Blue Cord

On day two of the 3D Trip we drove from South Bend, Indiana, to Dayton, Ohio. Fortunately, it was a much less eventful trip than our first day of travel, so I will spare my readers the boring details.

Day three was spent in Dayton with a friend who teaches Catholic theology at the University of Dayton. He had gotten us tickets to an afternoon game between the Dayton Dragons and the Clinton Lumberkings. It was raining lightly when we arrived at the field, but by the time of the game it had stopped. It never quite got warm, but we were fairly comfortable. Dayton sells out practically every game of the season. In fact, they have sold out eight consecutive seasons and are the only minor league team ever to sell out a season before it began. Because we had gotten tickets late, we were sitting on the right field berm.

Dayton has the nicest stadium I have ever seen for a Single A team. It is in a fantastic location downtown. The field is sunken, so the top of the lower seats is at street level. It also has an upper level as well as suites, both of which are rare for Single A baseball. Many Single A fields, such as the Beloit Snappers game I attended in Wisconsin two weeks ago, resemble glorified high school stadiums. The field is named Fifth Third Field after Fifth Third Bank. For those interested in trivia, the Fort Wayne Wizards (Single A) and the Toledo Mud Hens (Triple A) also have fields named Fifth Third Field.
Unfortunately, the Dragons’ play did not rise to the level of their ballpark. Their starting pitcher was pulled from the game after giving up for runs (all earned) in the first inning and loading the bases in time for the top of the order to come to the plate again. He left having gotten only two outs. The relief pitcher slowed the flow of runs, but by the end of the game it was 11–1 in Clinton favors. The Dragons’ loss meant that Clinton swept the series.

Afterwards, we went to a wonderful local pizza place called Dewey’s. If you are ever in Dayton, I highly recommend it. My kids liked it because they could watch the pizza being made. We finished the day with a trip to a cemetery to see the graves of Orville and Wilbur Wright. On a side note, Charles Kettering, the inventor of the electric ignition for cars, is buried in the same cemetery, as is Erma Bombeck.

I am going to be taking a hiatus from blogging about the Bible for the next ten days. I just finished up my semester at Wartburg College, so I am heading back to my home in Massachusetts. On the way, I am going to be stopping to see friends and family. My blogging between now and April 27 will be about the trip.

I am not alone in my travels, however. Yesterday, my kids flew out from Boston. I picked them up in Minneapolis and we drove down to Iowa. This morning, we set out on the 3D Trip (the three Ds are dad, Duncan, and daughter). I did a similar trip with Duncan when I taught in Iowa five years ago, so I thought it would be nice to repeat it with both kids. As on the previous trip, we will be stopping to see a number of baseball games along the way.

We set out this morning for what was supposed to be a six hour drive to South Bend, Indiana. We had hoped to visit the site in Iowa where the movie Field of Dreams was made. Duncan and I played baseball there five years ago, but the rain today meant we had to pass by without stopping.

The trip was lengthen by two hours when the front driver’s side tire decided to blow out while I was doing 70 mph on I–80 in Joliet, Illinois. I managed to wrestle the car to the shoulder and set about changing the tire. If you have never had the chance to change a driver’s side tire on the shoulder of a busy freeway, I highly recommend it. It’s a rush money can’t buy. My spare is a donut, so I used it to limp to the next exit. Once there, I found a tire shop. Unfortunately, I have a 4WD vehicle (1994 Subaru Legacy), so when you replace one tire you have to replace them all.

Because of the delay, we got to tonight’s game in the bottom of the 4th inning. The South Bend Silver Hawks were playing an Iowa team, the Cedar Rapids Kernels. When we got there, the Kernels were already up 6–1. The Silver Hawks had already made two errors, and they made an additional one in the late innings. A passed ball also allowed a runner to score from third when the Kernels had the bases loaded. It ended 9–1. The Silver Hawks have a cozy stadium that sits in the middle of downtown South Bend. We had really nice seats two rows behind the visitor’s dugout on the 3rd base side.

After the game, my kids went the side of the dugout to see if they could get some souvenirs from the players. Duncan in particular is a ball magnet. I had never gotten a ball at a game, but during our previous trip five years ago we got balls at three straight games (including a foul ball off Carlos Lee at a Chicago White Sox game). Tonight’s game was no different. Between the two of them, the kids got a game ball, a ball with the Silver Hawks logo on it, and a game-used bat. The bat is cracked but is still in one piece.

One interesting piece of trivia about our trip: I picked up the kids in the Twin Cities (Minneapolis, MN; St. Paul, MN). Today we drove through the Quad Cities (Davenport, IA; Bettendorf, IA; Rock Island, IL; Moline, IL). Next week we will be visiting my parents in the Tri-Cities (Johnson City, TN; Kingsport, TN; and Bristol, which is in both TN and VA). Anyone know where we can find the Quint Cities?

My brother Kenyon, a low brass instructor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, wrote a piece entitled “Kerfuffle” for a tuba/euphonium ensemble. It will premier this Sunday. The school’s newspaper, The University Echo, carried a news report about the premier.¹

The piece is built on a musical equation based on the last name of James Taranto, an editor for the Wall Street Journal who popularized the word “kerfuffle”. Although the news article only came out on the web yesterday, Taranto happened to find it in time to include it in today’s Best of the Web Today, a feature he writes everyday for the WSJ. It is the first item mentioned in the article, which I assume means my brother’s premier is the best of the best of the web today.

Kenyon also wrote a piece for my wedding that used my wife’s maiden name in the same way that this current piece uses Taranto’s name.  The Internet was just getting started when I got married, so I was in no position to proclaim that piece the best of the web.

1. The newspaper reported that ‘kerfuffle’ is a German word. I pointed out to my brother that it is actually of Gaelic origin, which he already knew. [back]

Finals started today, so I thought I would take this chance to look back over the semester and critique it. I am typing this in the middle of one of the exams, so you will have to pardon me if I look up every now and then to make sure the students are not cheating.

Overall, I am not thrilled with the way the semester went. I taught four sections of an intro to Bible class. This is the second time I have taught the Bible in one semester, and I found it even more frustrating this time. The frustration was brought on primarily by factors over which I have no control.

The first of these is the relative ignorance of the students concerning the Bible. When I was in college twenty years ago [Warning - nostalgic rant ahead that may or may not bear any resemblance to the way things actually were] most students at least had a basic understanding of the Bible. We didn’t know it from a scholarly perspective, but we had a general idea who Abraham, Moses, David, Jesus, and Paul were. And while we were not familiar with Leviticus or Obadiah, we at least knew a number of the stories in Genesis, Samuel, and the Gospels. Granted, I went to a Baptist college, so that may have skewed the data a bit.

For the most part, this does not seem to be the case today. I feel like I am starting further back in the teaching process. It is like a English or Math professor having to do remedial courses. And it means that by the end of the semester we have not moved as far along as I would have liked. I don’t expect students to come in knowing the critical theories, but even a little more familiarity content would help them greatly.¹ While teaching students who know Bible relatively well but have a problematic view of it presents its own challenges, I would much rather tackle that problem than having to feed students basic content.

(On the exam they are currently taking, they have to locate ten cities on a map of the Mediterranean region stretching from the Middle East to Italy. A student just came up to me and asked which way was “up” on the map. [Sigh])

The second factor is the fact that I have to teach the Bible in one semester. I have taught the Bible in a year several times before, and it is a much more reasonable time frame.² I know that professors always think students should have to take more classes in their department, but when you teach at a denominationally affiliated college, you would think that two semesters of Bible would be a no-brainer. Instead, I have to rush to get through.

Which brings me to the third factor. Cramming the Bible into one semester means that all of the students’ reading time has to be taken up by the Bible. If I want the students to read anything close to what I consider the minimum amount of biblical text, I have to forego a secondary text like an introduction. I walk through the SBL book fair and see all the introductions to the Bible that are out there, but I never get to use them. Not once in my teaching career have I ever been able to assign both the Bible and a textbook in undergraduate.³ Every department in which I have worked has either forbidden the use of a textbook or recommended heavily against it.

Without a textbook, I am forced to spend a good portion of my class time teaching the scholarly theories. While these theories are important, they are supposed to be the framework within which we read the Bible. They are not the end but merely the means. But with so much of my time taken up by this material, I find I have little time to actually dig in and read the Bible with my students.

This fact jumped out at my starkly when I was preparing the exam that the students are now taking. In looking over my lecture notes to see what questions I could ask them, the majority of what I had taught was background such as the development of the Synoptic Gospels and which letters were and were not written by Paul.

I wish I could assign both the Bible and a textbook with a reasonable expectation that the students would read both. That way, they would come to class with a decent understanding of the scholarly ideas, and I could spend my time in class focusing on the actual text of the Bible.

I don’t mind teaching introductory classes. In fact, I love them. It would just be nice if I were free to teach them the way I think they should be taught.

1. I know this is a common complaint among religion professors, but that does not change the fact that it is a valid complaint. [back]
2. The administration always requires a semester of OT and a semester of NT when they have two semesters of Bible. Why I can’t devote three-fourths of the time to OT and a quarter of the time to the NT I don’t know. After all, that is how God divided up the material. [back]
3. I was able to assign one when I taught at the seminary level. [back]

Most people have heard of the Phelps cult, a group that has become notorious for picketing the funerals of gay men, funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and pretty much any other event which they can somehow connect (no matter how weakly) to homosexuality. Today they picketed the University of Wisconsin, where three students were killed in a fire. The announcement on their website said

Thank God for three more dead students! God sent the Fires! These brats are the fruit of america [sic], and God is punishing you by cutting them off. You were blessed by God with those children, and you raised them to be bastards and whores. You taught them that God is a liar, that it is okay to be gay and He loves you anyway. You failed to teach them about the Wrath of God.

If you don’t know them, you can either (a) consider yourself lucky, or (b) check them out on their website at www.godhatesfags.com. I am not going to link to their website, lest the link increase their rating on search engines.

I first encountered the Phelps group when they were trolling on a Baptist discussion list back in 1994. When they picketed the Episcopal convention in Philadelphia a few years later, I managed to sneak through the police line that had been set up to protect them. While they were holding up their reprehensible signs, I held up mine that said, “God Loves Gays.” Unfortunately, the picture at the right is the only shot available of the event. It was taken back when digital cameras took pictures at 64 kilopixels.

A friend of my sent me a link to a site that is taking a different approach. It is similar to something I do whenever I teach Leviticus, but they have taken it to a new level. They are staging counter-protests with signs that announce God’s judgment against that other abomination: shellfish. After all, we can’t afford to pick and choose the verses we apply, and a much larger percentage of Americans eat shrimp than engage in homosexual activities (such as nude shuffleboard). These counter-protesters hold up signs that say “Stop the Shrimp-Eater’s Agenda” and “Love the Shrimper — Hate the Shrimp”. Check out their site at www.godhatesshrimp.com.