Blue Cord

If any of you have tried to access the site in the past few hours, you may have gotten some odd results.  I have been working on a PHP script that will randomly choose one of five images to display as the banner at the top of the blog.  It is finished now, so everything should be back to normal.

This is part of my project to brush up on my PHP and MySQL skills.  Because I am leaving Lithuania, I need to find a job to support the family.  We have enjoyed our time at LCC, but as I have mentioned, we have to raise our own income.  I am very interested in trying out this whole Job-With-A-Salary concept, as I have heard such good things about it.

If you are interested in seeing one of my other projects, check out my NewsRadio page.  Four of the five seasons of the sitcom NewsRadio have been released on DVD, and as a hobby, I have been cataloging pop cultural references in the show.  To practice my programming skills, I have created a database with the references and am writing PHP scripts for pages that will display the movie references, quoted lyrics, and allusions to TV shows that were rampant in NewsRadio.

Since the inception of this blog over a year ago, I have been looking for ways that the writing I do here can intersect with a publishing agenda.  After all, no tenure review committee is going to look at the number of blog posts I did when considering whether to offer me tenure.

A few weeks ago, I found one way to bridge the gap.  When I finished the series on A Farewell to the Yahwist?, I contact the editor of Review of Biblical Literature and asked him if he would be interested in me editing the series into one article for publication.  He looked it over and said he would be glad to publish it.  It should appear sometime in January.

The 2006 Weblog Awards have been announced. I had not heard of this award before, so I was unable to plan a big awards party where me and all my blogging buddies can get together, watch the awards being posted on the Internet, and comment on what all the winners are wearing.

The awards are given for categories: best liberal blog, best conservative blog, best new blog, best humor blog, etc. For specific fields, they have blog categories covering media, technology, sports, military, business, parenting, LGBT, and a host of others.

One thing that seems to me to be a glaring omission is the lack of any religious blogs. Now, I can hear their objections: “Religion is a very contentious field and we don’t want to upset people.” But politics certainly leads to as many arguments as religion, but they have several political blogs. And if they can have a LGBT category, it is unlikely that offending people is one of their concerns.

They could also object that they would have to choose one religion over another in making awards. But this is hardly the case. It could easily be divided by religion: best Jewish blog, best Christian blog, best (dare I say) Bible related blog, best Qur’an related blog, etc. This is how they handle politics, with one award for conservative, one for centrist, and one for liberal.

I would encourage people to write to the weblog award forums and ask that religious categories be included next year.  I have added a thread entitled “Why no religious blogs?”  If it generates enough comments, it could spur them to add religious categories.  I personally would like to have a way to find good blogs in religion and I suspect my readers would too. In addition, the omission of religious blogs is just one more instance of the marginalization of religion in the public square.

Following Tyler William’s description of cooking Christmas dinner, I thought I would share my cooking escapades. I was also inspired by the story in the New York Times of the Jewish woman celebrating Christmas. I figure if a good Jewish girl can get a Christmas tree, a nice Christian boy like me could bake some bagels.

I searched the Internet for a recipe. Our copy of Fanny Farmer’s has already been packed, and it is a remarkably Protestant cookbook anyway. I found several recipes and picked the one I thought would be best. One of the recipes had a great line about making the hole in the center of the bagel. It urged the baker to resist the temptation to use a cookie cutter, as that was a far too Protestant approach. Only hands should be used on truly Jewish bagels.

The first batch has just come out of the oven, and I have to say I am quite pleased with myself. Although the crust is not quite as crunchy as I would like, the texture is excellent. For the second batch, I have turned the heat up a bit to fix the crust problem. I made them for tomorrow morning, but although it is 1:30 at night I think I may eat a second one.

Update: The second batch came out better, with a wonderful crust.  The kids this morning went nuts over them.

I hope all of my readers had a wonderful Christmas. The idea of the light of Christ shining in the darkness has particular relevance here in Lithuania, both because of the long winter nights and because of the dark period of Communism that tried — and failed! — to overcome the light.

I wanted to let me readers know that my family and I will be leaving Lithuania at the beginning of January. We had planned to be here through the spring semester, but our funding has run out. LCC asks its faculty members to raise their own salary due to the financial situation of the college. We have been working as missionaries through the Episcopal church. Unfortunately, our fund raising last summer was not as successful as it needed to be. In particular, two grants totaling $9000 that we had gotten in previous years did not come through, which left us with a sizable shortfall. We tried a number of ways to make up the difference, but were not able to do so.

So, we will be leaving here around Epiphany and moving to Massachusetts to live with Stephanie’s parents. I still have several applications for jobs next fall that are outstanding, so I am hopeful that I will be able to return to teaching then. In the meantime, I will be looking for short term work. If anyone needs a top rate teacher and Old Testament professor for one semester, you know where to find me.

I have thoroughly enjoyed my time here at LCC. I hope the students have learned half as much as I have. I will miss everyone here: faculty, staff, and students. It has been an very good place to work. I would like to think that my legacy will live on, as one of my students is planning to become a biblical scholar. I am especially sorry that I will no longer have the chance to watch her grow as a scholar and a person.

For those of you who are college professors, LCC is always looking for people to teach short term. If you have a sabbatical and would like to spent it in Eastern Europe, make sure you contact them. For instance, I know they suddenly have a need for a biblical scholar next semester.