Author: AKMA

The Traveling Adams rolled into Durham late last evening, cramped and weary and malnourished from days on the road, but still very happy about the fantastic wedding weekend and the rich conversations with dear friends and family. Did I say how sweet Si and Laura were? And how marvelous it was to share exhilarated celebration with such a convivial crowd of wedding guests? If I did, I can’t have emphasized enough what a tremendous occasion it was. Truly, the world was healed in at least some little ways by the goodness and love that poured forth from this weekend.
 

 
Then, when I woke up this morning, I was startled to see an email note that raised the active job prospects total to two (it had been resting at “one,” because I incorrectly thought that one of them had expired). I’m currently in the mix, therefore, for two possible positions (one more academic, one more pastoral), neither of which is located in Baltimore or Durham. So we have to pack up everything here in Durham, store them in Sarah and Clay’s garage, couch-surf for a few weeks while these job processes process themselves, then move the Stuff to a location to be determined, and begin working on the shape of life without Pippa (who’ll be away at school next year) and possibly with Margaret and me apart from one another for yet another year.
 

 
I really like this photo that Joi took of me at the wedding; it looks like me, to me.

Josiah and Laura Harris-Adam set off on their honeymoon a couple of hours ago, if they followed their initial schedule. It was such a terrific weekend that it’s hard to say goodbye, to them and also to so many others whose presence supported, encouraged, enlivened, deepened these days. I don’t ant to begin to name names lest I leave anyone out, but it’s stunning to be humbled by so vast a crowd of loving friends and family.

Yesterday was a walk-through. This afternoon, it all counts.
 

 
The rehearsal dinner last night was spectacular — all Margaret’s hard work and planning worked out perfectly, and the caterer hit the ball out of the park, and everyone got along famously. We were on the top of the world, and today will only intensify our joy.
 
(More photos on Facebook.)

Given his sympathy for Ursine-Americans, I expect that Steve knows another side of this story. The MSM are notoriously biased against large non-human carnivores (even including the inaptly named FOX News).

David points to Donald Knuth’s collection of diamond traffic signs.

Welcome bags stuffed, table numbers prepared. Further errands on the horizon. Nice to see you, will check in again later.

We hit town tomorrow, and from there on we’ll tumbling headlong toward the impending nuptials. Today would’ve been a good day for blogging, but our hotel wifi doesn’t reach to our room, and I didn’t feel like camping out in the lobby (as Pippa did). There was an exuberant prayer meeting in the multi-purpose room adjoining the lobby, and informal day care for a half dozen in the lobby itself. Add the audio spillover from the revival to the kinderklang and the sound of lodgers trooping in and out, and staying in our wirelessless room, resting, made a lot more sense.

I’m itching to write another installment of the exegesis series — I’m up to “what makes research hard?” — but I don’t anticipate having a longish stretch of time in which to develop my handwritten outline into a full-bore (and I’m sure that “bore” is the right term for most readers) discussion of problems in exegetical research for students.
 
On the other hand, today we’ll go to the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame.* I harbor mixed feelings about this; it’s certainly not very rebellious to have a “Hall of Fame” in an architecturally-dramatic lakeside institution — not even in Cleveland — but at the same time, it’ll be a great opportunity for Pip to engage visually the history she’s been assimilating aurally, orally and textually. Plus, the transgressive side of rock is always inevitably inhabited by commercial/institutional interests anyway, and hey, it’s about having fun and delighting in the music. Our hotel features framed album covers as decor; ah! for the vast trove of covers that we deacquisitioned when we moved away from Princeton.
 
Sunday’s Doonesbury presents the tired, poisonous trope that “Whenever you read form the Old Testament, God is always crabby and snarky to everyone,” whereas “the New Testament isn’t about anger at all — it’s about love.” Really now — Trudeau should know better, Rev. Scotty should know better, and I sure hope Bible professors around the USA will be using this as an illustration of how dreadfully biblically-illiterate U.S. dominant culture is.
 
Steve links to this great essay on the future of books — yes, yes, yes. (Whoops, I thought it was Steve, but I lost the link-source.) Repeat after me: Books are not going away. Their cultural and economic role will change, but guess what? It was going to change sometime, somehow, anyway. The hue and cry over “Books are disappearing!” is a sign that people care too much about books for them to vanish. Look, I’m a fountain pen user; however much we may talk about “environmentally responsible writing instruments” and “quality,” the plain fact is that we use and collect fountain pens out of a particular kind of non-utilitarian appreciation. And if fountain pens can survive (and thrive!) in a disposable ballpoint world, books ain’t going anywhere soon.
 
And while I’m clearing out browser tabs, Michael Gilmour”s article on the Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible album exemplifies on of the things that provokes me to try to accelerate the discussion of popular music in theological discourse. On one hand, Gilmour does a helpful job of supplying interview and biographical fragments and of motif-spotting. On the other hand, though, the essay strikes me as journalistic in the unfortunate sense — it skims the surface of “things people said” or “apparent allusions” without engaging critically the implicit theology (or implicit philosophy or implicit life-world or whatever you want) that the music describes and promotes. That’s where I’m driving, sisters and brothers, and I have to work on that paper this summer. Hey, maybe since I’m presenting a paper on this at the SBL meeting in November, my visit to the Hall of Fame will be tax-deductible!
 
* When, long ago, our family unit made a trip to the equivalent institution for Baseball, our very young daughter enthusiastically identified it as the “Hal of Fame!” I’m not sure I can think up a rock’n’roll “Hal” to connect with this anecdote, but it has always appealed to those of us who heard her. The question is, does the Rock museum sell purple-pink baseball caps with a big “P” (for “Peoria,” or for “Pippa,” depending on your outlook)?

As if every Sunday were not sufficiently a Holy Day of Obligation, today is Pentecost — and we’ll be driving all day. Prayers and thanksgivings and solidarity with our sisters and brothers in worship today, and our heartfelt wishes for a time when the truth will again be heard and understood by all, each in their own idiom. Pentecostal blessings on you all!

I’ve been thinking hard about Jeff’s recent post (as I almost always do), and his reflections resonate powerfully with my own experiences and ideas. Most obviously, it’s not at all clear that I’ll have an academic job this coming year, while my wife has secured an appointment; secondarily, I share Jeff’s interest in the importance of visual rhetoric, and some of the estrangement that tends to engender among disciplinary colleagues who perceive only the verbal dimension of biblical scholarship. Jeff has long been a vital provocateur for my thinking about visual communication; while I don’t always agree with him, I tend to suppose it’s because he’s smarter, an exceptionally gifted photographer, and more well-read.
 
Way back in Inter-Web antiquity, a number of us played with the conceit of a University of Blogaria, but wouldn’t my neurons sizzle if I could [collaborate with] Jeff in some mode of non-institutional teaching/arguing/theorizing about rhetoric, communication, composition, argumentation, hermeneutics, and so on. And cheers and best wishes to Jeff and Krista!

Safe arrival at Baltimore, preparing for Margaret’s faculty dinner, leaving tomorrow for Cleveland (“city of light, city of magic”).

Some people say “[I] have no dog in this hunt” (Google = 10.4K), and others “[I] have no dog in this fight” (Google = 116K). Now, competent readers recognize both expressions as colorful ways of disclaiming interest, so it would be mistaken to ask “which is right?” I wonder, though, whether one arose out of the other, or each developed more or less simultaneously/autonomously.
 
Given the tradition of hunting with packs of dogs in England, I’d suspect (without direct evidence) that “hunt” came first: “I can speculate disinterestedly about which dog will turn up a pheasant first, because I don’t have a dog in the contest.” Among people less accustomed to hunting with packs of dogs, the more intelligible version would transmute the trope to the practice of dog fighting. But that’s 100% speculation. If there were a convenient way to send up a flare to Language Log in general, rather than picking on one of the Loggers, I’d refer it to them — but for now, I’ll just leave my ruminations here.