Spring semester, 2009, is officially over.  Grades have been submitted, and the students’ pleas demands for higher marks have been steadily rolling in.  Why don’t I give a B+ or an A- “like the other doctors” for an 85%?  Because an 85% in a 100-level course is a B.  The sad thing is that I am sure they aren’t exaggerating when they claim other professors do grade according to that scale.  All your students are getting A’s?  You must be a great teacher! Here is tenure for you!

On an unrelated note, thats me 2 days ago standing beneath the burning bush.  Thats right.  The burning bush.  It looks pretty good for being 3000+ years old.  It is in the monastary of St. Catherine (as in Catherine Wheel) in the southern area of the Sinai peninsula, and at the base of Mt. Moses, aka Mt. Sinai (as in commandments numbering to ten at the top; false idol calves of gold at the bottom).  This trip was amazing and I am still pretty worn out.  Highlights included being let into the monastary outside of tourist hours and attending the Greek Orthodox service that has been repeated twice daily for over 1000 years; realizing that all of the decorations and lamps and candle holders and tables and frames and thrones and nearly everything in sight in the church are actually made of solid gold and silver; having the stereotypically monky Father Justin take us to see their library, filled with a few thousand books and hand-transcribed manuscripts, most of which are hundreds to a thousand years old, and listening in amazement as he turns the conversation to digitizing, Google, and optical character recognition; going to bed by 9:30pm in order to wake up at 1:30am to climb Mt. Moses; passing scores and scores of pilgrims, tourists, tourists on camels, and Bedouin trying to get me on their camels on the way up, illuminated only with my trusty wind-up LED mini torch, to reach the summit with less than a dozen people there before me, quietly bent over the side of the chapel wall at the top in prayer (or suffering from altitude sickness, I couldn’t be sure), thus allowing me a solid half-hour to lounge in peace gazing at the most illuminated night sky I have seen in a very long time, munching on some veggie jerky and watching satellites and meteors pass by, and wishing Emily was there to share it; watching as the sun slowly revealed the breathtaking view and incredible granite formations that we had been unknowingly surrounded by; the mysterious digital iconoclast of the mountain causing multiple cameras to stop working (thankfully, not mine); touring the monastary again (this time unfortunately with the hundreds of other tourists) and getting to see some of the worlds oldest, most beautiful, and most famous encaustic icons; mango push-up pops at the petrol station on the way home; and the open and frank discussion among colleagues on the current state of our institution, our roles, and our futures, which ultimately served to remind of the void that will be left after those who are leaving this year have gone.  More pictures and details below.

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