Month: April 2023

Runs yesterday and today, 7° and 6°, adequate pace though a bit… weary.

Tomorrow is May Day, the international version of Labour Day, and my notional anniversary of being told that I was to be made redundant. Further, I got some job discouragement this week: a couple of rejection letters. And what’s even more frustrating than being rejected, they mean that I have to keep on pouring energy into a black hole of unproductive self-selling until something turns up. One can’t just say, ‘You know me, you know I’m good at X, Y, and Z, just put me to work…’ I’ll keep at it — no choice, really — but my heart is cracked by this experience, and if my [prospective] unemployment continues much longer, it will be broken.

3°, 5°, 11°. Rain and drizzle, and two miles a day. Nothing extraordinary, though today’s relatively warm temperature persented a pleasant change.

One degree — one! — and clear skies, a bit stiff but gradually limbering up, and a good pace. First day of teaching.

Two miles, 6°, clear and dry and no real breeze, and a startlingly good pace, since my joints were a bit unhappy at the start. I just pushed on, and the run went by rather quickly.

Two miles, several puddles (there was a downpour moments before I started this morning), 8°, footsore from a long day in dressy shoes yesterday. I gave myself latitude to just register the two miles, without striving for a pace; I felt great, positively springy, for the first third of a mile, then my joints and muscles all began reporting in as having forgotten how weary and stuff they felt. I permitted myself some walking, some barely-jogging, but I clocked two miles, and therein lies the victory.

A good run this morning: two miles, one degree, good, steady pace, in another spell of MIST .

I will soon leave for Newcastle, where my former student and very dear friend Bishop Helen-Ann (Francis) Hartley will be installed as Bishop of Newcastle (after having already served as Bishop of Waikato in New Zealand, and Bishop of Ripon here in England. Then I’ll dash to the rail station (blessedly near the cathedral) and come back to Oxford. It’s a 7:00–24:00 day!

Two miles, six degrees, dark skies, a positive pace, overall a decent morning run.

Yesterday or the day before, Alan Jacobs posted his approval and challenge to Brad East, concerning Brad’s straightforward use of “culture’ in a treatment of H. Richard Niebuhr’s famous typology. Alan would require a more robust, critical analysis of ‘culture’ in any treatment of Niebuhr’s topic. In this, he chimes in with the work many of us did in graduate seminars with Stan Hauerwas and Ken Surin (not so odd-sounding a combination then as it may sound now). Stanley mostly reminded us that there’s no such thing as a typology without a concealed ideology, though he also insisted on a more nuanced approach to culture; Ken insisted that there’s nothing without ideology, and led us into the intricate byways, intersections, pitfalls, and illuminating flashes of insight afforded by critical theory, and especially Raymond Williams (whom Alan also cites and discusses) (in this regard, I thank Ken again for his helpful contribution on ‘Culture’ in the Handbook to Postmodern Biblical Criticism).

So, yes to Alan and yes to Stan and yes, and thanks, to Ken. If you want to talk about culture, hear, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest what Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, and numerous others have had to say about the topic.

4° (I mean, really), clear skies, a breeze from the northeast, wobbly joints that eventually settled into a satisfactory, comfortable pace for my daily two miles.

Today is ‘personal statement for another job application’ day, ‘finally hammer out my plan for the A2 Intro to the New Testament: Matthew and 1 Corinthians’ class’ day (complicated by my dissatisfaction with most sources on Matthew, for teaching purposes), and tardy thank-you note day for several recent kindnesses. Plus, Margaret returns from her busy conference at the Society for the Study of Theology.

8° but it felt chilly nonetheless, felt all right but not strong or especially limber, pace was undistinguished. Yes, two miles.

Hey, Anil Dash (whom some of us actually remember from the old days at Movable Type) has a very apt reflection on ‘selling out’, a concept that seems to be coming back into vogue. The discourse complements my arguments (again from the olden times of blogging) concerning ‘authenticity’, and if the Internet were a smaller world again, and I were to tag Anil in a post and he could actually read referrer logs that pointed to this blog, he might respond. But that was a different world, with different mediations of friendship, and different malefactors whose practices require concealing the desire lines from one link to another…

It would be useful if, instead of referring to Barry Bonds (simpliciter), people referred to Bonds I (the star outfielder for the Priates from 1986 to 1992 or ’93), or Bonds II (the peak value version, who played for the Giants from ’92 to let’s say ’99, when he was still an amazing star but was showing every sign of ballplayer mortality, his stolen bases diminishing, the years perhaps beginning to take their toll), or Bonds III (the unnerving increase to almost superhuman baseball accomplishments, though it’s worth noting that he was still no longer stealing bases), to Bonds IV, the shell of the spectacular ballplayer who had finally begun to decline, a little, and was forced into retirement by the judgmental baseball establishment after a season for which most players would give years off their lives to attain.

Now, I’m not ignorant of the odds that he achieved Bonds III status by the judicious employment of performance-enhancing drugs. I’m not arguing that people should declare him innocent solely because he has not admitted or been proven to have knowingly used PEDs (though it’s pretty clear that his trainer used steroids in treating him). I don’t like those circumstances a tiny bit.

But he’s also a proud Black man whom the predominantly white power brokers in baseball and the media wanted to break — as white folks have used their power against other ‘uppity’ Black folks. Even as at the time I was wishing he weren’t so prickly, were more like his godfather Willie Mays, I had to respect his unwillingness to play by the rules others tried to impose on him. And to be fair, even Bonds III, the man who in his late thirties was improving his game and achieving baseball accomplishments that may never be equalled (with chemical support), was so good a hitter that he should go down in history just for those years.

An early season reminder that plenty of white ballplayers were disagreeable, cheated, were aggressively dangerous to other players, and the world of baseball noted approvingly how ‘competitive’ they were. Barry Bonds was better than most people who were alive at the time can remember, better than most who didn’t experience his presence in the game can believe, and he’s still around. It’s time. I acknowledge, honour, and respect him as the best there’s been (though we should also begin to make room for Shohei Ohtani to redefine baseball greatness over the next few years).

Yesterday I met with students for a revision, and today I had a make-up tutorial (making up a missed tutorial, not a tutorial on how to make this pig’s ear look more silk-purse-ish) so it really is Trinity Term. I got a [North American usage] slew of emailed tasks last night, so I worked late into the evening, and I’m hoping to get through them today so that I can take this evening off.

I did run this morning, a desultory two miles in 6°, clear skies, light breeze. Nothing remarkable about my pace or circumstances, but I did it.

And I’m on a short list (obvs can’t go into detail for reasons you will understand), so there’s that.

The BBC assured me that it was 9° this morning during my run, though I’d have reckoned that it was five or more degrees chillier. It had rained overnight, but I encountered no showers as I made my somewhat slow way through my two miles, but I didn’t feel bad — just slow.
Trinity Term begins today for me, meeting some of my first-years to coach them for their upcoming Bible collection (= ‘practice exam’), and my dear one sets off to Coventry to take part in the annual Society for the Study of Theology conference. The ladies (Minke and Flora) and I will have to manage on our own for three days.

Inspired by Prof. Philip Cohen’s discomfiting encounter with ChatGPT, t his morning I test-drove ChatGPT by vanity-chatting with the AI about Margaret and me. It was… well, not ‘educational’ since I would have anticipated roughly this result, but certainly informative.

For instance: I checked Margaret first, and it turns out that Margaret has been conducting several side hustles about which she didn’t tell me a word. ‘She began her academic career as a lecturer in theology at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. She later served as a lecturer in Christian Ethics at the University of St Andrews, also in Scotland.

Adam has also taught at Yale Divinity School and Harvard Divinity School in the United States, and has held visiting positions at several other universities and theological seminaries around the world. She has been a Visiting Fellow at the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton, New Jersey, and a Visiting Scholar at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. Currently, she is a Senior Research Fellow in Theology at Mansfield College, Oxford University.’ Well!
None of this is true, although ChatGPT got is close with ‘lecturer in theology at Glasgow’ (she was a visiting lecturer’, and the distinction makes a huge difference. Likewise, she’s a Visiting Tutor at St Stephen’s House, which is… in the same city as Mansfield. (By the way, she’s open to offers from Harvard and, especially, Yale). I invited ChatGPT to compare her work with her former co-worker David Clough’s, and it got some vague similarities, but reversed the poles by suggesting that Margaret is more Barthian and Protestant, and David is more Catholic. I tossed ChatGPT a soft pitch by asking if she and Willie James Jennings shared any theological teachers or influences, and it entirely whiffed on Stan Hauerwas (now, it’s true that neither of them is a Hauerwasian epigone, but it doesn’t take much theological-academical nous to note that both their Duke degrees were affected by Stan’s presence).

As for me, I was surprised to discover that I’m an expert on Mark and John, about which I’ve published books (hint: I have written about neither Mark nor John, and have written and published a commentary on the Epistle of James, and essays on Matthew). The huge surprise for me, though, was that everybody calls me by my nickname, ‘Kim’. (Margaret supposed that the AI might think her nickname is ‘Madge’, which I’m recording here in the hope that people pick up on it and it becomes a fulfilled prophecy.)

I noticed some other writing tics in the model, which I shan’t disclose here so that I can use them as a preliminary warning sign for GPT-ed essay submissions….

Not an encouraging sample.

Both a slow start to my morning run, and a slow start to my day. Instead of going to Mass at Cowley St john, I’ll go with Margaret to Mary Mags, so I’m not out the door (again) till ten o’clock or so.
My run was embarrassingly sluggish: heavy legs all the way and a molassean pace. On the other hand, the temperature ticked up to 6°, and the weather was clear and still.

4° with a steady breeze that cut right through my hoodie, clear skies, two miles, decent pace. I applied for another post this morning; I’m helping out with a wedding this afternoon; Trinity Term starts tomorrow. Not idle, by any means, though I wish my time were devoted less to stress and more to productivity.

3° (roughly the same temperature I was running in during January), but only one mile this morning because as I turned for the long outward stretch of the run, it began to rain with moderately heavy drops. I felt all right, apart from the rain, but I wasn’t going to subject myself to a dousing just in the name of mileage.

5°, clear skies and dry ground, I felt all right (if not energetic and limber), and ran at an adequate pace; submitted the application that I finished yesterday; looking forward to the Knossos exhibition at the Ashmolean. I have some planning to execute for the Intro to the New Testament class I’ll teach this term, but I may give myself a low-pressure day to gather energy and equanimity for the oncoming surge of responsibilities.

I finished a job application today, roughly eleven months after having been made redundant. Though filing an application gives a feeling of — well, not exactly ‘hope,’ but at least the flicker of possibility on the horizon. After completing, but before sending, I just feel the weight of a succession of closed doors.*

*I just realised that I got received a ‘We called someone else’ note today, too, so that’s obvs a factor.

The Easter vac is slipping away, and Trinity is right around the corner. I started my morning run in 5°, under clear skies; as I made the turn back I saw dark, ominous clouds on the horizon, and it was raining as I un locked the front door.

Time to be intensely productive today — Go, team! Tackle those tasks! Plan that module! Rah Rah Rah!

5°, clear skies, heavy legs (the day after the first run after a break often feels especially sluggish), adequate pace.

The story this morning is my fingers, which are still behaving oddly. When they started [playing up about a month ago, I put it down to simple old chilblains; there are several ways in which that still seems possibly to apply. But I’m also considering the possibility that it’s an initial flare-up of arthritis. The index fingers on both hands, especially the first knuckle on each, are the primary locus of the symptoms. The joints are puffy and stiff, prickly and the fingertips very sensitive with pins-and-needles sensations. Beginning yesterday morning, the fingertips seemed to be returning to normal, but joints are still swollen (I haven’t been able to wear my Grandfather’s high-school class ring on my right ring finger for weeks, though it fits onto my left ring finger) and this morning, not having taken any anti-inflammatories for a day or so, my index fingers feel puffy — almost as if they were the hot-dog fingers in Everything Everywhere, though not as long and floppy. Margaret has decided to apply some cortisone cream. We’ll see how that goes. I’d go to the GP, of course, except that the NHS is overburdened in the first in9stance because the @#$%$& government won’t fund them adequately, and this week junior doctors are striking after fifteen years of below-inflation wage rises. It seems a waste of everyone’s time to go in for puffy achey fingers when cancer patients are waiting for treatment….