It's the end of a looooooong week here in Chapel Hill. Shel and I have been working late almost every night, and we've been taking care of a lot of housebuying-related chores as well. On top of it all, Shel was seriously ill earlier this week -- running a 103 fever for two days, among other things. She's still recovering from what doctors think was an allergic reaction.

I woke up this morning thinking about how long we've lived in our place here. Or Chapel Hill, for that matter. CH doesn't seem like home, even now -- every place we go feels tentative, or deferred, or something. Not sure I have the word; it's like a suspended sense of resolution associated with the locale. I guess because we've always known we'd be leaving this place, once we finished school. Of course, it's been two years since I went on leave from UNC, and we're still here, working.

It will be good for us to leave Chapel Hill behind. This place has seen so much misery in our lives: the first two terrible years of our marriage; a graduate student experience notable for how little interest was taken in us by our professors (year after %#@&ing year); the mounting student loans to prop up that grad school life; diagnosis of various ailments, including bi-polar syndrome, chronic depression, ADHD, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and a raging caffeine addiction; and of course the terror and despair of feeling my evangelical perspective implode.

But yes, Shel and I have really loved the home in which we live, all of the above laments notwithstanding. Thanks to a new digital camera, I've been taking some snaps of the place to help us remember it. We have made this little duplex a home over the past six years. Shel has thrived like an orchid in the profusion of light through the big windows all around, and being able to hear the birdies is nice. I would like to shoot that dog across the way, though -- the one that yips all night long.

So what will we miss about our home and Chapel Hill? I think the following list starts to get at it:

• The sound of rainshowers on the tin roof
• The roasty-toasty feel of a warm woodstove fire -- our sole source of winter heat!
• The feel of cool concrete beneath my feet on a spring morning.
• The screened-in porch, where many a pipe was lit with Frog Morton on the Town.
• Trips to Cookout and Goodberry's with CH and WH
• Pepper's Pizza

• Biscuits and gravy at Elmo's Diner
• The Stella Insalate at 411 West, and their fresh rolls
• Gail and the whole gang at Carrburritos -- the only place where they would correct my call-in order when I forgot something!
• Chipotle salsa, flour chips, and the carnitas burrito at Carrburritos
• Swearing at the lawnmower at the top of my lungs
• That old karate striking post in the yard
• Barbecue at Allen & Sons: eating in a sparsely decorated cinder-block bunker, served by a surly high-school girl who's rather be painting her toenails and having a smoke.
• The attic fan, and our cathedral (sort of) ceilings.

Hmmm...I know there's more; what about the rest of you? Are there things about Chapel Hill or where we live that you'll miss seeing when you come to visit?

For a number of years now, Shel has complained of the cats monopolizing her space on the bed. Many's the morn when I wake up to a grumpy honey who can speak only of how little room she had during the night, thanks to the furry purries curling up around her at the most inopportune times--as in, mid-turn on the bed, or while lifting an arm--and staking out their pad for the evening. Understandably, to this point I inferred nothing deliberate about their actions; while I could plainly see the effects produced (a bad morning attitude), I wasn't sure how much credence should be lent to the slightly absurd claim that the cats were out to oust her.

But I fear I must reconsider my assumptions, though much to my dismay. Having stolen quietly into the bedroom one recent afternoon to grab some shoes, I came upon Edmund engaged in what can only be interpreted as a premeditated attempt to dislodge Shel from where she lay napping. As you will plainly see, he was putting all of his not-so-mickle might into the effort.



Edmund's brother has been notably quiet on the subject, and has shunned media coverage.

No more treats for you, bed hogs!

For those of you who have been on another planet for the past week, Shel and I found a place to live in Chicago. It's in Oak Park, and it's a one-bedroom condominium. I think Shel sent the link out for all of the pictures related to the place, but for the lazy among you, you can just click here

Meanwhile, life at work has accelerated, which I hadn't believed possible. They've moved me into a new role: I'm now Manager of Faculty Development, which means I manage myself and two other people. ;-) What's cool, though, is that I get to spearhead our efforts at building programs with adjunct instructors and subject matter experts.

It reminds me of a conversation I had about five years ago, in another life as a graduate student. I was sitting in a seminar with my then-professor James Thompson; we were all talking about the state of the profession and the situation for tenure. As you might imagine, it was not a cheery conversation. James related to us the prediction that schools would be moving away from the old-style model of tenured faculty teaching 1-2 courses a year to a more corporate configuration, where stables full of adjuncts teaching 8-9 courses a year would report to a single manager. As hopeful future tenured faculty ourselves, I and my colleagues were aghast at the prospect.

And now, five years later, it turns out that I'm the foretold manager in question. Soon, I'll be slouching toward a school near you. Bwa ha ha ha haaa!

I went this weekend to see my brother TJS race at the WERA Cycle Jam at Virginia International Raceway. He was the national champion last year in WERA's Class A Superbike Novice division, and was moved into Expert division this year.

Well, I watched the first race, and TJS didn't fare so well, thanks to insufficient spacing between his new steering damper and the weather seal on his steering column. He had installed it that morning, and had neglected to give it enough clearance to keep from rubbing against the weather seal. Thus, the steering damper was really putting a damper on his ability to steer. He was having to force the steering the whole race, and ending up placing poorly. Let's just say that little issue left a black cloud hanging over little brother's mood for the rest of the day. After his first race, we headed down to the barn/pavilion/cantina for lunch. We ate barbecue sandwiches and kicked back to watch what is apparently both popular and famous for being the dumbest race of the day: the Class C Superstock Novice division. This is the race that most of the newbies start in, and so not only is it the most crowded (four full waves of riders), it's crowded with some of the most dangerous riders out there. And all of them are on 600cc machines.

There were guys sitting in the pavilion who were taking bets on how many laps this race would last before a red flag. *** Racing Note! a "red flag" is thrown when someone wrecks such that the race officials cannot clear the debris off of the track in time for the next lap. The race is restarted when this happens, no matter how many laps have been raced. *** The guys who bet on Lap 1 collected the money; on the third turn, 5 guys went down. Take 2: 6 riders down in the first turn! Take 3: a guy stalled at the start, but failed to follow the protocol--which was repeatedly stressed during the riders' meeting that morning--and tried to get it going again rather than throwing up his arms to alert the riders behind him. So, as expected, he got plowed into. As you might imagine, folks were bored and annoyed at this point. See, if a race is restarted, that delays the schedule for the rest of the day as well. When the racers crashed again on the second restart, the officials gave up and moved the raced to the next day.

Later, we sat around in the heat, watched rednecks ride by with blurry blue tattoos and sunburned pot bellies, and TJS was pretty quiet for a couple of hours. I think it really bothered him that he had had trouble in the morning race thanks to a simple oversight; and given that WERA charges like $75 per race, I can at least partially understand.

But he got his game back on for his second race, in a big way. He started on the first row, and got the "hole-shot" (he was the first guy to get to the initial turn). In this four-lap race, TJS led the pack for the entire first lap! He lost the lead going into the first turn of the second lap, but looked strong throughout the race. He finished fourth! I gotta say, seeing my bro out there screaming down a straight at 170 mph, and then cornering like a champ was about the coolest thing I've seen recently. Yes, cooler than Kill Bill. I watched a lot of riders that day, and by the end of the day was able to pick out some basic things as I watched: engine rpms, shifting, ability to take the apex of the turn, and how late into the turn they were breaking. Also, I was observing from the same spot for the majority of the day, so I had a decent perspective on the good, the bad, and the ugly. In that respect, despite the annoyance of the heat and the relentless sun, I'm thankful that TJS's second race was so late in the day; by the time he got out there I was used to watching, and I was able to see--even if only with the eyes of the uninitiated--what a talented rider he is. Kudos to you, brother. I was proud, standing there watching.

Sunday morning, I got up at 6:15 a.m., threw on my running togs, and with Shel, EW and SCW, made my way down to Soldier Field, where the inaugural run of the Windy City Relay was being held. We of course stopped by the local Starbucks on the way there, and dosed up on the daily bold blend (regular coffee, black; I figured that the dairy in a latte would precipitate disaster in the field).

Now the relay is apparently the latest trend in running madness: you get a coupla people together and take turns running specified lengths. You have a Champion Chip, so you get timed on each leg of the race, and you give the chip to your relay partner when it's his or her turn to run.

This was a 10k two-person relay, and so EW and I were each running a 5k. For running geeks, it turns out that that the accepted wisdom here is that the fastest runner takes the last leg, serving as the anchor. We were both there just for a laugh, and to do something together in the process of building our friendship. So I went first and EW went second.

The race was held along a path that runs by Lake Michigan, and it was a gorgeous, cool morning. As you can see, I, uh...I hadn't finished my coffee, really, by the start of the race, and so here I am sipping it until just before starting. What can I say? They tell me that coffee helps a morning run. I guess they might not have been talking about 16 oz's worth, though. Note the guy on the right looking at me like, "what the?" Oh well. I'm comfortable with my priorities.

And my previous best 5k time was a 25:40, run with Karen at the Toys for Tots Trot in Seattle last November. I was not expecting to finish better than that, because it kind of blew me away that I could average 8:15 or so per mile. But I knew that this course would be flat, where the Seattle course was nothing but hills, and that I was used to running on hills.

I came out of the gate a little too fast, and so I was suffering a bit by the third mile. But in a 5k, the idea is that you are at a near-sprint the whole way, since you don't have to save anything for long miles later on. I tried to ignore the pain and push on, but I know I flagged a bit on the last stretch.

Turns out I crossed the transition line (where my leg ended and EW's began) with a time of 22:26. That's a 7:14 mile; how in hell did that happen? I am getting faster; I still can't hear the Bionic Man sounds yet, but I understand that comes soon. EW's finish was a terrific 26:02 (8:23 mile) despite some last-minute heckling by a stupid git on the sidelines. That man was later found and beaten. Our total time was a 49:17, or an average 7:56 mile. Not too shabby! Then they fed us tons of great food -- free sandwiches, sports drinks, Naked fruit drinks, cookies the size of scones, and fresh fruit. Eeeeeeyummaaaaay! What a terrific race it was.



News of the Weird! After the race, they awarded prizes for placing in the race in various categories, and then they held a raffle for some prizes and such. After all of that, though, they had a bizarre contest in which adult men were challenged to hula-hoop for 60 seconds straight. Fortunately for yours truly, my hip is a bit gamey after a run, and as such was too tight to venture into the depths of self-embarrassment that taking on the challenge would precipitate. One guy managed 52 seconds and failed -- oh, the shame. Pictured here is the winner, together with a man who is not Al Sharpton. The man who is not Al Sharpton was working for the radio station, and was circling around the contenders counting to 60 in an inspired shout and going through the physical contortions of an old-time itinerant revival preacher.

And what did the winner get? An 80's CD compilation, which EW quickly determined was not worth the cost in dignity. Thus ended our adventure at the first Windy City Relay; long may it run!

In some recent private correspondence, I've been made aware that there's a perception I've been witholding a part of myself for the past couple of years -- ever since the faith shake-up. That is, I've not shared much about the inner me with those close to me.

I've been trying to process this assessment for a couple of days. It isn't that I don't want to share myself with others -- shoot, this blog is a case in point. But there are parts of the faith question that I have definitely kept out of conversation with others, and I think that's been sensed by others. I won't initiate faith conversations much these days. I don't talk much about God, except to marvel at how little we can actually know about such a being outside of tradition.

I used to think that it was plainly obvious that "the heavens are telling the glory of god", that God is plainly evident "through what has been made, so that [I am] without excuse". But now, I look around me and see a lot of data, but I see no clear logical warrants or implications. Time passes, as it always has. One thing leads to another, which of course begs the question of what or who the first thing was. But as to the question of what leads us to think that that first thing is the God of Genesis, or the Father of lights in James, is far less certain.

Every so often I grab some beer and pizza with a friend, and we talk about how we're doing. I ask him questions about his life, his marriage, his studies, etc. He does the same for me. I don't think I'm holding back much when we talk (he can of course feel free to contradict or speak to that in the comments section), but that's because the guy has been alongside me the whole time, and has watched me grapple with and voice so many concerns that my anxieties about God don't freak him out.

So about a month ago we're sitting in Starbucks, watching people pass on the sidewalk in the Chapel Hill dusk: folks getting on about their lives, cars driving by, panhandlers, the evening streetlights coming on. I asked, "Does it ever occur to you that in the end, regardless of what we read and hear and think and say we know, that nobody really ever knows what the deal is about God, or what happens when we die?" My friend, who is steeped in the Baptist tradition and the proud son of missionaries, paused, and then replied, "Yep. We're all just grasping at straws." And then he sat there thoughtful and silent. No qualifications, no emendations, no cleaning it up.

That answer, in its brutal honesty at the remains of the day, was more life-giving than a hundred attempts to cajole me into giving up my ostensibly misguided approach to historicism.

But ask yourself: would you be able to give that answer? I imagine that few would be able to help but try to bring the focus of such a conversation around to a more conventionally positive or scripturally based assertion of God's identity and essential goodness. And, to be frank, those answers consequently step out of the discomfort, and do little to help.

And that's why I keep my mouth shut.

I'm sitting on a flight from Nashville to Raleigh Durham, a Southwest affair that would have been much pleasanter if it had been the one-way flight I had previously thought it to be instead of the two-stage detour through Music City. I need to read the flight schedules more carefully the next time I fly. The plane is hot, and I'm more or less sleep-deprived, from a series of evenings spent trying to finish and release content for a client. My flight was delayed initially leaving Chicago Midway, but at least I had time to change out of my business vestments and into jeans and a t-shirt. I tried to doze on the first leg a bit, leaning my head against the window and shutting my lids the moment I boarded. It might have worked, but the guy in the aisle seat kept loudly joking with the woman seated next to me. I thought about reaching for the pack of earplugs I keep with me at all times during travel -- making an obnoxiously exaggerated arm motion, with an annoyed sniff -- but in the end I just sucked it up and stayed annoyed. Maybe next time an outright, 120-decibel guffaw would do the trick. I did doze a bit, but when I woke, because the plane is so warm, I could feel my jeans sticking to my legs, and the gross pre-rash moisture of back sweat in a too-new tshirt.

And here come the peanuts -- two bags per customer, as the flight is too short to warrant full-fledged snack mix on one of the few remaining profitable airlines. The guy next to me is conforming to the general picture of the business traveler -- suit, dress watch, engrossed in a thick hardback politico-miltary thriller novel by some no-name book-of-the-month author who will never be remembered after the moment -- one week from now -- when the traveler drops the book off at whatever used book stall his current airport boasts, and picks up something from the book vending machines on his way to the next flight to Houston. The pilot comes over the intercom, dutifuly playing his accustomed role of the intrepid, slightly-salty-but-still-trustworthy captain: "Aahhhhhhhhnnnnnwelcomeaboardfolks --- we'rrrrrrrrrrrrr....currentlycruisingat --- analtitudeovvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv.....twentyseb'nthousandfeet". I wonder if they learn that kind of strange halting meter and lingo in flight school? The same way that preachers in the South learn to say "Jeeee-uh-zuuuus!" Is there a mini-course they all take somewhere, devoted to career-specific speech patterns?

Speaking of convention, this reminds me of a certain biker dude on my flight up here Tuesday. He was a biker off his bike, and like many Harley owners, he seemed unsettled by the thought of taking a plane: "Mongo no take big bird! Mongo ride Fat Boy!" The only comfort left to such as he is to proclaim his true identity as a serious bike dude by sporting acceptable, away-from-my-ride-but-only-temporarily biker casual wear: jeans, a trucker's hat, and the obligatory black Harley-Davidson t-shirt. His t-shirt was emblazoned in orange and white with the slogan "you never see a motorcycle parked outside a psychiatrist's office," which I took as proof that even t-shirt copywriters mail it in somedays. Maybe the writer was pressed for time, and late for his own psychiatric appointment. If you got stuck writing t-shirt slogans for Harley-Davidson, I'm betting you'd have more than your fair share of counseling bills: "I write for a living, but I don't live to write, much less live to write about riding to live and living to ride; I'm so confused, doctor! And why are there no motorcycles in your parking lot?" Eeeyep.

Geez, when will this flight arrive? Cap'n Crusty up there said 8:15PMorrrrrrrrrrrrr...thereabouts; I'm looking forward to a late dinner with Shel at Pepper's.

Did I say Cap'n Crusty? Based on his landing, a better epithet would be Cap'n Crunch. Good thing they build 'em sturdy.

My membership packet for the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development arrived today. Woo hoo! I've been cruising around on the website and looking at all the online resources. It's a goldmine, folks -- finally some good work on problem-based learning. What's that? You say you don't know what problem-based learning is? Well, allow me!

Problem-based learning is an instructional strategy whereby students are presented with a real-world problem to solve at the outset of a learning experience (whether it be a seminar, a course unit, weekly topic, etc.), and they have some -- but not all -- of the resources required to solve it. Through a process of research, questioning, reflection, and trial, they must identify the various aspects of the problem, figure out what knowledge or resources they need to solve it, obtain them, and proceed to architect and construct a solution. This technique introduces students to the data, skills, and perspective required to solve problems in an applied context.

For example, one team-building activity used in a number of professional development retreats is to have the attendees (usually all employees at the same company) prepare dinner. They are grouped into teams, and the teams enter a room and are confronted with multiple kitchen tables. On each table waits an assorted group of ingredients, and the task to prepare a particular course (but not a specific recipe). There's no cookbook, but a chef stands by each table, silent as the Buddha. He or she will not speak, except to answer direct questions from the cooking teams. So what do the teams have to figure out? They have to know

• What their collective previous cooking experience is
• What kinds of things the ingredients can be combined to form without causing violent stomach heaving
• What they don't know about how to make those dishes: techniques of preparation, sequence, etc.
• How to ask specific questions that target the exact needs they have (otherwise, the chef won't answer)
• How best to organize and distribute their efforts as a team to produce the desired dish
• And perhaps most importantly, what kinds of things should they absolutely not do? What mistakes lie out there waiting to be made? How might they avoid them?

In other words, the class gets to explore the topics under study in a hands-on process of discovery and self-education. I highly recommend trying it in the classroom; if you teach, give it a shot! I think you'll see that PBL affords an instructor a wealth of possibilities for helping students master learning at all levels, from basic knowledge and comprehension on up to sophisticated approaches to anaylsis and evaluation.

So I watched Tarantino's Kill Bill vol. 1 this morning, finally wading past the intangible feeling of resistance that I developed listening to other people shake their heads in reproof of what they deemed the film's gratuitous violence.

It's been a long time since I watched a film that was so completely tailor-made for me.

It is in its entirety a stylistic, aesthetic experience; like Pulp Fiction, this film doesn't really tell a revenge story so much as it tells a story about certain film genres. As is typical for Tarantino, the dialogue deserves an award -- it's a loving parody of classic samurai and western films. They even do the action zoom-in on the characters' eyes just before a fight breaks out!

From the moment the film opens in "Shaw Scope," devotees of Saturday afternoon kung fu cinema will know that this baby is for them. What I thought was simply a kooky way to start the credits morphed into shock and finally thrill as I saw that Tarantino pays homage not only to conventions of sixties and seventies action films, but to the stars of those films themselves. Most notable: the presence of Sonny Chiba and Gordon Liu. Chiba, for those not familiar with his work, starred in some of the most enjoyable, most violent martial arts films in Japan during the seventies -- such as the Street Fighter series (no, not the Capcom franchise -- think karate experts and pressurized fountains of blood) films. His character here, swordmaker and ninja descendant Hattori Hanzo, is a reference to the character Chiba played in the long-running series Shadow Warriors. Gordon Liu was the star of umpty-ump Hong Kong martial arts films: for his magnum opus, you want to see 36th Chamber of Shaolin, where he plays the part of a young man who goes to become a monk at the Shaolin Temple, er, bent on revenge, and uh, oh just finish the story yourself. There's massive buttkicking, okay? Well worth seeing, I can assure you.

And let's not forget references to the great one himself: Thurman's costume for this film is taken from that worn by Bruce Lee in the incomplete film Game of Death, wherein Lee actually fights Kareem Abdul-Jabbar!

The "Bill" to be killed here is played by David Carradine, who knew no martial arts whatever when he got the lead role in the TV series Kung Fu, which likely accounts for why that series bored the holy hell out of me. We see almost none of him in this first volume, which for my money is just fine. Carradine = fruitcake.

And the fights -- oh, man, the fights; they're choreographed by Yuen Wo Ping, whom you may recognize as the fight designer from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The knife fight between Thurman and Vivica Fox is about the best thing I've seen -- better than CTHD, and even better than the requisite finale fight with the Kato Klone Battalion near the film's end.

In other words, this is the last time I let somebody warn me off of Tarantino, who I think must be riding the same cultural sine wave I do. I loved Pulp Fiction, but this film is even better. Even without Samuel L. And for me, that's saying something.

In a recent comment, CAC asks, "what do you mean by postevangelical?" I'd like to draw from Dave Tomlinson's book The Post-Evangelical, wherein he does a pretty good job of shaping the term:

"Several people have suggested to me that 'post-evangelical' is really just a fashionable way of saying 'ex-evangelical', but this is not necessarily the case; properly used, 'post' means something quite different from 'ex'. 'Post', which means 'after', has connotations of 'following on from', whereas 'ex' implies 'ceasing to be'. To be post-evangelical is to take as given many of the assumptions of evangelical faith, while at the same time moving beyond its perceived limitations."(Tomlinson p. 7, author emphasis)

So, By postevangelical I mean an approach toward or grasp of theology that is initially (read: not finally) informed by the evangelical movement; indeed, it springs out of it to an extent.

As Tomlinson goes on to elaborate, it works as a term more or less the same way that the term "postmodern" is used in relation to "modern"; something that is a logical development of its predecessor, which shares many basic practices and beliefs with its predecessor, but which at the same time makes a few different decisions about things. So is a postevangelical hostile to an evangelical perspective? No, not intrinsically. As obvious as this may sound, a postevangelical perspective would not have been possible without the prior development of the evangelical perspective.

As promised, here are a few more pictures from our wondrous marathon experience in Nashville. Now, remember how I mentioned below that we made our own custom t-shirt banners? Here are before and after shots: a snapshot from the evening before, just as we completed our look, and fifteen or so hours later:



Mmmm, sweaty. I do have a couple more of yours truly, in varying states of mileage-induced pain.



And one more of the whole gang, including our terrific support crew/paparazzi:

This past weekend Shel and I were in the windy city looking for a place to live. As you may or may not know, we'll be relocating in fairly short order, because my job's office is moving. We're looking forward to the change; we've been in Chapel Hill since August 1996, and that is a loooooooong time. One M.A. and one ABD later, we're getting the hell out of here.

So we visited some friends, SCW and EW, who live up thereabouts in Lakeview, which is a part of Chicago. They were kind enough to put us up for several days and even help us go through the process of looking for places (SCW hooked us up with her realtor, and even came along on our first day of hunting).

Here are a coupla pics of their place. Click on the thumbs to see larger versions.



Lots of good food to be had in the area; we ate twice at a local pub called Charlie's Ale House, which had the best beef stew I've ever had. Also terrific were the shepherd's pie and the chicken pot pie. And those of you who know Shel and I know that it has to be some terrific pot pie to compete with Shel's home cooking. It was, incidentally, for this reason that I avoided ordering it. I let Shel get it and make any evaluative calls herself.

We're just starting looking, but we've definitely got some decent options in the Irving Park/Bucktown area. Next step: testing the commute to Hinsdale (where my office is located). I'm aiming to test that during my next visit, hopefully in mid-May.

Those of you who have been posting comments will likely have bumped up against the 1,000 character limit once or twice in your blathering exploits. I've just upgraded the comments service, though, which escalates the max character limit to 3,000. Blather on!

Anybody who wants to see the official pics in thumbnail form as taken by Action Sports International during the race can click on the following link:

Buzzard Pics

The pictures were taken at the start, halfway mark, and finish, I think. Pics taken with the inlaws' cameras are still to come, if I can get the Old Bear to send them my way.