Sadly, David and Margaret will be moving to the Netherlands in a few weeks. He's accepted a tentative position there. If he likes the university and they like him, they'll stay. Sigh. The people I am most drawn to seem to come and go too quickly in my life. My nature is such that I want my friends to be my friends FOREVER. This does not happen for me very often. Either we move, they move, we grow apart for other reasons, yada yada.
I really miss the long intense conversations that Ellie and I used to have over our all-too-short lunches at Snookie's. Even when Ellie and I do not agree on something, both of us are so intense that we stay at it until we either run out of time or the conversation shifts to some related topic that takes us in a different direction. I don't have many friends like that. Everyone seems so shallow these days. I miss my internet conversations with my niece Tassina. She's out of the loop at present because she and her children are living in a Woman's Shelter after her oh-so-religious brute asshole of a husband beat one of their daughters. Who knows what will happen. I am hopeful that this will be the chance for my brilliant niece to make something of herself.
A couple of friends from my doctoral program have once again become part of my life via Facebook: Kel Munger and Christy Porter. Both are strong, passionate people, but they live so far away from me. I don't have someone to sit down with, to share coffee with, to talk for hours with.
One good thing that has come about because of my new friendship with David is that I am once again being asked to teach the Women's Studies course next Spring.
My observation by the department chair went really well. That was a great class. The students really came through for me and impressed Dr. Garrelts immensely.
I have also been invited by a former honors student to sit with him at the Honors Banquet and to say a few words about him because he has selected me as his most influential professor. Not only does that honor make me extremely happy, it also eases my mind. He was in that class where the two super-religious girls got so unhappy with me because they felt I was dishonoring their religion. Tyler, much to my great happiness, said he felt I had presented as fair and unbiased a point of view as possible, that at no time did he feel I was dissing religion, just offering my own point of view occasionally. I am always careful to say both "This is how I personally feel" and "I am perfectly happy for you to believe something quite different."
These days, though, my tolerance of super-religious people grows thin. I actually had a perfect stranger SHOUT at me (all caps) that America was founded on Christian principles, and if I didn't like it, I could just move somewhere else. Sigh. She and others like her enjoy citing this book written by a minister that purportedly "proves" the deeply religious footing of the founding fathers. Uh huh. These same people turn to Glenn Beck for their "fair and balanced" news coverage. I am aghast at times at how ignorant these people are. They accuse those of us who are more open-minded of listening to "revisionist" accounts of history that seek to destroy Christianity. In turn, I have openly told a couple of them that their fundamentalist conservative beliefs will be responsible for the destruction of this country.
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