Robby Prenkert

In my top ten coolest reggae songs of all time.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rb13ksYO0s&w=420&h=315]

Gosh I miss Jamaica sometimes.

At Bethel we have what are called “FYE” (Freshmen Year Experience) blocks–two courses blocked in a single time slot on Tuesday and Thursday of the fall semester that two professors teach teach. Cristian and I teach FYE together.  FYE is a sort of a misnomer because it only runs the first semester.  Nevertheless, since the program was begun eighteen years ago it has had a fairly dramatic impact on student retention and has enriched the overall Bethel experience.  While it is not a unique program–there are many similar across the country–it is one of the things that makes the Bethel experience unique. 

Often at the end of the semester our students have expressed their sadness that the block experience ends with the semester.  More times than I can count, students have told me during second semester that they “miss block."

We’ve been thinking a lot about SYE (Sophomore Year Experiences) that might build upon the FYE.  There are many things that could be done, but lets just say that at our institution curricular changes don’t come easy.  One day driving into school I had a brainstorm about a way to “reconnect” with my block during second semester that wouldn’t require any curricular change.  All it would require would be permission to meet one day per week during chapel (for chapel credit) during the second semester of sophomore year.  The VP for Student Enrichment liked the idea and gave our block permission to give it a trial run.

So yesterday Cristian and our two “block mentors” (Karli and Cassie–the best FYE student mentors in the history of the program) started brainstorming together about what this thing might look like.  We set a launch date, came up with a name (“B7 Reconnect”–FYE Block 7, reconnecting on many levels), talked about how to generate excitement about it, and discussed themes and topics that might be most helpful to sophomore’s in college–something in the general neighborhood of life calling or vocation and our identity in Christ without using such tired and over-used lingo as that.  Anyhow, I’m looking forward to the many layers of “reconnection” that may be possible in a setting that is as “un-classlike” as possible.

I love my work.  It’s the place God has called me–as Buechner says, it’s the place where (my) deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.

p.s.  This song just started on my Last FM reggae station, and I’ve been singing it to my wife. :-)

[youtube www.youtube.com/watch

Free to good home:  two knees afflicted with mild patelar tendonitis from years of basketball.  As a bonus, I’m willing to throw in two achilles heels with chronic bursitis and two arthritic ankles. Left heel has noticable haglund’s deformity.

Sometimes in the middle of the day I have to break the monotony of checking things off my “to do” list, take a walk over to the gym, and make 150 shots. 

And then I can go back to checking things off my “to do” list and it doesn’t seem so tedious anymore. 

Just finished making 150 shots.  Just checked “write blog entry” off my “to do” list.  Next item on my “to do” list: “Make new ‘to do’ list.”

I’m considering the pros and cons of a standing desk or stand-up desk.

Pro: No more sore rear end.
Con: Potentially sore feet.

Pro: Novelty. First person in my office wing to have one.
Con: Weirdo.  First person in my office wing to have one.

Pro: Apparantly standing is better for your back.
Con:  My back is in relatively good shape compared with my ankles and achilles heels.

Pro: Might be able to get rid of my current really ugly desk.
Con:  Current really ugly desk weighs slightly less than a dump truck.

Pro: I like to read and write standing up.
Con: I would have to purchase ($) and assemble the stupid thing.

Pro: Would have to reorganize office.
Con: Would have to reorganize office.

Decision:  Undecided.

The best thing about crossfit is that you can invent your own crossfit workout and call it a crossfit workout.  Here’s the one I invented and then did today.

100 rep. jump ropes
10 wall ball shots with 25# ball
10 pull-ups
10 jump-knee tucks (a move borrowed from p90x)
10 sumo high pulls with 30 pood kettlebell

As many rounds as possible (AMRAP) in 15 minutes.

Exhausting.  Felt great!

I read this short story–very short story, really–by Raymond Carver yesterday, and now I can’t get it out of my head.  It is quintessentially minimalist, and yet it managed to grab me at a gut level with its raw emotion.  The story is called “Little Things” (read it now!!).  It is getting dark outside, and inside, too–where a couple fights as he packs his bags. He wants to take the baby. She refuses him. They struggle physically, pulling at the baby, trying to pry the child from one another’s arms.  The story ends ambiguously: “But he would not let go. He felt the baby slipping out of his hands and he pulled back very hard. In this manner, the issue was decided.”  As I read, Carver managed to make me feel for this couple, even though I’ve no idea what “little thing” has caused them to be so furious with one another.  And I felt for this little thing–this child caught in the middle, pulled two directions, somehow certainly harmed by the actions of these two wounded people. 

I guess I am reminded that there are little things that, over time, become–or will become–big things.

Ya, I’m the guy who listens to “Keane” radio while he tries to think of something to blog about.  At least today I’m that guy.

It’s not really working for me. In fact, all it’s really doing right now is delaying me from what I could be doing: shoveling the drive, riding the stationary bike and watching a rerun of the X-Files (ya, I’m the guy who watches reruns of the X-Files 3 or 4 times a week while riding bike), or grading some papers.

So what I’m saying is that “Keane” radio on Last FM isn’t really “muse” music–it doesn’t much inspire creativity, as you are plainly witnessing right now.  Allow me to change the channel and let’s observe what happens.

There. “Elton John” radio.  “Your Song.” 

Kind of makes me feel like writing a blog entry called “Your Blog."

“I hope you don’t mind, I hope you don’t mind
that I put down into words
how wonderful life is
while you’re in the world."

That didn’t really inspire anything much after all, I guess.  Next song…

“Maggie May” by Rod Stewart.

That reminds of a summer job I had after my freshmen year of college.  I cleaned the floors at the Kroger at Broadmoor Plaza in South Bend, six nights a week from 11 p.m. - 5 a.m.  I would dust mop, then scrub, then buff, then dust mop again.  It didn’t take six hours, usually, but my boss wanted me to put in six hours.  So I did.  Once a week they would shut the store down for three hours and I would wax the floors.

One of the night cashiers there was named Maggie–maybe thirty, thin, light brown hair, pretty smile.  Nice.  I remember one night this song came on the radio that softly played throughout the store all night.  One of the guys who stocked shelves started singing, and before long, all five of the guys who stocked shelves made their way to the front of the store, belting the song at the tops of their lungs at her, to her great embarrassment.  Only two of them really knew the lyrics, and none of them could sing. 

It was beautiful.  I scraped stickers off the floor in the produce section, and smiled to myself.  Smouched (Huck Finn’s word for “stole”) one of those ginormous gumballs from the bulk food section, and hummed along.

Thank you Last FM.  I’d forgotten.

It’s “Gold Rush” time. 

I’m not the biggest TV buff I know, but I do kinda dig Discovery Channel’s reality show, “Gold Rush.” Maybe I’m a glutton for punishment, but each week I watch the show hoping these guys hit the motherload somewhere deep in the bowels of Quartz Creek, Alaska.  Instead, I watch for an hour and discover that when it comes to gold mining, if it can break down, fall apart, or go wrong–it will.  The show could be called “A Series of Frustrating Events.”  So why do I like this?

I’ll never be a gold miner.  I’ll never know what it is really like to rough it in the Alaskan wilderness.  I’ll never drive gargantuan dump trucks, dozers, or front end loaders.  But the show does give the impression that its showing us a little of what it might be like to mine gold.  It’s intoxicating.  It’s maddening.  It’s enough to make you thankful that no matter how bad of a day you’re having, you probably didn’t have as many things go wrong as these guys did in any one hour show.

Yesterday I quoted from Rasselas. Might as well go for it again, since it seems relevant here.  Prince Rasselas is bored in the Happy Valley–bored because he has everything he wants. While it might seem like happiness is getting everything you want, the prince points out that he is unhappy precisely because he has nothing to struggle for, nothing to strive after, nothing to desire.  Rasselas says, “I fancy that I should be happy if I had something to pursue."

I like this TV show because these guys are relentlessly pursuing gold. I’m not all that interested in relentlessly pursuing gold, myself.  But I do know that we all need something to pursue.  Every week I watch them endure disappointment after disappointment, and only occasionally a small triumph or a glimmer of hope.  And yet they press on.  They seem happy.  I think it’s because they have something to pursue.  I need something to pursue, too.

So I keep on the lookout for little things that might awaken me from my contented slumber, and I pursue them.  A hundred free throws in a row.  Thirty unbroken pull-ups.  A doctorate.  A new humanities major. 350 blog entries in a year–one a day with a reasonable assumption that there will be a dozen or so days when I’m somewhere with no Internet connection. The entire Bible in 6 months.  That sort of thing.

There is that inevitable let down once you’ve reached some goal.  If these guys strike it rich by the end of the mining season, the show won’t be quite the same for me any more.  I hope they do, but I also know that if they do, that’s the end of the show.  I’ll make a hundred free throws in a row again someday soon. Then what?  Do it again.  Hit 50 3 pointers in a row.  Who knows.  I just know I’m the kind of person who is happiest struggling and striving my way towards something.  Kind of like the guys on “Gold Rush,” I guess. Call it restlessness if you want, but it beats the boredom of happy valley.

"Nothing," replied the artist, "will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must first be overcome." (Rasselas, by Samuel Johnson)

Every semester I have to come up with some new idea for a literature seminar. Every semester I agonize over this decision–over choosing a topic to spend fifteen weeks with, over finding something that I’ll be energized enough by to enjoy and to facilitate, and something that maybe a few students will find interesting enough to want to explore together. I’m not as successful in my choices as I’d like to be, and sometimes I’m surprised by the responses. There have even been times when I’ve feltl like something wasn’t going so well, but it turned out by the end of the semester the students were expressing much more appreciation than I could had sensed throughout the term.

• Post-modernist literature
• Myth and Archetype in Literature
• Nobel prize winners
• Nietzsche and the novelists
• Clashes of culture
• Survival literature
• Love and friendship
• Literary Friendships
• Bringing life to literature
• Modern European masterpieces
• The Sermon on the Mount and Story
• C.S. Lewis, Samuel Johnson and the Great Conversation

1 small bag of doritos
4 miniature reeses peanut butter cups
1 half glass of pink lemonade
9 baby carrots with ranch dip
Two thirds of a miniature ice cream sandwich
and… some baked goldfish crackers

She has put in a request for for mama to pick her up a “slurpee” on her way home from her meeting.

Ok. So am I a good papa for insisting that she eat some carrots–as if they would counterbalance all that garbage and ease my conscience a bit? Don’t answer.

I do remember the feeling of being half starved at the end of a school day. I remember in middle and high school going home finally after a practice close to dinner time feeling woozy, grumpy, with a splitting hunger headache far too many times. I can’t imagine that as the healthiest way of existence, either. I don’t feel so bad that a famished little girl ate a bunch of junk food this afternoon. I suppose a peanut butter sandwich on whole grain bread, an organic apple, and some of those baby carrots might be a snack Dr. Oz would want my daughter eating, but I also don’t think she’s taken any years off her life today by eating all this junk. And she’s happy as a lark. :-)

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHcP4MWABGY&w=420&h=315]

I’ve seen them perform this song in concert five times, now, and every time its felt like the Kingdom was upon us.

"My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death." (Mt. 26:38)

"Through the prism of my tears I have seen a suffering God.  It is said of God that no one can behold his face and live.  I have always thought this meant that no one can see his splendor and live.  A friend said perhaps this meant that no one could see his sorrow and live.  Or perhaps his sorrow is his splendor."  (Nicholas Wolterstorff)

In blog entry #11, I commented on “Visigoths” and the visigothian idea of grades. See that entry here. http://robbyprenkert.blogspot.com/2012/01/11-on-visigoths.html

We asked the class whether they thought–considering their graduating class–the Athenians would outnumber the Visigoths. I suppose the value of a question like that isn’t so much in the answer we get to the specific question, but to the discussion the question sparks and the perspectives it reveals.

I think it would be fair to say that most of them felt that the majority of their classmates were in the Visigoth camp, and seem to show few signs of relocating themselves.

Taking a bit longer view, I remain hopeful. My teaching partner and I think that seeds do get planted, and that sometimes–maybe even years later–students and former students slide on the scale and become a little less “V” and a little more “A.”  Of course, the two categories are not Christian, but a robust faith will always push one toward the “A” and away from he “V.”  t

Sadly, a superficial faith may very well slide a person deeper into visigothian territory.  But that’s a thought for another time.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdKa9bXVinE&w=560&h=315]

The first reading assignment in every class I teach is the syllabus. The first thing I do the second day of class is take questions students have about the course after they’ve (supposedly) read the syllabus.

Sometimes, I feel like the guy in the video. Not all the time. Not even most of the time. But every once in a while.

Not necessarily this semester. :-)

Here is, by far, the best insight from class on Tuesday.

We read Neil Postman’s “My Graduation Speech” for class, a speach where he contrasts two groups that come to be metaphors for important ideas–the “Athenians” and  the “Visigoths.”  It’s a fantastic little piece and will only take you five minutes or so to read.  You should read it now if you never have.

http://www.ditext.com/postman/mgs.html

We asked the class think about their own (future) graduating class at Bethel, and then to speculate whether they thought the Athenians would outnumber the Visigoths.  One student suggested that a barrier to being an Athenian was actually “grades.”  My teaching partner chimed up right away and said, “That’s great!  Grades aren’t a value of the Athenians–grades are a value of the Visigoths."

I was reminded of Phaedrus' proposed university without grades in Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.  But that’s an entry for another time.  (btw, You should read that book, too, but not right now.).

So grades are a visigothian idea–I like that. Some of our supposedly “best students” are Visigoths in their approach to education. And who do we have to thank for that?

It wasn’t students who invented the idea of grades.  It took a group of Visigoths called “professional educators” to up with that one.

My Monday’s are tough.  It’s all relative, of course.  A high school teacher would look at my schedule and go, “big woop–I do that every day.”  So I’m not complaining. 

I thought if I scheduled my Monday heavier, the rest of the week would be smooth sailing.  But there could be a downside to having four classes spread out over 12 hours, with a back-to-back-to-back from 3pm till 8pm.  Let me borrow a term from fitness: “recovery.”  The rest of the week may be so much lighter and easier, but I’m so spent from the marathon Monday that I’m worthless for a few days.

Or maybe that’s all just over-reacting, because yesterday was worse than most Mondays will be because somebody scheduled a two hour meeting in the middle of the day that ended up being emotionally exhausting.

I’m not worried.  But I will let you, my two readers, in on a little secret.  Listen: Usually I write my blog entry the day before I post it. I didn’t have time yesterday to write today’s.  So this is how bad I write “first draft.” 

Speaking of a blog about “nothing”–eh?

She knocks at my office door, enters.  She is the student who shows up far too infrequently to class, and in what little writing she has submitted, she gives just a glimpse of a life teetering on the brink of chaos. 

“I wanted to recite psalm,” she says. 

It is an assignment–memorize and recite ten psalms over the course of the semester.  This is her first–somewhere at the midpoint of the semester, and considering her lack of work and attendance thus far, and our recent interventions to encourage her to come to class and to do the homework, I take this as a positive sign that she is making an effort to turn her semester around. 

“Which one?"

“Psalm 6.”  She is pretty and extremely bright.  But her eyes have an omnipresent, weary sadness about them.

I flip to Psalm 6 in our textbook–The Message–so I can follow along as she recites. 

^1-2 Please, God, no more yelling, no more trips to the woodshed.
Treat me nice for a change;
I’m so starved for affection.


^2-3 Can’t you see I’m black-and-blue,
beat up badly in bones and soul?
God, how long will it take
for you to let up?


^4-5 Break in, God, and break up this fight;
if you love me at all, get me out of here.
I’m no good to you dead, am I?
I can’t sing in your choir if I’m buried in some tomb!


^6-7 I’m tired of all this—so tired. My bed
has been floating forty days and nights
On the flood of my tears.
My mattress is soaked, soggy with tears.
The sockets of my eyes are black holes;
nearly blind, I squint and grope.


^8-9 Get out of here, you Devil’s crew:
at last God has heard my sobs.
My requests have all been granted,
my prayers are answered.


¹⁰ Cowards, my enemies disappear.

Disgraced, they turn tail and run. 

She does not stumble.  She does not pause awkwardly searching for the right word.  She recites flawlessly, as if she has written the words on her soul, and allowed me for just a moment to peer into it.  It is beautiful.

“Wonderful!” I say, and she manages a half smile.  I pause.  “I like this psalm.  Why did you choose it."

The sad eyes mist over, she glances at the floor, and then quickly back up.

“Because it’s exactly how I feel."

I take it she means especially the first seven verses.  Now I fight back tears.  “You keep praying that prayer,” I say. Then, as if to set her free from what must feel like confinement–the office of her professor–I say, “Thank you, for this. I needed to hear this psalm.” And she’s gone.

She does not make it to the end of the semester at my college, and I do not know where she is now.  It wouldn’t be all that hard to find out, for we live in a world with Facebook, a world where virtually no one disappears forever anymore. I have thought of that day from time to time since then, but I had forgotten the psalm until this morning when I read it again and remembered and wanted to say to the sad eyed one, “I remember you, I have thought of you, I will pray for you."


And “Thank you.”

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j8mr-gcgoI&w=560&h=315]

He slips out the backdoor of his office and into the movable stacks.  Most employees have but one way in and one way out of their offices.  His office, in the bowels of Bowen, has a second doorway out and directly into the literature section of the library–into a large room with the highest concentration of books of anywhere on campus.

Were he a poet there might be a metaphor to work here.  Sometimes he likes to shut the main door to his office and crack open the door into the library to let in its cooler air.  Perhaps in a magical realist story, more than just cool air would work its way into his modest, windowless office when he opens this door to another world. 

Libraries have always enchanted him.  He walks past a stack of books a hundred times without noticing, then the hundred and first time some book title captures his eye, and if he is not careful (and why should he be?), he finds himself standing for a half hour cracking open a book cover, inhaling its cooler air, transported to another world.

One day the library will likely claim the faculty offices in the northeast corner of its building, and the English department will be relocated elsewhere.  This will be a sad day for him–the day he loses his windowless office with its secret passageway into a world of worlds.

Or not so much on cars in general, “On My Car.”  Or, “On My 1999 Blue Ford Escort.”  The one that is just about ready for the graveyard, I think.  It’s served me well. I don’t drive it all that much–back and forth to work, in the summer to softball tournaments and games, occasionally to the store. It hasn’t even made it to a  hundred thousand miles yet, but it runs like it’s a lot older. The kind of miles I put on it all these years are the hardest kind of miles on a car.  A mile or two here, eight or nine miles there.  Hardly gives the poor thing a chance to warm up.

I hate the very thought of buying a new car.  And I vowed after I bought a new care ten years ago that I would never buy another “new” car.  That’s not what I mean.  I hate the thought of buying any car.  I don’t trust people who sell cars, I don’t trust myself to not get ripped off when I buy a car, and I don’t like spending money in such large sums.  Leaves me depressed for days.  And cars–a car is just something that takes you from one place to the next without your having to sweat or breathe heavy. 

If there were decent bike lanes or even if I could trust the rest of the idiots who drive cars all over the place, I’d bike to work most days and maybe find a way to eliminate my reliance on the car.  But there are no decent bike lanes from where I live to where I work, and experience biking that route has given me no reason to place my trust in idiots.

I could buy a house somewhere closer to where I work, a thought I entertain nearly every day driving home.  But remember what I said about big purchases leaving me depressed?

So, I will buy a car.  Or maybe, J. will buy us a car.  She actually seems energized by the wheeling and dealing and excitement of car buying.