State of the Union Speech (post-test)

Well I really don't have all that much to say about President Bush's speech after all. Certainly nothing as sharply defined as what I wrote this morning. I guess I could try to be nice. It seemed like he was trying to take a conciliatory, accomodating stance, at least for him, compared to the way he's postured himself in past speeches (no doubt playing the role of President the way he and his advisors think it's supposed to be played...) So I will give him credit for an appropriate tribute to the life and message of Coretta Scott King, which he used as the lead to his speech (after all the customary stuff had been said.) That was good. By the way, here's what Coretta Scott King stood for:

"Despite the great victories of the Civil Rights Movement under Martin Luther King, Jr., many obstacles remain before his dream can be fulfilled, including high rates of child poverty, AIDS, the death penalty, domestic, community and international violence, declining educational opportunities and many forms of racism, bigotry and discrimination, to name just a few. Clearly, the philosophy and methods of Kingian Nonviolence remain our best hope for addressing these crises, and The King Center's role in promoting my husband's teachings can have a profound impact on the kind of future we create for our young people and future generations.

As the King Center's programs have been refined over the years to accommodate changing times, our dedication to building the Beloved Community of his great Dream remains undiminished. Indeed, under the leadership of our President and Chief Executive Officer, Martin Luther King, III, The King Center has met this challenge with an energetic dedication to reach young people and to help prepare them for leadership in the struggle against poverty, racism, war and violence in the spirit and tradition of Martin Luther King, Jr."

More about the Beloved Community...

"Dr. King’s Beloved Community is a global vision, in which all people can share in the wealth of the earth. In the Beloved Community, poverty, hunger and homelessness will not be tolerated because international standards of human decency will not allow it. Racism and all forms of discrimination, bigotry and prejudice will be replaced by an all-inclusive spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood. In the Beloved Community, international disputes will be resolved by peaceful conflict-resolution and reconciliation of adversaries, instead of military power. Love and trust will triumph over fear and hatred. Peace with justice will prevail over war and military conflict.

King’s Beloved Community was not devoid of interpersonal, group or international conflict. Instead he recognized that conflict was an inevitable part of human experience. But he believed that conflicts could be resolved peacefully and adversaries could be reconciled through a mutual, determined commitment to nonviolence. No conflict, he believed, need erupt in violence. And all conflicts in The Beloved Community should end with reconciliation of adversaries cooperating together in a spirit of friendship and goodwill."

You know, that's plenty enough inspiration for me tonight. I think President Bush did a great job directing our attention to the values that Mrs. King stood for and worked to realize even after the assassination of her husband. I'll just leave it at that and quit while we're all ahead!

State of the Union Speech (pre-test)

I sent this to the PoMoXian email list this morning, in response to a message posted there about the difference between old-style conservatives and the neoconservative ideology that steers the current US administration in power and its self-proclaimed goal of "promoting freedom and democracy around the world":

I'll take us even further into the "skeptical/cynical" take on current US policies by asserting that at this point, American rhetoric about promoting freedom and democracy around the world is probably ringing about as hollow in the ears of non-Americans as the old Soviet rhetoric about "liberating the working people from the yokes of their bondage," etc. fell flat here in the "Free World." At best, people saw/see such talk as self-justification offered by a super-power based on its old ideals that have now been compromised in the pursuit of a more complete domination. At worst, it just looks like flat-out hypocrisy and deceit, or perhaps self-delusion.

It's a shame, because I think that American ideals are still noble and worth living by - I think freedom, democracy, a limited government balanced with a social safety net for the "poorest among us" and the basic concepts laid out by the Bill of Rights are the way to go as far as managing our society go. Unfortunately, our politicians and lawyers have become much too finessed at cloaking their self-serving actions in the language of traditional American values and using mass-marketing methods to sell us their shoddy product. As the Abramoff scandal shows, institutionalized bribery and money-laundering have become the driving force behind most political action. The elevation of corporations as entities having more rights and advocates than individuals in our current government arrangements is also a big problem.

I may be too naive in some respects to harbor some notion that these problems could have been avoided by people who took their ethics more seriously - this crisis has doubtless been developing since before the current administration assumed power - but the current "state of the nation" seems pretty dismal and oriented toward serving the interests of something other than "we the people." Tonight, President Bush will put forth a speech that will try to rouse the nation and prove us grumblers and gripers wrong, but I don't expect that it will have much of an effect. I still have a hard time getting past his doozy of a SOTU speech in 2003 when he used the bully pulpit to mislead our country into war against Iraq. I didn't buy it then and subsequent events have justified (to me at least) my steady opposition to the war. I will probably watch his speech tonight just to see what I
should be wary of in the months to come...

(I'll be back later tonight with my SOTU pro-test... I mean, post-test)

Public Image Ltd.

I have been listening to the music of this band pretty steadily the past few days and just wanted to mention that. I'm not assuming that frequent visitors to this blog even know much about PiL, but they were a favorite band of mine during the years when I was playing guitar in the Church Police (1980-82.) Public Image Ltd. are probably best known as the band that Johnny Rotten formed after he left the Sex Pistols. The group was very innovative and influential, like the Pistols, well beyond their album sales. I have a four-CD set called "Plastic Box" which is an in-joke on their second album release, titled "Metal Box" (three 12" 45-rpm discs packaged in a tin can, pictured above, that wasn't quite big enough to let the records drop out freely so you'd have to risk damaging the vinyl to get one edge loose in order to pull the thing out altogether... One of the most ingenious and subversive packaging jobs ever in the LP era.) "Plastic Box" is a career-spanning retrospective. I only followed PiL closely up through their third album, "The Flowers of Romance," and had a brief revival of interest a couple years later when "Album" came out (with generic-style packaging, an idea they stole from my old friends Flipper that we used to hang out with and open for back in the day in San Francisco.) PiL's reputation suffered as the band's career dragged out over the years. The band went from being revolutionary post-punk pioneers (influencing many mainstream bands over the years, including U2's guitar sound quite notably) to being a more conventional pop-style band, even touring with INXS (as an opening act, for shame!) in the late 80's. So it's customary to like the early PiL and dismiss their later stuff, but I actually found myself enjoying the full range of the band's development as I gave it a close listen lately.



I also watched the Roman Polanski film version of "Macbeth" last night. Yeesh, what a creepy, dark and bloody rendition of Shakespeare! Pretty much what the script calls for, and quite masterfully done, IMO. The locations and acting and atmospherics of the film are just right for creating a sense of ominous dread and doom. So if you want to consider that a recommendation, check it out, but you'll want to be in the right mood first.

So Deep I Can't Get Under It...

I'll give bonus points to whoever can name the song that the title of this post came from.

But that's not what I want to write about. I have been overdue for a blog post for several days, if "significant stuff happening in my life" counts as something that makes a new entry here something close to obligatory. Problem is, there's just so much going on, and a lot of it is work-related, confidential and too complicated to spell out here without either saying too much or divulging things that probably aren't of much interest to people likely to read this site.

So I just don't know where to begin (another song reference... can anyone name the source?)... I'll start with yesterday morning, where we had a "Critical Incident Response Team" (CIRT) debriefing for our team, the staff at the Delta Home, where I'm supervisor for the next few days or so until my successor is named, and maybe for a brief period after that. Our team has been through a lot, really way too much, lately, in terms of stress-inducing events that go well beyond the normal levels of tension, anxiety and complexity that our work routinely stirs up. I am reluctant to spell out the details of the problems we've been dealing with, but I can say that the emotions that many of us (including myself) are dealing with were expressed clearly and with accompanying heaviness at yesterday morning's meeting. Several weeks ago, I had made the mental calculation that January 26 might be my final team meeting as Delta Supervisor, but it's not turning out that way, and I'm glad, I think, because I would like to have a different send-off than that. Not that I expect all that much to change by next week, but I've put in 12+ years at that position and I want to have a chance to reflect back a bit and say some things to my co-workers that adequately express my appreciation for all the dedication and support they've put forth over the years. Of course, many of my colleagues from this stretch of time will not be present, but there's just a part of me that wants to transition out of this role "the right way."

So I have a number of concerns on my heart and mind for my friends at Delta. I know they are struggling in some significant ways and my departure is not seen as all that helpful to them. I've decided that even though I may relinquish the Home Sup title very soon, I'm not that close to being done at Delta. In addition to me leaving, our Activity Therapist has taken another position within the agency, one of our overnight staff is resigning after 3 1/2 years of working the graveyard shift, we have a couple of part-time positions (and, due to painfully unfortunate circumstances that I won't elaborate on at this time, probably another full-time position) to fill and depending on who gets the Supervisor position, there could be other slots to fill before our team is back up to full strength. We also have some big challenges related to some of the girls in treatment that we have to sort out. But I'm going to help the team address these needs in a role different from the one I've been in for the last dozen years now.

That's a brief (and yes, vague) sketch of what I'm dealing with in my work life. There's other stuff happening off the job, not nearly as gut-wrenching as the Wedgwood situation but still demanding in its own way, that weighs on me too but that will have to go unmentioned now. I just want to think out loud a bit on how all this stuff affects me spiritually. I have been spending time in prayer, not necessarily asking for any particular outcome to all this, but rather seeking for strength, clarity of vision and resilience to carry my share of this load compassionately and creatively so that the people who look to me for assistance and assurance can get what they need and I can still have something left in my tank afterward. I'm grieving privately (and sometimes publicly) for the hardships being endured by people I like, respect and care about, and lamenting my inability to make the difference or engineer results that satisfy everyone involved. And I'm dealing, as I always have, but never enjoyed, with accepting the sense of helplessness I have when I see people make choices or simply behave in ways that create enormous and painful problems in their lives and the lives of people around them.

Makes me want to get continuously better at being a peacemaker, even though there are a lot of people who don't seem to have much serious interest in living in peace...

A new look...

It's a new year (a bit late for that, I know) and I'm about to start a new job (but haven't quite got there yet) so I figured it was time to update the look of my blog. If you have an opinion, let me know what you think. I may end up changing it to something else. But I'm malleable on this particular subject. I don't think I'll go back to the Minima Black though. Gotta do something different. Just not sure if this is it?

Me and IGE in the Grand Rapids Press.

I got my picture in the local newspaper this morning! John Sinkevics, one of the local entertainment section writers who specializes on music, interviewed me over the phone last week and used that chat, and the video he saw of the IGE Protest Songs event mentioned here recently, as a springboard for his weekly column. I'll past the text below, in case the link doesn't work (I've had that problem with MLive.com before...), and if you want to know what the picture of me looked like, it's the one featured in my profile, just cropped down a little to squeeze me in there.

Nice to get a little publicity - it's gonna be interesting to see how much notice this gets me at work and elsewhere. :o)

Protest songs are out there

Sunday, January 22, 2006

By John Sinkevics

The Grand Rapids Press

"War, huh. Good God, y'all -- what is it good for? Absolutely nothing."

With apologies to 1960s folkies Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs and Pete Seeger, the song including these simple lines could be the most recognized, most played antiwar tune in pop history.

More than three decades after it hit No. 1 on the Billboard charts, cultural references to singer Edwin Starr's "War" continue to surface -- covered by rockers and rappers alike, popping up in TV sitcoms, inspiring a Jackie Chan/Chris Tucker duet in "Rush Hour."

Penned by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong and originally meant for The Temptations, the catchy refrain became a signature career-maker for the late Starr.

Using this No. 1 hit from 1970, the Institute for Global Education kicked off a "Where Have All the Protest Songs Gone?" discussion on a recent weeknight. Part of the IGE Talks: First Thursday series, the session with 16 or so people was so engrossing, barely scratching the surface, that IGE plans to stage a Feb. 2 follow-up to further explore "The Protest Song."

"It can spring some social action, some reflection, a sense of 'We have to do something about this,'" said discussion host Dave Blakeslee, 44, a social worker and IGE board member. "I had over two or three hours of music that I put together, and I didn't even get to play it all."

Not surprisingly, some argue the politically volatile 1960s and early '70s produced the most notable protest tunes: Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On," Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth," John Lennon's "Imagine," Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind," Barry McGuire's "Eve of Destruction," Crosby, Stills Nash &Young's "Ohio." Even the session title is a twist on the 45-year-old "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?"

"What would the chances of a song like that ('War') becoming No. 1 these days?" Blakeslee asked attendees. "If you want protest music, you're going to have to go looking for it."

Yes, the current glut of commercial, chart-topping dreck includes the forgettable "I'm N Luv (Wit a Stripper)," "Laffy Taffy," and "Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off," pushing tunes with substance to the back seat. And maybe politically charged songs break into the charts more by accident than by design.

But even if they bubble under pop's surface, I'd argue they've never gone away, just taken different forms in the hands of punk's Clash, rock's Pink Floyd and rap's Public Enemy, who robustly questioned authority and condemned war.

More recently, Green Day's "American Idiot" -- a punk-rock masterwork that rails against a "redneck agenda" -- went straight to No. 1. It's registered more than 4 million in sales, stayed on the Billboard charts for 67 weeks and hovers in the top 30 more than a year after its release. Other artists boldly tackling politics and protest on recent albums include Bruce Springsteen, Steve Earle, The Rolling Stones, A Perfect Circle, Paris, U2, Keb' Mo' and John Prine, and most don't even wear sandals and love beads. (Of course, some conservative artists, especially in the country genre, put their political views to music, too, though I guess this would qualify as anti-protest music.)

When executed properly, freedom of musical expression spawns the most refreshing variety of art: creatively unfettered anthems, whether antiwar rants by punk bands or patriotic alt-country tributes to fallen soldiers. They challenge our senses, our politics and spur debate.

"Things that wake people up or keep the edge up should be part of the mix," said Blakeslee, a former punk band musician and a collector who's snagged every No. 1 Billboard single since the mid-1950s. "That's where the creativity comes in."

And sometimes, whether it's Green Day or Edwin Starr, they're so refreshing and so irresistible, they even top the charts.

Just not often enough.

©2006 Grand Rapids Press © 2006 Michigan Live. All Rights Reserved.

Quakers, NKOC, EmergentWestMichigan, etc.

At least one reader of my blog mentioned her interest, so I am going to honor that request and talk about the book discussion I went to this past Friday. I have a number of friends whom I've known for several years now who are regular attenders of the Grand Rapids Friends Meeting, a local group of Quakers that I worshipped with off and on several years ago. Though I don't show up at their Sunday morning meetings these days, I still connect with them through IGE and other peace-related activities.

I also receive their newsletter, and read awhile back that they were going to do a reading of Brian McLaren's A New Kind of Christian. That book has been a favorite of mine and made a significant impact on my life when I first read it back in 2001. Since then, I've followed McLaren's career and writings fairly closely, intrigued by how he goes about addressing some of the big and troublesome issues that many Christians today are mentally wrestling with - the questions about other religions, evolution, hell, postmodernism, etc. Out of the NKOC book (a work that I'd describe as "theology in narrative, fictionalized form," McLaren developed a short series, a trilogy of books, that I've also read and appreciated. In 2004, he also released a more detailed explanation of his developing (or as he'd put it, "emerging") beliefs, titled A Generous Orthodoxy, which many people appreciate but which as also activated a critical and sometimes harsh response from more doctrinaire Christians who don't trust his motives or generally like what he's doing.

So that's a little background on McLaren. I was curious to see how McLaren's book would go over with the Quaker group. There's a fair amount of diversity of theological views within that group, even though the meeting is pretty small compared to most churches. There are those who are comfortable and at ease with the Quaker's historical relationship with Christianity, and their take on McLaren was that he's basically helping to bring his community closer to where the Quakers have been all along, i.e. not getting so hung up on doctrine, literalism, and having a more open/tolerant attitude toward people whose upbringings and cultures lead them to follow religions other than Christianity, without adopting a judgemental or scornful tone or automatically disqualifying what they have to contribute to discussions of religion, philosophy or theology.

There were some whose beliefs and experience lead them to take a more cautious or skeptical view of Christians, which made them balk a bit at McLaren's endorsement of many basic points of evangelical faith and practice. Still, they appeared to agree with much of what he was saying and liked the "story" aspect of the book rather than a drier, prosaic, intellectualized approach as some might take in trying to get similar points across.

The funny thing though was that a lot of people there had not read much of the book, so that kind of inhibited more detailed discussions. Beyond some generalities, the part of the book we talked about the most was the introduction, and just what was all this "postmodernism" stuff about anyway? Not all of the Quakers are bookworms or armchair theologians like me or the folks who had the most to do with proposing this volume for their group reading. We will continue the reading in February and I'll report on what happens there.

Another highlight of the night for me was meeting Chad, someone who has connections with Emergent West Michigan, a small network of mostly pastors who are on the same wavelength as McLaren and others like him. This is a nice connection for me to make and I will pursue some closer contacts with this group in the weeks ahead as well. Chad seeks out manuscripts for Baker Book House, a local publisher of Christian books - hmmm, maybe I should get to know this guy better and see if there'd be any chance that he'd be interested in a cobbled-together anthology of all my old emails?!?! Well, maybe, just maybe!

MLK Day

My MLK Day observances were pretty simple. At work, we ran the DVD "In Remembrance of Martin" throughout the day. I'm back on Wedgwood's Diversity Committee after a couple years hiatus, and it dawned on us at last week's meeting that we had nothing planned for the holiday, so I suggested a video screening and found this one, which turns out to be an excellent program, about as good of a one-hour overview of King's career and the impact he made on people at various levels of society as I've seen or could imagine. (Though of course there is so much more to the story than an hour could ever convey.)

After dinner tonight, I read some passages from The Autobiography of Martin Luther King which is actually a posthumous anthology of his writings that roughly follows the chronological story of his life. I focused on some of his formative childhood experiences, to give us a moment to reflect on what our own country was like when segregation was openly practiced and tenaciously defended, not all that long ago.

Then I had to run out to buy a copy of H.G. Wells "The Time Machine" for my son, who has to read it by Monday. I went to our local Bargain Book store but they did not the have the original version, just an abridged and illustrated kid's edition, so Derek will have to read it on the Web, which is actually not too bad. But anyway, I found a book called To The Mountaintop: Martin Luther King Jr.'s Sacred Mission to Save America 1955-1968 by Stewart Burns. It's a book that is supposedly unique because it "focuses on King's biblical faith and spiritual vision as fundamental to his political leadership and shows how these threads wove together 'a single garment of destiny,' making King the most important social prophet of the twentieth century."

This is a fairly new book, published in 2004 but a title that I wasn't familiar with until tonight. It was the only copy they had, and given the occasion, I just had to get it! And I got it for a very nice price (less than a third of the listed retail, hardcover, 1st edition, clean) :o) and will begin reading it soon.

There's some very good material to be found on the book's website, without having to dig too deep or wade through excess verbiage.

May we all take even a little of what Dr. King taught and lived to heart (just for starters, anyway!)

Quick check in.

Just stopping by long enough to say that I have been fairly inactive lately on both my blog and email lists, focusing elsewhere, like mainly a day-long training I'm giving tomorrow on LSCI. The more I study this stuff, the more I admire the work and comprehensiveness of this approach to teaching and guiding youth. Fritz Redl, the guy whose theories form the basis of LSCI, is also the person who more or less invented residential treatment. I'm eager to get into the class tomorrow - I've included some new material and I'm curious to see how it will go over with a group of a dozen or so students (adult staff, that is.)

Tomorrow night I'm going to a book discussion on Brian McLaren's A New Kind of Christian. It will be with the Quaker book group, but someone from Emergent West Michigan is going to be there as well. I am pleased to make a connection with that group. I'll report back here sometime this weekend on how the meeting went, it should make for an interesting anecdote or two...

Where Have All the Protest Songs Gone?

This past Thursday, I presented a program at IGE on the state of contemporary protest music. It was, in my mind and according to the feedback I got from several people, a successful event and an enjoyable one too. Here's a summary of what I had to say (and play.)

The program began with a radical/revolutionary rap that leads off the album "Kick Out the Jams" by the MC5, a notorious proto-punk band from Michigan (Detroit, not Grand Rapids!) It's a rabble-rousing rallying cry, about whether we are going to choose between being part of the problem or part of the solution. Real righteous, late-60's, militant hippie stuff. From there, I went on to discuss the following songs:

War - Edwin Starr
Links on the Chain - Phil Ochs & The Broadside Singers
Eve of Destruction - Barry McGuire
No Blood for Oil - Rhonda Walsh
Fuzzy Math - The Bots
What's Going On - A Perfect Circle (cover of Marvin Gaye)
Fight the Power - Public Enemy
AWOL - Paris
With God on our Side - Bob Dylan
Chimes of Freedom - Bruce Springsteen
Know Your Rights - The Clash
Where is the Love - Black Eyed Peas
Army of One - Resident Genius
The Girl With the Sun in Her Eyes - Orbital (recorded in a solar powered mobile studio)
Universal Soldier - Glen Campbell (I think - the recording was brought by someone who didn't know the artist, but it wasn't the Donovan version I'm familiar with)
Where'd All the Good People Go? - Jack Johnson
Choice - Orbital ("Peace ... or annihilation? It's your choice!")

There may be a few tracks that I'm forgetting, but we only scratched the surface of the collection that I brought - plus, other artists and songs were mentioned throughout the course of the evening.

My basic point was that songs that challenge and upset the status quo used to have a better chance at radio airplay and broad popular success than they do today. This can partly be attributed to increased corporate control and oversight of radio playlists, as well as an entertainment culture that seems more prone to escapism and avoiding hard issues, despite the fact that our nation is currently in a war that is divisive and controversial. Still, the picture is not so bleak - the internet allows for rapid access to many alternative and underground artists if one takes the time to learn how to find them. Recording and sound processing technologies have opened up rich avenues for satire, exemplified by the Bots song "Fuzzy Math," a re-working of samples and soundbites created by President Bush in his speeches. Friends have the ability to make custom mix CDs for each other, allowing us to bypass commercial media vendors and their efforts to homogenize or water down controversial messages.

We discussed the role of profanity and confrontational content in protest music in discussing hip-hop and aggressive metal genres. One of our audience wanted to discuss the music of Marilyn Manson, but was reluctant to do so because he didn't think it would be well-accepted in our group - he chose to speak with me about it during a break and afterwards. He also didn't want to get us in trouble since he saw we were making a tape for cable-access TV! And it did so happen that one utterance of the "m-f" word slipped through, on Paris' "AWOL" before I could hit the Mute button on my Windows Media Player. We'll see how that comes through in the final cut!

Actually, the tape should be pretty interesting. We had to deal with a challenge from one participant who seemed to me to be suffering from some kind of a mental disorder that caused him to blurt out very random, and frequently disruptive and impolite, comments. He seized on very obscure word associations and had a number of paranoid/conspiracy theory opinions to offer about computers, the telephone system, Christian missionaries and other phenomena of contemporary life which apparently cause him a lot of struggle. But for the most part, we stayed polite, maneuvered our way past his outbursts and did our best to meaningfully connect with him both during the program and afterwards. You just never know what's going to happen when we hold these meetings!

The turnout was big enough that we are thinking of doing a "part 2" meeting for February. With the tape scheduled to roll several times this month, and the abundance of songs that I didn't even get a chance to play, I think we could put together a second program quite easily.

If anyone would like to get a copy of our tape, email me or leave a comment and I'll see what I can do to get one in your hands...

Normalcy resumes.

The holiday mood and relaxed pace of things swiftly dissipates as we finally get "the real 2006" underway after a couple days of observance. I only worked an hour or two this morning, going in early to do payroll and my usual Monday morning paperwork. Then it was back home again so that I could drive Curt back to Spring Arbor where he will resume his studies at the University there. We have made a tentative plan for him to move back home next fall and take classes at the local Community College since SAU isn't really working out so well for him. He's finding too many of his fellow students annoying and more or less incompatible to him. Spring Arbor University is a Christian college and Curt is going through a phase of doubting and questioning a lot of the a prioris that come with their brand of evangelicalism. And he's not really all that well persuaded by the answers he's getting from his fellow students and some of his faculty. I can relate to that, of course, and I'm content to let him steer his way through this time of personal development. He doesn't much care for some of the "rah rah" tone that a lot of people at SAU adopt in their apologetic and cultural stances (and I would presume that this school isn't all that different or extreme compared to others.) Curt is blessed/cursed with that independent thinking streak and at this point it sounds to me like he's looking for a bit of relief from the religious overload that he's been feeling from various sources in his life.

Plus SAU is an expensive private school and it doesn't make sense that he would go into debt with student loans if he's not basically enjoying his experience there. He's strapped for cash because he was not able to get an on-campus job last fall (they said they couldn't offer him anything that didn't interfere with his class schedule; we're hoping for better results this next semester, cuz he needs to generate some cash!) So that's what's leading to the "move back home" plan - he needs to get caught up with his brother Brandon, who's pulling a full work load, has his own car and is making decent money working at the Steak'n'Shake, especially over this semester break (nearly 40 hours each week - they like him, apparently!)

Curt and I had a good long talk on the way to school, and I think he's on a good footing to make the best of this next semester, now that his future options are cleared up a bit. Alyssa goes back to her dorms this coming Sunday, and I go back to a full day of work tomorrow. These routines are a lot busier and more hectic in some ways, but I've had my share of time off and I look forward to getting productive and engrossed in work again, especially with the job change and some new routines to look forward to.

Back at it!