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... are not good responses to your ECON professor's question of, "why do you think I should up your grade from a mid to low C to a B?"

a) "I really need to get into the Education School, and I think I deserve to be an exception."
b) "I'm on academic probation."

Just throwing that out there.

I PASSED!

...start today. My first one is in six minutes.

Pray that I do well.

Second one is on Friday.
Third is next Wednesday.
Paper is due any time between now and Wednesday.

More later.

...but questions linger on.

Bones rattle. Dried, calcified fingers scrape the stonework. Ulna and radius rattle, shifting weight from arm to arm. Tattered graveclothes rasp and tear as dust falls from the limbs. With great force, the corpse pushes itself up, craning its neck, lifting its head towards the light. Empty eye sockets scrape the air, hungry for the sun. The dessicated mandible drops open, the memory of lungs clawing for air.

And yet, a breath escapes the maw of the skull, kicking up dust into the darkness. Impossible. No lungs expell it. No vocal chords give it vibration. No lips part to let it pass. Yet the husk exhales, then draws breath back in to empty ribs.

It rises upon frail femur and trembling tibia. Rags cling to the husk. Scraping across a dusty floor, it shambles with force far beyond what it's frail frame ought to facilitate. Phalanges old and dry grip the stone that seals the tomb and push. The air shifts and hisses as freshness and light pierce the crypt.

Out across the graveyard and down through the field, the ghoul staggers steadily. Down the road and to the sea, across the pier and past the docks, its empty eyes trace the outline of an old ship, long broken apart for firewood. It climbs aboard the vessel's memory and staggers to the stern. There, its claws grip the wheel.

The hanging jaw hisses a command. The sails drop. The anchor lifts. A wind, unfelt, fills the sails. The wheel spins, and the ship obeys.

Empty eyes, lidless and invisible, lock upon the open sea. Bones long dead remember the salty breeze. The trappings of life long left behind, with all its cares and worries and lies and politics, the dead man's heart begins to warm.

One thought echoes in the empty skull.

I live again.

The memory of lips peel back into a smile as the spectral hull crashes against the waves.

Never before has the dead man felt so alive.

I've been feeling sick lately, and not in the upset stomach way that's been normal as of late, but more of a weak, pathetic, whining kind of sick. I just haven't been myself lately, almost distant. I thought that was due to the large worm that is probably harboring in my stomach, as stow-away from El Salvador, but I'm finding it more to be some sort of emotional exhaustion. Since I have 3 more trips to go and I wasn't feeling well, I packed for Alaska and decided to watch "Stranger than Fiction" and fall asleep on the couch. It worked.

A side note: I recently bought a Fiat Spider, a two door convertible stick shift, that is fun to drive and a bit freeing. There's a long, long, story with that, both pre-purchase and post-purchase that will have to wait until after Alaska, but here's she is:

After watching the film, I felt inspired, and I wanted to connect with something. That may sound new-age, but I realized that the stomach bug wasn't keeping me down, I've just been exhausted and disconnected from myself, which really just means I'm lacking some needed Jesus. So I went for a run and ran down this trail that led to a lake that was the forground to a setting sun. The problem, however, was that in my current stomach situation, running proved to be an interesting endeavor. I promptly ran back home, and in due time I was ready to head back out to the lake. I decided that I bought the Fiat for reasons like this, so I popped it into gear and was sitting lakeside in a matter of minutes.

I was in such a good mood, having the chance to sit and write and take photographs and be with Jesus, that I came home and made an amazing meal of shrimp and vegetable pasta with a nice glass of red wine all the while reading my new magazine. It was so great that I decided to take a photo of it.

A glorious end to a day that started in such an odd manner.

And then tomorrow, off to Alaska for, hopefully, more sunset photos.

I have finished up my first semester of teaching "Latin American Development" and I think it went pretty well. Here are some lessons:

1) Offering extra credit only attracts students who value their grade, and would have most likely gotten an A anyway.

2) Telling students you won't curve, and that the "extra credit is the curve" will result in the same conclusion as described above. However it does take a bit out of the arbitrary nature of curves, and students on the margins have a way of sending an effective signal "Hey, I worked in this class."

3) Group projects can be done, however if the students are doing a presentation give them more time to present in class.

4) Group projects are a great way to not have to work on class plans for an entire month.

5) Students parrot the lecture material, either through trying to get by on the grade or because they just do not understand the material well enough to form their own opinion. This was painfully evident in their presentations regarding the topics of: the informal economy, remittances, public vs. private goods. I need to focus more on developing how to analyze these very difficult concepts; judging from their presentations I failed at this over the semester. They got the conclusions presented in class and how I got there, but they showed no differing viewpoint or how to get to that differing viewpoint. I was pleasantly surprised that other arguments arose over provision of education, health care, infrastructure, foreign direct investment, and some rather difficult macro concepts. But I'm still puzzled as to where I went wrong on the others.

6) Two things will happen if you let them choose their own topic: either they will choose something from the lecture material and it will be borring, or they will choose something way out in left field and be very interesting, but difficult for the student to present. The latter is what I was hoping for, and with a few groups they did a fantastic job with topics that I had not covered (the ALBA trade negotiations, a comparison of the reactions of the Mexican and Venezuelan economy to the 2008 Recession as a compare/contrast paper on free market vs. central planning). The majority though were the former; if I want them to go outside the material, I need to provide a list of topics and explicitly tell them to not use what we've covered in lecture.

7) More economics required. Some of them had great background in Latin America, and some of them had great background in economics. The vast majority had neither. More time is necessary on economics for them to understand how the analysis works.

8) Slides are time consuming. In the process of converting my power point slides to beamer presentations. Luckily that does not take as much time as the actual writing of them this semester. Hoping to have a consistent "go-to" slide file to recycle over the semester.

9) Students threaten all kinds of things. Though I have yet to actually be physically threatened by a student I have been told that I will face the wrath of: "my parents", "the provost", "the department chair", "God", and various other figures of authority and deities. Situations of wrath faced by human authority: 0. Divine retribution: Unsure, but I still seem to be alive, walking, and teaching.

Remember how the government said that the bail out would help spur the car industry to make electric, green, vehicles? How they would give up their old, gas guzzler production ways?

Yeah. That worked out really well. I want my money back that went to financing the Italian purchase of this failing American car company.

Now, Julie and Bill are out numbered.

Blake William was born on April 27th, and Kara and I had the privilege of being there for the new birth.



Kara and I also got to spend some time in St. Louis for a bridal shower, my god-father's funeral and, of course, some Ted Drewes.


But the best time was spent with Kyle and Ellie. They never stop talking, are hilarious, and apparently Kyle is turning into quite the golfer....

In February I had the privilege of being a leader on a ski retreat for Junior High kids. I did not get to ski, again, because the size of my ankle rivals any of Nick Probst's classic oranges over the years, but it was fun nonetheless.

On one particular night, we were discussing some great spiritual truths (as great as they can be with 10 Junior High boys that smell like death's excrement). We were discussing what the bible means when it says that God would spit us out if we were "luke-warm," a passage that is often taken out of context. The conversation was diving quickly to a depth that required some serious thoughts. Until, of course, one particular friend of mine happened to speak up. He is only in 7th grade, mind you.

"So, it's kind of like lasagna, mashed potatoes and ice cream."

"I'm sorry, what did you say?"

"It's kind of like lasagna, mashed potatoes and ice cream."

"No, we heard you, what's your point?"

"Lasagna is good hot. Ice cream is good cold. But if you eat mashed potatoes cold, yuck, I'd just spit that out."

Silence.

"Oh, I see."