Tabernacle

I somehow left out this picture of the Camp Sychar tabernacle, which dominates the middle of the camp grounds. This is the tabernacle at the 150-year-old camp where Billy Sunday once preached, now updated with a high-tech sound system. I mentioned I don't think I've ever attedned worship here. We weren't able to unlock and see it. Mom also reminded me that Aunt Sandy has for years - in Excel - edited/constructed the newsletter, which we get. I'm not sure who maintains this Web site: http://www.campsychar.org/

-- Perry

Shifting assignments

My manager has been protecting me from new assignments, letting me finish off assignments from my old position and focus on getting my feet wet with the Presbyterian Panel, as I try to make deadlines and hopefully keep up with more of the backlog of Panel work that he wasn’t always able to keep up with when he had the job and also had lots of other projects. But Thursday/Friday the manager asked me about taking on a new project, working with a consultant and the World Mission unit – a unit I’ve worked with before – on strategic planning. The project is bigger than I had thought when I tentatively said Yes – and/but is also supposed to be done in about a month – which is a very tough deadline but also means it will be over sooner rather than later. We’ll see how it shapes up. One of the key players is on vacation for the next week (another one of them is pictured above). My manager said some nice things about me in referring the clients to me.

Stephanie is in kind of a similar boat. Her main teaching English as a New Language has apparently been trying to shift some of her responsibilities and she has started pushing Stephanie to teach not only the Scholastic standardized. Computerized Read 180 curriculum to the upper-grade students (ENL and other ) but also the lower-grade version Systems 44, which she was supposed to teach, to Stephanie. The advantage of this is that Stephanie – although she’s have to learn two new curricula/systems – would have to do very little lesson planning. I don’t really like Stephanie getting pushed around so much by her colleague, however, and the move isn’t necessarily good for the students/the school as a whole (and Stephanie is still somewhat skeptical about these new curricula and they may not last more than a couple of years at the school.

-- Perry

Pay check and uniform

Vincent’s life took a couple of more small turns Thursday as he got his first paycheck ever (not counting cash from KFC taste testing or working with his father) and he signed up for a third medication from his psychiatrist, who we visited Thursday. In addition to a mood pill and antidepressant, he’ll take a sleeping aid too. We talked briefly about Michael Jackson’s medication. Vincent reiterated his revived interest in going to school out of town (Western Kentucky), which I don’t know how we would afford now.

Friday moves into a different role at the Halloween store, as the doors open at 10 a.m. Vincent will go in a kind of uniform (black pants and an orange Halloween Express T-shirt they gave him), although he apparently won’t be cashiering.

Mom awaits word on two things: getting trained to administer the anti-osteoporosis medication she’ll eventually inject into her own abdomen every morning and possibly having to move her somewhat sprawling office into something much smaller. Mom continues to work with a fellow church member who comes to clean her house on Thursdays.

Hope the job shift and new medications work out.

P.S. I mailed off my Sallie Mae student loan income-based repayment plan application Thursday too. Duty calls for me also as both local Democratic Congresspeople are having town hall meetings on health care this coming week, and folks are trying to call health care reform supporters to ge them out to the town hall meetings, partly to counter the right.

-- Perry

Different routine

Ever since Stephanie moved to Fairmont Elementary School three years ago, Stephanie has mainly taught classes "pull out" - bringing four or five or six classes of different English as a New Language students to her class - sometimes when they'd otherwise be in English class - for focused instruction in English - with the aim of them catching up with their classmates. The ENL program already had some textbooks, materials, computer programs, and equipement, but Stephanie had them purchase plenty more. She used some textbooks but designed a lot of her own curriculum. Occasionally she practiced "inclusion" where she "pulled (herself) in" - going into classrooms with some of her students and helping out them and other students - sort of like a teachers' aide/paraprofessional. Last year afterschool she worked with both ENL and other students ("boom boom") in the afterschool Culture Club. She also tutored non-ENL students.

This year things are different. The school district in general and the ENL program in particular got money to implement Scholastic's Read 180 program, which includes curriculum computer programs, and actual scripts for teachers. Stephanie is one of a couple of designated Read 180 teachers in her school - for which she went to Nashville in July and got trained Thursday in New Albany. As soon as the curriculum arrives, she's going to be teaching a Read 180 classes, to a mix of ENL students and other students, while also teaching one conventional ENL classes and then "pulling in" (herself) into two other classes. (Sometimes there's variety in this regard - Tuesday Stephanie's colleague actually ask her to take some of the ENL and the other class (it is a 3rd/4th grade split class and Stephanie has been working with the 3rd graders) out to Stephanie's class for a time to work on math.) Because the Read 180 program is scripted - which is useful in some ways but seems stupid in other ways (limiting creativity...part of what makes teaching fun)- and because when Stephanie is "pulling in" she's not in charge or doing the planning, Stephanie will now have to do lesson planning for only two classes. This means that Stephanie has been coming home much earlier (at least until Culture Club and tutoring start again). Now, Stephanie has some classes about Read 180 and it's not clear it will be going forever. But she's being a team player and working with it and one reward is she's got less lesson planning to do.

P.S. In the middle of the Read 180 training, Stephanie learned from her principal, who was also there, that her principal's daughter Abby, with whom I've worked on health care reform issues this summer, was in a car accident Tuesday and may have suffered back or neck damage. Abby is a dancer and was starting school this week and was slated to move to a new apartment over the next week.

-- Perry

Working more days and working it out

Stephanie got a couple of pictures of Vincent working Tuesday, unbeknowst to him. Wednesday Vincent's managers asked him to come to work in black pants that might go with the orange shirt they're going to give him. That suggests that they're going to keep him on on the retail side once the store opens Friday. Thursday Vincent gets his first pay check. Wednesday also Vincent apparently misinterpreted a Facebook post by his friend Jessi, as if she were breaking up with him - which apparently wasn't true. But the tizzy Vincent went into briefly - upset about the possible breakup - has convinced us that the romance between Vincent and Jessi - which I wondered about - may be for real.

-- Perry

Killing Doctor Lucky (August 23)

Way back when we lived in Tallahassee and often haunted Lake Ella's cottage shops we encountered an alternative game to our favorite game, Clue. The premise of the game was that Clue started AFTER all the fun. Kill Doctor Lucky is essentially the prequel to Clue. In a large mansion players chase Doctor Lucky around trying to isolate him so that you can kill him. The other players have "failure" cards that can save Doctor Lucky. I bought the game for Vincent after learning about it but we had only played it a few times, since it is a long game...but not Monopoly long.



Sunday after church, Jessi, Vincent's now girlfriend, came over to hang out with Vincent. They hung out upstairs for awhile but then Perry and I were able to talk them into a game of Kill Doctor Lucky. Perry was exhausted from a long drive back from an Ohio funeral so sometimes we had to remind Perry when it was his turn since he would zone-out. Jessi seemed to enjoy the game even though we didn't have time to finish the whole game.

Vincent of course was the most maniacal and had the most murder attempts but together with the other players we were able to thwart all his attempts. Kill Doctor Lucky has some rather unusual weapons so all of Vincent's murder attempts brought laughs, especially the murder attempt for a tight hat. Vincent's evil laugh also kept us laughing.

---Stephanie

Camp Sychar

Two weeks ago, after Mildred's memorial service, Aunt Sandy took me by Camp Sychar, the church camp that she and Uncle Don and at one ponit Grandma and Grandpa had been going to for years. It was just a mile and a half northeast of downtown Mt Vernon, where the memorial service, and on the way into town from the gas station, hospital, and motel where we'd spent time in December and the nursing home where Mildred and Warren had lived. I had stopped by there once when I lived with Grandma and Grandpa when they were up there - where they went for several days or a week each summer. This is an old-fashioned camp meeting/church camp, with cute old cabins, a big sanctuary (apparently somewhat modern - we didn't get to pick inside), that runs for a week. Gradually Sandy has gotten her daughters involved - plus many of her children through Don are involved. One part of the history I knew: it was in protest against a proposed move from a rival Holiness/Methodist camp south of Columbus - Stoutsville, where Stephanie went growing up, to Sychar - that got Stephanie briefly on the Washington Avenue administrative board (like the Presbyterian session). But Sandy told me more: she and her sisters started coming to Sychar when Sandy was eight - this was a Christian oasis - and apparently Grandma also came - but not regularly until she married Grandpa. It's a very old (150 years old, in fact) church camp, and the master early 20th-century preacher Billy Sunday, has preached in the tabernacle. Sandy and Uncle Don in fact met - in between key visits by me to central Ohio - at Sychar. They now run the book store among other things. Sandy also pointed out to me the place where Sandy and Don were lifting stuff and she hurt her back/neck badly. Little cabins at Sychar cost like $10,000 - plus sweat equity - and you can pass them down to family members. I guess both of Sandy's daughters and their families have cabins there (?) - but old kids stay in big group kids-only dorms. At least on a cool early August day, the place did have a peaceful feeling - holy ground, as Sandy said. June left soon, but Don and Grandpa waited as Sandy showed me around. The camp is now across the street from a city water park, but it is less high-tech. I think that's one side of the bookstore pictured below, but Sandy showed me that later.



Below is one of the little road that leads past the cabins and other buildings.

Sandy showed me Don and Sandy's house. Lots of wood paneling thoughout most of the houses - just like up in Vincent's room in St. Matthews.

The houses have "front" doors on both sides - I believe this is one to their house (below).

We walked up the hill.

I think this is Robin's house that Stan (her soon to ex) and Don's sons helped finish (below).

Below, I took a picture through the window of the big boys' dorm room. Notice it's not a conventional dorm room in that no one has their own rooms. Some of these big dorms reminded me a ski dorm that Darra and I and some of her friends stayed in in the Adirondacks one winter night before going out cross-country skiing.

Below is another big building with some dorm space and some rooms for single adults

Sandy's daughter Lori and Robin, it turns out, are very involved in the children's ministries - kind of like Children's Fellowship (which Stephanie and I may just help out with this year) - but for two whole weeks - and Lori is also an artist as she painted the walls of rooms in this relatively new space for children (below).

Below is Sandy in the bookstore, for which she helps do the books, ordering, inventory control, marketing, etc. She gave me a Camp Sychar mug. (Next door was a buildilng with something linking it to the Oriental Missionary Society, which figured prominently in my stewardship talk last fall.) She obviously hoped I might come back, even for a while, some summer. I believe that I ate lunch (or dinner?) with Grandpa (and Grandma? - maybe 10 years ago - on the day I came up - and sat in their cabin. I don't think I went to a service or Bible study class. But I may have been there for only a couple of hours. Sychar is obviously a very important part of Sandy and Don's lives, and has an interesting history - intertwined with that of my family - and I was happy that she shared it with me - even though I didn't get on the road (for more meandering then) out of Mt. Vernon until almost 5 p.m. (after getting gas). More on the meandering later.

-- Perry