...at least they didn't fire me for the exploding schoolhouse.
Here is a tip: do not talk anymore about sodium's violent combustibility.
I hope Mr. Springs would be proud of me. This is the very first time in more than thirty years that I've used the term "valence electrons" in a piece of writing.
For now, I'm being a very active substitute teacher. Which, well... we'll see what happens from there. People have been telling me for many years that I would make for a great teacher. Today was a chance to give it a shot.
I must confess, I am absolutely BLOWN AWAY by the technology in the average classroom today. Instead of a TV and a videotape player on a cart, each classroom now has this big touch-screen high-definition set. I had to get one of the kids to explain to me how to make it work. The teacher had a video about the Bohr model, using various elements' atoms.
The last atom it touched upon was sodium. I saw a ripe opportunity to broaden the kids' minds in a way they might find pretty fascinating. After the video I told them that the one lonely electron in sodium's outer shell is determined to chemically bond with ANYTHING. And from there I shared the story of how my own high school's chemistry teacher once set off an explosion heard for miles around by sending a brick of sodium plunging into a bucket of water. They did indeed find that pretty awesome. A few of the male students asked if we could do that, and I said no.
The kids proceeded to make 3D models of their assigned atoms. Someone asked aloud about neutrons. Like, "what do they do?"
So I used that as the diving block from which to jump into teaching the kids about how neutrons and atomic weight play an important role in using gas centrifuges to enrich uranium into nuclear weapons-grade "yellowcake":
One lad asked if we had a gas centrifuge in the school's lab. I told him "I doubt it." But I must give him credit for his curiosity.
(In case you're wondering, I am not joking about any of this. Who knows, I may have sown a seed or planted a sapling in these kids' minds today.)
So, I'll be doing substitute teaching for the next little while, trying out different ages and subject matters. The ultimate role reversal is probably going to be me teaching math. Oh bruddah... WHAT have I gotten myself into??
See? I really do know how to write an op-ed piece that doesn't honk off many readers!
This edition of Elon's student newspaper The Pendulum came out right before spring break 1999. I didn't want to be on the cusp of that and deliver something that would be overly provocative. There had been an article for Christmas a few months earlier and this new one needed to be on a happy note too.
So here it is, from two months before the premiere of Star Wars Episode I. Note the special photo we used for the essay: me brandishing a toy lightsaber and wearing the helmet from a Darth Vader mask. Click on the pic to enlarge and read!
Found something last night while doing historical research. It absolutely floored me to read this passage. It could be referring to the America of today:
Regrettably, there is one goal that has eluded me in the seven years since my dog Tammy and I left our old hometown to find our place somewhere in America. It was something I was very serious about, and still am. I speak of finding a place of worship. Somewhere that I can be an active part of a community of believers.
This area doesn't lack for churches. I've visited many of them. Guess you could say that I'm hoping and praying that God will lead me to where He needs me to be. It's almost like a microcosm of the journey across America we did. I'm still in that "let's see what's out there" mode.
In the five years since I've been here I've visited some churches that were very big, others that were quite small. A few of them had beliefs that I can not for good reasons subscribe to. For the second time in my life I departed from a visit to a church because the number-one item in its statement of faith is that homosexuals are not welcome. Now, I am not a homosexual and I absolutely believe it's a dire sin that God can not possibly "affirm". But when that takes priority over everything else in a congregation's doctrine, ahead of even there being one God, something is terribly wrong. One house of worship had a lot of people babbling incoherently with no idea as to who was saying what. That's... just not for me, no offense meant.
I had begun to wonder if there was something wrong with my faith. Am I being too "picky"? Am I trying to find what many Christians have said does not exist and that I know that they are right: a perfect church?
If there is such a thing as a perfect church, I shall never be able to darken its threshold... because as soon as I enter the building it will no longer be perfect!
So a few weeks ago I was spending a Saturday afternoon browsing church websites. Looking for a new place to visit soon. Anyplace that would stir my interest. It was a seemingly fruitless search.
And then I did something that I had failed to do when I first started looking. I went to Google and for the search term I simply asked for "churches near me".
It returned with a nice-sized list of places of worship within a few miles' radius. And the very first of the results was for a church... that was less than five hundred feet away.
"No way!" I literally shouted.
At first I thought it was an error. Now, there had been a Baptist church with a mostly African-American membership just across the street and a few numbers down from my house. I used to hear them playing their instruments every Sunday morning. But they seem to have disappeared in the past year or two.
Apparently, another congregation was now using that building.
I found the church's website and its Facebook page. And for the rest of the evening I was dumbfounded that a church that already seemed to have much of what I've come to appreciate in a congregation was less than five minutes' walk away.
So it was that a few days ago on Sunday, I walked from home all the way to church.
What was it like? Well as I told friends later that day it was like Baptist preaching, Pentecostal praying, and a bit of Eastern Orthodoxy all rolled into one. The most obvious trait of the church is that the vast majority of its people are from Russia and other countries in Eastern Europe. This area has seen a lot of migrants arrive from that part of the world and there are many churches that serve those communities. This particular congregation speaks both Russian and English, which a few members were translating between the two. I couldn't help but notice that during the sermon the teenage girl next to me was taking notes in Cyrillic alphabet. There were some praise songs in Russian, that all I could do was stand there without an iota of comprehension, followed by songs in English.
The message of the morning's service was based on the Book of Joshua. About how Joshua is the first character in the Bible who is instructed by God to study scripture (in the form of the Books of Moses). It also touched upon verses in Matthew and Philippians. My fingers were darting all over my iPhone's Bible app, and I must have looked like an oddball because everyone else was using good ol' fashion printed books.
The service lasted two and a half hours. And I definitely felt that I was a better person for being there. The people of this church are very friendly and welcoming. They take their prayer life seriously, and that's something that in recent years I have started to better appreciate in my own spiritual journey. They thought it was very neat that I had asked Google to show me churches nearby, and the top result was a place that I can see from my living room window.
I can't say anything in Russian other than "da" and "nyet", but I really enjoyed spending a few hours with my fellow believers. Language has never been an insurmountable obstacle for those who are in the Kingdom of God. Faith and love will always prevail. I may not have understood the words, but the smiles and the light in their eyes said it all well enough.
It's quite likely that I may go back soon. There are a few other churches that I've the curiosity to also investigate in the next few weeks. No matter where I end up though, there is great comfort and joy in knowing that true brothers and sisters in Christ are but a brisk walk away from my front door.
I've said it before, and I try to be mindful of it, but it's true: The Lord provides.
Actually I've had it for a very long time now (I think 2006). I just haven't done anything with it until this week...
Some friends suggested that I "increase marketability". So I'm putting myself out there in a way I might have not done before. In assembling this I've become a bit astounded at all the experiences that have been racked up over the past decade or two. In spite of having manic depression - or maybe because of it - I've wound up with a pretty impressive skills-set and collaborative history. I also uploaded and included a portfolio of some of my video work, bits of which have never been seen by a wide audience until now (I'm particularly fond of the "Wacky Dead" clip).
Anyway, if you want to see the professional side of me, here's my LinkedIn page.
So for like the third or fourth time in my life I am entering the field of education.
I promise that I won't read "The Call of Cthulhu" to second graders again.
(No, seriously, that's what happened.)
Looking forward to taking young minds full of mush and molding them into critically thinking members of society. Or playing a small part in it anyway :-)
