I Survived!!!

I survived the first day of teaching. It wasn't all pretty. There was a time or two when I was pretty incoherent, a joke or two that fell flat, and a few times I lost my train of thought. My throat is totally raw, and I'm exhausted (though that is primarily from lack of sleep). All in all, though, I thought it went fine.

There were also a couple of good moments. Hopefully, as the year goes on, there'll be a few more.

Thanks Emerald

Me.

I've been wanting to put this sketch, drawn by my friend Emerald McGowen about a year ago, on my blog for a while. I thought that it had been lost for the ages, but Emerald found a copy hiding somewhere. Take away the blue lines and add a freckle or two and a cap, and this is pretty much me.

At Least I Got Something to Talk About

Yeah, I'm a pretty quiet guy when I'm in a school setting, and it seems like a fairly daunting task to fill up an hour and a half each class period. I do think I have most of the first day thought out though (Do pray for me on this if you will. My first class I teach is Tuesday at eleven.)

I've spent a good deal of time thinking about what question I would ask my students on the first day. You know, the first day of class, everyone tells the class their name, major, hometown, and then the teacher asks some sort of question to get things started. What is your most embarrassing moment? What is the worst food you've ever eaten? What do you want to be when you grow up? etc.

I've been debating about whether I'd ask a goofy question or a serious one. I decided on both.

Last week, at orientation, I heard two questions that I liked better than the ones I had already thought up, and so I'm going to use them. They don't go together at all, but who cares? I have all the power in my classroom, and I can do that if I want.

The questions: "What is your the embarrassing cd or movie in your collection? And what is your favorite?" and "What was the last piece of advice your parents gave you before they left you here?"

The goal: I'm hoping something funny will happen with the movie/cd questions. That seems to be a question that might interest them or tell me a little something about them. The second question could also be funny, but I plan to use it. I think I can turn it into the discussion about their responsibilities in the classroom pretty easily, and that's my goal for the class period. It'll start out fairly light, but in the end, I'm out to scare them on Tuesday. It'll do 'em some good.

And just in case you wanted to know my answers to those questions, here they are.

What is the most embarrassing movie in my collection?
It kind of scared me how excited I got at the extra feature on my special edition Beauty and the Beast DVD that told me what character from the movie I am most like. (It's Belle by the way.)

And my favorite movie? Believe it or not, my favorite film is Kill Bill Vol. 2. It's not my usual tastes, but I can't help but love it.

What is the most embarrassing cd in my collection? The soundtrack to The Full Monty. No questions about this one please.

What is my favorite cd in my collection? I never thought anyone would eclipse James Taylor, but it has happened. My favorite album that I now own is The Collection by Jennifer Knapp. And "Martyrs and Thieves" is my favorite song.

What was the last piece of advice my parents gave me before leaving me at Tech? My Dad: "Look both ways crossing the streeet."

Yet Another Sad/Semi-Funny Adventure

So, I'm walking home yesterday. And I'm talking on the phone, which means that I'm not paying much attention to my walking. That's bad. So, I'm walking and I'm talking, and I see an African-American fellow riding on a bike toward me. This is on a sidewalk on the Tech campus. Anyway, this guy's arm is extended out somewhat, and he's holding up his hand. And I think, "Why does this dude want me to give him five as he rides his bike past me? That's strange." And then I think, "Well, I better do it or it'll look racist." So, the guy rides by, and I reach out and slap his hand. This doesn't work well, in part, because I have my keys in my hands and no time to put them in my pocket. Anyway, the guy rides on. I keep walking.

And about three steps later I realize that the guy wasn't wanting me to give him a high (or not extactly high...) five; he was just making a turn signal.

A Hero Yet Again

You see, every time I go to the movies, I end up being a hero. I just have a knack for it. What happens is that I go to the movies, and something almost inevitabley goes wrong. Either the sound will go off or the film will fall some way and the audio will keep going or the whole thing will shut down or I'll be watching a film with subtitles and the subtitles will be below the screen or the people will forget to start the film at all. There are lots of things that can go wrong with the movies, and I've seen them all. This is yet another way in which the Pierce curse reveals itself.

Of course, being a Pierce is both a blessing and a curse. All of that time fighting off the ill-effects of being cursed from birth, will produce the sort of battlehardened, heroic figure I have become. I have made some missteps along the way, but each mistake has only made me stronger. And my unimaginable heroism is on full display each time the movie shuts down.

Because, you see, every time the movie messes up, I get up out of my chair and walk through the theater, and tell the theater people that something has gone terribly wrong. And, forgive me for bragging, this is a great and heroic thing to do. In the last four-and-a-half years, I can actually count eleven times that the movie has messed up, and in those times, I have never once seen anyone else get up to tell the movie people. And I'm not extraordinarily quick about it either. That's really what makes me so amazing. At heart, I know I am a coward. I'm just like everyone else in the room; the last thing I want to do when the sound goes off is get up in front of everyone and go and tell the theater staff. Each time, I consider just sitting there for two hours so that I can complain afterward and get a refund. I don't though. I face my fears, and I stand up tall, and I step out into the dark stickiness, guided only by the little lights at my feet, and I stare those cowards sitting in their comfortable seats eating their popcorn-flavored butter in the eye, defying them, and I walk straight up to the guy sweeping the floor right outside the theater and I say, "Um, the sound went off," and he, knowing in just one glance at my sharp and boney elbows that I'm not a person he wants to mess with, says, "Alright." And I walk back to my seat with humility knowing that another day's work is done. And I enjoy the movie.

Of course, this happened tonight. Me and Will were talking about how that always happens to me before the movie started, and sure enough, when the movie started, the sound went off. I waited a while, thinking that maybe one of the people who was just walking into the theater might step out and notify the theater staff. They didn't. So then I got up and told the dude outside. They fixed it, we watched it, and a good time was had by all. All thanks to me.

When is somebody going to give me a medal?

Who was it that said that we humans are most true to ourselves when we're being inconsistant? Was is Oscar Wilde?

Whomever it was probably pretty close to right, though. And I am certainly not above being inconsistent.

That's why I'm returning to the subject of my rants yesterday when I complained about Tech's policy limiting theological thought in the classroom. Today, I'm not totally sure I was right.

You see, there's a small part of me that rejoices that our secular academies would rather not worry about having Christian thought in our classrooms. That may be sign of some moral growth in the church or at least a sign that things are falling into place for the church.

Because, you see, the church married Caesar about seventeen hundred years ago, and things haven't always been pretty since. And, of course, Caesar turned out to be rather a tyrannical hubby. Despite all the abuse this marriage has caused us, though, we've remained married all these years. I guess we thought it'd be good for the kids. It was in ways. The children have prospered. There's a whole lot of 'em, and they seem to be healthy and strong. They seem to have forgotten who their real father was though.

Things have changed though. Caesar may be getting tired of using us, and he's trying to kick us out. That's why part of me sees something good working in the implicit discrimination present in academia. If we finally leave Caesar, we can go back to our first love. I bet he'll take us back.

Sorry, I needed to go on a little rant for a while.

I was just reading through my "GPTI Handbook" and came across the following passage:


Religious Sensitivity

Religious topics may affect some students far more intensely than instructors imagine. Obviously religion will arise in many valid discussions, but the instructor has an obligation to avoid scrupulously any hint of religious bias or any suggestion of denigrating any religious belief, religious practice, or public policies based upon such beliefs and practices.

It is, unfortunately, all too easy for the instructor to cloak in sarcasm a position which the instructor finds silly or harmful but which the student may link to a deeply held religious belief. It is up to the instructor to recognize when such issues arise and to read his or her behavior accordingly.

The instructor should take pains to steer students away from writing about religion or social and political policies arising from religious belief, and the instructor should take further pains to encourage students to avoid using religious belief, liturgy, or the Bible as evidence to support a thesis or claim.

Specifically, the instructor should resist having students write about abortion, prayer in the schools, evolution versus creationism, and the validity of Holy Scripture.


Some of this is a little troubling to me, primarily the last two paragraphs. Of course, religion is a tricky topic in a diverse composition classroom. Of course, religion is a dangerous subject. As ol' Hauerwas (I think) says, "Any religion worth dying for can become a religion worth killing for." In a classroom context, it's sure to spark heated debate. Sure. But it seems a lot more dangerous to me to sweep it under the rug because it might cause impassioned feelings. A teacher can encourage mature thought on religious matters without either evangelizing or denigrating a religious view. In fact, that religious belief can be so dangerous is precisely the reason it should be discussed and debated in classrooms and in student writing. The impoverishment of religious thought in our American churches is largely a product our liberalistic (not "liberal") schools denying the students the opportunity to think about the matter. Students leave school with no ability to critically think and question the impoverished religious discourse surrounding them, and of course, that makes them vulnerable to the shallow pseudo-Christian/political ideologues running things at the moment. Certainly, our churches have to take a lot (in fact most) of blame for this too. We don't teach people how to think theologically, and we've basically given into liberalism. We've let Caesar run us for a long time now. But I think my school should also see that their decision to ignore religion in the classroom and in their students' lives isn't going to help things improve. Furthermore, it's difficult for me to see why writing theologically about a subject isn't valid. Certainly, a scientific argument against evolution that uses the Bible isn't valid and a legal argument using the Bible isn't either. A theological argument on these subjects, on the other hand, should be a perfectly valid context within which the students could draw on their faith. For instance, when I hear the question of abortion, I totally reject the use of legal language. I won't go into my thoughts here except to say that for me the subject is not at all an issue of rights. I wouldn't think any argument within a Christian theological context valid that appeals to human rights or that tries to determine when life begins. I can, however, recognize a good legal argument, written within an American legal context, and can assess how well the argument is made within that context. I could give a well made legal argument an A. I personally would not be influenced by it because I reject the narrative forming such an American legal argument, but I could assess the writing that occurs within that context fairly. It seems to me that our system should be the same. Just because certain individuals within our academic program reject and are not comfortable with any religious narrative doesn't mean that they should deny their students the opportunity to write within those contexts. I don't want to make this argument on the basis of rights either, though I think that argument could easily be made. It just seems that the department is showing their students an enormous lack of respect and is doing a great disservice to them (though, of course, this is nothing new).

ACU keeps looking better and better every day.

I'm getting scared. You know how it is. You have a large challenge coming up in the future, and it doesn't seem like a big deal for so long, and then, it suddenly hits. Well, it finally hit me today that I'm actually teaching three sections of freshman composition. And not only am I in charge of three freshman classes, I was also today put in charge of six other freshman instructors. I'm the person who's supposed to make sure these instructors' grading and classroom practices are working within the system. That's a very strange position. Several of the people in my group are far more experienced than I. I'm the lowly not-even-received-a-master's student who's supposed to oversee several near Phds. It's strange. And, of course, I can't stand the composition system we have here anyway. So it goes.

I'm also a little excited, at least about the teaching. I've been trying to think of cool ways to start the class. I'm a little frustrated that I didn't get the book I'm teaching out of until this week (AAAAAAARrrrrrrggghhh!) and haven't been able to prepare much. It's going to be a lot of work, but I think I'll like it.

Reminder #11

Yeah, don't listen to Pat Robertson either.

Reminder #10

If you ever feel the need to shave your legs, remember to shave both of them. (I can't attest to this, but my sister says that it's useful advice.)

Free Books (and other stuff too)!!!!!

I recently became aware of a really wonderful website that I'd recommend highly. It's put together by the Bruderhof Communities, a remarkable group of Christians who truly strive to embody the principles of peace, faith, justice, community, and simplicity that Christ preached. I've recently had my attention drawn to the theologies of the Mennonites and Anabaptists, and Bruderhof is largely influenced by Anabaptist theology. I definitely think that Christianity in our culture should look a little more like the Bruderhof communities.

The Bruderhof website has two features that particularly interest me. Of course, the English major in me loves that they offer a lot of FREE E-BOOKS!!!!!! Seriously, they're totally free. You don't even leave an email address. And they're wonderful books. I downloaded a collection of Tolstoy's short stories of faith, Walking in the Light. Oscar Romero's The Violence of Love was there, and there were a lot of wonderful Eberhof Arnold selections. All of these were on my Amazon Wish-list, and now, I get them for free (it's even legal). These are classic devotional books that a lot of people would love.

Secondly, there's the "Daily Digs." Bruderhoff sends out an inspirational quote from major Christian thinkers every morning. They do a really fine job of it.

I just thought I'd pass this along.

My Grades

I had five goals for this summer.

1. Rest.
2. Write my Master’s portfolio project.
3. Write lesson plans for those two classes I’m teaching next fall.
4. Write something for publication (even if it doesn’t get published).
5. Figure out what I’m going to do in December when I graduate (seminary, teaching in a community college, English PhD program, etc.).

The Assessment

1. Rest – A+ – I did do some mighty fine resting. This summer, I really needed to rest mentally. It’s almost impossible to describe the type of strain graduate school puts on you. It’s intense. You never rest your mind. Not even when you’re sleeping, because the question or problem you were mulling over in your mind is there the whole night. Moments of peace are far too rare in this sort of life, and I desperately need them to keep myself oriented.

2. Write my Master’s portfolio – F – I flunked this one totally. I had my panel and everything together going into the summer, and I told them I’d probably get this written over the summer. I tried to start it about two weeks ago, and I ended up restarting it about four times before giving it up for the rest of the summer. I’ll probably give it another shot starting Monday.

3. Writing Lesson Plans – C – I still haven’t written anything, but I still give myself a passing grade on this one. I was expecting Tech to get me some sort of copy of the book I am teaching out of in June. They got it to me last week. It’s difficult to think of very good lesson plans when you don’t know what you’re teaching yet. I do have some ideas though (those poor students).

4. Write for publication – F – I still have an idea or two, but by about halfway through the summer, this didn’t seem that important, and I decided to not care about it.

5. Figure out what I’m going to do in December when I graduate – D – Believe me, this is the one I spent the most time on this summer. I did a lot of reading and writing and praying with this one in mind (even though I decided to not post much on my blog about this). At moments, the answer seems so clear, and at times, it is anything but. I know I’ll write about this one at more length throughout the semester, so I’ll leave it at that for now. I’m a pretty confused puppy.

Reminder #9

The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.

Blood, Sweat, and Tears

I hate packing day. That’s the day where you’re packing up all your stuff to move somewhere else. I particularly hate packing day when I’m moving somewhere from Menard.

I hate packing day for several reasons. First of all, it’s a lot of work. I was on my feet from nine o’clock this morning until now (past midnight) running up and down stairs, packing (particularly books), loading cars, picking up a piano, buying mattresses (and somehow cutting myself while loading them), washing cars, cleaning churches, cooking lunch, watering flowers, feeding animals, doing laundry, and plenty of other stuff. It left me totally worn out.

More importantly though, it’s so sad. My home in Menard is certainly my safe place. There’s nothing that can happen to me here. Everything is so intense in grad school. Pretty much every day, I get challenged by a new idea that I have to account for. There’s not a way to get oriented without being dishonest. I’m not saying that this isn’t a decent way to be, at least for a while. I would go through grad school again, and I’ll go through a lot more of it before I’m done, no matter which path I choose. The growth that I think I’ve made couldn’t not have happened without this challenge, and I wouldn’t trade it. But sometimes I need some distance from the life you’re living. And Menard is the furthest thing from grad school you can get. Here, the people who’ve loved me my whole life are together, as are the stories that have shaped me the longest. Menard is safe, and coming back here helps me to remember who I am. That’s a nice feeling that’s difficult to let go, even when I know that taking the next step in my life requires doing so.

And I HATE leaving my parents. I’m not exaggerating at all when I say that I have the best parents you possibly could have. There’s no way parents could possibly have loved Kalyn and me more than they have. They devoted their lives to us, and they hate to see us go. Mom starts crying days in advance of our departure and doesn’t stop until a few days after we are gone. As for Dad, I’ve only seen him cry about four times in my life, and three of those were when he was leaving either Kalyn or me. Even though it’s necessary and even though I know my parents do okay here by themselves, I still hate doing that to them. And, of course, even though I talk to them almost every day, I miss them both when I’m gone.

Anyway, I’ve made it through packing day, and I’m going to bed now. I’ve a long day tomorrow (unpacking day) moving my sister into her new apartment in Abilene before I head off to Lubbock. Unpacking day isn’t quite so bad, but still, this is about the one time of the year that I’m looking forward to Monday.

Reminder #8 (to self)

Never write or say anything stupid ever again.

I am insane.

I am insane. It's not quite official, but since I'm getting ready to move back to the Wasteland for a few months, I'm pretty sure of it.

Playin' Da Foosball Like a Real Nerd

I just got my fantasy football team. I'm such a dork. Back in high school, I was obsessed with sports, and during my undergrad days, I thought I was getting over it. But then I got to grad school, and nothing at all about life was sane except sports, so now I'm a bigger fanatic than ever, and this summer I finally joined the real sports nerd fanatics and started playing fantasy baseball, and now I'm starting fantasy football. It's pathetic (though at least I don't pay for my league). Anyway, I just got my team and my league, and these are the team names of my competition.

Chaos (really original)
shwag (I'm sure this is another one of those curse words I haven't learned yet.)
Ky Steelers (more originality)
Cocks (plural?)
piropup (Seemingly, there's a "pyro" team in every league.)
Ummmm Beer (I'm sure my biggest competition.)
KENTUCKY KRUSHERS (I can't figure out if this person hates Kentucky or is from Kentucky.)
patriots1989 (more originality)
Booker T Killer (this guy must be really old)

And of course my team name: Martyrs

I kind of like the contrast and the excuse for losing. I always thought that ACU should have honored our Christian heritage and called themselves the Martyrs, but since they never picked up my idea, I'll just keep using it.

Oh Happy Day!!!!!!!

I've always thought that once you're assigned a holiday, that just means that all the other days aren't your days. I may be wrong, but anyway, I guess you should do the best with what you got.

Which is, of course, why today is such an awesome day for me!!!!!!!! No, August 13th hasn't yet been named John Carol Pierce, Jr. Day (if that prospect ever arises, I'd prefer that holiday to be in October around my birthday). Today is LEFT HANDERS DAY!!!!!!!

We poor lefties really do need a day. After all, we put up with being discriminated against constantly. Just think about it; all kinds of things from our ink pens and scissors to our power tools to our cars and highways are right-handed. Our teachers and coaches don't know how to handle us. We left handed people even have shorter life spans than righties. (My theory for this: deaths cause by road rage from people who hate our tendency to drive in the left lane.) Christianity even seems to have something against us (Christ sitting on God's right hand, people on Christ's left going to Hell in Matt 25, etc.).

Plus, we're soooooo wonderful. If you ignore the couple of odd ducks like Napoleon, Richard Simmons, and Celine Dion, there are some pretty cool left handers out there like ol' Leonardo Da Vinci, Michaelangelo, Lewis Carroll, Douglas Adams, Charlie Chaplin, Mozart, Jimmy Hendricks, Babe Ruth, and me.

So anyway, for all you righties out there, if you have some left-handed friends, this is the day to throw them a party or lavish them with gifts or give them a party or something. You can go back to torturing us tomorrow. :-)

Recent Recommendations

Not much has been going on here lately. Mainly, I’ve been sittin’ around working on my final project for my Masters degree. The result is that I haven’t had much to say (as if I ever do). I have taken a few small breaks, though, from my writing to watch a couple of movies. There have been some good ones.

In particular, I would recommend the movie A Very Long Engagement. It’s a foreign film that stars Audrey Tautou (the girl from Amelie, another good movie). She’s a woman who was engaged before the start of World War I, and her fiancé never came back. Everyone tells her that he was executed on the front lines for cowardice. Her instincts, however, continually tell her that he’s still alive, and she sets out to piece together the truth. The result is a surprisingly original and complex mystery/romance/war movie (you’d of thought the World War I love sage would have been done to death by now). I’d recommend this to just about anybody. There’s a nice mixture of romance, suspense, and (a little bit of) comedy that will please people of a lot of tastes. I found it really satisfying; I watched it twice. (And if you watch it and like it, I would recommend the classic novel Random Harvest by James Hilton.)

I’d also highly recommend Hotel Rwanda. Just about every blog that I read regularly had recommended this at one point or another, particularly for Christians to see, and I finally got around to watching it. The moviemaking was slightly flawed, but that couldn’t overcome the tremendous story that was being told. It’s about a man who saves hundreds of people during the Rwandan genocide. Everything about it was gut wrenching, particularly when you consider that the killing was done by Christians, that the west offered very little response it, that the west did nothing to prevent the genocide despite clear warning, and that the conditions that resulted in such bloodshed was largely brought about by western colonialism. This is really sort of a must-see for people in these times.

I’m also currently reading The Constant Gardener by John LeCarre. It’s another pretty chilling story set in Africa. So far, I’d recommend it highly, and considering the people who are involved in making the movie, I bet it’s good, too.

The Sky Is Falling In!!!!

I was just outside, and it started raining, very lightly, on me. It surprised me because I hadn’t known it was going to rain (and I was watering some of my tomato plants). I, of course, looked up at the sky to see what kind of storm was coming, and I got a bit more of a surprise. There wasn’t a cloud in sight. Seriously. Even though it was twilight, the sky was already filled with stars just everywhere around me; there were no clouds at all blocking the view. No clouds at all anywhere that I could see. None. I also wasn’t under a tree that was dripping water, and I was nowhere near a building. There were no people hiding in the bushes with water guns, and there were no birds flying overhead. It was just raining without clouds.

Crazy things like this seem to happen to me a lot. Do they only happen to me? Maybe I just need to get new glasses.

On My Mind...

“But is it so entirely clear that we won the war [World War II]? Wasn’t there a sense in which we were defeated in that war, and I don’t mean only by the early disasters? I would say that we were defeated to the extent that we became like the enemy we opposed. Early in the war we condemned the Germans for their indiscriminate bombing of civilians. By 1943 or 1944 we were engaging in the most terrible bombing of civilians in history. Hundreds of thousands died in the firebombing of Dresden, Tokyo, and other German and Japanese cities. And then on August 6 and 9 the United States unleashed the only two atom bombs ever to be used, unleashed them on the large, crowded cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As an eighteen-year-old at the time, looking forward to immediate induction into the army, I like most other Americans, had no doubt that using the atom bomb was the right thing to do. Only considerably later did I come to see it as second only to the Holocaust among the crimes of the twentieth century.”
--Robert Bellah in “Seventy-Five Years”



Today marks the sixtieth anniversary of the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima. On that day, somewhere around 140,000 civilians were killed immediately by the dropping of an atomic bomb. In time, about double that number would die from burns and from radiation poisoning. The future generations born of Hiroshima’s survivors did not escape the effects of the radiation either, as thousands more were to be stricken with severe diseases and disfigurements. To add insult to injury, those survivors affected by the bomb, the hibakushka, were made pariahs in their society for fear of contamination. It’s not much of a leap to say that the bombing of Hiroshima was one of the largest, if not the largest, terrorist attacks in history.

Tonight, I’m keeping Hiroshima in mind as I pray. I’m praying for the 85,000 surviving hibakushka. And I’m also praying for the church in these difficult times. I’m praying for forgiveness for the atrocities we’ve helped commit and are currently committing. And I’m praying that God will grant us the courage and the faithfulness to cease being culpable in tragedies like Hiroshima and to start being the sort of peaceable people He calls us to be.

Reminder #7

When you visit Galveston, don’t stay at the Motel 6.


Actually, it can be alright to stay at the Motel 6 if there’s nowhere else to go or if you are on a very tight budget (the reason we stayed there), but do take several precautions:

1. Make sure that you are the only ones booked to stay in your room.

When we showed up to room #125 last weekend, somebody else had beaten us in there, and believe me, this very large, very scary looking fellow that was already there did not seem very happy to see me barge into his room. He didn’t say a word to me, but his glare was awfully painful as he stared through me on my walk all the way back to the car (Kalyn and Mom, sitting in the car, were just about crying from fear at this dude’s look).

2. Kill all the mosquitoes in the room before you go to sleep.

When I first got into our new room (right next to the pool), I noticed several mosquitoes flying around. Later that night, when we got back to the room, I noticed more, and Dad, Mom, and I went after them before they could get us in our sleep (we’re old pros at dealing with mosquitoes). Anyway, we whipped off our flip-flops and smeared those bloody little bodies all over the walls of that room. We counted over forty in about twenty minutes of work. After they were all dead, we didn’t see anymore for the rest of our stay. I know this all sounds terrible, but seriously, killing those mosquitoes was awesome!!! Believe me, this is a fun family activity if you ever need one! We got plenty good laughs and some good pictures out of it. This probably wouldn’t be so fun if we hadn’t been from Menard (where we learned to enjoy these simple pleasures of life), so I wouldn’t recommend this activity at Motel 6 to quite everyone. But if you make this best of the situation, it can be okay.

I'm Back

Well, I’ve obviously been out of pocket for a while. We had the first Pierce family vacation in several years, and so I had been out of town for a few days. We all had a very nice time.

This year, we basically repeated a vacation that we had taken a little over ten years ago. (We Pierces have a habit (not a bad one) of going to the same places we’ve gone before.) First, we spent a few days in Galveston. We had gone there years before for mine and Kalyn’s first look at the ocean, and that trip had been something of a failure. Among other things that went wrong, Kalyn and I only got to spend about twenty minutes in the Gulf. I’ve gotten to go back since then to the ocean (including Hawaii), but Kalyn hadn’t. So, we thought we would go back to Galveston to do some of the things we didn’t get to do before. Galveston’s also the place where my parents spent their honeymoon, so we wanted to see some of the places they went then.

And Galveston’s really a wonderful place. It’s sort of like a little New Orleans—gaudy, trashy, beautiful, and utterly fascinating. We spent a lot of time going through some of the beautiful old mansions there that survived the hurricane of 1900, and we went down to all of the shops that are built along the port. We ate some great seafood. We rode the ferry. And, of course, we spent a lot of time swimming which was so much fun. Swimming was particularly fun on the second day we were there because, for some reason, there were thousands and thousands of minnow-like fish in the water all around us and hundreds of gulls and some pelicans around us trying to get an easy dinner. It probably sounds a little gross (though we were able to get away from the fish when we wanted to), but it was pretty cool to see.

After staying a couple of days, we went down to San Antonio, which I always love. I’ve been there a lot of times in the last few years, but none of us had been to Fiesta Texas or to the zoo in over a decade. Those were both places we loved when we were little, and we decided to go back. The zoo has changed a lot over the years, and it was really beautiful. The coolest thing (at least for me) was that I developed a fascination with cranes this summer (I have no idea why), and they had a large “Cranes of the World” exhibit visiting. Fiesta Texas was also a lot of fun. The shows were great, and the rides were fun (though they’ve left me with an aching back).

Anyway, it was a nice few days, but now I’m glad to be in Menard for a couple more weeks. (And I’m definitely not ready to go back to Lubbock.)