I was home for Christmas

Well, the holidays have come and are almost gone. I got home yesterday evening from a trip to VA/DC to hang out with friends over the holidays. However, prior to that, I went home to Missouri for Christmas, it was a lovely and short trip to home. I flew through Chicago to KC and from KC we drove three hours to Springfield on the 23rd. I came home on the 26th and then headed to VA/DC for the weekend. This trip home was quite good. Three days is just long enough of a visit with my family. Mom's cooking. Well there is never anything like it. So here is a picture of me, my brother, mom and dad. 
Mom reverted to the "old days" and got matching shirts for the boys. HA!!

On Christmas Day, we all went and saw Alvin and the Chipmunks. We all laughed. The animation of these little guys is quite marvelous. Worth the price of a matinee.

One of the things I did this time was take a few pictures of the family farm. One place in particular really calls to me and that is the river bottom on the property. It is a quiet place with hills around. It's called Hominey. I'm not sure where the name comes from. I also managed to spend some time with the stones on the farm. More and more the stones have faces, take a look at the two shots of the rock person I talked to. I wasn't there long enough to converse. Rocks require some slowing down. However, it is this ground that my daddy's family grew up on that still calls to the deep parts of me. The river, the rocks, the faery portals all over the land have a draw to me. There is no clarity about what I'm supposed to do with this "calling." 

  

  

Hmm....A pretty scary ministry

I'm done with all my homework and I decided to indulge in HBO on Tuesday evening. I happened upon a documentary about an unordained Catholic minister who is recruiting kids. It is called Hard as Nails Ministry. It is a bit disturbing to say the least. It targets young people and his tactics are rather, shall we say, harsh. While blindfolded, he has kids carry a cross, wear a crown made of braches, has kids whipping the cement, and nails them to the cross (real hammers and nails are used, but they don't nail the kids hands to the cross). All the while, kids around the blindfolded child are saying, "We hate you, King of the Jews." "Jesus you are nothing."

Now, I'm all for experiential learning, and having just gone through an initiation experience of being with my own death and lying in bed for hours, I can appreciate the learning from actually experiencing something. But this just seems wrong. It brought up all sorts of stuff for me. But the scary part is that kids seem to be connecting to it. It is something that kids are able to relate too. It is filling a void in our young people, and, I guess it is better than violent gang behavior. But it just makes me crazy that we don't have other alternatives for young people.

Work work work

It is a busy time of year as the semester winds down and I have two papers due by the end of the coming week, along with a couple of presentations for the next week. Then there is the holiday knitting I've got to complete. Only one scarf to start and a pair of socks to finish. So, not alot of time for reflecting and blogging.

Vanishing Bees

Take a look at this trailer on this website.

One down, one to go

I passed my quantitative methods prelim exam on Thursday. It was one of the ones I failed. I'm going to retake the other one the first part of January.