American Heroes, by Edmund S. Morgan

Last night on my way home from work, the car thermometer said it was 4 degrees Fahrenheit outside. But there was something else even more significant weather-wise: a gusty wind out of the north blowing around 30 miles an hour. And then, it started to snow.

When I woke up this morning, the temperature was 0 and it had snowed about 7 inches. Of course, in Amarillo 7 inches of snow means you've got drifts 4 and 5 feet high. Area schools were closed for the day. So we stayed home, built a fire, ate, watched TV, and read.

A good bit of today I spent reading the latest from historian Edmund S. Morgan, American Heroes: Profiles of Men and Women Who Shaped Early America (New York: Norton, 2009). It's a collection of articles and essays--some never published before--that Morgan, now 95 years old, has written through the years. And although some of them were written as far back as the 1930s, they're all as fresh and alive, instructive and inspiring as ever. Here we have in all their glory and infamy, Puritans, witches, Quakers, and Revolutionary leaders. Morgan combines his penetrating insight into the past with some wonderful quotations from primary sources. Each chapter can be read in anywhere from 10-30 minutes. And each one is a perfect little gem. Just right for an afternoon at home.

So that's what I'm reading these days. How 'bout you? Any good books you've recently discovered?

A Southwestern Wedding

So last weekend, Michele and Aubrey and I drove down to El Paso for a wedding. Eddie Cartagena and Marissa Hernandez (Michele's niece) got married.

It was a nice ceremony, something I would have said even if Michele's father didn't preside. He also conducted our wedding back in January 2004.

I don't think I'd like living in the desert southwest. But I did enjoy the warm weather in December.

The whole time we were there, I kept thinking about how, when we were there three years ago, it was safe for us to walk across the bridge over into Juarez. We found ourselves in a big crowd of out-of-towners who had come to El Paso for the Sun Bowl football game. What a difference a few years can make. Nowadays, you'd probably be safer in Baghdad or Tehran.

While I sometimes wondered about life on the other side of the Rio Grand, I also felt blessed to be on this side with my wife.

A Frenzied, Frantic Fall Semester

I know. Til now, I haven't posted anything in the entire month of September. Thanks for checking back with me. So what's been going on here?

1. School started. And, boy, did it ever start. Amarillo College set a record enrollment this fall, with well over 11,000 students, more now than ever before in the history of the school, and one thousand more than this time last year. My classes are packed. One of them, New Testament, maxed out at 30 students. (That's about as many as we can comfortably seat in our classroom). The other classes--The Old Testament, Introduction to World Religions, and The Gospel of John--are also pretty full. So it's a busy time at the Bible Chair. Lots of students, and that's nice.

2. School started. Yeah, I said that already. But I also went back to school as a student. I've always enjoyed the structure, the challenge, and the opportunity of a college course. Well, almost always. So I signed up to take a graduate seminar at West Texas A&M. It's a history class focused on medieval England, especially London. The professor, Dr. Bruce Brasington, is a full-fledged medievalist. He really knows his stuff. Best of all, he's challenging us to do almost all of our reading in the primary sources. I've decided to do my seminar paper on some aspect of the Lollards, those religious eccentrics who took their inspiration from John Wyclif. My working title is "Hell's Bells: Lollard Objections to Church Bells, the 'Horns of the Antichrist'." I hope the project turns out to be as juicy as it sounds. Maybe a Ph.D. in religious history some day? We'll see.

3. Hebrew. Oh, I'm also teaching another course this semester: Introduction to Biblical Hebrew. So far, student turn out has been high to say the least. The second week, we stuffed nearly 50 people into the classroom. We ran out of chairs. A few people went back to their cars and brought in their lawn chairs. I won't soon forget a doctor, still in his scrubs, sitting on the floor just a few feet away from me as we learned the Hebrew alphabet song. Here's the most exciting news about Hebrew: we're right on the verge of finishing up the process so that Hebrew I and II will be added to the curriculum of Amarillo College. This has been one of those long, drawn-out things. You wouldn't believe the work that goes into adding two classes to the course inventory of a college. But now it's done, and I'm just waiting to hear from the school that this has now gone through. If and when I get the news, then Biblical Hebrew I will be offered in the "Fall Too" semester at AC, which begins in early October. In the Spring semester, the second course would be offered on the regular schedule. Stay tuned.

4. Beautiful weather. This time of year it's very pretty here on the high plains. We've had some absolutely gorgeous days, with hardly more than a slight breeze. So I've gotten to spend a lot of time riding my bicycle and walking.

5. Preaching and teaching. Over the last few weeks, I did a couple of the sessions in the Wednesday-night summer series at my home church. Currently, I'm the fill-in preacher at the Church of Christ in Panhandle, Texas. For three weeks, I'm driving out for the morning Bible study and worship. The auditorium class is looking at a different psalm each week. That's something I really enjoy. So far we've looked at Psalms 4 and 113. Not sure which one we'll go with next Sunday. Any suggestions? (You have to say why). The sermon mini-series is entitled "Real Christianity." Seems like the lessons are about to convert the guy in the pulpit. But he's a sluggish soul. . . .

So what's going on in your world these days? I'd enjoy reading a few updates that I might not get from the blogs. Oh, anyone else going to the Moser Ministry Conference at Lubbock? Lemme hear from you. Cheers!

Go to Yale for Free

I'm back in New England for the time being. Woke up to rain, which is precisely what these Connecticut Yankees didn't want. This July has been their wettest one on record (not counting the year they had a hurricane). Today's showers will likely push the total for the month to over 9 inches. We're hoping for sunshine this afternoon.

Anyway, sometime back Yale University began its open courses program. What's that? The homepage says, Open Yale Courses provides lectures and other materials from selected Yale College courses to the public free of charge via the internet. The courses span the full range of liberal arts disciplines, including humanities, social sciences, and physical and biological sciences.

So far, I've watched several of the segments from "Introduction to the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible" and "Introduction to Psychology."

As you'd expect, the lectures are very good to excellent. The one complaint I have is that only one camera is used, and it stays on the instructor. So when watching the videos, you can't always see the visuals (slides or chalkboard) used in the classroom. But that's a minor thing.

I've mentioned this program once before. But just recently they added several more courses and basically doubled the number. So if you didn't see something that interested you the first time, you might check it out again. Here's the Yale Open Courses homepage.

Saturday Morning, March 28th

Sometime in the middle of the night (must have been the wee hours of Friday morning) I woke to one of those eerie sounds you could never get used to. At first I thought an animal was dying just outside my window. But it sounded closer, like it might be coming from inside the house.

My next thought was that Michele must have gotten sick in the night (gross, I know, but that's what I thought). I reached over to find that she was in bed, sleeping peacefully. So what could that sound be?

After another minute or two, I finally realized that I was hearing an incredible howling wind.

By the time the sun rose on Friday, hardly any snow had fallen in Amarillo. But the TV weathermen were saying, "Just wait." As they predicted, it snowed without a break all day on Friday. Interstate 40 west of Amarillo was closed; so were the state highways going north out of the city.

Sometime that morning, Michele made potato soup and put it in the slow cooker. Around 6 that evening, with a little cheese and bacon bits on top, that soup turned out to be the perfect supper.

Before we ate it, though, we took a walk through the winter wonderland. It wasn't entirely by choice. We knew that all the local schools would be closed on Friday, and my step-daughter, Aubrey, had spent the night a friend's house about a half mile away.

We couldn't drive over to pick her up because our three cats, none of whom I like that much, were holed up in the garage. If we opened the garage door, they'd "run out and freeze" (Michele's words). So Michele and I walked the dog over to the friend's house with a sack full of warm clothes for Aubrey to change in to. Then we walked the dog and daughter back home.

As long as we were walking south, the first leg of the trip, it was merely miserable. By the time we made it to where Aubrey had spent the night, Michele, the dog, and I were frozen.

Once Aubrey had bundled up, we began the walk home, going north, straight into the wind, snow flakes hitting our faces like ice-cold pellets. The dog didn't seem to mind too much; the teenager in tow was not amused.

I coped by imagining I was a cold character in some Jack London novel. A little melodramatic, I know, but I've been doing that sort of thing since I was a kid and I'm not about to stop now.

Anyway, it's late Saturday morning now and that sound still hasn't stopped.

As you can probably tell from the photo above, Amarillo's Blizzard of '09 wasn't technically a blizzard. It didn't have the snow to qualify. But I think it had the wind.

Either way, the photo at the top doesn't really do justice to the amount of snow that fell. There are places where the drifts are two or three feet high. In other places, the snow is only an inch or two deep. I heard one of the local weathermen say that even they were having a hard time figuring out how much snow had fallen. There wasn't a spot where you could get a reading that hadn't been influenced by the wind.

Anyway, here's another photo facing north, away from the building. As you can see, the pay loaders have already cleared the parking lots at Amarillo College. Oh and that's my 1992 Ford Crown Vic, affectionately known as "Big Blue."

Thursday Afternoon, March 26th

I took this photo mid-afternoon on Thursday of this week. It was about 74 degrees, a beautiful day. Oh, that's the Amarillo Bible Chair, where I do a lot of my "work" reading, studying, thinking, teaching, praying, eating, and drinking coffee.

Weird Weather and Recent Reads

As I write this, it's not yet noon on Thursday and it's 66 degrees and mostly sunny here in Amarillo. Later tonight and tomorrow, we're expecting blizzard conditions and snow accumulations as high as 14 inches. Hard to believe. Maybe I'll take some pictures tomorrow.

- - - - - - - -

I like talking about books. Here are some of the ones I've enjoyed the most over the last year or so:

1. This edition of Augustine's Enchiridion (handbook) on Faith, Hope, and Love. Sometimes dense and baffling, almost-always profound and entertaining, the writings of Augustine, dedicated to God, haven't gotten old over the last 1500 years.

2. St. Paul by A.D. Nock. A Harvard professor who never finished a doctorate, Nock was a walking encyclopedia. He had a reputation for reading everything and forgetting nothing. This short book was originally a series of lectures delivered at a seminary. It sometimes anticipates contemporary studies of Paul. Oh, and Nock was also a teacher-mentor to likes of Abraham Malherbe and Everett Ferguson, who have provided intellectual leadership for the Churches of Christ for about a half century now.

3. N. T. Wright's two small books covering the Gospel of John. Wright's series of books on the New Testament--called "For Everyone"--is comparable to the old Daily Bible Study series by William Barclay. Not just newer, though, Wright's books are better.

4. Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas' engaging memoir My Grandfather's Son. I wrote earlier about this book here.

5. John Grisham novels, The Street Lawyer and A Painted House. Does anyone tell a better story than Grisham?

So, what have you been reading lately? What books would you recommend?

Photo from Tuesday, March 8. See previous post.

The Winter that Wouldn't Go Away

Without looking outside, you can always tell when Spring has sprung in Connecticut. The radio stations play "Here Comes the Sun" about once every hour. I smile, sing along, and hardly ever get tired of it.

But I haven't heard that song this year. Not once. "Little darlin', it's been a long, cold, lonely winter." Indeed. And it's not over yet. From today's "Hartford Courant":

Rain morphed into a windy snowstorm Tuesday that nearly paralyzed the evening commute on the state's highways.

Cars spun off roads, tractor-trailers jackknifed and school buses were stranded. Plows could only crawl.

"Basically, Hartford County is not moving. I kid you not," Mike Alan, a traffic reporter for WTIC-AM radio, 1080, said on the air at about 5:10 p.m.

But Hartford County was hardly alone.

"Crazy, crazy, crazy" is how a state police spokesman, Sgt. J. Paul Vance, described the state's highways. Police received about 200 calls reporting accidents between noon and 4:45 p.m., he said. Near whiteout conditions contributed to 130 accidents in just the first three hours of the storm.

A few reactions to my present affect:

From now on, I'll listen more closely to the groundhog report. No, not every guy named "Phil" has something profound to say. But the furry one in Pennsylvania? He's onto something.

"If you don't like the weather, just wait a minute or two." When he coined the expression that goes like that, Twain was living in Hartford. Although it applies to most other places I've been, the phrase belongs to New England first.

There's a lot that I love about Connecticut. You're halfway between New York and Boston; but in addition to the cities, you've got farms and suburbs, beaches and mountains, a wide variety, all very nearby. But sometimes a long winter will get me down. Today, I'd prefer to be somewhere well south of here.

I can't wait to sing with George. "Here comes the sun, (do-do do-do) Here comes the sun. And I say, It's all right . . . " Here it comes.