Not revised as often as often as it once was, but from time to time, we still add to it. Download here.
People in the Sun at Camp Stevens (left to right, Gary Hall, Kathy Hall, Harvey Guthrie, Michelle Wheatman, Larry Dilg)
People in the Sun by Edward Hopper
Great weekend retreat at Camp Stevens in Julian, Calif. with Christ Church, Cranbrook rector and former Seabury dean Gary Hall leading us on the topic “What We Talk About When We Talk About God,” (known to camp staff as the “Gary Hall Weekend”) which Gary swears will be renamed “For Sale or Lease” next year.
Gary argued for the use of Ordinary Language Philosophy on the grounds that the people we’re trying to draw into our churches can’t find God or even real information about God because church people typically are more interested in preserving our institutions. We don’t give them the agency to claim what they think or know about God. Technical language is problematic when we talk about God because we don’t use that vocabulary to describe our actual experience of the world or of God.
Instead, we described and engaged the hiddenness, purposes, and character of God using the paintings of Edward Hopper, with commentary from Mark Strand‘s Hopper (Hopewell, NJ: Ecco Press, 1994); “Circles” by Ralph Waldo Emerson; “501” and “1717” by Emily Dickinson; “The Accidental Universe: Science’s Crisis of Faith” by Alan Lightman in Harper’s, December 2011; “Chaos, the Multiverse, and God” (January 16, 2012) by Gary Hall; “Neither Out Far Nor In Deep” and “Desert Places” by Robert Frost; “Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour” and “Of Mere Being” by Wallace Stevens; “Filling Station” by Elizabeth Bishop; and “A Journal of True Confession” by Charles Wright.
Participants included Gary and Kathy Hall, Vicki and Peter Bergstrom, Larry Dilg, Mimi Kennedy Dilg, Harvey and Doris Guthrie, Lane Hensley, Debbie Larkin, Joan Wayman, and Michelle Wheatman. Harvey is an Old Testament scholar and former dean of Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Mass.
Friday, February 3
6:00 to 7:00 p.m. Dinner
7:30 p.m. Session One: “It Beckons and It Baffles”
9:00 p.m. End
Saturday, February 4
8:00 a.m. Breakfast
9:15 Session Two: “Desert Places”
10:15 Break
10:30 Session Three: “The Nothing That Is Not There”
12:00 noon Lunch
1:00 p.m. Session Four: Individual Reflections/Excursions
2:30 Free Time
6:00 Dinner
7:30 Singing River Songs and More with Larry Dilg
Sunday, February 5
8:00 a.m. Breakfast
9:15 Session Five: “Somebody Loves Us All”
10:30 Eucharist
12: 00 noon Lunch
1:00 p.m. Depart
Oct 282011
Bob Brady and Lane Hensley entered this in the Palos Park Chili Cook-off in 2007 and 2009. (We lost in 2007, but won the People’s Choice Award in 2009.) For the chili cookoff, triple this recipe. This version yields about 1⅓ gallons, which is a lot, because it’s a merger of two more manageable recipes.
2 ea. medium onions, chopped
1 ea. red bell pepper, finely chopped
1 ea. poblano chili pepper, finely chopped
1 ea. jalapeño pepper, finely chopped
¼ c. olive oil
5 lb. ground round steak
5 tsp. cumin
3 c. water
2 tsp. hot pepper sauce (Tabasco)
1½ tsp. Liquid Smoke
12 tbsp. chili powder
4 tbsp. onion flakes
3 tsp. salt
5 tsp. paprika
2 tsp. beef flavored base or instant bouillon
1 tsp. chicken flavored base or instant bouillon
2 tsp. ground cayenne pepper
1½ tsp. black pepper
1 tsp. garlic powder
28 oz. canned crushed tomatoes
23 oz. canned tomato sauce
10½ oz. beef broth
8 oz. chopped mushrooms, drained
4 oz. chopped pimento peppers, drained
½ tsp. white pepper
30 oz. light red kidney beans, undrained
Sauté all the onion, jalapeño, bell pepper, and poblano in the olive oil until tender. Brown the meat in 1 tsp. cumin; leave some of the juice. Add all other ingredients except the kidney beans and simmer 2½ hours. Add kidney beans and simmer another half hour or more.
This recipe is a hybrid of Jerry Hunt’s 1990 Terlingua Cookoff winning recipe and another recipe found by Bob Brady.
Used without permission
Visiting Becky this morning at Loma Linda, and she’s still doing great. They removed her morphine drip a minute ago because she wasn’t using it. The nerve block comes out later in the day. She’s moving the leg a lot, and is working with the physical therapist now. She describes her pain as about a 4 on the 1-10 scale, and then only when she’s up and exercising. At rest, she feels much better. The doctor and physical therapist are really impressed with her progress, which is high relative to most patients. She just walked outside and enjoyed the heat.
They tell her she can shower without covering the wound, and can keep it unbandaged as long as she isn’t wearing long pants.
Functionally, she can do everything now that she could do when she entered the hospital, and maybe a little more. She’s practiced climbing stairs and other tasks. There are no concerns about her managing at home alone, and though she’s not yet supposed to do it, she could drive easily. She’s on OxyContin and Norco, and doing fine.
Becky is very pleased with her “Loma Linda Contraband” kit from Karel Lambell, which includes emergency doses of Diet Coke (with caffeine, which is a big no-no here), Turtles, and Doritos. Now she’s living large!
For those who are as curious as I am, here’s a crash course on all these happy pill medications:
Codeine, oxycodone, and hydrocodone all are opioids, alkaloids, and analgesics. Codeine and oxycodone are Schedule II narcotics, and hydrocodone is a Schedule III narcotic.
OxyContin is a brand name for oxycodone.
Percodan is a brand name for oxycodone with aspirin, and Percocet is a brand name for oxycodone with acetaminophen.
Vicodin, Norco, and Lortab are brand names for hydrocodone with acetaminophen.
Oct 102011
As I write, the physical therapist is helping Becky get back in bed. She’s been in the room just a little less than an hour. Already he’s had her up and walking down the hall. The leg wasn’t the limiting factor: She’s still loopy from the general anesthetic. He just got her back in bed, and started trying to teach her how to use her good leg to lift the bad one into bed, and before he could finish the sentence, she did it. He said that’s normally a day 2-3 thing.
Becky now says her pain level is about 5-6, just a dull ache, not stabbing. The walk didn’t increase the pain much at all. She looks and sounds great, and is making smart aleck jokes.
The physical therapist says he’ll be back twice a day to help her with walking, increasing the range of motion, and strength. “A fair amount of bleeding going on,” he observes.
The bad news is that she’s in a triple room. The good news is that she has no roommates. Yet.
Oct 102011
I’m with Becky now in her room. She’s been here less than an hour, and the physical therapist is here applying a brace in anticipation of getting her up and walking. Dr. Botimer says it’s imperative that she move the knee as soon and as far as possible to keep scar tissue from developing. There’s a machine (CPM: “continuous passive motion”) that does that for you so the knee is moving constantly. It will go without saying that our insurance doesn’t cover that.
The physical therapist is moving her leg a lot. A whole lot. So much that if this had happened back in March or April when she had the staph infection, she would have been screaming by now. But she’s fine. She describes the pain as a 5 on a scale of 1-10, and she’s smiling at me as I write this. I’ll update again after she gets out of bed. Check back at http://www.lanehensley.org?cat=7.
She has the nerve block and also a morphine drip. She says the morphine is not making her loopy, but she says that in that kind of voice you’d hear when someone says, “Good evening, Ossifer.”
The fun thing about Loma Linda is that it’s a Seventh Day Adventist hospital. So all the food is vegetarian. And they don’t sell anything with caffeine in it. I’ll need to make a contraband fun later.
Wow. He just moved her leg in a way that would have sent her into orbit six months ago. This is already much, much better.
Oct 102011
Becky has been in the recovery room for 2½ hours. They tell me they’re prepping her for transfer to a room, but I can’t see her until she’s in the room. Not that listening to the guy in the wife beater shirt rant the whole time hasn’t been wonderful …
I bought some M&Ms for her bag. Something for her to discover later.
Oct 102011
Becky is out of surgery and in recovery. They tell me I’ll probably see her in about 90 minutes. They’re putting a catheter into her leg that administers anesthetic directly to the nerve that would otherwise endlessly be relaying “Holy #&%@! Do you realize what just happened to me?!?!?” from the knee to the brain. The surgeon said she did very well, but was amazed at the amount of scar tissue she had. He says it covered the entire surface of the joint, which he suggests is a lot. The consequence is that the substantial range of motion that she’ll recover immediately will be lost immediately if she doesn’t exercise it constantly very early on. He said it looked like it would have hurt a lot. (Yes to that.)
Thank you Dr. Botimer, thank you Loma Linda, and thank you God. This is the best news I’ve heard in 7½ months.
The pancakes weren’t bad, either!
Oct 102011
Found the hospital. We’re in pre-op now, and everything is going well. The IV is here, but not yet going. Becky is reading the Desert Sun, trying to decide between the page one story about rats, or the Chaz Bono Dancing with the Stars story. I have promised her I would not delete DWTS from the TiVo. In solidarity with Becky, I haven’t had anything to eat or drink since about 8 last night. Once they take her into the OR, though, my chivalry will be over. I need some coffee, and I need it now.
So naturally I’m afraid. The surgery is Monday, and everything is set. We don’t know how long to expect for the recovery. But looking at the experience of other people, and considering Becky’s age, general health, and stubbornness, I’m thinking she won’t be off her feet for long. By late October, I’d anticipate that she could get around just fine. So there’s nothing to worry about.
I remember when we were visiting the Grand Canyon with the kids in 2006, I was walking along the edge of the rim. Becky stood further back and said, “I know you’re not going to fall in, but everything being equal, I’d rather you didn’t walk over there.” I know the feeling.