Interesting people

On top of the interesting people I met while in Cincinnati, on the way to and from and in Denver I met several interesting people. Jiexia (pictured above) is a first-year sociology professor at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where my former colleague Gina is one of her colleagues. Somehow I was sitting next to Jiexia on BOTH my flight from Cincinnato to Denver, and on the flight back. Jiexia got me to tell the story of my Korean grandfather, Harabaji, and then told me about her own grandfather, a hero of the Chinese Revolution whose humiliation during the Cultural Revolution was so thorough that his wife, Jiexia's grandmother died. On the bus trip from the Denver airport to downtown Thursday night, I met Mark, a grad student for whom I pulled out my laptop to see he could help me with some of the regression analysis for my presentation later at the conference. Finally, I met two interesting Eastern European women. A night clerk at the hotel printed and made 25 copies of my 8-page presentation handout. She had moved to Denver some 10 years ago from Croatia, in the aftermath of the war in the former Yugoslavia. Another Eastern European woman I met was Olga, a sociologist from the former Soviet republic of Belarus, who was trying to introduce congregational studies to her country (via some training at the University of Texas at Austin, where Jiexia had also studied.

-- Perry

Zombie walk

A week ago Saturday night in Denver, I more or less happened upon this event. Thousands of - mainly young people - descended upon downtown Denver's 16th Street outdoor mall and environs, clad in all manner of outrageous zombie outfits, those undead creatures from such recent movies as "I Am Legend" and "Zombieland." Unfortunately, with my new camera, I took no video, and so didn't get the many kids with the halting zombie gait, growling "Brainzzz" (apparently zombies' favorite food), or the occasional time a group of them would chase oen of their friends or hapless passerbys (yikes!).

Below is something like an alien zombie.

And below - a zombie couple outside of Taco Bell!

Two zombie victims (?). At one point the Ghostbusters stationwagon drove by. The one bus line that sends buses up and down 16th Street actually had police escorts - police cars cruising in front of the buses.

These two young women - zombie victims? - stayed perfectly still throughout the whole time I could see them.

This young zombie was apparently eating through a victim's neck to get to the victim's brainzzz (yech!).

The zombie bride outfit was one of the favorite costumes.

I looked out for a slice of pizza and finally wound up on Market Street, where I had to wait quite a while for them to make slice to order - after making whole pizzas that came before it. There were a number of zombies in there, and so I was essentially having a slice of zombie pizza!

-- Perry

A tale of two cities

On the left, above, is the Duke Energy Center, home of an anime convention Vincent attended several years ago and home of lunch and the exhibit hall for the Mission Celebration (of which the Guatemala Mission and Amigos de K'eckhi were part). Below, down Elm Street, is Riverfront Stadium, where the Bengals crushed the Bears later that weekend (on Sunday).



Below - looking up the 16th Street mall in Denver. It turns out that Mom was in Denver in fall 2001 for a conference, and she (then) and I both out at the same subway resturant.



The clock tower is near the corner of the 16th street mall and another street (just around the corner from our hotel).

At the far end from my hotel was a melange of government buildings and parks . . .

. . . including the Colorado state capitol building.

-- Perry

October animals

Fall in St. Matthews

Up and down

It’s been an up and down few weeks. I celebrated a birthday twice, neither on the exact day. On Saturday as it turns out Stephanie and I only traveled to New Albany’s packed Harvest Homecoming festival and Huber Farms for pumpkin picking and an early dinner at the restaurant and then back home with Vincent for a stunning Columbus Day cake (above - the "Santa Maria," not a pirate ship) and a new stereo (further below).

In between Huber and cake I – thanks to Mom – got the camera that took these pictures but then backed up Stephanie’s car into our neighbor’s parked car. Although our rates may go up, insurance apparently is covering this. Causing some anxiety, I talked with one of the neighbors the next morning, after leaving them a note the night before. Making me feel worse was the fact that the couple was expecting a baby within a month. (Pictured below is their house, sans car.)

On Tuesday my colleagues helped me celebrate my birthday again (this time a day late).

Many folks in Kentuckiana – including kids we know with H1N1 and then Stephanie and Vincent – have been sick. Vincent has kept his job – moving from days to nights, finally buying a discounted costume (“Freddie” from “Nightmare on Elm Street”?) (pictured below) and wearing it each day to work, ostensibly joining a rock band, and turning in a draft final paper for his English class (for very slow progress). More recently, a one-time Brown friend who Vincent started hung out with last fall has joined him there (adding to other friends he's made anew there).

Both Stephanie and I have had trouble with colleagues at work – Stephanie with another teacher, and me with administrative assistants when all of the other professionals were away – and have faced managers not backing us up to varying degrees. These problems came during times that were stressful at work for other reasons: Stephanie suddenly started tutoring and leading Culture Club after school, teaching Read 180 and had the new school district superintendent visit her school and her classroom. (Pictured below is Stephanie with an early book she shared with her Culture Club students, as they began talking about Native American cultural groups.) I’ve been leading a very challenging survey project for our World Mission unit and facing other Presbyterian Panel deadlines (some management-imposed). During the same time – working with colleague Ida when she was around – I’ve been trying desperately to develop materials for a late October presentation on congregational growth at the Religious Research Association meeting in Denver.

I’ve been leading a very challenging survey project for our World Mission unit and facing other Presbyterian Panel deadlines (some management-imposed). During the same time – working with colleague Ida when she was around – I’ve been trying desperately to develop materials for a late October presentation on congregational growth at the Religious Research Association meeting in Denver.

And no time for blogging.

P.S. For the first time ever, Monday afternoon an official person came to observe Stephanie's tutoring and Culture Club. Tuesday morning Stephanie’s troubles with colleagues may come to a head with a meeting scheduled with half a dozen teachers and administrators. Pray for Stephanie to stand up for herself but diplomatically and for a peaceful but just resolution to differences.

-- Perry

New beginnings

Today is the first day of 21st Century program afterschool activities at Stephanie’s school, with Stephanie tutoring half a dozen kids for an hour after school and then leading the first of her (weekly?) Culture Club activities. Registration, you might recall, was last week. You might also recall that – like some of new drop-in/pull-out school-day activities – this involves Stephanie working with English as a new language students and other students. Today is an introductory day in Culture Club, with no single country in focus. This all assumes Stephanie's school stays open, since dozens of students and several teachers were out - or left mid-day - Friday, because of flu-like symptoms - some of them probably with H1H1. The school district seems to have something like an 80 percent threshhold for this sort of thing. If less than 80 percent of students are there - because of illness - the school closes.

Today is the middle of three work days in which I am apparently the lead person left in our office – with my three senior colleagues and another professional colleague out – and with the deadline for a big project I – and now we all – have been working on looming tomorrow. Some of the administrative assistants have been even more cooperative than others, and we’ll see who shows up for a staff meeting I called for 9:15 a.m. Today will be a test not only of my leadership skills (imagine for example that in 15 years I really was a manager) (this reminds me a tiny bit of teaching) but also of my technical skills. With my former turtlesitter, senior colleague – and our database manager – Ida out and able to finish a little less than she hoped she would before she left – and with less good wireless Internet access on vacation than we had hoped – I’m getting stucked running more SPSS than usual. This is good in some ways – I was able to do some runs for a presentation Ida and I are supposed to do in a couple of weeks in Denver on my own – but it also means if things go wrong this afternoon with deadlines looming, there’s no one to bail me out.

In other new beginnings: Mom continues to self-administer her new medication - starting mid-week last week - and Nancy has shared with us by Facebook pictures of her newly renovating downstairs.

- Perry