Spent 12 hours yesterday preparing for the workshop I'm giving at Friends General Conference, titled "Are Friends Too Nice." It's about the loss of spiritual power that comes from Friends not wanting to offend anyone, since everyone carries that of God in themselves. We've forgotten, I think, that sometimes you need to provoke a confrontation to raise the level of moral awareness, that sometimes you have to say, in Quaker plain speaking terms, really hard things to people. In any event, it should make for a confrontational workshop, which is why I've been spending so much time on it. I have a 50 page booklet to hand out of writings by various Quakers. I've specifically picked Quaker writings that will challenge modern day Quakers to live into their heritage of plain speaking truth with power. I may get run out of town on a metaphorical Quaker rail <grin>. My good friend, Sonia Tuma, will be my elder in the workshop, making sure I speak plainly myself and also making sure I hear plainly!

 

Now I wonder if pearls go with Quaker plain dress?

 

One of the nice things about having time off is being able to work on all those little jobs you've been putting off since the last vacation. Besides trying to work on the workshop I'm giving for FGC I've been working on those little jobs. Finally cleared off my kitchen table of old mail, books waiting to be put away, folders needing to be filed, etc. I've also cleaned up the stacks of books on endtables in the living room, put together a table top loom that was given to me by a friend, which went into the guest room, which also had to be cleaned up first. I have a couch in the guest room again!

 

One of the most enjoyable jobs has been to put more music on my Ipod. I've done a good job of keeping up with transferring new CD's to it in the last year, but I didn't have time to put on all of my old music. So as I've been working at cleaning and organizing these last three days I've been getting out CD's of music I love and putting it on my Ipod. Discovered that much of the music I love, though, is either on records or tapes. UGH! I'll have to find a way to transfer the tapes to dvd's. Not sure how to do that. The records I think I won't transfer, as I still like to put an occassional record on to play. Two of the tapes I miss the most I thought I'd download from I-tunes. They're so old they're not on there. I discovered just how old some of my tapes are! One album I searched for by Holly Near has been ot of print for 30 years!

When I was up in Berkeley, while waiting to get a pizza for Jaemon and Tana, there was a used bookstore next to the pizza place. Never being one to pass up going into a bookstore, I went in and saw that they had a wonderful selection of books, but also used cd's. What should i find there but a boxed set of the complete works of Woody Guthrie. Now he's probably the greatest American Songwriter who's ever lived, and i love all his stuff. The price was reasonable. Ten dollars! So this morning I'm transferring the disks to my Ipod. Wonderful songs like The Great Dust Storm, Old Joe Clark, I Ain't Got No Home, Columbia's Waters, Do-Re-me, Gypsy Davy, Hobo's Lullaby (Probably my favorite Woody Guthrie song), and 100 other songs!

 

What a treat...

It was a great treat to see not one but two shows of the Dillards yesterday at the Festival. I got to the festival in the afternoon just in time to see the Dillards afternoon performance at 4 pm. Later in the afternoon I ran into my banjo teacher, Randy, and his wife, Joy, and they invited me to sit in the front row with them for the evening performance of the Dillards. What a treat! I was disappointed that because of graduation I couldn't see the Dillards at McCabes in Santa Monica on Friday, and here I was sitting right up clase on Saturday. It was great for watching Doug Dillard's banjo picking and Rodney Dillard's guitar playing. I know most of the books and my banjo teachers have told me this, but somehow it was startling to see that, indeed, they used mostly just the chords G, D7, C, F and G7. In between, though, there was some very fancy picking. After their set I bought a couple of their CD's that I didn't have, and got an autographed picture of the Darlings signed by Rodney Dillard.

 

A big hurdle for me was crossed in the afternoon. I actually joined in a big jam. I stayed way in the back and I didn't put my finger picks on so that my mistakes wouldn't be loud, but it was so much fun watching the guitar player and following his lead on chord changes. I even screwed up my courage to get a little louder on "This Land is Your Land", which is a tune I've practiced strumming along to at home.

 

The heat wasn't too bad there in Victorville, mostly because the wind was blowing at a pretty good clip. I felt sorry for the performers on stage, since it was built up they caught the brunt of the wind.

 

On the ride there I got a phone call from PYM Nominating Committee asking me if I would be Presiding Clerk again this coming year. Being Presiding Clerk is generally deemed to be a three year job, but they ask you at the end of every year if you'd like to continue, which means if either side thinks that Nominating chose wrongly there's a back out point each year. So it must mean that there haven't been any loud complaints about my clerking. It's hard to believe it's almost a year now.

 

Mostly a very nice first day of vacation.

Well, the Spring 07 semester is over. Turned grades in yesterday afternoon, then out to lunch with the department, and then over to graduation, which was awful. The President of the college left precipitously and their were constant references to him. Rumor of a fight and audit by the Board with him leaving immediately to spite the Board have been rampant since the news broke in the local newspaper (!) on Tuesday. At the graduation the teleprompter that was sending text to the video screen kept screwing up, so that "He had estabblished..." came out, "He stabbed himself..." and "He was responsbile for shearing sheep..." came out, "He was responsible for killing sheep..." Been a while since I've laughed that hard at commencement.

 

Vacation starts today with a visit to the Huck Finn Blues and Country Festival in Victorville. Bringing the trusty old banjo again!

Yesterday was the final faculty meeting of the year. They have been made non-obligatory in the last few years and as a consequence their attendance is way down. That's a shame, I think, since they are a chance to see old friends from around the campus, say goodbye to retirees, and celebrate those who've been around the longest. More and more these days friends I've known for almost twenty years are retiring and leaving and there are more and more new people I don't know. Being out by the farm has really isolated the math department. Ultimately I think it will not be good for the deparment to be so isolated. Supposedly we'll move back to center campus when the new building is finished in Fall 08.

 

One more final to give today, then hopefully turn in grades tomorrow and my summer vacation will officially start.

They can talk all they want about customer service, but they stink!

 

I finally got tired of putzing around Glendale yesterday at 4 pm after leaving the car at the dealer at 9 am so they could find out why the check engine light was lit, and also give the car a tune up and an oil change. Still no phone call, so I called them. There was, of course, only a phone machine answer on my service manager's direct line ("See how much we care!"). So I started walking back to the dealer. When I got there I found my service manager had gone and that my car had not been touched except to do the oil change. No tune up. No check engine light check. I was incredulous. How long does it take to hook up to a machine to find out what the damn check engine light means? Trying to keep my composure I asked about bringing it in this morning. "You could", he said, "but get here early since we don't make appointments on Saturday. We might not be able to get to it until Monday even if you're here at 8 am." How much would it have taken to really do customer service and say, "We screwed up. Be here at 8 am tomorrow and we'll do it first thing." Instead he apologized and said that normally they have two men doing the check, but he had only one man on and then said, "We called you about it a few minutes ago." That was right. When I dropped the car off at 9 am I asked them to call me on my cell phone when the car was done. They, of course, had completely screwed up the day and called my home phone at 4:10 pm! And surely they knew at 9 am they only had one man and could have let me know they might not get to it. Just another screwup for the day! So they'd done no work on the reason I brought the car in, they would not let me go to the head of the line on Saturday, and all I needed was for them to hook the car up to the damn machine and tell me what's wrong.

 

The last time I was to this dealer was 3 years ago and I wasn't very happy with them then, so I've gotten into using the Ford dealer in Claremont, which is on they  way to work. When I got home from this lost day I made an appointment at the Ford dealer in Claremont for Monday. It's gonna be a long time before Glendale Star Ford sees my car or me again!

 

And this is probably the last Ford car I'll buy. No wonder that I recently saw an article about how badly Ford is doing. Perhaps their customer service has something to do with it? The Ford dealer in Claremont is probably not much better. On Monday last week I made an appoinment to take care of this check engine light problem with them. A few minutes after making the appoinment I realized I was going to be working late on Tuesday, so I immediately called them back and changed the appointment to Wednesday. The next day, Tuesday, I got a message saying that my appointment had been cancelled by me and to please make another appoinment. Since I'd already made another appoinment I assumed they were talking about the second appoinment. That's how I wound up going to Glendale on Friday to take care of things.

 

Can you tell I'm still angry about the waisted day and the time spent trying to get the work done at two different Ford dealers? It's a simple matter of plugging the car into the diagnostic machine and finding out what's wrong, and I've been to two dealers now trying to get an answer. I love my Ford truck, but the service is enough to make one look for a different car!

Well, I'm sitting here this morning in Borders in Glendale, catching up on email, working on my FGC workshop, and waiting for Star Ford to finish with my truck, whose "Check Engine" light suddently came on this week as I was driving home. My office mate, Art, who knows a lot about cars, said not to worry as long as the light wasn't blinking. He said to double check the manual, though. By golly, he was right. Blinking is bad. Steady light means a problem with the emission system. He said it might be bad gas or filter, or something simple. After putting a fresh tank in it, the light was still on so I made an appointment to have it looked at this morning. Hope the damages are not too bad, especially at the beginning of a summer with no income.

 

Taught the last classes for this semester last night. Finals are written and being printed for next week. Spent this week getting caught up on my grading. Everything is graded and in place for the final grades. So I hope to turn in grades next Friday before graduation and begin my vacation. Looking forward to it! Things have been so hectic this week I had to give up my banjo lesson, which hurt but was necessary to get caught up.

 

Monster came from the kennel last weekend with a bad cough this week, which he promptly gave to me. Both of us were hacking this week. We certainly are a symbiotic pair! He went to the kennel because i was in North Carolina (again!) for the torture conference put on by QUIT, whose planning committee I sit on. Spent sometime this morning updating the website before dropping the car off. Check it out: http://quit-torture-now.org. Shelly Angel, one of the elders at the gathering, has agreed to take over web-site development and updating, which would be a great burden off my shoulders. Another person from Strawberry Creek Meeting may take over my tresurer duties, which means I really would have a vacation this summer!

 

Anyway, time now to look at some books...