Warning: This post is not on the topic of what the Episcopal Church should do, or what the Anglican Communion should do, it’s what *I* personally intend to do on Monday and Tuesday…

When I returned home from Convention in Columbus, I was emotionally drained. The intensity and the anguish felt by so many over the last few days of that Convention took a massive toll. When I got home, besides sleeping for a day or two, I just sort of sat and stared out the window. I ended up digging out my director versions of the Lord of Rings movies and spent a few days watching the whole series sequentially. Sort of like going to Bayreuth for a full Ring cycle.

I’m not as drained this Convention. The bishops have made the big decisions already (and there’s little or no question about where the House of Deputies is standing on this during this particular Convention) and the budget discussions yesterday were mostly a waste of time in terms of accomplishing anything. So given that I’m not exhausted, I’m thinking I need to find a nice mental challenge for a couple of days of vacation.

I think I’ve found it:

“Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates believes that if he had been able to watch physicist Richard Feynman lecture on physics in 1964 his life might have played out differently.
Mr. Gates, of course, is legendary as a Harvard University dropout who went on to create the world’s most successful software firm. He has told associates that if had watched the lectures earlier in his life he might have become a physicist instead of a software entrepreneur.

However, Mr. Gates, who is also well known for his sharp and varied intellectual interests and his philanthropic commitment to education, said this week that he had purchased the rights to videos of seven lectures that Dr. Feynman gave at Cornell University called “The Character of Physical Law,” in an effort to make them broadly available via the Internet.”

Read the full article here.

My advisor back when I was working in the area of General Relativity was Ed Kerner. Kerner was famous around the school as having been Feynman’s first grad student. Dr. Kerner (I never ever called him by his first name, not even behind his back) was said to have had much of the same lecture style as his advisor had. Kerner, while certainly one of the finest mathematical minds I’ve ever known, never ever lost sight of the physics behind the equations. He told me that he’d learned that skill from *his* advisor.

I’ve read the Feynman lectures a couple of times now, but I always wished I could have seen Dr. Feynman actually deliver them. Now I can apparently.

I think I’m going to do just that for my aperitif in the coming week.
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How is your grasp of differential geometry?

Well, I’m writing a blog post, going out to get lime for the vegetables (blossom end rot), and making tilapia provencal for dinner. There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of point in further discussion of what the GC resolutions mean, because we are now at the point where the meaning is in the doing, and the doing isn’t going to happen right away.

Charles Wingate - 18 July 2009 02:25 PM

Well, I’m writing a blog post, going out to get lime for the vegetables (blossom end rot), and making tilapia provencal for dinner. There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of point in further discussion of what the GC resolutions mean, because we are now at the point where the meaning is in the doing, and the doing isn’t going to happen right away.

I am just sitting down to write something too, but I don’t know if I will ever be able to get it in words to my satisfaction. If so you will see it on Covenant later today or maybe tomorrow if it takes a long time to “gel”.

Where do you get tilapia? The only tilapia I have seen here for months is the frozen pre-packaged ones. These do not have their point of origin on the box and I suspect are from China, so I don’t buy them. The store used to stock fresh (or maybe they were “previously frozen”) fillets from somewhere in Central America. After they stopped appearing in the display case, I asked the guy at the fish counter why no tilapia and he said the packing plant had been damaged by a hurricane. I have no idea when I’ll be able to get it again. I like tilapia just microwaved with lemon, onions and parsely. It only takes about five minutes all told and most of that is chopping the parsely. What seasonings are used to make a dish “Provencal”?

Karen

I actually decided to use the “Baked Fish with Summer Squash and Zucchini” recipe from Franey’s lo-cal French (p. 76, if you have a copy), with the slight addition of a little garlic. That and olive oil and tomatoes gives the key ingredients of Provencal cooking. My wife also cooks tilapia quickly pan-fried, dredged in flour.

I’m praying for grace for the coffeehour crush tomorrow.  I’m trusting that we have been better prepared by our Rector and Vestry, for post Convention,  than in 2003 (considering we weren’t prepared then at all!).  Then, I will take my youngest to Scout camp and spend a few days in the Northwoods.  I do a great deal of program in the parish, so it’s vacation bible school next, sermon prep as well as pastoral care for some of our elderly.

I’ve been home about 30 hours now, and most of that time has been spent re-connecting with my kids (ages 2 and 4), my wife, and some extended family. A few people in church this morning welcomed me home but did not press me for a recap of everything that happened in Anaheim.

I’m still processing, and catching up on my sleep. I’m not sure how much I’ll write, but I do want to have a conversation with Mike Russell about laws regarding sign-up cards for labor organizing. He spoke against my amendment regarding that and I’d like to have a longer conversation than the floor debate process allows.

Rev. David Langille - 18 July 2009 10:43 PM

I’m praying for grace for the coffeehour crush tomorrow.

My rector has a simple solution for that: he simply never makes the slightest acknowledgement that the national church exists, other than the routine prayer for the PB. What coffee hour crush there was consisted of people asking about the Continuing Problem of service times; he and I finally exchanged a few mordant remarks about adding John Muir to the kalendar and about VGR’s demographic lies in his NYT interview.

Charles Wingate - 20 July 2009 12:56 PM

Rev. David Langille - 18 July 2009 10:43 PM

I’m praying for grace for the coffeehour crush tomorrow.

My rector has a simple solution for that: he simply never makes the slightest acknowledgement that the national church exists, other than the routine prayer for the PB. What coffee hour crush there was consisted of people asking about the Continuing Problem of service times; he and I finally exchanged a few mordant remarks about adding John Muir to the kalendar and about VGR’s demographic lies in his NYT interview.

My congregation is made up of liberals, conservatives, and everything in between. Every Sunday there is an “Episcopal Life” bulletin insert in our service sheet, we always pray for the PB by name, and we are generally rather well informed about what’s happening in TEC.

There was no “coffeehour crush” yesterday.