Lesser Feasts

  John Houston, Sunset over Cornfields Right on the heels of being called up to the bishop coadjutor search committee, I got asked to chair a faculty search committee in my department. I really, really didn't want to. Faculty searches are a lot of work; they are heavily regulated and subject to all kinds of irksome restraints. (For example, if two committee members see each other in the hallway and one says to the other, "Candidate X looks really promising." they have just violated the state's open meetings law.) But I've had plenty to say over the years about senior faculty who shirk important service, and I didn't want to fall under my own justifiable condemnation; plus, given that I'm teaching only one course this semester and have met all my pressing research deadlines, it really would have been selfish to say no. Not to mention that I'm eligible for a sabbatical next year. Better get that application completed soon. My hope is to spend some substa

John Maclauchlan Milne, Iona Shore (As is so often the case on this blog, the painting has nothing to do with the post. It's just a piece of Scottish art that I love.) I have a fairly easy gig right now in my day job. Because I'm teaching a 300-student lecture, I am just teaching one course this semester. That means only 100 minutes of classroom time a week. Now obviously there's preparation, supervising teaching assistants, wrestling with USF's reliably unreliable IT, and so forth, but still, it's an easy gig. And I just sent off a ton of research around the beginning of the month, so I can take a breather in that aspect of the job as well. (There are only so many times you can copyedit your own translation of Anselm's On the Procession of the Holy Spirit  before you feel like giving up on the whole enterprise and turning Unitarian.) So the Church's timing in claiming more of my attention is excellent. I am now on the Diocese of Southwest Florida's bish