Word reaches us on the Niagara Frontier that Todd has left A’ville on his journey westward, reiterating in reverse my journey of 5 years ago. He’s going west on I40, through TN, OK, TX, etc, on his way to taking Route 66 into LA.
With his passing to the west ends an era: Todd’s my best friend. I made 2 really good friends in HS and 3 in college, and I’ve been told over and over that friendships like that are terribly rare when you’re an adult. Well, I’ve been blessed to find one and I’m only sad that I could not make it back to A’ville in time to see him off. With both of us out of Asheville, now, it seems the connexion is really broken.
Everyone, prayers and blessings for Todd as he drives: and keep an eye out for the Black Pickup with NC Plates. I’m sure it’s packed, pressed down and full to over-flowing. You’ll probably find him in a rest area or a McDonald’s parking lot, huffing the WiFi.
It’s been a day of Stonehenge news, oddly. Stonehenge - and the other Great Works of Britain - are a fascination of mine. They are a testament to mans ideas of the sacred, I think - as evolving and yet constantly present through time.
The BBC has this really wonderful video, an animated history of the monument that was built as a Calendar and Eclipse calculator (according to my favourite theory). But it’s clear it’s also a temple. It may or may not be proved a “Neolithic Lourdes” as the scientists currently think, but there is a new excavation starting today.
Meanwhile, a man in Michigan is exploring his own theories as to how it was built with some amazing results.
Had a totally awesome interview yesterday - actually two interviews - with a company that would be amazing to work for. I looked at their website before I went in and confirmed my suspicions about them during the conversation.
Why are you in Buffalo? Given my own situation, where else could I go? But why Buffalo? What I told ‘em (not these exact words, of course…):
Buffalo has something that only a certain sort of decaying city has: like Hamilton, Ontario, like San Francisco was and NYC was in the 1980s. It’s a heart. There is a crew of people committed here, to not just “living in Buffalo” but to LIFE in Buffalo. There are artists, and foodies, and musicians here that want to make Buffalo into the cool place it was supposed to be - before industrial greed and political corruption took over and then abandoned us.
Like what I’ve learned about Hamilton, ON: there was a strong industrial presence here that economically gutted the place and, once done, just up and left. Now, one person leaves western NY every 30 seconds.
But what can be done? Jobs, yes, money, sure… but culture - and not just more Wal*Marts and suburbs - is the answer. How do you stop slumification? With heart.
Anyway…
I think I’ve found one of those companies…. and when I went in with my talk of heart and culture - they answered right back with their own! And as of this AM I’ve got a second interview on Tuesday with the boss and owner. Your continued prayers and good thoughts would be most welcomed.
Asheville had the potential - but developers took over and, yes there is still art and what all, but the heart is gone. I mean that: stretched over a bucket of money (like in SF, now) is this cute little Mountain Metropolis Facade. It’s suffering from the same things that have ruined SF: a desire to Stay Exactly The Same and Get Rich At the Same Time. A Fear of Change coupled with Greed. We want to keep Our Small Town Centre, and so we’re forcing suburban sprawl up the mountainsides. Look at the over-developed hillsides of quaint, Victorian San Francisco, 1950s Oakland, and the South Bay - tiny little houses on tiny little lots right next to each other, eating up every bit of green for thousands of square miles: there is the future of Asheville, the Blue Ridge Housing Sprawl.
At Windy Ridge, a recently built starter-home development seven miles northwest of Charlotte, North Carolina, 81 of the community’s 132 small, vinyl-sided houses were in foreclosure as of late last year. Vandals have kicked in doors and stripped the copper wire from vacant houses; drug users and homeless people have furtively moved in. In December, after a stray bullet blasted through her son’s bedroom and into her own, Laurie Talbot, who’d moved to Windy Ridge from New York in 2005, told The Charlotte Observer, “I thought I’d bought a home in Pleasantville. I never imagined in my wildest dreams that stuff like this would happen.”
Asheville’s mountainside developments have a lot to look forward to.
The food varies daily, and reflects the school’s multicultural population — about a third of its students speak English as a second language. This week alone the menu includes buriyani rice, Japanese pancakes, Singapore noodles and Moroccan hot pot. Like the five other outlets, the kitchen is staffed by refugees from such places as Nepal and Sudan.
And all pay-as-you-can.
At least in NC, such things get around health-code issues, as well. There is such a place near Asheville, specialising in local-food organic pizza. I’m thinking we need more such places.
The Last Day of Work was today. I had a round of hugs and a couple of hand shakes from some clients and I was outtathere.
What an amazing experience that has been: I’d never looked to enter the social services or paramedical fields and there I was. And reasonably successful, too.
Glory to God for all things.
As I walked away there just the tiniest ferklempting: just last night (at 3AM) I’d got into a client’s headspace and helped, making an emotional connexion that hadn’t been there prior, and that would have no time to grow. But no extended emotional heart strings. I got a little overjoyed, in fact, for finally ending all the psychologically unhealthy aspects: especially the odd sleeping schedule!
I commented to Ruth, my coworker this AM, that I had not, for some time, left to go somewhere. Instead, much of the last few years have been leaving to get away from somewhere. Moving to Buffalo is a new experience: moving because of a new opportunity, moving because of a possible positive rather than a present negative.
The feeling is rather different, rather wonderful.
Evidently it’s flurrying in some parts of the Asheville hood. It’s been doing so here off and on (mostly off) for the last hour or so. But it’s starting to seem inevitable.
Sooner or later, I guessing we’ll see some evidence of winter. Or more, at least, than we’ve been seeing. My friends in Boone report they’ve been downgraded to some flurries today.
Currently theory: the press is trying to scar away republican voters in South Carolina.
Me, looking very rotund. This is at 8AM in the morning. I’m just finishing up work for the night.
They threw a going away party for me this morning at work: Bagels and Cream Cheese, and a blueberry dump cake! (Got a $25 B&N Giftcard as well). The Whole Set is here
Please pardon the quality: between the official office camera and printer, most of these were either blue or green.
Yesterday I went back to my former Orthodox parish to say good-bye to everyone in preparation for my move to Buffalo. It had to be yesterday: next week Mom and Dad are coming, and then the week after that is my last week in the Episcopal Parish I’ve been attending. I hope to be in Buffalo the week after that.
The music was awesome (as always). The food was awesome (as always). I didn’t get to see Fr H, which saddened me. I shall have to travel out that way this week or next to see him. My legs, even today, are sore from the metanias. I’d forgotten how much exercise my backside received from just a normal Sunday liturgy!
It was great to see everyone: I made my Pascha Cake because I know the monks like it! At one point, looking around the table, there was a noticeable sugar buzz going on…
While there I heard about a family leaving a very conservative Protestant denomination to become Eastern Orthodox. They were doing this over changes in the doctrine of their home church, seeking a place where doctrine doesn’t change. And I just kind of rolled my eyes: there is no place where doctrine doesn’t change. The problem? Their Southern Baptist preacher had allowed people to believe that God may have used evolution to create the world and life.
The image of someone worried that Theistic Evolution might be too liberal was not unheard of - especially here in the Bible Belt. But it did cause me to tune out the conversation. Although I know what the liturgy of the Orthodox Church says, I’m very aware that within Eastern Orthodoxy there is no official teaching (because there can not be) and a wide spectrum of belief among the Bishops, parish clergy and the faithful.
The development of modern science as we know it is a product of the Enlightenment, therefore no ecumenical council has ever addressed how to integrate it with divine revelation in a coherent and consistent worldview. As a result, there is not a dogmatic treatment examining how to resolve conflicts, whether apparent or real, when scientific findings appear to contradict divine revelation. Many early Fathers were happy to use the primitive science of their day to divine purposes, perhaps suggesting to modern Christians a compatibilist resolution to the question. Other Fathers, however, clearly see conflicts and contradictions which they resolve in favor of their understanding of Christian revelation.
The basic need for that sort of literal certainty (which also drove me into Orthodoxy) is exactly what doesn’t work for me. Although I understand what I was doing, I can’t yet wrap my brain around why I was doing it. I hope this family doesn’t wake up one day and hear the same sort of claim from their new Orthodox Pastor (where ever that is) and find themselves running away from “World Orthodoxy” into one of the pseudo-Orthodox sects.
This is the self-ruled blog of an Christian attempting to follow God in the Way of Jesus... sometimes. I most identify with the Anglican and Liberal Catholic flavours.
I who have written this story, or rather this fable, give no credence to the various incidents related in it. For some things in it are the deceptions of demons, other poetic figments; some are probable, others improbable; while still others are intended for the delectation of foolish men. (Closing lines of the Táin Bó Cúalnge)
Evidently it’s flurrying in some parts of the Asheville hood. It’s been doing so here off and on (mostly off) for the last hour or so. But it’s starting to seem inevitable.
