Parts of Speaking Publishing

  At the risk of copyright infringement, I am reposting this newsletter article from the Chronicle of Higher Education.  I have been to UT-Austin and enjoyed its scholarship on teaching and learning. This news is baffling, although I've heard of such from other large institutions.  If you are a college or university instructor, please respond to Dr. McMurtrie.  I worked in this field for many years--not at the level Josh Eyler, etc, do, but in my own little way--and this is not good news for higher education.  I used to keep up a blog called Higher Education Observer (link https://highereducationobserver.blogspot.com/ :  ) and posted many articles on this subject.  What is a teaching center for? Last week I  reported  on the impending closure of the University of Texas at Austin’s teaching center. The news, announced in an email by the provost, was short on details, but described the decision as part of an effort to “optimize” and “streamline...

I am studying Ephesians right now, very slowly, and I'm glad to hear N.T. Wright has a new book out about it. However, I find his style repetitive and wordy. So be it. He gives another kingdom view of the New Testament.   I came to Ephesians 2:4 today: "But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us..." The preceding verses chronicle our state before conversion and really, before the cross.  Here is the interlinear version: The phrase "But God" appears a great deal in the Bible, so here are some. The thought "But God" appears more.  From Joseph's life: Genesis 48:21 Then Israel said to Joseph, “Behold, I am dying,  but   God  will be with you and bring you back to the land of your fathers. Genesis 50:20 But as for you, you meant evil against me;  but   God  meant it for good, in order to bring it about as  it is  this day, to save many people alive. Genesis 50:24 And Joseph said to his brethren,...

 I just learned of the poet James Wright (sorry, the literary world is so expansive that we all have holes of knowledge) and this quote about being criticized as "glib." "My family background is partly Irish, and this means many things, but linguistically it means that it is too easy for me to talk sometimes. I keep thinking of Horace's idea which Byron so very accurately expressed in a letter . . . 'Easy writing is damned hard reading. ' I suffer from glibness. . . . I have [to struggle] to strip my poems down." 'Easy writing is damned hard reading. ' Yes, I need that today. I wrote a short story for my writers group in one setting, typed it up with some edits, and submitted it for the bi-weekly meeting. They liked the idea . . . but I could tell on the re-reading that it was "easy writing," too effortless, too fast, too full of myself. The idea was one I wanted to get on paper without paying attention enough to the execution.  It'...

Years ago I read a book by Douglas Groothuis. He is a professor at Denver Seminary who has written many books, is known by some friends of mine affiliated with that seminary, and somehow became a "friend" of mine on Facebook. I guess I added him and he agreed. I always like his posts. He also wrote about his first wife's long battle with a disease.  He posted this link to an article on what the Apostles' Creed and affirms and that by saying we believe it, we are actively denying a lot of other false teachings. This might be a good article for discipleship groups or similar gatherings for a discussion of doctrines. I find that most Christians are really uninformed about false teachings and have, at the very least, misconceptions. There are a lot of false doctrines out there.   https://www.christianpost.com/voices/what-the-apostles-creed-denies.html?fbclid=IwY2xjawPhBctleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEeq29awklXzWS_SIitjW2M1fhd7dVT8pogI22j3QKewBNhq...

 I am working on an essay and podcast on binaries. There are plenty of theological, biological, and logical binaries.  But they rarely exist in politics.  This ICE issue is one of the non-binaries. As I have written elsewhere, two, three, six things can be true at once. Yes, ICE overreaches. Yes, some of their actions are cruel and disturbing and violate human rights.  Yes, Congress has failed to deal with immigration reform.  Yes, Biden let in millions of criminals.  Yes, leftist activists are getting paid to cause chaos.  Yes, American values of law and order are at stake at a higher level than one church in one city.  Yes, Donald Trump is a chaos agent. His recent actions are downright scary. He somehow manages to get what he "wants" after taking us to the brink of war, only because the U.S. has a bigger military. Yes, some immigrants come here to be criminals in a richer place.  Yes, protesters of the past, such as in the civil rights mov...

 I am posting this because I sent it to my writers group this week and it has gotten mixed reviews (they were nice about it). I know it needs work but I also know that I don't know what to do with it.  My fiction is too secular for Christians and too Christian for secular audiences.  ____________________ Laughter (title in progress) I saw her—them—today. I’d heard they were coming back but I didn’t want to believe it and I didn’t want to see them. But our village is small, and their home, a part of his family’s complex, is just three streets over. I was on the way to the market and they caught my eye as they were unloading an ass-driven cart. She looks to be at the end of her time, as if she will soon go into her confinement. The little boy, maybe three, maybe getting closer to four, carried small baskets in and out to help his burdened mother. He is a pretty child. He seems serious but with that mysterious wisdom we see in children’s eyes that often deceives us. ...

I just read the responses on Facebook to a Christianity Today article on the protesters against ICE who invaded a church in Minneapolis. The article in CT is balanced. One of the elders of the church is an ICE director, so the church was targeted for that reason. Don Lemon, who seems like a clown to me, showed up conveniently and filmed interviews with the pastor, acting very self-righteous.  In the comments on the story, which I figure are more from people trolling the sight than anything, they keep saying "Jesus flipped tables." This comment is from ignorant people who don't know Jesus. Disturbing a Sunday morning service has nothing to do with the cleansing of the temple. The moneychangers were directly exploiting the poor. The church members were not doing that. People who write that have no concept about the New Testament.  Added 1/21: They are using this as a talking point someone made up. Note how often it appears in these comments.  All that said, two things can b...

As an experiment with Open AI Art, I tried to create a cover design for my next novel, whose working title is The Foark River Hair and Tanning Salon and Bait Shop . The final one may be truncated from that. It is based on a play I wrote, which was a comedy, but the whole vibe is quite different.  I used the AI app the first time to create a rather bland convenience store look. I would not use it, of course, and as I hope to have this published by someone else, that will be their task.  Here are the two versions.  Then my husband suggested I ask it to do the same in the style of Howard Finster's art. He is a popular figure here in Northwest Georgia.  The second is eye -catching, but has some big problems. I can't have Howard Finster's name on it, and good grief, the writing is almost all gibberish. I posted this to Facebook to see what folks thought, and they love the Finster look.  I find the background interesting. That is a really sketch looking shack there. ...

 I think I would be picking at the Plur1bus post every day if I let myself, so I'll leave it alone at this point. I want to move on to Severance as my second example of Speculative Fiction that I have been immersing myself in, with several provisos or caveats mentioned up front.  I call it speculative fiction but it's a how, not prose on a page. Same with  Plur1bus.  I do read other speculative fiction, just not as often. I read Til We Have Faces and   The Memory Police in  the last year or so and plan to read them again. In the last five years I have read Ursula LeGuin and Dune and Hyperion and Wool (Silo). Overall, I tend to read literary fiction that is set "in the real world."  Both of these shows touch or "Venn Diagram" into typical space and technology science fiction but are definitely more about the psychological matters involved.  Most people know the premise of Severance. A huge multinational corporation, apparently providing hea...

 These are my responses to this show. I began watching it in October. I do not remember if it was recommended on a podcast I listen to or if it just caught my attention on Amazon Prime (it is an Apple TV show). I think what drew me in is that the main character is a writer, a very successful one, far more successful than is believable. She lives in a house in Albuquerque that would be over $500,000 or $600,000 here in Northwest Georgia. That's a really lucrative career. So, yep, it's science fiction.  In the first episode, and I will confess I have not rewatched any episodes, two major things happen: The planet is infected with a virus, and we meet Carol Sturka. Let's start with the first.  Over a period of a year or more, astronomers receive signals from Kepler 22b, which is, according to Google AI (and I apologize for using it): Kepler-22b  is  a significant exoplanet discovered by NASA's Kepler mission, notable as the first confirmed planet in the habitable z...

 This may be a three-parter. I am fascinated by speculative fiction of a certain type. I would call it Twilight Zone-based. I love the Twilight Zone when I was a child and it imprinted on me. I have not watched many of the episodes now on YouTube, but I remember many of them. The basic aesthetic of a normal person all of the sudden caught in a nightmare world has a lot of possibilities. I have written some short fiction of that ilk myself. One day I need to collect them and self-publish them. I do not want to send stories to contests (costs) or to magazines. People can read them if they want. Perhaps I will start to post them here.  Anyway, "speculative fiction," according to the all-knowing Wikipedia, citing the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature, is an  umbrella   genre  of  fiction  that encompasses all the  subgenres  that depart from  realism , or strictly imitating everyday  reality , instead presenting  fantastic...

 Yesterday we celebrated the second birthday of my grandchild. I do not post anything, especially photos, of my grandchild on social media or the Internet. Her mother does, but I will not do that.  Things I'm thinking about today.  Will there be another revolution in Iran? I hope so, except that is easy for me to say. Revolution means people die and there is a risk factor--very large--about who will take over. I definitely would not want Donald Trump to! The Iranian people are suffering from oppression and from economic default.  My prayer is that they regain their human rights, first, then their resource-rich land can be used properly for their benefit, and third, the gospel can flourish there. I want the same for Turkey, which is nowhere in the position of Iran but could use new leadership. The Turkish people did not strike me as happy, but somewhat scared, definitely unfulfilled.  From sources I read, the Ayatollah has a ticket to ride, probably to Moscow, wh...