: "Symphony No. 3 in C minor" by Camille Saint-Saens. Track 7, "Allegro".

This morning....

Rachel and I went running. The morning was actually rather chilly, and by the time we were done running, my ears rang from the northerly breeze. As we jogged past the Law school, a hawk darted from the elm tree in front of the Law library. Its banded tail and wings flashed as it swooped up into a tree across the street. There was hardly any sunrise this morning: the clouds were too low and grey.

I showered after we ran and did my devotions. Psalm 119B today. I spent the morning until nine-thirty with "doing nothing": i.e., sending (or at least starting) a good many e-mails, and reading a website about the English Civil War which Dr. S had assigned me for TURC (to give historical context to Paradise Lost).

At nine-thirty, I went to Tyrrell to practice. A violinist was practicing down the hall, and a pianist was playing an elaborate, courageous Romantic piece in the piano majors' room. After practicing for an hour, I sat on one of the benches outside Lorton Hall (which is down the sidewalk, between Tyrrell and Lottie) and continued working through Books 5-8 of The Confessions. The morning had an autumn tang to it: a rippling, pale blue sky behind low, grey clouds, and a chilly breeze ruffling the trees--a few elm and sycamore leaves falling gently to the freshly-mown grass.

As I sat, reading, emergency vehicle sirens started to sound down the street. There were several other students hanging around nearby benches, and all of us lifted our heads in curiosity as the sirens came nearer. A pair of unmarked police cars screeched into view, lights blazing. To our surprise (and sophomoric delight), the cars didn't stop at the kerb, but pulled right up onto the broad sidewalk. They stopped in front of us, and a policeman in one of the cars stuck his head out the window and asked a girl where Chapman was. "It's across the lawn," she told him. He cursed (I omit the language), and the two cars screeched past me, their dark blue sides gleaming. They turned onto one of the narrower sidewalks that cross the lawn and bumped down the sidewalk, stopping in front of Chapman Hall, and a policeman emerged from each car. Naturally, we were all curious. I heard the student who had been questioned by the officer rehearsing the story with relish to her friends.

The resolution of this little episode didn't come until the end of the day....

Rachel and I had Major American Writers class at eleven o'clock this morning. We're discussing "Roger Malvin's Burial", a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Gloomy, of course.

After class, Rachel and I ate lunch together. We discussed Shakespeare, mostly. "Hamlet" is the next play we're reading for Honors. Rachel explained the characters more fully to me, and we discussed the traits of the characters and how they influence the characters' fates.

Back in our room, we spent the afternoon studying. I finished my e-mails and spent two hours finishing reading the Civil War website and concluding the assigned reading of The Confessions and Brown's Augustine of Hippo: A Biography. Rachel had class at four o'clock. Shortly after she left, I finished the material for Augustine class. In desperate need of a change of scene, I grabbed my binder for MAW (a bunch of our readings are excerpts from books, which the professor compiled for us in a notebook so that we wouldn't have to buy all the other books) and a pen, and went outside. On the way, I checked our mailbox. Rachel had yet another package (more books!), and I had a letter from my Cousin Barbara and my first edition of "World" magazine.

Needless to say, the first order of business once I got outside was to read the letter and skim the magazine. I settled down under a pine tree on the lawn in front of Lottie. The rough bark rubbed my back as I leaned against the tree. As I flipped through the magazine, Nicole came by. We chatted briefly. Both of us are having struggles with our professors' worldviews. She has a liberal policy analyst professor (she's a Political Science major) who drives her nuts. I told her a little about MAW. Both of us laughed that we should go into something easier--mathematics or physics.

After I'd finished reading a little, I lay on my back in the short grass and stared up at the branches of the pine tree. A northwest wind blew steadily, rising and falling through a pair of shock-headed sycamore trees down the sidewalk. Their thick leaves rushed endlessly, like ocean currents. The pine tree hooed uncannily behind their noise--a sigh on the edge of hearing. The needles, perfect as Chinese calligraphy, lilted against the sky. I shut my eyes and thought about something Anna had posted on her xanga: about how my sins are Christ's, and how amazing and horrifying it is that the Son of God really and actually took my sin as His own.

After awhile, I got down to the business of reading the homework for Thursday. Professor A assigned us quite a cheerful topic: Poe. *note sarcasm* In a nutshell, Poe's theory runs thus: Life is a nightmare. Therefore, death is better. But death is gruesome and unnatural. So no matter where you go, you're basically a ghost. You don't have a choice. Lovely stuff to be reading on a gorgeous late summer afternoon, is it not? *cough*

Because of its grotesqueness, I actually spent more time daydreaming than reading. Down the way from me, in the broad open space of the lawn, several people were playing frisbee. One of the girls was being ditzy: turning cartwheels, sitting in the grass and making her friends get the frisbee for her when she mised a catch, insisting that she wanted to go to IHOP for supper. "I need a chocolate chip pancake and some hashbrowns," she groaned--until her friend reminded her that it would make her fat.

The frisbee zinged over the grass, sometimes landing right next to me. The players didn't pay any attention to me, though I couldn't help grinning a little at their silliness. Up the sidewalk, in front of Tyrrell, the School of Music was holding its annual back-to-school cookout. Smoke rose from a couple of grills, hazy in the westering sunlight. A big crowd of people had gathered for hamburgers and hotdogs. Trendy jazz music pulsed out of a large speaker.

After awhile, the frisbee game started to get too close for comfort. So I moved up the lawn and lay down on my chest under a sycamore tree. A seed ball had broken open on the ground nearby, spraying golden fluff across the grass, like the explosion of a star. A cricket rasped in the grass at my elbow, and a cardinal sang bittersweetly in the plaza by the library. The trees rushed and hushed above me, great towers breathing as the wind took them. The grass was soft and tickly under my elbows. I lay and stared across the lawn at the buildings. The scene reminded me of last spring, though now the colors were not jewel-vivid, as they had been then, reminding me of the "Song of Roland". Now, the colors were dimmer, the warm face of the library the color of faded parchment. Dark green grass rolled down the lawn and up the other side. Lantana and marigolds planted in the ring at the upper end of the lawn burned like embers. Around my horizon ran the quadrangle of parchment buildings, stones sleepy and old in the sunshine. Above the quadrangle sat the sky: low, silvery-and-white clouds drifting underneath a roof of scintillating blue. The first monarch butterfly of the fall fluttered down the wind, southward.

As I sprawled in the grass, half-reading and half-dreaming, Jenny H. walked past. She stopped by and gave me a hug. She told me about a morning devotional time that she and Nicole are planning for the RUF girls in Lottie. As we stood in the deep shadow under the trees, talking, Jenny started to grin. She gave a little coughing giggle, "E--, look behind you!" I turned round and started a bit because Asher was standing very, very close behind me, making a snarling face with his hands in claws hovering right over my shoulders. I laughed, "Asher!" He'd come up without my noticing at all. He stood patiently and waited until we finished our conversation, then went off with Jenny.

I read until five forty-five. Then I became too impatient with Poe's dull morbidity and decided it was high time for supper. Supper was not an altogether appetizing meal tonight: watery turkey-and-stuffing, greasy pizza, or suspicious-looking noodles with tomatoes and bits of pork. I opted for the last choice, and rather wished I hadn't. It was very garlicy, and I kept thinking about what Laura had said about large kitchens that produce fast food--about the disgusting vats of grease they keep standing around.

Rachel joined me towards the end of my meal. I stayed and sat with her while she ate, partly because I was too lazy to drag myself off to read Poe. We poked gentle fun of Poe, and talked of many things--pleasant fellowship. She told me the conclusion of the incident this morning: Apparently, the President of the University sent out an e-mail this afternoon notifying the student body of the cause of the disturbance. In ACAC, a former employee of the university had charged into the offices on the second floor of ACAC and had attacked his old boss with a couple of guns. There had been a fight, but no one was hurt. Police, security, and the whole barrage of safety people arrived on the scene in time. Rachel and I surmised that the policemen I'd seen this morning had been misinformed. There are at least three buildings called Chapman on campus (Chapman Hall, home of the Arts and Sciences office; the gym; and ACAC). I guess they found the right place in the end.

Back in our room, I finished reading Poe, and even managed to type out some thoughts for the paper that's due a week from today about a poem by Poe. (Not "The Raven", unfortunately--a poem called "Ulalame". And we aren't allowed to make fun of it, or so it would appear. Otherwise I'd write a parody. :o)

At seven fifteen, Rachel and I strolled over to RUF. Everyone seemed to be out tonight: people were playing frisbee, practicing juggling, and learning martial arts on the lawn. We passed a couple of girls chatting on their cellphones (they seem to be installed outside Lottie as a permanent feature), and several groups of Indian or Pakistani students sauntering down the walk. The stereos outside Tyrrell were now blaring out insane rock music with a growling electric guitar. As we walked by, I said, "I would've hoped for something more high class from the music department," not lowering my voice at all. "Yes, you'd think Beethoven or Mozart blasting across the lawn would be quite countercultural. But these people aren't being different or making a statement. It's just the sort of music I would have expected," Rachel said condescendingly. Both of us were laughing a little because we had this little conversation right in front of the music booth, and neither one of us were at all cautious about it.

Tonight, one of the selections they sang before the sermon started was Psalm 51. I could join in--it was a pleasure to be able to lift my voice with the rest of God's people. Mr. K preached on Genesis 3 tonight. He used the incident in ACAC today as an illustration of the battle between good and evil. He was actually there when the incident happened, and he ran toward the fight. "As I ran, I said, 'I'm not sure I want to be in this fight!' because I didn't know what the outcome would be. I didn't know where the guns would be. But if I had known, you can imagine that I would've been a lot braver," he said. He exhorted us that because we know that Christ will win, we need to engage more courageously in warfare with the Enemy and with the brokenness that has resulted from the Fall.

After RUF, I chatted with Nicole about the sermon. I asked Tara about her classes. She told me about the short story class she's taking this semester and the odd writing exercises they've been doing. Behind us, David was wrestling with Karis, the Ks' youngest daughter. Karis is a petite girl (probably about six or seven, I'd guess), but very fiery--short dark blond hair, freckles, and a pointed face. David, on the other hand, is a strapping, ruddy chap with short, bright red hair. He's laid-back and courteous. Karis climbed onto David's back while he knelt on all fours and stood in the position of a victor. Everyone nearby started to laugh because she was standing in exactly the same position as the figures on the Virginia flag, which Mr. K had described at the start of his sermon (a woman, Veritas, standing on top of Tyranny in a victorious stance).

As I went on my way out the door, having said good-bye to Tara, Crystal struck up a conversation with me. We talked shop about our poetry class: Pound, Olsen, Baraka, etc. She likes Pound's ability to "turn a phrase", and I understand--he does use some strikingly beautiful language. We discussed the various statements of poetics.

As I broke away from our conversation, Nicole called me over and invited me out to Sonic with herself, Rachel, and Mary. But I was tired and declined. Jessica and I walked out together, and I had the chance to catch up a little with her. I haven't talked to her since last semester. She's the A.C. for Twin South now. She said that the new batch of freshman girls have been decently well-behaved so far, for which she's quite thankful.

I'm alone in my room now, the keyboard rattling away. I'm four minutes past curfew (ten-thirty curfew for me!). *sigh* A cone of lamplight sits comfortably over the desk. Outside the window, lights shine: streetlights, skyscrapers, airplanes, radio towers, the wings of hovering insects, like ripples dancing over dark water. I'm listening to "The Hand Song" from "Nickel Creek"--soothing, reflective music.

God bless, and good-night!

Shakespeare in the Park

Now Playing: "Stealing Second" by Chris Thile. Track 6, "Hyperdrive".

This post is for Jenny H. :o)

This morning, instead of going running, Rachel went to the RUF prayer meeting at seven o’clock. I ran. Clouds ringed round the sky. To the east, great towers rose, streaked with deep color from the sun rising beneath them. They stood like the peaks of an ancient city, with two enormous thunderheads looming over them like waves: Atlantis or Numenor, the last sunrise over the dying city. While I did my devotions after running, I ate a banana. Then I marched over to Tyrrell and practiced, studying at the same time for the MT quiz today. In MT, the professor spent most of the time going over the quiz material with us. Next came Honors. We talked about “Henry IV, Part 1”, focusing on Hotspur.

At noon, Rachel and I walked over to the cafeteria to pick up our lunch. To our dismay, the lunch line was ridiculously long. We managed to get in and out fairly quickly, though, and once we’d left the cafeteria, we walked over to the apartment where Jenny, Tara, and Alisha live now. We weren’t sure exactly which apartment it was in the block behind John Mabee, but Jenny stepped out on the balcony and waved to us. We found just Jenny and Tara at home. Jenny was eating green grapes, and Tara was sitting beside her on the floor. They showed us around a little. The apartment has two bedrooms. Tara has a room to herself, with a big bookshelf in it, and Jenny and Alisha share the other room. Though they don’t have much furniture, there are lots of pictures on the walls, lots of books, and computer equipment. They don’t have any chairs or tables, so we just sat on the floor with them and ate our lunches. Alisha came in later. We basically just lounged on the floor, being silly, chatting about classes, etc. Jenny painted her fingernails.

Back in my room, I worked on my Honors paper, read e-mails, commented on Logan’s blog, and packed up. In the midst of this, Jenny H. knocked on the door. She popped in to invite Rachel and me to come to DoubleShot with herself and Ange to spend the afternoon. I explained that we were going back to Stillwater this afternoon, but she did stay awhile to chat. After she left, I sprawled on my bed with a stack of P&P homework, which I read lying upside-down.

When Rachel returned from class and from picking up a package of books, we packed up and left. Traffic was congested because of construction, but once we were outside Tulsa, driving became easier. We listened to Mark O’Connor’s “Fiddle Concerto”, discussing the music. The ride was long, and we spent most of it without talking, just listening to the music.

At home, we found my mother busy laying out salad for supper. My father had just returned from work. Philip, Laura, and Stephen came scurrying downstairs to welcome us. Laura had a suspicious grin on her face. “Laura, I know you’re up to something,” I laughed. “Come upstairs!” she giggled. Rachel and I reluctantly followed her upstairs to my room—and discovered a scene of carnage. Teddy bears had been set up all over the room in little tableaux: one bear was being hung from the ceiling. A white bear stood on the floor tied to a stake and surrounded by red tissue paper flames. A bear was perched in one of the baskets on the bookshelf, holding a watergun. Another bear was leaping from the window with a bloody knife in its paw. Rachel laughed, and Laura and Stephen giggled excitedly, but I was disgusted. I busily put everything away, with Rachel’s help. While Rachel settled in (she’s sleeping in my room), I checked over the pile of clothes and mail that had been left on my desk. To my delight, one of the pieces of mail was a brown paper package with a U.K. postmark. I opened it: and found the sweater Mrs. Bruce had knitted me! She had hand-knitted it and mailed it to me all the way from Scotland. I smelled the package, and was faintly reminded of the smell of Scotland—soap and tea and dust and polish in the church. The sweater is a beautiful jade-green color. Intricate patterns of weaving run down the front and along the sleeves. I pulled it on over my head, with some trepidation. We’d had to guess my size since the European sizing system is different from the American sizing system. But the sweater fit perfectly.

We ate an early supper. After supper, everyone went into a frenzy of activity: tonight we were to drive down to Oklahoma City for “Shakespeare in the Park” on the UCO campus. My father packed chairs into the Sienna, and I filled a waterbottle for Rachel. My mother filled a canvas bag with snacks. Logan showed up to ride with us, at it turned out. At six o’clock, we piled into the car. My father drove the Buick, with Laura and Stephen: my grandparents were coming, too. My mother drove the Sienna, with Logan and Philip in the middle, and Rachel and me in the back. We swung by my grandparents’ house. My grandfather couldn’t come, but my grandmother did. My father patiently helped her climb into the front seat of the Sienna. Then we got underway. On the drive to Oklahoma City, Rachel and I looked at my scrapbook from June/July, with pictures from the Scotland and Stillwater/Enid mission trips.

In Oklahoma City, we drove over to UCO in Edmond. We parked the car and strolled to the grassy open area where the play was to take place. We walked between a gym and the fitness center, past the small chapel, and past the library. All the buildings are brick, with simple lines—no ornamentation. The library stood at one end of the long lawn. The grass had been painted with white lines to make it a football field. At the other end of the lawn from the library, a stage had been set up: a western-style backdrop, with a barn on one side, a bar on the other side, and two flights of stairs running up to a balcony above the stage below. Rachel immediately took interest. “That’s a great stage setup. See, they can have lots of different things going on without having to change the scene at all,” she said. In front of the stage, there was a roped-off area. People were camped out on lawn chairs, blankets, etc. inside the ropes. At the entrance to the roped-off area, there was a white ticket booth. My father paid for us there, and we filed inside. I helped set up our fleet of lawn chairs towards the back of the “theatre”. Jonathan and his friend joined us, as did the Wagners (except Katie, who stayed home to talk on the phone with Ryan), and the Parnells. It was about seven-thirty. The sun had begun to set behind the library, throwing its long shadow over the audience and the stage.

Shortly after we arrived, actors entered the stage. Dressed in modern-day cowboy gear, the men stomped on, while a girl flounced to the area behind the bar and started to serve drinks. The first part of the play was set in present-day Oklahoma in a bar. The actors sang karaoke to familiar Country songs, while people in the audience clapped along and whooped delightedly. A couple of the actors ran into the audience and grabbed partners to dance with. I stood and watched skeptically. In the middle of one of the songs, a brawl started. The singer accidentally knocked one of the actors unconscious with her microphone. A police siren was heard wailing, and everyone except the unconscious actor and his sidekick scrambled away. The actor’s sidekick, Grumio, was dressed as a hick—stubby, dressed in dirty, loose clothes. He stumbled childishly through the announcements he’d been given, thanking the sponsors, pointing out where the bathrooms were, etc. He framed the play as a dream sequence into which the unconscious actor had descended.

And thus began “The Taming of the Shrew”. Rachel and I settled down into our lawn chairs to watch. The production was quite good. It was fun to sit next to Rachel: she quietly critiqued and considered the actors, laughed appreciatively at the jokes, admired the set-up. The actors were dressed in Oklahoma Land Run costumes, but they used Shakespearean English, word-for-word. Most of the actors did an excellent job. No one just recited their lines, deadpan: they all portrayed their characters vividly, using not only their voices but their faces and bodies to lively effect. The man who played Tranio was hilarious: a thin, oily chap with curly black hair and a thin face. He was as expressive as Johnny Depp, which made him quite humorous. I felt sorry for Kate, though. Petruchio was pretty nasty to her, and there were some scenes in which she drooped very despairingly around the stage—though of course she probably deserved it. Petruchio was a lanky cowboy with a self-assured air, and Kate was a little, short, well-knit girl with a pointed face and cropped hair. Bianca, Kate’s sister, was a deceptively sweet chick with a pompadour and a long, flounced, pink dress, and her eventual husband, the Latin tutor, was a dreamy chap with a foolish smile and slick hair. All-in-all, the best part of the production was watching the actors enjoy themselves. You could tell that they were just having fun, hamming up their emotions, inventing new expressions, even ad-libbing a couple of times. Of course, since it was Shakespeare, there were a couple of scenes I didn’t much enjoy—innuendo and the like, Petruchio throwing Kate around rudely.

In the intermission after Petruchio’s wedding (for which Petruchio and Grumio appeared dressed in outlandish, wild-west-style gear: Petruchio in glittery chaps, and Grumio rigged out with a fake Indian headdress), my mother passed out snack mix. Philip asked Rachel to explain the storyline to him since all the deceptions (and the fact that the microphones didn’t always pick up the actor’s lines very well) made the plot rather confusing. While she explained the story, Missy strolled over to say hi. She started to rub my neck and shoulders. “Wow, girl, you’re stressed-out!” she exclaimed. “You have so many knots in your back!” Her massaging felt good, but I found that the more I tried to relax, the tenser I became. Around me, voices bounced back and forth: the smell of cigarette smoke, children shouting and laughing, Country music sawing over the loudspeakers, Mr. Wagner talking with Jonathan, etc. Above us, stars shone pale and faint, struggling to pierce the city lights. Yet though I tried to focus on enjoying the moment—enjoying the play, the gestures, the jokes of the actors; Rachel’s spirited rendition of the plot; Mary skipping over to Rachel to greet her for the first time after the summer away, her silky curls bouncing; the taste of yogurt-covered raisins in my mouth; moths flashing like comets in the bright stage lights—even so, I felt oppressed by the week past, and the prospect of the weeks ahead.

I enjoyed the second part of the play better than the first part. After the play ended, the actors held hands and line-danced, each line coming up for a bow. We applauded. After the bows, the lights went down, and the actors slipped away. “You’re going to have something to discuss with your daughters on the way home,” Jonathan said, turning to Mr. Wagner. Rachel and I packed up our chairs. Mary hugged Rachel good-bye. Missy is coming over to our house to spend the night, so she walked with us back to the car. Rachel, Laura, Missy, Philip, Logan, and I followed my mother and grandmother. My mother courteously took my grandmother’s arm and guided her as she shuffled slowly down the sidewalk. The rest of us followed behind, matching our strides to my grandmother’s. It took us awhile to reach the car, especially since the lighting wasn’t always good, so my grandmother occasionally had to stop to feel her away ahead with her feet. When we got to the short flight of stairs down to the parking lot, my mother guided her as she stepped cautiously. In the parking lot, Missy grabbed her bags out of her family’s van, and loaded them into our van. She said good-bye to her family. She climbed into the front seat with my mother. Rachel and I sat in the back, and Philip and Logan in the middle. Laura, Stephen, and my grandmother rode with my father in the Buick.

On the way home, my mother and Missy talked most of the way. The four of us in the back talked in fits and starts. Between topics, I leaned my head against the window and stared up at the stars. They shone faintly, but there were more of them than in Tulsa—in Tulsa, I can scarcely count ten stars on a clear night. To the north, lightning flashed threateningly under a mass of cloud. Lurid purple and yellow highlighted the dark underbellies of the clouds, and white flickered against the stars where the outlying edges of the thunderhead covered the sky. On the trip, the four of us in the back talked about various things: hiking, classes, heavy textbooks, homework, professors, etc. Logan asked Rachel about her major, and they discussed Calculus-based classes. He asked me about “Beowulf”, and we talked about the sound of the language.

It was fun just to talk about odds and ends of things. I listened dreamily, half-awake as my mother and Missy laughed about the odd people in our congregation, and Logan and Rachel discussed economics. Back at home, Logan left. Philip and I unloaded the chairs from the back. I got Missy and Rachel settled into their rooms: Rachel is upstairs in my room, and Missy is downstairs in the study. We said our good-nights, and trailed off to bed. I slept in Stephen’s room, on his big double bed (he’s sharing Philip’s room this weekend).

Fall 2006, Day 3

Now Playing: "15 Variants on Dives and Lazarus", by Ralph Vaughan-Williams.

This may be the last post for awhile. We'll see.

This morning Rachel and I ran together again. When we return from running, I shower, while she does her devotions. Then I do my devotions. Usually, she goes to breakfast, while I start in on my day immediately. It seems a better use of time to eat a little bit while I'm studying and e-mailing instead of eating a lot and not doing much at all.

I spent the time until Music Theory reading "Henry IV" and the biography of Augustine. In Music Theory (MT), the professor went over basic information about the definition of musical terms, the staff, the names of notes, etc. Shakespeare came next. Rachel read aloud one of the speeches, which was a delight. She puts a great deal of expression into the words, emphasizing and enunciating. It was fun to hear Dr. W play off her interpretation, the two of them reading back and forth spontaneously for awhile.

After Shakespeare, I studied in my room, working on homework for MT, memorizing terms for the quiz on Friday, and finishing "Henry IV". At noon, I walked outside to meet Syneva. The two of us drove to lunch at Panera. When I climbed into her car, she was talking on the phone with her mother. Panera was crowded with the usual lunchtime bustle. The smells of freshly-baked cinnamon rolls, wild-rice-and-chicken soup, hot meat and cheese, and coffee swirled from behind the counter. We ordered our food and sat down at a tall table in a corner by the front window. I had to clamber up onto the high chairs. I had half a tuna salad sandwich and wild rice and chicken soup. We spent an hour-and-a-half talking. We had a delightful meal, just becoming reaquainted. As we chatted, thunderclouds built outside. We skipped to the car through a sweet, warm rain that made the asphalt steam.

Back at the university, I spent most of the afternoon reading the biography of Augustine, as well as the assignment for MAW. I practiced for an hour, which was fun. Practicing for an hour-and-a-half gets tedious after awhile, so hopefully I won't have to do too much of that this semester. I ate an early supper. When I went into the cafeteria, I saw Jenny H. sitting at a booth alone. I chatted with her briefly. She was busy writing an article for the college paper, and I needed to keep soldiering along with Augustine, so we went to our separate places.

After supper, I walked over to Oliphant Hall for the Poetry and Poetics class, taught by Dr. G (whom you all know already) and Dr. J. Dr. J is a slender man, perhaps in his forties, with thick, curling, dark hair. He reminds me of Caleb K. in the way he looks, and of my father's brother in his mannerisms. Anyhow, on the walk over to Oliphant, I felt a new peace come through me. Reciting Hebrews 12 over to myself, meditating on the verses, turned my focus to Christ. Also, there was a magnificent storm building over the campus. The whole sky, from the southeastern curve to the southwestern curve, was a mass of cloud. To the southeast, a huge white thunderhead mushroomed over the sky, its dazzling edges billowing upward. The south was dark with clouds, marshalled rank on rank. To the southwest, a canopy of clouds covered the sky, reaching over and above me. Grey on grey, head on head, like huge trees pillaring high into the evening sky. The sun shot intense streaks of grey through them, and lined their edges with silver. Wind swirled my trousers around my legs, and whisked my curls over my face--a sweet, cool wind, breathing rain.

In Oliphant, I found several familiar faces lined up outside the classroom. Crystal is in the class, as is Russ (from the two Honors classes of last year), and Danielle. Danielle's friends, and others from the Romantic British Literature course last year are also in the class so that I recognize most of the people. We make a very strange mix. Crystal greeted me, "We're going to be the ones who stand up for form!", and we slapped a high-five. Dr. G and Dr. J came up together, five minutes late, and unlocked the door. We pulled the desks into an ellipse in the classroom, and everyone settled down.

For the first portion, Dr. J assigned us to do free writing about various questions: What is poetry? What is a poem? How do you make a poem? What is a poet? Then we discussed various people's answers to these questions, with varying results. Dr. G handed out a sheaf of Modernist "poetry" (note the quotation marks!), which consisted (in one set) of various scraps of squiggles and newspaper cuttings pasted together, and (in the other set) of nonsense words lined up on the page. Thankfully, most of the people in the class didn't consider these to be poetry as such. "It's very defensive and academic," was Danielle's comment.

The professors gave us a break at about seven-thirty. Crystal, myself, and one of Crystal's friends, a girl named Stephanie, stood outside for a while. It hadn't rained, and the sky was clearing, but the evening was cooler.

During the second half of the class, we went over the syllabus. Dr. J said right off that he's not going to be "judging" our poetry so much. Dr. G, on the other hand, said that he will be more of a judge--though he followed this by promising that he would only do so to push us to be as intense and as good as we can be. Then Dr. G gave us half of a whirlwind summary of poetics, starting (to my surprise) with the Song of Songs. We moved on to Plato, Aristotole, and Sidney, which brought us up to the Renaissance. The Middle Ages were (of course) completely skipped over. *sigh*

Walking out of the class, I felt more optimistic about it than I had before. From my perspective now, it appears to be a souped-up version of Quartz Mountain (with the unpleasant language and physical allusions throne in for good measure--*hem*). We'll be reading modern poets exclusively (which is almost always what happened at Quartz Mountain), writing, etc. One thing that does "scare" me is that the course rests on huge grade amounts: one quarter of the grade is poetry, one quarter is a research paper, one quarter is a "personal statement of poetics", and one quarter is participation and responses to discussion questions.

Anyhow, Crystal, Stephanie, and I walked back to Lottie together. The evening was cool and moist. Nighthawks darted around the lights along the sidewalk, the white patches flashing on their wings. Crystal and I stood in the hall in Lottie and chatted for awhile. Eleanor emerged from her room and joined us. She showed us her room, which she's rearranging and redecorating. Then Crystal showed me her room--a tiny, rectangular box. Right now, it's incredibly messy, with blankets, papers, books, boxes, clothes, and all sorts of oddments scattered everywhere.

When I returned to my room, I found it dark and quiet. Rachel was still out. I sat down to work on this entry, but Rachel returned shortly after that. We spent a long time discussing the poetry class, the microeconomics class that Rachel just enrolled in (she's very excited about it--the professor is energetic and somewhat flamboyant--Rachel gave me one of her vivid impersonations of his teaching style, which made me laugh), and "King Henry IV".

Just after we'd settled down to our individual tasks, the fire alarm went off. Thankfully, it was just a drill. The RA thumped on our door and yelled, "Fire alarm!" "Coming, ma'am!" Rachel shouted back. The deafening screech of the alarm pushed us outside more than anything else. We crowded onto the lawn with the rest of the inhabitants of the dorm. Girls giggled with their boyfriends, instant messaged on their phones, joked about being forced out of the shower, talked with their roommates, or stared impatiently at the building. The blue fire alarm lights flashed eerily through the windows. Rachel struck up conversation with one of her old acquaintances from last semester. The grass was wet and squishy underfoot. I looked around idly until they let us back into the building.

Things are quieter now. And it's time for bed! Forget all the work that needs to be done.... :o)

Fall 2006, Day 2

Now Playing: "Violin Concerto in D", by Johannes Brahms. Track 1, "Allegro Non Troppo".

This morning I ran alone. The morning was humid, and light rain flecked the sidewalk. The sun rose in a cloud of deep pink. I spent more time looking around me at campus. They've bulldozed the old married student apartments on the south side of campus, completely flattening a whole block--including the trees. The trees make me grieve most: a couple of stately old elm trees, and two or three white-skinned sycamores, which in their graceful symmetry reminded me of mallorn trees.

I ate an apple for breakfast, read e-mails, and finished reading the second act of "King Henry IV". I also read part of the first book of Paradise Lost. Both these readings are a great delight to me. "King Henry IV", as I mentioned yesterday, has wonderful languages, clear-cut characters, and interesting themes. Paradise Lost has the same qualities, though in different ways. Another great delight: J.D. managed to send me a huge file of pictures from July--ropes course, rappelling, camping, VBS, painting, etc. I was so happy. :o)

I practiced my flute in Tyrrell for an hour, running scales mostly, and playing "Il Gardelino" and the Poulenc "Sonata" for fun. For awhile, I sat outside on a bench and read Paradise Lost. Then Rachel walked up from the library. We went into our first class together: Major American Writers, at eleven o'clock in Lorton Hall. Lorton is the same building where we had our First Seminar, and it's the home of the psychology department. Our classroom is on the third floor. A typical classroom--square, white-walled, with miniscule desks. The class is quite large--between twenty and thirty students. The professor is a graceful, tall, slender, tanned woman, with curly brown hair. She immediately took a position of authority in the classroom by her bearing and behavior. Though she's a younger woman, she licked a couple of students in line with a few well-placed rebukes. The class, as it turns out, is Major American Writers with an emphasis on *drumroll please* ghosts. So after she called role, she spent half the class time getting us to discuss ghosts in movies and stories we know. Then she talked about different kinds of ghosts and how they influence culture. In a nutshell: she's a flaming feminist and Liberal (I won't repeat what she said about the President of the United States), but very professional and zealous to engage the class.

After Major American Writers, Rachel and I went to lunch. The cafeteria was crowded and noisy. We sat down in a booth together, but Jenny H. and David joined us. We talked about our summers, our classes, etc. It's good to be seeing people again.

After lunch, Rachel and I spent awhile fiddling around with our internet. Her computer for some reason won't log on to the internet. I had a flute lesson at two o'clock. The new flute professor was sitting in the hall when I arrived, waiting for the clarinet lesson before us to finish. (Thanks to the "generosity" of the university, the music faculty have to share buildings. N.B.: They're building a new athletic facility, a new entrance to campus, and a new plaza area--but no new music building. *hem*) Dr. R is a plump, short, older chap, balding, with dark hair and pudgy fingers. He reminds me of Dr. E at OSU, who teaches Classics. Dr. R was quite friendly, and the lesson went well. We worked mostly on tone (hooray! the last professor hardly did that at all!) and some on scales. He also assigned me a new etude book (hooray! again--not Karg-Elert, the etudes of death, but something much more melodic and interesting to play). He has a beautiful tone himself, rich and dark.

When I returned to my room, I scooped up my Music History books and marched over to the bookstore to return them. The ground squelched under my feet from the rain. The hearty, earthy smell of wet, newly-mown grass rose from the hot lawn, mingled with an evasive, sweet perfume from a cortege of blooming crepe myrtles. Their delicate white petals flecked the sidewalk.

At the bookstore, I was greeted with a nasty surprise. After waiting in line, and standing patiently while the clerk (an elderly, short-sighted woman) checked in the books, I discovered that I needed my father's credit card number to complete the transaction. So I trudged back to my dorm room (leaving the books behind) and called my long-suffering father, who was at work. He patiently read off the number. On my way out of the room, I grabbed the first volume of Schaff's History of the Christian Church, loaned to me by The Shadow, to read as I walked. I felt a bit funny, striding down the sidewalk with my nose buried in a non-textbook that looked like a textbook (and my "dude" sunglasses on, to boot!), but the book was very interesting. From the introduction, I was off on wonderful rabbit trails, thinking about God's goodness and predestination, and the magnificence of Christ as I slowly turned the thin pages.

Back at the bookstore, I managed to get rid of the Music History textbooks. I then bought the textbooks for the Augustine class, with some trepidation: ten-to-one, before the end of next week, I'll be returning them. But we'll see what happens....

In my room, I spent the next two hours frantically reading the first eighty pages of Augustine of Hippo: A Biography by Brown. I have to read the first hundred-and-seventy-eight pages, as well as the first four books of Augustine's Confessions by next Monday. *gulp* For awhile, I lay in an uncomfortable posture on my bed--but when my spine could bear it no longer, I curled up on my side. Bad idea. I dozed off for a little whlie in the warm afternoon sunshine, and woke very reluctantly to the "real world".

Rachel and I ate supper together. We talked about Shakespeare. I asked her questions about the interpretation of "King Henry IV", and how it would likely have been staged. We discussed the speeches (on which a paper is due next Monday) and essays. After supper, when we went back to our room, I sat down to read the assignment for Major American Writers (MAW). However, I got no further than the second line of the author's biography than I started to complain aloud. The sentence, "For religion he was taught a harsh Calvinism that held that the Fall of Adam and Eve had brought about the Fall of Nature as well," instantly raised my hackles. Rachel sat patiently on the floor and we had thick half-hour discussion about predestination, election, angels, etc.

Just before we left for RUF at seven-thirty, A.C. stopped by. She knocked on the door, and we stood and chatted with her for awhile. She read off to us the rather peculiar course description from her advertizing class (the professor has a weird sense of humor). She walked with us downstairs. Outside, we met Esther, Jenny H., Alisha, and Tay, all headed to RUF. A.C. went off to meet her father. I walked behind with Jenny H. We talked about evangelism and showing Christ to the people around us.

Upstairs in the chapel, we were greeted by an exuberant Jenny S. She was bouncing off the walls with energy, as usual, eager to have a dance party and showing off all the crazy things she could do. I stood and laughed at her. Syneva was there, and immediately invited me out to lunch tomorrow. Tara and Jenny H. stopped to chat with us. Mr. K came by and welcomed us. RUF was as always: hymns set to guitar music (Tara played violin to accompany the last song--she plays well!), prayer, and one of Mr. K's sermons, which combine good ol' Calvinist theology with very, very modern (and, for me, eyebrow-raising) language and anecdotes. The theme for this semester is relationships, so we started off with Genesis 1.

After RUF, Rachel and I stayed and chatted with people. The first person we went to find was, of course, Amanda, who is returned from her semester in Spain. Amanda, Mandi, Rachel, and I talked for a long while about our summers, the schoolyear ahead, our families, etc. It was good to see Mandi and Amanda again. They're both older girls, both sweet and level-headed, and warmly welcoming. David and Josh, the Ks' youngest son, dashed through our circle, David in hot pursuit of Josh, panting and laughing. Josh buzzed ahead of him, rather like the hedgehog in Sonic (computer game). Then I chatted with Tara and Crystal. Crystal is scheming a girls' night out, in "rebellion" against the planned boys' night out. We talked about the Augustine class. Daniel came over to listen, and complimented me on my journal (thanks, Philip! :o). Ange said she'd read my xanga and left a comment. After awhile, I started to feel very sleepy, so I waved good-bye and walked back to Lottie. The night was warm. Hardly any stars overhead. I missed the walk we took in Scotland on the last night, down the dark country roads, and the sky over the campsite in July. Both skies were brimful of stars, but here the humid air and city lights have bleached the stars away. Boys were playing sports on the intramural field. A grasshopper buzzed against my legs. Moths danced around the streetlights, and nighthawks swooped after them.

In the room, I found Rachel discussing classes on the phone with her parents. I showered. Rachel has gone out, and I'm getting ready to go to bed. There's so much still to be done!

Thank you for your encouragement, everyone. I'm praying for you all.

Fall 2006, Day 1

Now Playing: "The Fiddle Concerto", by Mark O'Connor. Track 3, "Adagio".

Today has been incredibly long. I feel as though I've been put through a wringer and have come out very wrinkled on the other end--in more ways than one, as you'll see.

To begin with, I didn't sleep well last night. Something about having another person in the room, and not being able to see a clock, and all the strange noises around me of other people moving in, kept me on guard all night long. When the alarm clock went off at six-thirty, I sprang up with a quiver. Rachel's alarm clock went off right after mine. The room was dark, streaked with pale light coming through the blinds. I pulled on my running shoes, and changed into shorts and T-shirt in the closet. I invited Rachel to come running with me, and she did. We jogged around "the square", between two-and-a-half and three miles. Rachel runs fast, with long, loping strides. When I jog, I take short, choppy steps, so it was difficult for me to keep up at first until I got used to the different pacing. The morning was warm and muggy. We went past the various construction projects on campus: the new athletic administration building outside the football stadium. (I hoped aloud that they'd put strong windows in the building, in case a football ever went toward them--then I had a mental image of windows made of rubber, with a football ping-ponging back and whacking the kicker in the head; at the same time, I also had a mental image of how Anna and Ruth would burst out laughing if I told them this absurd little story.)

Back at our room, Rachel sat down to do her devotions. I was dripping with sweat, so I took a fast shower, changed, and then did my devotions while Rachel showered. Rachel went to the cafeteria for breakfast, but I stayed in the room. I ate a sweet Gala apple and wrote e-mails.

My first class, at nine o'clock in Tyrrell Hall, was Music Theory I. Over the summer, the upstairs lecture room was refurbished. It smelled of new upholstery, carpet cleaner, paint, and strong adhesive. There are about twenty or thirty people enrolled in the class. The professor is Dr. M: a paunchy, older chap, with a humorous (if somewhat ponderous) manner--friendly but strict. The first chapter of the textbook, assigned reading for today, was quite simple, just naming the notes on the staff and going over musical terms.

The next class, at ten o'clock in Zink Hall, was Honors: Shakespeare. Rachel, Kathryn, and I are in the class together, so that will be fun. The professor is Dr. W: also an older chap, inclined to plumpness, with a very ruddy face and a frank, humorous style of teaching. He's full of anecdotes. As he took attendance, he asked each of us where we were from, and in response to our information, he'd give us a little snippet about himself that paralleled what we'd just told him. For example, when he heard that Rachel was from Colorado, he told us about an old roommate of his who'd been a real estate agent in "a small town called Vale", and who now "can afford to do just about whatever he wants!" We're starting off with "King Henry IV, Part I". I've really enjoyed reading it so far. The characters are strong, each with its own individual style. Even the simplest use of language has powerful results. For example, whenever the members of the royal court are speaking, they talk in iambic pentameter, blank verse. But usually when the pals of Prince Hal (to be King Henry V) talk, they speak without any meter--they're too drunk and ruffianly to bother with such things. Prince Hal, however, switches back and forth between the two styles.

The third class of the morning was Music History III. And here I was destined for an unpleasant surprise--though the unpleasantness was sweetened by a couple of factors. First of all, I saw Alisha and Syneva again because they're both taking the class. Alisha greeted me with a cordial hug, and we sat and chatted until class started. Laura is also in the class (she's a flutist, Christian--very sweet girl). The four of us sat in the front row. The professor, Dr. R, was another pleasant surprise: A rollicking younger woman, buxom, with her black, wiry hair in frizzy cornrows. She had the class put on a skit that she'd written (a very silly skit) to welcome us. After the skit, as she called attendance, she greeted everyone with the same warmth, both new and returning students, paying personal attention to each one. I was quite happy--until she started to list the particulars of the course. Now, when she showed us the syllabus, I was intrigued. The syllabus started with late Romantic composers, including Tchaikovsky and others. However, when the Dr. R started to get into the administrative details, I felt a sick feeling in my stomach. The music department requires at least two semesters of music theory for this class--and I am just starting my first semester! The requirement is a bit strange since music minors are not required to take two semesters of theory, and since this requirement is not mentioned in the course listing at all. Nonetheless, I was crestfallen. Appropriately enough, halfway through the class, it started to pour outside. Drenching rain rattled against the window, suiting my mood perfectly.

After class, Alisha and I turned and looked at each other. She's only had one semester of theory, too--though she's also had Music History II. We went up and asked the professor about this pressing issue. She just barely consented to allow Alisha to remain, and when I heard her reluctant consent, I knew it was over for me. "Oh, dear, I'm so sorry, honey," Dr. R said--and, to my astonishment, gave me a big hug.

Alisha and I trailed downstairs and onto the porch on the south side of Tyrrell. Here we found Syneva, dismally watching the rain and munching a granola bar. The "porch" is really more like an alcove, surrounded on three sides by sturdy stone walls, with a narrow entrance on the fourth side. We were well-sheltered from the rain, but there was no hope for Alisha and me, who needed to get to the cafeteria for lunch. We stood with Syneva for awhile. Occasionally, people would scurry into the alcove, their clothes soaked through and through; or people would come out of Tyrrell and stand with us, eyeing the rain and shaking their heads. The rain poured down in cold sheets, splashing off the new concrete sidewalks. Lightning flashed close by. Thunderclaps shattered the rhythm of the falling rain and wind.

Finally, in a break between thunderclaps, Alisha and I decided to make a run for it. Alisha stuffed her nice shoes into her knapsack, and ran after me, barefoot in the falling rain. I started to laugh, despite the wetness--exhilarated by the feeling of the cold water, and by physical exercise after sitting still so long. A thunderclap rattled the leaves of an oak tree, and I jumped. We reached one of the administrative buildings, which is about ten yards from Tyrrell Hall. Both of us were absolutely soaked. Our jean capris stuck to our legs, our shirts hung in dank rags from our shoulders, and our hair dangled unbecomingly around our faces. "We look like drowned rats," Alisha groaned. We squelched through the building, and ran around it towards the cafeteria, which was twice the distance we'd already come. I laughed as gritty mud splashed over my toes when we sprinted through the parking lot. Alisha shrieked behind me. "It's not a thunderstorm, it's a monsoon!"

When we reached the cafeteria, we both started to shiver in the cold A/C. Alisha combed her fingers through her hair and sighed when she saw that the inside of her knapsack, which held her shoes, her books, and electronic equipment, had gotten wet. We squashed over to the dining area and picked up our lunches. As I scooped peanut butter onto a piece of bread, I saw Andrew, Crystal, and Katie. Then when I went to join Alisha at her table, it was time for more reunions: Tara and Jenny S., with shouts of laughter and "How are you?" Jenny was as crazy as ever, hardly able to sit still, dancing with energy, full of off-the-wall jokes and stories. I raised my eyebrow at her. "Haha, that's why I came back--so you could make faces at me," she laughed.

After lunch, Jenny, Tara, and Alisha came up to the room. Alisha and I attempted to dry ourselves off. Our clothes were wrinkled, and our skin was clammy. The girls stayed and chatted for awhile. Jenny had to go to class, but I showed Alisha and Tara part of the Scotland scrapbook. It was still raining outside. After they left, I did homework. Rachel has class in the afternoons, so I was alone. My first problem was finding a class to replace Music History. After frantic shopping around online, I settled on three options: a class on Paul, a class on Augustine, and a class on 19th century American literature (which, in my opinion, is some of the literature that Major American Writers should cover--Twain, etc.). I called my father to ask him about the problem, and he told me to find someone in the English department to talk to. I had to go to Zink Hall to pick up Paradise Lost anyway, so I slogged over. The rain had mostly stopped, except for a light sprinkle. The sky was all pale colors--gold, pink, green behind the dark oak leaves.

Dr. S, who's doing the independent study (TURC) with me, had been caught by the monsoon over lunch, so she'd gone home to change into fresh clothes. She'd left Paradise Lost with the English department secretary. After I picked up the book, I wandered down the hall. Dr. G's office door was open, but I felt shy about going in. Eventually, I screwed up my courage and rapped softly on the lintel of the door. "Ah, hello, come in," he said and glanced up at me with a quirky smile. He was at his desk. "I'm in the midst of trying to figure out how to make myself a snack," he told me with a smile. (His specialties are poetry, Renaissance, and cooking.) But he settled down across his little table from me as though the school year had never ended, with the same quite cordiality. He inquired after my summer, and when I told him that I'd been to Scotland on a mission trip, he asked about which denomination I belong to. I mentioned that we'd studied church history. "Ah, yes. The Covenanters. Fascinating," he said. My hair nearly stood on end: to be quite candid, he's the very last person in the world who I should expect to know anything about the Covenanters. We chatted about that briefly, and I asked him my questions. "Do whatever sounds fun," he advised. "Oh, dear," I groaned--and then both of us laughed.

Having made up my mind to take Augustine, I marched over to Chapman Hall, where the advising office is located. I announced to the secretary what I wanted to take, and she performed her bit of magic on the computer and handed me my new class schedule. "If anything else changes, just call me," she said, scribbling down her phone number. The last task was to run upstairs and pick up the final essays from Dr. A's Honors class last semester. Rachel had asked me to get hers, too. The secretary of the Religion and Philosophy Department led me back to Dr. A's office, unlocked the door, and showed me a shallow box full of papers. I found our papers easily, thanked the secretary, and hurried back to my room through a gentle rain.

I spent the afternoon working busily on theory and Shakespeare. I ate an early supper by myself in the cafeteria, reading "King Henry IV". The cafeteria was quite crowded, but I dodged my way through the maze of tables as best I could. For twenty minutes, I sat outside Chapman Hall and read Shakespeare. The evening was cooler than usual, pearly clouds drifting behind the skyscrapers to the west. A mockingbird scolded me from a golden rain tree.

At six o'clock, I ventured into Chapman Hall for the Augustine class, taught by Dr. H. I felt very shy: the class is senior-level, and when I entered the room, there were only boys sitting around the long seminar table. They seemed to know each other, and two of them were deep in debate about whether wisdom and insanity are different or the same. It turned out in the end that Crystal and Asher are also in the class. The professor, Dr. H, is another portly, elderly chap. He speaks slowly and sonorously, with many long pauses and some smacking of lips. He goes off on constant rabbit trails--overloads of detailed information about ancient Mediterranean life. Though the first day is usually only introductory, he managed to fill two hours by going over the syllabus. The class consists of an enormous amount of reading, with a twenty-page paper due at the end. As I looked at the syllabus, I felt even more daunted. I know that Dr. G's poetry class (on Wednesday nights) will involve a great deal of reading and complex writing, so I'm not sure I can keep both classes going (they're both senior-level).

After class ended, I was glad to go outside. I felt tired and headachy, as though my brain had been doing too much work. On the intramural field, RUFers were playing ultimate frisbee. I recognized Mr. K, Andrew, and others, but mind and body had turned to mush together, so I hauled myself across the wet lawn to my dorm. Rachel had a meeting tonight. I was alone in the room. I flopped down on my bed for awhile. I intended to finish the assigned reading for Shakespeare and start Milton, but my eyes hurt too much. My mind was in utter panic and confusion. I really don't think I can keep all these intense classes going, and still get good enough grades to preserve my scholarship.

So I hung more maps on my wall and typed out another quote to put over my desk--physical work helps me to think more clearly. The quote I chose happened to be Psalm 37:1-8: "Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness. Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart...." The Psalm says these things in the context of worrying about God's enemies, and fretting about evildoers. If it can say such soothing things in the face of evil, can I not apply this comfort to my own much less dire situation? I reminded myself of the One in whom I have put my trust--God omnipotent, who has provided for me every step of the way.

The quiet strains of Mark O'Connor's string quartet lilt through the room. Rachel is still not back, which worries me somewhat. The night outside is dark and still. The dorm rattles with doors banging. A girl's flip-flops thock as she walks down the hall. Keys jangle. The bass on the recording jumps cheerfully between intervals.

"Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him...."

burnt cookies and other cooking experiments

Now Playing: extremely hyper Celtic reel music from a Michael Flatley CD ("Lord of the Dance"). Also, "In My Hands" by Natalie MacMaster. Track 7, "Space Ceilidh".

Beware: I'm very nervous, which tends to send me off into a state of reckless happy-go-luckiness. I'm leaving for Tulsa tomorrow! Despite the fact that I've been trying to take Mr. C's very good advice and enjoy each day as it comes, my mind (comandeered by a ridiculously overactive imagination) has spent the past several weeks running wild with all sorts of thoughts. Which does not make for calmness....

Today was Philip's first day back at MTC. When he got home, he told us that he'd been bored out of his mind because they'd spent all day watching safety videos, which he'd seen last year.

I spent the morning doing two things: Trying to bake chocolate chip cookies, in preparation for the arrival of our Fearing cousins, and reading Cuchulainn of Muirthemne by Lady Gregory. The first activity was definitely not a success. First of all, we didn't have any butterscotch chocolate chips, so I couldn't make my "specialty". Second, the bottom heating element in our ancient Frigidaire oven isn't working. At least, it was working, to my limited knowledge when I put the pans of cookies in. However, after fifteen minutes had elapsed and the smell of caramelizing sugar had begun to drift out of the oven, I was alerted that something was the matter. I opened the oven door to discover, to my disgust, that the tops of the cookies were quite singed, while the bottoms were still gooey, to put it mildly. I spent about half-an-hour trying to get the two pans to cook all the way through--setting the timer for five minutes, popping up to see if the cookies had baked any more, then sitting down in chagrin for five more minutes when the experiment hadn't worked.

The second activity, on the other hand, was successful. I managed to read about two hundred pages in two hours (with constant interruptions), and finished off the book. If you have a taste for wading through ancient Irish Gaelic names, and if you can put up with strings of convoluted Homer-style adjectives, the book is a pretty good read. The characters are the sorts you'd expect from ancient hero myths: strong, defiant, courageous, proud, fiercely loyal, and rather selfish, men and women alike.

During lunch, we watched some of "The Phantom of the Opera". Laura went over to my grandmother's house for the afternoon. Stephen spent the afternoon at Daniel's house, while Philip did school and I wrote poetry. I also went for a walk around San Born Lake. "But, honey, it's a hundred degrees outside!" my mother objected as she went to lie down for a nap. I went anyway, and was rewarded by seeing a spectacular kite and an armadillo. The kite whistled and shrilled endlessly as it wheeled against the blazing afternoon sky. The armadillo was engaged in more homely affairs: rooting through the honeysuckle vines under a juniper tree. It was too busy to notice me. My walk was mostly pleasant. The woods are beginning to take on a scorched appearance. They smell like late September--the smell of plants basking in the sun too long and of dusty earth. The sumac is already turning red, and my feet already swish through deep drifts of silver cottonwood leaves. The least pleasant part of my walk was crossing the dry creekbeds. The earth has split and cracked, grey as a corpse's skin, absolutely dry, not so much as a damp puddle for a tadpole to paddle in.

We need rain!

For supper, I drove out to my grandmother's house. She lives at Golden Oaks, an independent living center for elderly people, in a comfortable duplex. Laura had gone out there to spend the afternoon and fix supper for the three of us. When I arrived, I found them still in the midst of their preparations. NPR crackled out of the radio over a flying chaos of questions. I washed my hands and helped. On the menu: Salad (fixed by yours truly), French bread (doused in melted butter and garlic powder by yours truly), and hotroot stew (yes, you Redwall fans, the same famous hotroot stew that's the favorite of the Skipper of Otters). While my grandmother peeled shrimp for the stew, Laura diced the potatoes and tossed them into a pot with leeks, onions, and broth. I set the table with the thick, blue-and-white china, and poured cranberry juice to drink. My grandmother and I talked about C.S. Lewis and the Song of Songs. Laura sliced the bread, and I basted it with butter and garlic, and stuck it in the oven to warm. Then came the fun part: assembling the salad. While my grandmother sat at the dining room table and sipped a cup of coffee, I dug through the refrigerator. Investigation produced a variety of plastic sacks containing a range of vegetables: two different sorts of lettuce, frilly as staghorn coral; five small radishes, deep pink and gritty; three little sweet onions; a score of baby carrots; a pair of ripe red tomatoes, and a head of celery, pale green arms sprawled across the cutting board. These were duly washed, sliced, and tossed into a metal bowl. Meanwhile, Laura was busy fixing the fruit smoothie: strawberries, blueberries, bananas, yogurt, ice cream, milk, and cranberry juice all blended together.

When we finally sat down to eat, the meal was quite good. The French bread was very crusty, and whenever I tried to gnaw off a bite, Laura and my grandmother laughed at me because crumbs trickled everywhere. The soup was spicy from leeks, onions, and chili powder. Laura wrinkled up her nose at the salad (she claimed she couldn't eat it because of her braces), but my grandmother and I enjoyed it. We talked about all sorts of things: going back to college, the doll dress Laura is sewing for the county fair, the food, and the "funny people" who live at Golden Oaks. Dessert consisted of the smoothies and chocolate cupcakes, which Laura had saved from her birthday party on Monday. The smoothies were the best part (in my opinion)--creamy and fruity.

After supper, we cleared off the table. My grandmother helped Laura with her doll dress. She ripped a seam out of the deep red fabric, and cautioned Laura to sew the gathers straight. Laura bounced back to my grandmother's bedroom where the sewing machine and computer are, while my grandmother and I sat at the dining room table and talked. The smooth, dark wood of the dining room table gleamed under the warm lamplight. Outside, evening settled gently over the pond and the woods. Sky and water became one color. The house was very quiet--content, peaceful, cool walls curled like a cat's sides around the circle of lamplight. My grandmother asked me about my plans for studying abroad in England. She and my grandfather used to go there on elder hostels. She reminisced about Grampy. We talked about how good he used to be on trips, always going off the beaten path, and about how he loved to do research and answer questions. "I think he loved to be in that library, looking things up. He'd come home with the strangest funny stories sometimes," she said.

After awhile, Laura bounced back in. "Did you finish it?" my grandmother asked. "What?" Laura asked. "You were working on the dress, weren't you?" my grandmother said. "No. She's been back there on the computer, playing Solitaire," I growled. "I won," Laura chirped saucily. We went back into the bedroom to look at the dress. Scraps of cloth were spread across the pink quilt on the bed. A pair of sad-eyed kittens peered up from the computer monitor.

We hugged Grammy good-bye. Laura heaped her belongings onto the back seat of the car (this included her knapsack, The Moonstone, her cookbook, her sandals, a latchhook rug, etc.). We drove home through the warm August evening, listening to "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" soundtrack. I rolled down the windows to let in the cool breeze. Laura "flew" the car by sticking her arm out her open window and waving her hand up and down in the backrush of air. A cool smell breathed from thick stands of Johnson grass growing under low elm and pecan trees--almost rain-cool, seed-tasseled stems hushing like falling water. We drove between hay fields, drying grass still warm from the afternoon, a sweet, earthy smell that reminded me of graham crackers. We passed the OSU cow, swine, and horse barns on the edge of campus, and a smell not so savory. Long pastures of close-cropped grass had turned pale blue in the evening, reflecting the open sweep of sky. Laura and I chatted about various things--Scottish church history, Redwall, etc. Most of the recipes in her Redwall cookbook are vegetarian (which makes sense since the good characters are mostly herbivores), so our mother can eat them.

When we returned home, we found my father reading The Jeeves Omnibus by P.G. Wodehouse to Philip, Stephen, and my mother. Laura rushed upstairs to take a shower. My father finished reading, and we had family worship. As always, when we started to sing, Mandy jumped off her chair and scampered into the dining room. That crazy cat never can stand our singing.

Showers and bed for the rest of us now. My room is full of suitcases. I'll be glad when tomorrow is over... when next week is over... when the next semester is over.... Looking over my list of classes, it would appear that I'm walking into a Liberal lion's den.

"Rejoice in the Lord always!"
"Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who, for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross...."

Oh, one more very important thing: Pray for rain!

until next time, Danielle....

Now Playing: "Nickel Creek" by Nickel Creek. Track 1, "Ode to a Butterfly", and Track 6, "When You Come Back Down". In homage to one of my best friends, Danielle, who just left for college in Sterling, Kansas.

God be with you at your going out and coming in!

Psalm 121

dogs, cats, birds, and funny people

Now Playing: "Heartland: An Appalachian Anthology" by a rogues' gallery of bluegrass artists whom I will not name here. Track 7, "BT". (This one by Josh Bell, Sam Bush, Edgar Meyer, and Mike Marshall.)

Ok, Shadow, you asked for it.

I woke up this morning.

I did some things.

Now I'm going to bed.

(Go read The Shadow's blog! :o)

But....

Spectre wanted to hear more about the kitten.

Today my father drove me down to the Parnells’ house. The Parnells are out-of-town, so I’m taking care of their two cats and their dog. Lucy, the dog, is a purebred mutt, and greatly lacking in the department of brains. She dragged me around the block this morning at rip-roaring pace. After I’d fed her and the cats, my father and I drove to the bike shop on Main Street. His old bicycle has broken down after about twenty years of use (ever since he was in high school), and he’s getting a new bicycle today. I waited with him while he and the owner of the shop filled out the necessary forms. The owner of the bike shop had to adjust the kickstand, so while we waited, we stroked one of the many shop cats, Butterscotch. The cat curled up complacently on the counter next to the cash register, and purred politely when my father rubbed its chin. The owner of the shop wheeled out the bicycle from the back, holding the bicycle up on its handlebars so that it rolled over the smooth concrete floor on its rear wheel. It’s a royal blue Giant road bicycle. While my father paid, I teased one of the other shop cats: a little grey-and-white kitten. This kitten was a real monster. I knelt down on the floor to stroke its head, and it skittered around behind me and attacked the back of my legs. Then it scrambled up onto a plastic chair, waited until I had half-turned its direction, and then made a flying leap at me, claws outspread. I backed off, but the kitten hid under a rack full of bicycles. Its big grey ears poked out between bicycle spokes as it eyed me warily, waiting until I walked past it so that it could spring out and dig its teeth into my ankle. I didn’t give it the chance. So it jumped from box to box until it was up on the counter, where it proceeded to sit on the cash register and pick a fight with Butterscotch (who was much older and larger). Finally, the owner of the shop scooped the kitten up and deposited it in a kennel. “Time for you to settle down,” he growled at the kitten.

Back at home, I spent the morning finishing In the Heart of the Sea, a book about a whaleship that was sunk by a whale. My mother assigned chores for all of us to do, so that kept us busy, too. And Sarah and I were scheming over the phone. During lunch, we watched twenty minutes of “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe”. After lunch, I spent the afternoon fooling around: sending e-mails, etc. When Laura finished her school, she begged me to help her with a bird model we’ve been working on. It’s a model of a swallow, made out of stiff paper. We set up our “surgery” on the schoolroom counter, pulled out scissors and glue, and set to work. By the end of the afternoon, our fingers were sticky with glue, but the swallow was finished—a bit tipsy in the wings, and a bit off-keel in the head, but otherwise fairly decent. We listened to “The Phantom of the Opera” and “National Treasure” soundtracks, thanks to Stephen, who was playing “Age of Empires” on the computer in the schoolroom.

When the bird was finished, Laura and I practiced the two-hand reel. She’s been teaching it to me over the last couple of weeks. I have most of it down, except for the leaps and the highs-and-lows. She keeps telling me to turn my feet out. She marched up and down the schoolroom with her feet sticking out opposite directions, bowlegged, grinning ludicrously, curls frizzing rebelliously around her forehead. I slouched to the floor, laughing. After we’d run through the dance several times, I put “In My Hands”, by Natalie MacMaster, into the stereo. We danced to “Space Ceilidh”, which was fun, and also to “Olympic Reel”, which was insanely fast. By the end, both of us were gasping with laughter. We tried to dance to track 13 (I think it’s “Moxham Castle”), but it was so fast that our feet didn’t even have time to do the reel step, let alone the leaps.

Right before supper, I marched Philip and Stephen outside, with them dressed in their good shirts, stood them up against the maple tree, and took their “mugshots”. My mother requested this painful exercise, so they had to suffer through it. Stephen either looked squinty-eyed or was blurry because he was laughing so hard. Philip was a little better. Since he’s a lot taller than I am, though, I had to tip the camera up, which makes the pictures look a little bit strange. All six of us sat down to supper for the third night in a row—an unusual phenomenon! My father discussed math probabilities with Philip and Stephen (in connection to figuring out how many speeds there are on a bicycle with three speeds on one handle and seven on the other). After supper, I marched myself outside, gave Philip the camera, and tried to behave myself sufficiently for a good “mugshot”. Unfortunately, what with lighting and the fact that I always look tired, none of the pictures turned out very well. Laura sat in the grass, teasing Sandy, and making fun of us. Philip laconically chewed a stem of fescue and told me not to smile.

My grandparents (my father’s parents) came over for dessert at seven o’clock. They sat around in the living room for awhile: my grandmother discussing people who’ve died recently from her Sabbath school class, and my grandfather asking Philip how he thought football would go this autumn. Laura made gingersnaps for dessert. After dessert, my mother could hardly contain her excitement: she had to show my grandmother pictures from the Chihuly exhibit at the St. Louis botanical gardens. So I brought my laptop down and scrolled through the pictures on the internet (www.chihuly.com/installations/mobot).

Now they’re all sitting around the table, talking. My grandfather is telling stories: about going down to the Trinity River in Dallas to catch guar. My mother told a story about a time when Misty, her beagle when she was little, caught a rabbit—and then didn’t know what to do with the unfortunate animal. My grandmother is giving my mother all the details of the wellbeing of her garden—lantanas, moonflowers, roses, etc. My father just stepped outside to turn off the sprinkler: The peacock’s tail of water flickering down to little beaded nubbins along the metal sprinkler head. Faded zinnias bloom bravely in the garden. The bell peppers are wilted, leaves hanging like strips of tattered cloth, and the echinaceas have become a mass of crispy black deadheads, flowers burned into seed. Cicadas rasp outside. Philip tries to be very patient as my grandparents exclaim when my mother tells them that he’s going to take Calculus 3 this semester. And my mother is tossing out silly Spanish phrases to see if she can tease Philip into responding.

And so it goes....

pictures from the zoo in St. Louis

Giraffes are Laura's favorite animals.

















A pack of rascally otters




Sea lions being fed











Some silly-lookingn penguins

pictures from the Botanical Gardens in St. Louis

This is the chandelier under the bridge in the Japanese garden.










Look, Laura really can smile nicely!














Glass "herons" inside the Climatron













Palm tree sprouting glass in the Climatron



















Us four kids perched on the edge of the long pool with the glass "onions"

the comment box is just packed!

Wow, this is delightful: returning from a vacation to a full comment box. I'll have to go away more often. :o) Thanks, everyone.

We did return safely from our vacation to Iowa. We got back at about four-thirty this afternoon. Our yard looks like toast, despite faithful watering by my grandparents. My poor little potted rosebush has lost all its leaves and flowers, but the stems are still green, so perhaps it will live.

In the following post, I will attempt to do what Anna wisely did not attempt: to describe a place without using pictures. I apologize ahead of time for the flowery language, similes, etc. It is my hope that, despite (or perhaps because of) all the details, you will be able to gain a little bit of the wonder I had at the amazing beauty and diversity of God's Creation.

For the past week, we've been gone to Crooked Creek Christian Camp, one of the RP Midwest Presbytery family camps. For the first stage of the journey, Sarah was with us. After camp, her family came and picked her up to take her with them to Chicago. As a result, I drove home with just my family. We took the long way back from Iowa through Missouri. On the way, we stopped in St. Louis and spent yesterday (August 4) sightseeing there. This is the lion's portion of my journal entry from that day.

August 4, 2006

This morning, after eating breakfast in the hotel, I helped my father pack the car. We drove from our hotel on the outskirts of St. Louis into the city itself to spend the day sightseeing at the St. Louis Botanical Gardens and the St. Louis Zoo. The suburban sprawl became gleaming office parks, which in turn became old turn-of-the-century row houses, old brick hospitals and churches, and narrow streets. We got a little lost on the way, but we finally managed to find the St. Louis Botanical Gardens, located in a large park. The cottonwoods on the edge of the park were showing heat stress, and some had been felled by a big storm.

The Botanical Gardens are a lovely place. We visited them before, several years ago, on a moist day when we were some of the only people. Today it was hot and sunny, and there were more people about. Outside the main building, we lined up to buy tickets. The main building is a large, white, two-story affair, elegant and sleek, with a high glass atrium in front. This year the Gardens is hosting (yes, that’s correct grammar :o) an exhibition by Dale Chihuly, a glass blower. Inside the atrium a long shining chandelier was hanging as part of this exhibition. Spirals and curls of blue and white glass flashed and sparkled in the hot morning sunshine, like a tower of water. After we bought our tickets, we walked through the atrium and into the gardens. On the way, we passed under another part of the exhibition: over the doors to the gardens, orange-and-red fluted “plates” had been installed on top of the glass ceiling.

We stepped outside onto the main terrace. Here, a high white fountain shot plumes of water into the air. A set of blue crystal blocks stood on a metal pole in the middle of the fountain, like chunks of ice. We turned to the left and walked down the side of a greenhouse, along three pools full of waterlilies. Purple, pink, and cream lilies floated on broad pads. Among them, in the shallow, dark water, glass balls floated. The balls had been given an iridescent finish and shone like dragonflies’ eyes. At the end of the series of pools was an herb garden, enclosed by high brick walls. A metal “tree” held a collection of bells in one corner, and as the wind blew, the bells filled the small garden with round syllables of sound. Philip and Stephen stopped to tease a sensitive plant, running their fingers up the thin stems to make the little leaves fold together. My parents and Laura brushed their hands through thick beds of thyme, bay, and mint. The smells of herbs hung warm and spicy in the quiet corners of the garden.

From the herb garden, we stepped out onto a wet lawn. Planted on the lawn, in a huge web of beds and paths, was the rose garden. The roses were enclosed in a white fence, and at either end, white gates covered by arched trellises. Another part of the exhibition decorate the gates: spines and curlicues of gold and orange glass shot out from the curving arches above the gates like rays of the sun. We wandered through the rose garden. Fat bees bumbled among the flowers, too busy with their work to notice us. Laura and I smelled rose after rose—sweet scents, tea, citrus. When the wind raked over the masses of petals, the high, wild smell was intoxicating.

A broad path led from the rose garden toward another trio of symmetrical pools. These pools were much larger than the ones along the greenhouse, broad, flat sheets of water. In each of the pools, metal statues stood on pedestals—statues from Greek mythology, winged Hermes and sad nymphs. The two side pools were long rectangles in which waterlilies floated, maroon and purple. But the center pool was round, and in it floated gigantic lily pads, similar to the Amazonian lily pads that are large enough to hold a child. These pads were thick and flat, with little ruffled lips around their edges. In all three pools, bobbing among the waterlilies, were glass figures shaped like onions: round, rising to a point with a curlicue on top. They were veined with color—peacock and butterfly blue, viridescent green, crimson and saffron. The hot sunshine glowed on their fat sides and flashed on their curly tops. Nearby, my mother found another pool with glass in it—this time, it was an old wooden boat, full of blue and purple glass figures which curved and dipped and sprayed over the sides of the boat, flashing like gigantic fish.

Our next stop was the Climatron. The Climatron is an enormous geodesic dome which houses a jungle greenhouse. The sides of the dome are glass, shaped like the segments of a honeycomb. From the hot, dry air outside, we entered the jungle climate. This was the main part of the Chihuly exhibition. Hidden among the plants, glass sculptures mimicked the plants’ forms, blending beautifully. The sheer number of species housed in the jungle greenhouse, plus the varied shapes and colors of the glass artwork, was rather overwhelming. We were immediately greeted by a blue, flowerlike form in a blue vase, nestled against the backdrop of a creek. Then I discovered round yellow shapes with crystal knobs running around their edges, nestled under the lush leaves of hostas like little fat yellow frogs. The jungle house was full of smells and sights. I smelled something like rancid potatoes (potato plants did grow in there), ginger, cinnamon, and mildew. The roar of waterfalls, the splash of streams, and the constant whirr of huge fans droned against my ears. The air was still, hot, and humid. My feet slipped on the slick concrete paths which wound up and down among the plants. Behind me, my mother kept stopping to look at the plants and tell whoever would listen about their curious habits. I kept exploring. Slender glass rods, blue as shadows, stood against a backdrop of yellow bamboo stems. Red rods shot up like young maple twigs under low-growing trees. Glass sculptures that looked rather like octopuses coiled out of odd nooks, their tentacles glowing yellow or teal. Glass fountained out of a palm tree, its leaves cropped so that the curls of glass could trickle down its green trunk—crimson, blue, and yellow, as though the tree were shooting out rays of sun. Three rounded balls floated on a still, shallow pool, surrounded by tiny, round leaves of pale green weed. Their sides were slick and spotted green and gold, like frogs’ skins. Suspended from the ceiling, clusters of glass balls hung over the royal and sentry palm trees. Their surfaces were iridescent with silver glaze, streaked and swirled with color—like bubbles of water, or huge pendulous fruits. Epiphyte roots trailed down from a trellis, tickling my face. Sunlight through the windows flashed on the broad, flat leaves of hostas and hooded lilies. Orchids spouted freckled faces from an old tree trunk. Tucked away under a clump of cycads, I found a series of glass sculptures like pale green trumpets with fluted mouths, springing upright from the damp ground. Stephen and I watched a little black jungle bird, perched underneath one of the cycads, as it preened and sang to itself. I took pictures of banana trees fanned against the glass ceiling like Egyptian hieroglyphs, and of a tree with flowers like fuzzy pink chenille sleeves. In one corner, Laura found rice, ginger, and avocados growing together. My father pointed out a yellow-and-white flower that was one of his particular favorites: called the “shrimp” flower, long white petals projected like shrimp’s legs from a cluster of upright yellow petals. Along the path, I found more glass “vases” with glass flowers in them, hidden under fringed leaves. A pair of red-and-white trumpet shaped glass sculptures poked up among thick bamboo stalks. Standing in a still, green pond, bronze-tinted sculptures shaped like herons, with long, curving bodies and protruding heads, bent toward the water. Their reflections floated like dead leaves on the surface of the stagnate pond. Beside a waterfall, a long green sculpture curled like the fiddle of a fern, and below the falls, glass sculptures shaped like Mexican hats spouted from a rocky hollow. Their broad “brims” were speckled bright green, like round petals of algae. My mother found a silk floss tree, to her delight, inch-long thorns sticking out of its trunk. An Australian tree fern stretched a delicate tracery of rounded leaves against the glass ceiling. Deep pink Japanese lantern flowers hung low over the path, their petals curving like calligraphic strokes, veined with yellow.

We left the Climatron, the roar of water and rush of fans behind us, and entered the gift shop. Here, glass bowls were on display, glowing against a plain wall. Their lips were fluted like giant clam shells, and tipped upward to catch the light.

We went through the gift shop into the temperate house, another greenhouse, this one shaped like a glass triangle, with a long, sloping roof. We walked under a trellis whose wooden beams supported more flat, fluted glass plates. The sun dappled our faces with splashes of red, yellow, and pink. The temperate house was dry and hot, just like our climate at home in Oklahoma. I recognized many of the plants: impatiens, huckleberries, calla lilies, geraniums, asters, lantanas, begonias, cyclamen, clematis. We entered a Mediterranean courtyard with a Moorish fountain in the middle. White star roses bloomed in the corners of the courtyard. Blue-and-white tiles were set into the adobe walls. We walked past masses of oleander and silvery germander. An olive tree stretched welcoming limbs over the path, its stiff, grayish leaves flashing dully in the hot sunshine. Stephen and I poked the spongy bark of a cork tree. There were more glass sculptures in here, too: another yellow “octopus” stretching curly leaves outward like a dessicated desert plant, “tumbleweeds” suspended from the ceiling (they lit up at night with neon blue and pink), a lovely teal-and-blue bowl nestled among dry desert grasses, its lip tinted crimson. Dark green “trumpets” sprang from the ground near a stand of long-limbed fir and spruce trees.

After the temperate house, we walked to a small café, housed in the home gardening center, where we ate lunch. My father bought sandwiches for lunch. Afterwards, my mother and I walked around outside. The area around the café and gardening center was set up with examples of various types of landscaping. My mother found a cute fountain in which statues of cavorting otters were poised. We also found a little hidden garden tucked away behind a high hedge.

Having finished lunch, we started off again. My parents both put on their sunglasses and the floppy sun hats they’d bought at Wal-Mart. We briefly explored the Chinese garden. Near the pagoda, gardenias perfumed the air with a heavy, sweet smell. Mosaics of cranes and sunrises were set in the concrete walk, which ran around a pool full of worm-and-wind-eaten rocks. From the Chinese garden, we walked along the edge of the landscaping plots. A wild slope was full of sumac and midwestern wildflowers, and the familiar meadow smell of sweet clover and drying grass blew on the wind. On the other side of the path, low beds held coral bells and bishop’s hats.

Our goal was the Japanese garden, which we found easily. The Japanese garden stretches along the banks of a small lake: serene, perfect, the spires of carefully-manicured trees reflected in dark green water. We crossed a stream on broad, flat rocks and walked around the shore of the lake. A bridge curved like a half-moon spanned the water from the shore to an island. Hanging under the bridge was another Chihuly piece: a red “chandelier”, curving petals spewing outward like dragon’s fire. A long, shelving beach covered with large, grey-blue pebbles ran down to the water. As we walked along the shore of the lake, we entered patches of deep shadow under cypress and pine trees. We found little pagodas and stone statues nestled among the trees, their grey silhouetted artistically against the bronze-red bark of writhen pine trees. Small fountains made of slender bamboo sections trickled invitingly in shadowy nooks, where stone lamps swung from supporting branches.. Philip, Laura, and Stephen explored a wooden zig-zag bridge which ran out along the shore of the lake. In some places, white gravel had been raked into swirling geometric patterns beside the concrete path. As the wind rose, copper maple leaves like tiny stars bobbed against the bright blue sky. Sweet, spicy smells blew to us from the cypress and pine trees, with a roar like distant oceans. Around a curve in the path, my mother, Laura, and Stephen investigated a tea house hidden under the deep shadows of low-growing pine trees. Thick moss grew on the ground, damp and cool. My father and I walked on a ways, and we discovered a broad bed of lotuses growing in the shallow water of the lake. Most of the flowers had dissolved into broad, flat seed pods, but some of the flowers were still in bloom—elegant, pale pink and white, their long petals ruffled by the wind.

Having strolled all the way around the lake, we entered the English forest. Here, the hardy, meditative beauty of the Japanese garden was replaced by the fragile blooms of tiny forest flowers nestled under huge trees. Oak, ash, and beech trees towered thickly against the sky, their gigantic trunks like the pillars of fairytale castles. Delicate flowers clustered between their roots, flowers with fanciful names, with round, heart-shaped leaves and pale petals: dragon root, toad lily, goat’s beard, fairy wings, hellebore, Solomon’s seal, fairy bells, virgin’s bower, bear’s breeches, magic lily, forget-me-not, lily-of-the-valley. Hosta bells dangled on long, arching stalks. Equisetum (horse’s tails) marched like long, stiff, green spears in a low, marshy spot. Dogwoods grew in low bushes under the taller trees. Ferns threw feathery shadows on the path. I found a shelter tucked away among the trees. As I sat down, the smell of cedar wood flowed from the peeled boards. Strips of juniper bark fluttered on the wind from the rough roof. Curving branches had been pieced together to form elaborate, Elvish tracery around the walls of the shelter, so that the walls were made of strong, wooden veining. We sat and rested in the shelter for awhile before leaving the English forest.

Laura wanted to visit the Victorian gardens before we left, so that was our last stop. The Victorian gardens surround the old buildings in the Botanical Gardens—an old mansion, an observatory, and some buildings which are now used for research. We crossed another smooth lawn, and were greeted by a shout of color from a bed beside the old mansion. It was as though a host of Hawaiian birds had descended on the grass. A riot of colorful flowers had been arranged in the geometric network of beds. Fluorescent orange, crimson, purple, bright blue, and magenta flowered in thick borders. A couple of cycads stood like green fountains over the colorful chaos. In the middle of the garden was a white statue of Juno, standing firm and commanding over the beds. From this garden we walked to the maze, which Laura and Stephen were eager to try, though Stephen was feeling a bit ill from being out in the sun and having stayed up too late the night before. Philip and I climbed up into the observatory, an open, wooden building with a curving spiral stair leading to a balcony. From the balcony, we could look down onto the maze, a labyrinth of trimmed boxwood hedges. Beyond the maze, a line of stately cypress trees dripped deep shade on the grass. Beside the mansion, a smoke tree bloomed with pink, feathery flowers.

We walked back to the main building through daylily and iris gardens. Both types of flowers were long past blooming, most of their leaves snipped short to the ground.

Back at the main building, we rested a bit, then got into the car. I sipped water from my water bottle, but it was nearly boiling hot. We drove to the St. Louis Zoo. Parking was nine dollars, but the zoo itself is free—and one of the most wonderful zoos I’ve ever been in.

The main building gives one the impression of being a Grand Central Station: people going and coming without any orderly lines, rooms branching off into a labyrinth of ecological and educational displays, and enormous plastic models of gaping sea creatures dangling from the high ceiling—sharks, squid, and whales. We spent the rest of the afternoon taking a leisurely tour of half the zoo.

Our first stop was the penguin house. We had a wait to get in, but it was well worth it. I took pictures of Laura and Stephen sitting outside the penguin house, beside a pool where four or five small black-and-white speckled penguins were gaily paddling through the water. While we waited in line, Stephen and I giggled at the penguins’ antics as they toddled clumsily over the broad, flat stones along the side of their pool, then plopped into the water. Inside the penguin house, the air was freezing cold. A narrow path ran between two large tanks of water. Both tanks were lined with rock against the wall—and both tanks were swarming with penguins. A colony of king penguins had gathered on one side of the path, on a rocky “beach”. These penguins look sleek and trim: their black wings and head fade to stately grey, then the typical white tuxedo on their breasts, with elegant yellow trim. Most of the king penguins were engaged in sleeping or preening themselves. Occasionally, one of them would stick out its wings, stretch up its neck, and give a long, croaking cry, which made all the other penguins look around.

Then there were the gentoo penguins. These were a little smaller than the king penguins. They were black and white, with black-and-white freckles over their heads and upper chest. The gentoo penguins had collected in another group aside from the king penguins. Some of the gentoo penguins bobbed in the water. They seemed to take great delight in paddling on their sides, diving under, and then suddenly emerging to splash all their “guests” in the face. One of them wobbled on its side, flapping its fins and kicking its webbed feet. Stephen, Laura, and I squealed when one particular penguin gleefully splashed us several times. Another penguin bobbed like a fat wine bottle in the water, ducking its head up and down, watching us as curiously as we were watching it.

The funniest penguins to watch were the rockhoppers. They were the littlest, fattest penguins. They bobbed and tumbled through the water, like balls of blubber. They were smooth black-and-white like the king penguins, not freckled like the gentoo penguins. But over their eyes they had yellow “eyebrows” that made them appear to frown grumpily, and just above where there ears were, yellow tufts of feathers protruded, making them look as though they’d just woken up. They looked ridiculously grumpy, and were absurdly fat. Four or five of them spent the whole time racing through the water, diving through tunnels under the path, appearing on the other side, then swimming through the circle again. They zipped fast through the water, occasionally splashing us. Whenever one of them wanted to climb out of the water, they had to use their beaks as well as their feet. They were so short and fat that they couldn’t climb very well. Once they were on the rocks, they hopped like wind-up toys, wings stuck out clumsily on either side. We all spent a long time in the penguin house, laughing at the penguins’ antics, following them as they swam through the water.

After the penguins, we visited the bears: black, brown, spectacled, and polar. The polar bear was lounging in her deep pool and chewing boredly on a red ball. We peered into the big apes’ outdoor cages, but didn’t see any of them. It was three-thirty, and the sea lions were being fed. Us kids pressed up around the sea lion pen. A ring of people had gathered around the pen, thronged against the fence to watch the four sea lions take their meal. Two zoo keepers stood on the shore of the pen. A broad, deep pool occupied most of the pen, but the sea lions had clambered out onto a couple of rock outcroppings in the middle of the pool. They bobbed and ducked their heads to catch the fish the keepers threw to them. They grunted and chuckled to one another, flapping their fins. After they had been feed, I watched them for a long time. They zoomed gracefully through the water, occasionally raising their heads to take a snuffling breath. Their whiskers beaded with water. Their sleek bodies whirled through the water, gleaming under the surface.

Next we visited the otters. These were also a big hit. There were two parents and two pups, the pups about three months old. They played in the water, tumbling and wrestling together. Their strong tails lashed the water into a lather. As we watched the otters, a young couple came up to the fence. The man had on a grey shirt, and the otters ran up to the fence to peer through it at him. The otters ran with a long, loping gait, their hunched backs lengthening over the grass. We went over to watch. The otters’ broad, flat faces eyed us eagerly through the chain links. They chirped and grunted to one another. The mother and two pups wrestled while the father stared at us hungrily until a pair of keepers (the same women who’d just fed the sea lions) appeared. The keepers tossed fish to the otters, calling them by name. The father, a large, muscular male otter, was named Grover, and the mother, slightly smaller and sleeker, was named Lilo. The two pups were too young still to have names, not being sober enough to sit still for a medical examination. When the keeper tossed fish to Grover, the big otter dragged the fish over the grass and sat down on his back in the water, cradling the fish between his four paws and gnawing hungrily on its head with sharp teeth. A stain of blood trickled into the water. Lilo shared her fish with the two rascally pups. I was surprised by how big the otters were: I’d never seen one so close out of the water. My mother asked the keepers questions about otters. The head keeper said that river otters have returned to normal population in the wild, but that sea otters are having a harder time rebounding. Sea otters are almost twice as large as these river otters, and I was amazed: that would make sea otters at least as large as a beagle or other small hunting dog.

While we watched the otters, I heard a strange, brassy sound coming from a nearby pen. I ran over and was surprised and delighted to discover a pair of trumpeter swans. The two majestic birds were trumpeting noisily in their pool under a cypress tree. I’d never heard a trumpeter swan before.

Next, my mother wanted to visit the Herpetarium. The Herpetarium was one of several old, turn-of-the-century buildings at the zoo. Inside, the Herpetarium has an atrium with a glass ceiling. Columns support the glass ceiling, and round, Victorian-style glass lamps hang from the columns. The area under the glass ceiling is divided into two watery pens: one for three caimans (which were so still that they looked dead) and another for a host of Asian turtles. Glass cages around the edge of the Herpetarium house other reptiles. Stylized snakes, turtles, and chameleons decorated balustrades, metal railings, and columns. Their spines and scales were edged with gilt. Cobra heads fountained out of the capitals of columns among stone foliage. Laura and I glanced briefly around the Herpetarium, then sat down near the glass atrium, dozing exhaustedly until my mother roused us.

Laura wanted to visit the apes, so we strolled to the Primate House next door. The Primate House is another turn-of-the-century building, with fanciful gilt curlicues, columns, and wrought-iron railings. The Primate House smelled more strongly than the Herpetarium of animals and mildew. The small monkeys were more interesting than the snakes. I watched a couple of lemurs eating their lunch. A pair of beautiful grey monkeys (dusky-leafed monkeys) perched high up in their cage and groomed each other, occasionally turning huge, lamplike eyes on us.

After the monkeys, I begged that we make one last stop and visit the big cats. The lions were off display, but we did see a few other cats: a sleepy puma, and a pair of drowsing snow leopards. A majestic amur leopard sat on a rock, watching everyone who passed by. The tiger was sad, though: the muscular, orange-and-black creature paced restlessly back and forth on a short, worn path.

Since we were in the neighborhood, we stopped by the giraffes. On the way, we passed a variety of hoofed creatures—gazelles, antelopes, tapir, zebras. The zoo has four young giraffes, most of them fairly active. Their hides were deep brown with creamy veining, like water over dark rocks. They watched us interestedly from long necks. A pair of ostriches and a couple of antelope shared their cage. The female ostrich stared aggressively at us above the cage wall, her grey head with its ridiculously long eyelashes sticking up like a periscope.

After the giraffes, we took a straight route back. On the way, I saw the spectacled owl and a gorgeous eagle. We passed the prairie dog cage. A pair of prairie dogs nuzzled together, chirping gently to one another. Other prairie dogs dug busily or stood on guard. I laughed at the sign which informed us solemnly that prairie dogs are endangered—I thought of the bustling colony of prairie dogs in a park in Lawton where my father and I ate lunch on Sabbath afternoons when we went on a trip together.

As we entered the main building, loud, harsh cries rang from the sea lions’ pen.

After the zoo, we drove to our hotel for the evening. The one-hour drive actually took two hours because the highway resembled a parking lot. I occupied myself by watching everyone in the other cars, and by collecting license plates from other states. With the help of Philip, Laura, and Stephen, I collected plates from Arizona, Missouri, Wisconsin, Illinois, Kansas, Oklahoma, Virginia, Alabama, California, Utah, Texas, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Mississippi, Michigan, New York, Ontario, and Alaska.