Irenic Road

Oh July! Where have you gone?

Well, it’s 10:30 at night, and I’m finally writing another post. “Finally.” That seems to be one of the words of the month, along with “accident.” In the past month, my:

• car started sputtering again, a month after it was fixed
• car was then rear-ended (see below for details)
• bedroom wall began to disintegrate and mold from leaks in the exterior/foundation
• work became a lot more hectic

I did have some fun, though. Over the 4th I helped with the Gateway Church booth at the 80/35 Music Festival in downtown Des Moines. A church member made several stencils of things like the Des Moines skyline and a microphone, and we spraypainted them over pages from an old dictionary. A few people asked if they were pages from the Bible! At first I thought “C’mon, people, wouldn’t that be just a tad sacrilegious?” but I suppose if the stenciled image fit with the passage, it could make sense…. As churches go we’re relatively edgy, but not THAT edgy. I was fairly out of my element, but it was good for me. Several of us won free tickets so I ended up seeing Spoon in concert, a band I’d never heard before and haven’t listened to since. They were decent, I guess, but didn’t excite me too much. I walked home smelling of several kinds of smoke, mostly BBQ, which was appropriate for that weekend.

The next weekend I went to The OC (Orange City, Iowa) with several friends to “finally” give our friend Amanda her wedding present from us: help painting and reshingling her house. This was a much different cultural experience. Orange City is a lot like Pella, the town I went to college in, but more so. Very Dutch, Reformed, conservative, with a liberal arts/Christian college. There’s scarcely a crummy-looking building in town. I also discovered farmers in the area bale the ditches wherever possible, which seems like a good use of resources, but also fits with the Tightwad Dutch stereotype. We got the roof done and most of the painting (which was inside) and much hospitality from Amanda and Rose’s family (who live nearby). Sunday morning we attended the Maurice Reformed Church, which was the first Sunday I hadn’t been at Gateway since at least October. Rose gave us a tour of Hospers, the town of 600 she grew up in, and we made good use of the human-sized mouse wheel in the park.

Prior to that excursion was my little fender-bender on the way to an after-hours get together for one of my co-workers. I was waiting to turn across traffic to pull into the parking lot of Jethro’s BBQ when I was rear-ended. Even though it wasn’t my fault, it was still a bit embarrassing to get into a car accident in view of half my co-workers. The other guy had insurance and was actually eager to report it, so I made out just fine. It was just another hassle to deal with.

I bought the Mumford & Sons album Sigh No More after listening to it online for a while. (I like have a CD because I appreciate the art and design of the physical album, and because I’m getting old. When I was kid, we didn’t have the iTunes Store….) It’s powerful stuff, and I appreciate their spiritual seriousness, although I’m not sure it amounts to anything specific. I hope it’s more than just an artistic statement. It’s strange to think of God as fashionable. He’s sooo vintage! Anyway. I will still be using serif fonts and wearing plaid shirts when they’re not cool… well, maybe not the plaid shirts. I pretty well covered that in high school.

Somehow, this month got away from me. I did finish reading some books (of which I will write later in the week) but I had intentions of writing more and redesigning this blog, emailing several friends I really ought to be in better touch with, looking for a new roommate…. It’s really been a struggle to be productive. The next month is going to be better. For one thing, I’m going on vacation to see my Aunt Helen in Rehoboth Beach and my friend Luke in Princeton, New Jersey. I’m committing myself to writing on here at least once a week. I have a prioritized to-do list and a plan. Hopefully there will be fewer accidents in August!