This I Believe

I think it's time that I spoke openly about something that I believe strongly in. Let me start off with a little background.

Most of us are motivated politically by reacting against what we see as great injustice. For instance, as a mostly left-leaning individual and pacifist, I am strongly opposed to the warmongering that the U.S. propagates continually these days. We are beholden to economic and imperial interests and have been for quite some time. That motivates me politically, but not to support. Rather, our nation's horrific Human Rights record mobilizes me to dissent. I simply cannot assent to torture and mass murder performed in the name of the Stars and Stripes. On the other hand, many in the Pro-life camp are outraged at the admittedly obscene number of abortions performed in this country. The antagonism entrenched in this issue prevents honest, productive dialogue that could lead to common interests, such as reducing dependence on Abortion as Birth Control. I think we all could agree on that. But the refusal of many to back down from their absolute stance prevents the left and the right from coming together on this.

That is why I think religion has something to offer.

Some of you might say religion is the problem itself. I disagree. I can speak from my perspective and my perspective only. I am not here to say that ONLY Christianity has something to offer. But I believe that Jesus' message was one of radical God wisdom in the midst of radical political struggle. You may choose to see the Gospel differently. But you cannot deny that Jesus spoke CRAZY TALK! In the midst of xenophobic hysteria, Jesus chose the Samaritan as hero of a parable. He ate and spoke with prostitutes for God's sake (and I mean that literally – for God's sake). And with his actions, he modeled a better way of life. In today's society of increasingly negative emotions and attitudes, I choose to be FOR something. I choose to be for the radical love that Jesus showed us all.

You may be wondering why I am writing this. Why now? Why in this age where the only thing you hear on the news is violence and brokenness? Because no matter how much the world sucks right now, no matter how many children are being butchered in Syria, no matter how many human beings are experiencing ultimate suffering in this country alone – I believe we must be FOR something. And for me, that something is the Kingdom of God on Earth. I believe that all people are created equal, endowed by their creator with so many rights! We must build the kingdom here despite all our doubts. There is simply no other option. We cannot resign ourselves to the world as it is. Because Jesus told me we can do so much better.

Now who's with me?

One Week Anniversary!

Hello all. It's been a week since the wedding, but Naomi and I are settling in to married life pretty nicely. Thanks to all who came and supported us during our wedding celebration. It was great to see so many familiar faces and to get a chance to catch up with you all. We both feel truly blessed to have so many loved ones (and in so many different cities and states, at that). In particular, we would like to thank our parents Peter and Mary Graber and George and Jeanette Leary for their support.

One of the things I mean when I say Naomi and I are “settled in” is that we are both employed and enjoying our jobs immensely. We make communication an emphasis and we show our affection kindly. What's the problem? We live in different states! For now at least. This was always part of the deal, but it is still not fun to be physically separated newlyweds. While I am working at the Kellogg-Hubbard Library in Montpelier VT, Naomi is all the way in Boston MA (we should have just moved there – for all the time she spends there, Naomi may as well live in Beantown). Despite our frustration at not getting to be together, Naomi and I are both very glad that we got married when we did, and that we are going to create a life together.

I'd like to end by giving a plug for a truly wonderful wedding planner and caterer, Grace Schwartzendruber. If you or any of your friends are planning on getting married in the Elkhart/Goshen area of Northern Indiana, you would do well to enlist Grace's help. She was a lifesaver over the months of planning, as well as the wedding weekend itself. For those of you who are married know, there are about twenty-three thousand things you must consider for your ceremony. Grace knows each one of these, and was a huge help for us. I don't believe that we could have pulled it off without Grace. Check out her Facebook page: Plates by Grace!

I do have more to say, but I'd like to keep this blog post short and sweet. I'll try to post another one shortly.

A Haiku for All Seasons

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that most of you are familiar with the poetic form of Haiku. Many of us were taught how to write Haiku in High School English Class - most likely because it seemed like the most accessible kind of poem to our English teachers. If you remember one thing, it's probably that it is a three line poem broken up into lines of 5,7 and 5 syllables, respectively.

I recently read a picture book that I would highly recommend to anyone. It is written in Haiku form, and is intended specifically for young boys. The title? Naturally – Guyku. It's Haiku for guys!

In reading this incredibly well-written children's book, I learned a few additional things about Haiku that I probably should have remembered from class. First, Haiku poems generally have nature as their subject matter. This is one of the reasons that author Bob Racska cites as why he wrote this book: “[H]aiku is an observation of nature, and nature is a place where guys love to be” (Raczka).

I also learned that Haiku poems are written in present tense. Maybe you remember this, maybe you don't. But this also is another reason that Haiku is great for boys. After all, “guys are always interested in what's happening right now” (Raczka). I know that this is certainly true for me (cue the amens from Naomi and my sister, Megan)

The other thing that I love about this book is that it is broken up into four sections – one for each season. Because each Haiku keeps the present tense, the reader gets to progress through the course of the year as the book goes on. It may sound nostalgic, but to me, Guyku evokes the spirit of that wonderful comic strip that lives on in many hearts: Calvin and Hobbes. If you haven't tried to emulate the freedom and imagination of Calvin recently, I suggest you start right now.

You might be able to tell that I am really trying to avoid copyright infringement. If college taught me anything, it is that you should not plagiarize. Ever. Just don't do it. Therefore, let it be known that the following Haiku is written by Bob Raczka in a book called Guyku: A Year of Haiku for Boys. This book was illustrated by Peter H. Reynolds, and was published in 2010 by Houghton Migglin Books For Children in the great city of Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A. You can find it at your local library:

With the ember end

of my long marshmallow stick,

I draw on the dark.

Why it is Better to be Lazy Sometimes

Let me tell you a funny story about keeping track of your possessions and how sometimes being very lax works to your advantage.

This past weekend, Naomi was whisked off to Boston for her work. Her company was putting on a conference about sustainability on Sunday, and every staff member was required to be there. She drove down on Wednesday to prepare. Since I was not doing anything important, and my work does not start until March 18 (next Monday) I decided to catch the Greyhound Bus and spend Saturday and Sunday with her.

It was kind of a stressful trip. The bus had been held up at the Canadian border on its way from Montreal, and it arrived an hour late. I had never ridden a Greyhound Bus before, and my unfamiliarity with the procedures and customs on the bus meant that I was a little on edge. And because it was late, we arrived in Boston at approximately half-past midnight. I just barely missed the last subway train, and thus had to do another first: hail a cab.

I must have looked pretty pathetic, standing there half-heartedly sticking my pointer finger in the air. Lucky for me, a cabbie pulled over and I got in. I'm pretty flustered at this point and all I know is that I'm going to the neighborhood of Jamaica Plain. I tell the cabbie that's where I'm headed and I hastily pull out my Nook for the address. I'm finally able to locate the address and we set off.

For those of you who have never taken a cab before, let me assure you that there is at least one cabbie in this world who fits all the stereotypes you see in books and movies. This guy is loud, boistrous, and peppers his speech with “yaknowwhatI'msayin?” At this point, all I want to do is sit quietly and clear my thoughts, but the cabbie keeps talking. I feel like I need to listen, so I do.

After what seems like an eternity, we arrive at our destination. I pay and exit the vehicle. Whew. End of story. I Wish! Not twenty seconds after the sounds of the cab disappear into the city atmosphere, I realize that I left my Nook in the cab.

I'm pretty mad at myself. I never put a password on my Nook, so theoretically anybody could pick it up on the back seat of the cab and make purchases til my bank account runs dry. Not only that, but I remember that I have other sensitive information available – passwords, usernames, etc. - Basically I am at a high risk for identity theft at this point. As you might imagine it is very hard to go to sleep.

Do you remember what I said at the beginning about being lax working to your advantage. Well my friends, my laziness was rewarded in full when I got a call from a young woman at 2:00 in the morning (I was still wide awake, I might add). She and her friends had been out on the town, and found my Nook when they decided to take a cab home for the night. As I spoke to each of the girls individually, I gradually pieced together the puzzle. In order to find my phone number, they had gone on to my email account and emailed a very random assortment of my friends and contacts. They were able to find my number from Grace Swartzendruber, our wedding planner. I was (and still am) very impressed by their altruism and their ingenuity while intoxicated. There are, it seems, still good people in this world.

After that, it was easy to find the address the next day, for it was amazingly close to a museum Naomi and I were already planning to visit.

So, if you were confused as to why you got an email from me at 1:45 on a Saturday night, I hope this explains the situation. And the moral of the story is don't password protect your stuff because I never would have gotten my Nook back had I done so... Never mind. Just write your phone number on your Nook case. Yeah – let's go with that.

Has Kevin found a job yet?

Yes! He has.

I have to be careful. I don't want to be more excited in this post than I was in the one where I announced our engagement. I don't think Naomi would like that very much. That being said, I am very pumped to have this opportunity to become a children's librarian! I got a formal offer today and I have accepted it. To prove that I'm not just tooting my own horn, I'll let Naomi do it for me. She has written the following segment. If you like it, maybe we can bring her back for a reprise, or she could even be a regular contributer? Who knows:

"So, this is definitely Kevin's deal, and I don't want to impose, but I have to take this opportunity to do a HECK of a lot of bragging.

"Not only has Kevin been WAY more productive during his few weeks of job searching than I was, but he has done such a great job of demonstrating how awesome he is, that he got the job at Montpelier Library!!

"I cannot say how excited I am for him, how proud I am of him, and how lucky I am to have him here with me.  He has been excited about this possibility from the beginning, and it seems to fit his skills so perfectly.  He beat out other candidates arguably more qualified because he was able to show them what we all already know; he will dive into the library and make it as awesome as he is.

"I just wanted to quickly say that I couldn't be happier for him, and that I am just happy that he has such an opportunity to be a part of this community.

Plus, the library is two buildings away from where I work! :)

Domesticity

You've seen this type of person before -

At least on T.V. you have. The type who becomes unemployed and does some major soul searching with their new abundance of free time. This stint usually works out for a while, with the unemployed person achieving some degree of satisfaction from their personal leisure activities. Unfortunately, this “free time high” does not last. On T.V at least, the character soon reaches a tipping point and begins to spiral out of control.

Perhaps they become overwhelmed by their very own boredom. Perhaps, as I recently saw in an episode of Parks and Recreation, the character realizes how little they have actually accomplished in their tinkerings. In that episode, Ben, one of the main characters, is enthusiastically unemployed and spends his time creating a clay-mation movie. That is, until it dawns on him that three weeks of work has landed him only five seconds of (boring) clay-mation footage.

Obviously, This is one problem that I hope to avoid. I am thankful that I am living in real life, and not a Hollywood world where the twenty-two allotted minutes of screen time require a good deal of conflict. Basically, I want to avoid hearing the words: “Kevin. This is an intervention.”

You might guess from the title of this post what my unemployed tendencies have turned to. Cooking, Baking, Wedding Planning, etc. All very much included in the quote-unquote “domestic arts” I very much enjoy these kinds of things. It is exciting for me to pick out the various details of the wedding, from the colors to the registry items. It is exciting for me to eat bread that I have baked with my very own two hands (Thanks, Carla Histand for the excellent oatmeal bread recipe!)

While these things occupy a lot of my time, I hope and pray that I don't become obsessed. Naomi asserts that she could never become a “foodie,” but she thinks my personality is prone to foodie tendencies. Depending on how you look at it, a foodie is either a person who takes the time to select fresh and tasty food that was grown sustainably and locally, or a food snob who never eats anything processed and obsesses over food labels and ingredients. Obviously I'd rather become the first than the second. At least in Vermont, there's no danger of becoming the snobbiest foodie around.

Finally, you might wonder if I feel any degree of embarrassment or shame in doing these so-called domestic activities. As a man, I should be out doing the heavy lifting, right? Let me tell you what my friend Zach Metzler once told me. When Zach brought a sewing machine to college, I asked him about it. “Yeah,” he said, “I like to sew. I like to cook and clean as well as use power tools and fix stuff. My family taught me from early on that I should learn to do all sorts of things – both masculine and feminine – so that I'll never have to be dependent on no %*$&! woman!”

So yeah – I like to cook. However, I am rather fortunate to have a great fiancee to be co-dependent on. No matter how much I was taught to do dishes, that is one thing I really dislike doing. Lucky for me, Naomi would much rather wash a plate than prepare one. So it works out in the end.

That's it for today. Just let me know if you think I'm “spiraling” with my blog posts!

p.s. I also fixed the p-trap in the kitchen sink and am making plans to build a couch out of pallets. Not that I'm trying to prove my manliness or anything.

A short break from wedding planning

With wedding planning dominating my life recently, I decided that today would be a good day to take a short break and do something different. I tentatively planned to hike to the top of the hill at Hubbard Park, just outside of Montpelier.

Aside - as a native Kansan, I use the term hill deliberately. Any incline that I saw growing up would be considered a "hill". A hill in Vermont would be considered a mountain in Kansas. In fact, the biggest "hills" that we used to go sledding on were huge piles of trash covered in dirt (and eventually grass). Thus when I say "hill", I mean "HILL". Native Vermonters talk about out-of-staters from Massachusetts as flat-landers, but I suppose they might fling that epithet at me, too.

So I set off. I walked the half-mile across town to the base of the park and started up. As I was climbing, I realized just how much exercise I was getting. I also remembered that I was from KANSAS and soon realized that maybe I shouldn't have worn long underwear, 3 upper layers and my big coat. Don't get me wrong - it was cold. But climbing mount Hubbard was really taking it out of me. Fortunately I soon surpassed the worst of it. This hill was more like a plateau, where the steepest part is at the beginning.

My destination was a tower that sits atop the highest point of the hill. The steep part was on a road that had been plowed, but I had additional challenges ahead. As it turns out, the path to the tower had not been plowed, and was sitting in about half a foot of snow. (another aside - I must apologize to my friends in Kansas. I know a half foot of snow must sound like absolutely nothing to you right now). Still, as I walked, I began to understand that the other footprints that I was following were all made by snowshoes and cross-country skis. It was snowing and I was attempting to go hiking. How was this a good idea?

Okay, I'll cut to the chase. I finally made it to the top of the hill, and climbed the tower. It was a fairly tall tower that provided a very nice view of the city. The only problem was that it was snowing. And I didn't have my camera. Darn, I guess I'll have to climb it again tomorrow so my blog followers can see the full beauty of it.

I can't wait.

We're Engaged!!! (also in Boston)

WE ARE ENGAGED!!!

As most of you know, Naomi and I are engaged to be married!!! This is, of course very exciting. At the risk of sounding overly gushy on the fairly emotion-free medium of a blog, I cannot describe how happy I am, nor how ready I feel to wed this wonderful person. We don’t yet have all of the details for the wedding, but we are vigorously planning away. Right now, the idea is to have a small ceremony in Indiana fairly soon, but also to have a reception in Newton later this year, probably in August. That way, all of our Kansas friends and family will have a chance to support us in this new endeavor! I do thank everyone who has poured out their support on us these past few days, as well as before we were engaged. Your love has truly been most welcome.

On a separate note, Naomi’s work has taken her to Boston this weekend, and unlike the first time she went, I got to tag along. We spent the day traveling around on the T (the Boston subway) while visiting various museums and restaurants. One of my favorite stops was the MIT museum, a fascinating museum of science. They had lots of robots on display, as well as technology that assists in medical research. For instance, they are radically developing new ways to interact with the sense of touch over computers. If that sounds confusing, I am almost certainly not doing it justice. But this technology is going to change the way surgeons train their craft. Amazing!

It was great to experience this legendary institution that has been such a large influence on our everyday life. Really – if you counted up all the advances in technology that came out of MIT within the past 50 years, you would be blown away. Now all I ask is to see Isaac Entz’ name on the next big innovation in the world of technoloy. I even asked Isaac for some tips on how to best enjoy Boston (Thanks, Isaac!)

Now, as I lay on my warm bed, I feel truly grateful for the many blessings I have been given – supportive family, wonderful friends, and an amazing deal of good luck. Even in a Boston snowstorm, I have a toasty room to come back to. That’s more than can be said for many people. So, as Naomi and I embark on this road to our lives together, please keep us in your thoughts and prayers. It is much appreciated.

p.s. I know many of you are going to be asking how we got engaged. What is our cute story? I’m afraid some of you may be disappointed. At the same time, many of you will say how appropriate it is for Naomi and me. Regardless of how you may feel, we simply decided together that we were both ready to commit our lives to each other. It wasn’t even in a special, romantic place – it was in our apartment. So there, eat your hearts out. I’m not so much concerned about how it happened. Rather, I’m just ecstatic that it happened.

The job search...possibilities

Hello all,

First, an update on my situation. I am currently unemployed and have been on the job search for the past few weeks here in Vermont. Part of my search has included applying for substitute teaching jobs at local schools. While I have been looking for mostly teaching jobs (or substitute teaching jobs), I have also applied to some other education-related positions.

For instance, I applied to The Princeton Review, the company that puts on the ACT and the SAT. That particular position was as an ACT tutor for high school students. I have not heard back from them, but there is still hope.

However the one that I am most excited about at this point is a children's librarian position. It is a job at the local public library, the Kellogg-Hubbard library. I'm not sure why this job appeals to me so much more than a substitute teacher, but maybe it's the chance to build strong connections with both adults and children. It does not pay bad, and the benefits are good.

At the risk of jinxing the situation, I wanted to let everyone know that I got an interview for this library job. Hopefully this does not backfire. But I am very excited and I hope this shows through in my interview. It's funny – after being unemployed for even a short amount of time, I am ready to have a solid job with a regular schedule. To put it bluntly, I am ready for the daily grind. Wish me luck, and if you know of any solid young adult or kids' books that I should read before my interview, let me know.

As a final note, I wanted to say this: while spending an afternoon at the library the other day, I was interrupted by a little girl dressed in a tiger outfit. Her mom was filming her as she prowled through the stacks. I would have just written her off as just some cute kid until her mom asked her (while filming): What do you think about the library. Her response - “Everyone deserves to read!”

Couldn't have put it better myself.

Sunday Night

Hi all,

I'm trying out a blog, here. Let me know if you get it and what you think. want to stay in contact will you all, so I'm seeing if a blog is a good way to do it.

Before I start, I want to say that I know there are lots of opinions about Unitarian Universalists out there. They are probably one of the most theologically liberal groups out there. Keep that in mind as you read.

Naomi and I went to a The Unitarian Universalist Church of Montpelier today. Well - I'm not sure they would call it a church. It was definitely a great experience and the people there were more than welcoming. The only thing is, I don't know if Unitarians themselves would call their organization a church.

We sang several songs that were familiar to me. For instance, we sang the tune "Go Now In Peace". As Naomi pointed out, though, all references to God were taken out. Where the song that I remember says "May the love of God surround you", the Unitarians sing "May the spirit of Love surround you". I am not trying to pass judgment. However I was almost surprised that the guest pastor had to almost apologize for using the G-word. Very interesting.

I must give credit to the members of the congregation. They were immensely helpful and very friendly. After the service there was a coffee time where we conversed with various members of the congregation. Several people said that they grew up in more formal church settings, and that the Unitarian worldview drew them in. Others had grown up in the church and always felt welcome within the community. In that way, I suppose it was much like any other denomination - many different people coming together for various reasons, but finding a commonality in what they believe. We have already decided that we probably won't go back, but it was certainly fun to sit in on a religious community doing what they do. Next week, we would like to check out the Mennonite church in Burlington...if it actually exists. So far we have not been able to figure out where it is/if it is still a viable organization.

If you are reading this blog. Thank you! I am trying to work out the kinks in communicating with my family back home in Kansas, as well as my family in Florida and Ohio. If a blog seems like the best way of communicating, I will move forward with this. I know this particular post seems short, but please leave comments if you can figure out how. Once again, thanks for taking interest in my life, and I will try to keep in touch in whatever way works best.

Kevin