Ryan, Debi, and Toren Cragun's Blog

For those who don’t know, my family has a blog for sharing funny stories. I don’t hear funny stories from my family very often anymore (unfortunately), but whenever I do, I post them over there. My sister just sent me a good one. You should check it out.

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Now playing: Nina Gerber – Back Roads
via FoxyTunes

I just finished my morning class on Friday and was responding to email when I heard that John McCain was visiting the university at noon. I called Debi, who doesn’t have classes on Fridays, and asked her if she wanted to see him. Regular readers will know we don’t generally lean Republican, but we are always willing to listen to ideas, even if they are coming from someone we don’t generally agree with.

So, we headed to the room (in my building) where the meeting was supposed to be. When we arrived we were told it was an “invitation only” event. I’m not sure why politicians do that, but we were a little annoyed. We kind of pushed to see if there was anyway we could get in but all they would offer was, “Well, if you wait, there may be a little room in the back and we can sneak you in.” I had class at 1:00 so I couldn’t wait forever, but after about 30 minutes of waiting for Senator McCain to arrive, one of the campaign people tapped us on the shoulder and asked if we wanted to go into the meeting. I had to say no because I had a class, but Debi went in.

She stood through the meeting at the back. It was mostly filled up with military brass (in civilian clothes) and McCain’s speech was mostly pro-military, pro-war. We don’t often think about the strong military influence in Tampa, but there is a huge air force base in Tampa (MacDill), so military issues are popular.

Debi thought he seemed nice enough and he was actually able to respond intelligently to questions without resorting to guttural monkey speech (like our current monkey-in-chief), but she wasn’t sold on his positions. After a little more research she realized that McCain has pledged to overturn Roe v Wade without exceptions. As a genetic counselor, that is an untenable position. If Senator McCain had ever sat down with someone who has a child with a very serious genetic condition that guarantees the child will die, he might just change his mind. But, of course, he has to speak to the evangelicals who will help him get the nomination from the Republican party.

Anyway, it was a good chance to see a candidate, even though it’s not a candidate we would consider voting for in the actual election.

Saturday we walked past the Gasparilla festivities here in Tampa. We were thinking of going to one of the parades, but once we got there we realized it wasn’t really our scene. Everyone there had a cooler of beer on one shoulder and a beer in their free hand. It seems like an excuse to basically get drunk and stay drunk all weekend. That’s not really our sense of fun.

Instead, I came home and began the tedious process of extricating our chimney from our wall… Okay, that sounds funny, but long story short, when the last person to do a major remodeling on our house was working on it, apparently they figured it would be cheaper to just leave our chimney in the wall then remove it for closet space. So, they cut off the top, roofed over it, then sheetrocked it in. As uber-cheapos, I figured I could use the bricks from the chimney for a garden. So, I chiseled the top 6 rows or so off on Saturday, cleaned them up, then used some of our compost to build a small garden. We figure we’ll add to it slowly as we extricate more bricks and get more compost. For now, we just planted peas and cucumbers. We’re supposed to be able to harvest in a couple of months. I’ll let you know how it goes.

We usually try to put together a nifty little year in review holiday letter for friends and family. If you read this you probably got a copy in your email. If not, let me know and I’ll add you to my email list.

I haven’t posted anything in about a month as all we’ve really been doing is working. Honestly, I never believed working as a college professor was as time consuming as it is. I’ve been putting in easily 60 to 80 hour weeks and I still don’t feel like I’m keeping up. I’m just hoping things slow down next semester a little bit.

Anyway, I did want to post to get some suggestions. After the break-neck pace of this semester, Debi and I have decided we are going to visit at least a few places in Florida over our winter break to get to know the area a bit better and to do some general sightseeing and relaxing. So, does anyone out there have any suggestions? There is just one ground rule – nothing related to Disney (no Epcot, DisneyWorld, I-want-to-blow-my-money-on-fantasy-Disney, etc.)! Other than that, we are open for suggestions and hopefully will have some fun stories to tell as a result.

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Now playing: Tangerine Dream – After the Call
via FoxyTunes

I spent the past weekend participating in an academic conference I regularly attend (Society for the Scientific Study of Religion). I have a number of friends and colleagues who attend and we had a good time together. But I have to tell about one session at the conference.

The conference organizer – who did a great job – was looking for conveners for sessions several months back and I volunteered (trying to be a good citizen and all). I ended up convening a session with four papers, none of which seemed to go together very well. But I can usually find something interesting in a paper, so I approached the session positively. I contacted all of the presenters about 2 months in advance and asked that they send me a copy of their paper a couple weeks ahead of the conference so I could read them and have some questions/feedback for them. I got virtually no response. One presenter did finally send a half written paper about a week before the conference, which I dutifully read. Otherwise, nothing. That’s really not that big of a deal, but so it goes.

I arrived to the session with plenty of time to help them get everything set up. As is often the case these days, one person had a laptop and the others all loaded their presentations on to that laptop via thumb drive so we didn’t have to switch laptops mid-session. Everything seemed to be going well. The first presenter gave his quantitative presentation – no problem. The second presentation was a combined presentation with two people giving parts. It, too, was a quantitative paper. Again – no problem (though one of the presenters had a very cool, thick Texas accent). Then we get to the third paper. This happened to be the one I read. It was an ethnography of a rock and roll church (basically, a church with electric guitars and rock music). She started in on her presentation and got about 3 or 4 minutes into it when the laptop went apeshit on her. Unlike most laptops when they lose power, this one didn’t just shut down – it started flashing psychedelic images on the screen. I figured it was the power (which it was – the power cord had come out somehow), but commented that it was a nice backdrop for a presentation on a rock and roll church. The laptop owner (the first presenter) rushed up to the front to fix the problem while the presenter continued. About 2 minutes after the laptop went psychedelic on us, a member of the audience fell out of his chair completely and landed rather hard on the floor. Everyone was concerned, but he picked himself up and said he was fine, that he had just fallen asleep! The laptop came back to life a couple minutes later and normality was returned to the session. Temporarily…

The third presenter finished her presentation then passed the laptop on to the fourth, whose presentation was fine until almost the last slide, when she flashed one word on the screen – paraclete. Paraclete is Greek for “comforter” and is often used to refer to the Holy Ghost, which is how she was using it her. Her talk was on succession issues in megachurches. At this point she paused and said (paraphrasing), “We cannot underestimate the importance of the Holy Spirit in succession issues.” I almost choked on the air I was breathing in – huh? This is an academic conference, right? Since when do we pretend we can quantify the Holy Spirit? Unfortunately she felt so strongly about the importance of the paraclete in leadership succession that she spent a good couple of minutes on this rather bizarre element of her talk. This is the first (and hopefully the last) time I’ve seen this approach at this conference and I wasn’t the only person there who was uncomfortable. Bizarre!

Anyway, that was definitely the most “lively” session I attended. I do have to mention one other incident that is sticking in my mind. The conference was in a hotel in downtown Tampa. As I’m just learning, there are not a lot of great restaurants in downtown Tampa open on Sundays or during conference hours, so my colleagues and I had to scout out the area. Sunday, after the conference had ended, we went out to lunch. I was walking with Mike Nielsen (whose Psychology of Religion blog I recommend) back to my car after lunch when we saw a homeless person (who looked pretty beat up and run down) fishing for a cup in the garbage can just outside the restaurant we visited. Both Mike and I started toward him, but Mike beat me to the punch – he gave the man his drink and the man graciously accepted it. Send some kudos Mike’s way when you get a chance. He is one of those rare individuals who studies peace, non-violence, and justice and practices what he studies in his everyday life.

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Now playing: R.E.M. – Have You Ever Seen the Rain (live)
via FoxyTunes