Another week, another seven days of work, at least another seven learning experiences. Here are the thoughts that have accompanied this week's experiences. Thanks to Jennifer Fulwiler for hosting the 7 Quick Takes meme at
Conversion Diary.
1. Last Friday, I ended up at Mass accidentally. I suppose it would have been much better had I ended up there intentionally, but rarely do I have Friday noon available. Work seems to tumble right up to departure time and then spills into the Mass time itself. Last Friday was no different, or so I thought. As I drove into my parking spot, one of my employees approached me to talk about matters in his department. Ah, I thought with resignation as I listened intently to the information he wished to share, one more week without being able to take advantage of Mass being offered at the little church down the road from my office -- or lunch! (The church near my office is a far cry in beauty, historicity, or even numbers of worshipers from the old mission here in San Ignatio and a place where I know no one, but Mass is Mass and I had attended once before when I was able to sneak away from work while no one was looking.) As we were talking, my employee looked at his watch and excused himself, saying that he had to hurry because he wanted to go to Mass. "Oh, take me with you!" I exclaimed, and off we went. The priest who celebrated Mass was an elderly gent who reminded me very much of my beloved
Fr. Barry, who was transferred out of our diocese six months ago. It turned out that my employee knew most of the people who regularly attend Mass there and introduced me to them. What a blessing Friday noon turned out to be!
2. Saturday morning dawned too early. We had to be up because the first thing in the morning the carpet cleaner, Eric, who had spent the afternoon cleaning the carpet throughout the house in preparation for two upcoming parties, was coming back to redo a portion of what he already cleaned because because Donnie had brought chairs that he had set on the porch back into the house, dragging them and his dirty shoes over the newly clean carpet without realizing it was still wet. Dark black streaks glared from the white carpet. Eric came bright and early and quickly cleaned up Donnie's mess. He stayed a bit and talked and would take no money for the extra work. That is the way it is in small towns, or at least in our small town. I went out onto the porch to say goodbye to him, then walked back over the wet carpet with socks made dusty from the front porch. There were the black marks again! Well, gray marks. Thank God for Resolve! After the carpet dried, I could take care of my dirty work myself.
3. On Sunday, Donnie and I attended a funeral mass for the mother of one of my employees at
St. Mary Assyrian Chaldean Catholic Church in Campbell, California. What the employee forgot to tell me was (1) the Mass would be conducted in Aramaic and (2) women need a head covering in order to take communion. I probably could have guess both these situations, but I did not think ahead and so was quite unprepared, especially for the Eucharist, which I was unable to take. (I could comment on that, but I won't.) The Mass was celebrated by Fr. Yoshia Sana, who is originally from Iraq and was posted to the Campbell church by Rome. Present-day Chaldeans and Assyrians come from the northern regions of Iraq and the eastern regions of Syria. Ethnically, they are the descendants of the ancient inhabitants of Mesopotamia. Culturally, they are the heirs of the Aramaic language and culture of Jesus; most of the local population in this part of California, particularly those in my employ, speak as their everyday first language modern Aramic (which differs from the language of Jesus's day in that all languages add/drop/change vocabulary and simplify grammar over time). You can read more about Assyrians and Chaldeans
here (much of the information is in Arabic, but if you cannot read Arabic, keep digging, there is much information in English, as well. There were helpful missals in all the pews at the church. At first, I thought great, Arabic, but as I looked more closely and tried to read (nary a word could I understand), I realized that there were additional letters beyond those present in the Arabic alphabet. It is rare that I end up somewhere where I cannot understand at least something of what is being said in the local language, but Sunday was one of those rare occasions. We also went to the sitting (an Arabic way of paying respect to the departed that involves men together and women together -- poor Donnie had no way to communicate because none of the men, except my employee, spoke English well enough for communication; at least, I could speak Arabic with the women, but Donnie had learned little Arabic when we lived in Jordan and has forgotten most of what he did know.
4. On Monday, I had the day off! Yes! Happy Fourth a day late! We held a BBQ for my prayer group and others from
Old Mission Church. We brought
Doah down, and he celebrated with us.
Donnie cooked. (No one would have permitted
me to cook, given my reputation for burning or otherwise ruining any food I touch.)
Shane, Lemony, and kids showed up. It was the first time I saw
Nathaniel up close and personal with his new spiked haircut. I almost did not recognize him. "Grandma! You know who I am!" he complained. The prayer group members, who had done a lot of praying for
Nikolina but had never met her, were delighted to see her. They were astonished at
her progress from nearly hopeless to full of life.
5. Tuesday I attended an all-day, in-house, mini-conference for everyone within the organization. We have one a year. I am not actively involved in setting them up; there is a committee, overseen by my boss, the local head of our organization, that does that. I arrived at the plenary session promptly because a friend and colleague, someone I have worked closely with for nearly 30 years, was coming from the East Coast to be the keynote speaker. Delighted to see me, he immediately made plans for us to get together the next day to discuss some things of mutual business interest, and we did. The best part of the day, however, was an incidental discussion with one of the junior leaders of another division. She had worked for me years ago when I first worked at our organization. (I worked there from 1989-1993, then left for 13 years, returning in 2006.) She told me the history of the annual conference -- me! I was astonished. We had done such a conference on a small scale in my division years ago. A couple of years after I left, she happened to be working on a project where she was in a position to make a recommendation to an advisory committee that the whole organization pick up on this idea and conduct an annual in-house conference, and management agreed. This has now been going on almost 15 years. When she saw me, she said, "Look what your conference turned into!" I did not understand until she explained. Oh, my, it
is good to feel that one has made a contribution somewhere! (I do realize, however, that it took many other people with as good or better ideas really to turn it into the major event that it is today.)
6. Wednesday I had my first Pashto lesson. One day not long ago when I was handing out cookies to employees on one of my famous MBWA (management by walking about) afternoons, one of our Afghani employees, learning that I have been involved in some Afghanistan-related projected, offered to teach me Pashto. I emailed him, thanking him for the offer and taking him up on it if he was still inclined to help me. Indeed, he was! He came to my office on Wednesday, nervous as all get-out. After all, he is one of our traveling employees so I don't know him very well, and I am his boss's boss's boss. That lengthy chain can unnerve some folks although most, given my open-door policy and occasional afternoon cookies, have become used to interacting with me. Jamal perched nervously on one of the chairs at the conference table in my office. Seeing his nervousness, I took a slightly lower chair, so that he could look down on me, not up to me. That seemed to do the trick of throwing us into the proper teacher and student roles. Pashto is the 18th language I have studied, so I do not find it difficult. Jamal expected to teach me part of the alphabet that first day and was quite surprised to learn that I already know the alphabet (except for three letters). The alphabet is the same as the Arabic alphabet, which I have known since my days of living in Jordan. He quickly taught me the three letters, the days of the week, greetings, numbers to 1000, all the pronouns in the language, present tense of some verbs, sentence structure, possessive prepositions. In one hour, we were already communicating in the language albeit in short, limited sentences, banal questions and answers. Jamal left his glasses behind; when I contacted him to return them, he said it was because he was so overwhelmed by all the work we had accomplished in such a short time that he lost his head! :) We had our second hour today (well, actually, 30 minutes is all I could squeak out, but now I can talk about things in the future and past tenses, can describe my town and state, saying such things as "San Ignatio is a beautiful, historic town located in California in the southwest part of the USA," "I will be going to Jordan on the 19th of August and returning on the 25th," "I come to work every day at 7:00 in the morning but today I came at 7:30," and "I have seven children, four boys and three girls." Jamal is so excited about having an experienced language learner that he came in from vacation today and is coming in again tomorrow to teach me. I guess he got over his nerves!! The downside? I don't do homework (no time for that), but I warned him about that in advance.
7. I finally got around to reviewing a book proposal for
Cambridge University Press. They tend to ask my opinion before giving contracts for new books because the two books I have published through them have been their most successful. Unfortunately, I could not give even one thumbs up to this particular book. I always feel a tad guilty when this happens because I know how hard it is to put a book proposal together and how disappointing it is to get a negative response. On the other hand, the editors/authors should have done their homework a little better and been a little humbler in their presentation. They claimed that the whole world would be excited about their book. Well, probably not. In fact, I suspect that only libraries would buy it and then only if it were to carry the CUP label. They claimed that their work was seminal. Well, no, they even listed others who had written on the topic in their bibliography. They listed someone with a well known name in the field as writing the final chapter. Well, perhaps he would do that but they had not included an abstract, so clearly he had not cooperated with them on a deadline and, while famous (and a bit infamous), in my opinion, he does not have enough experience in the narrow field about which the book editors were collecting chapters to make reliable and valid commentary. While I always dislike giving a thumbs down on proposals, it is not fair to either authors or the press to encourage the publication of a book that is likely to be a bomb. That, I suppose, is why I have a reputation for honest and frank reviews, which I would prefer to retain.
Another week, another seven days of work, at least another seven learning experiences. Here are the thoughts that have accompanied this week's experiences. Thanks to Jennifer Fulwiler for hosting the 7 Quick Takes meme at Conversion Diary. 
1. Last Friday, I ended up at Mass accidentally. I suppose it would have been much better had I ended up there intentionally, but rarely do I have Friday noon available. Work seems to tumble right up to departure time and then spills into the Mass time itself. Last Friday was no different, or so I thought. As I drove into my parking spot, one of my employees approached me to talk about matters in his department. Ah, I thought with resignation as I listened intently to the information he wished to share, one more week without being able to take advantage of Mass being offered at the little church down the road from my office -- or lunch! (The church near my office is a far cry in beauty, historicity, or even numbers of worshipers from the old mission here in San Ignatio and a place where I know no one, but Mass is Mass and I had attended once before when I was able to sneak away from work while no one was looking.) As we were talking, my employee looked at his watch and excused himself, saying that he had to hurry because he wanted to go to Mass. "Oh, take me with you!" I exclaimed, and off we went. The priest who celebrated Mass was an elderly gent who reminded me very much of my beloved Fr. Barry, who was transferred out of our diocese six months ago. It turned out that my employee knew most of the people who regularly attend Mass there and introduced me to them. What a blessing Friday noon turned out to be! 
2. Saturday morning dawned too early. We had to be up because the first thing in the morning the carpet cleaner, Eric, who had spent the afternoon cleaning the carpet throughout the house in preparation for two upcoming parties, was coming back to redo a portion of what he already cleaned because because Donnie had brought chairs that he had set on the porch back into the house, dragging them and his dirty shoes over the newly clean carpet without realizing it was still wet. Dark black streaks glared from the white carpet. Eric came bright and early and quickly cleaned up Donnie's mess. He stayed a bit and talked and would take no money for the extra work. That is the way it is in small towns, or at least in our small town. I went out onto the porch to say goodbye to him, then walked back over the wet carpet with socks made dusty from the front porch. There were the black marks again! Well, gray marks. Thank God for Resolve! After the carpet dried, I could take care of my dirty work myself.
3. On Sunday, Donnie and I attended a funeral mass for the mother of one of my employees at St. Mary Assyrian Chaldean Catholic Church in Campbell, California. What the employee forgot to tell me was (1) the Mass would be conducted in Aramaic and (2) women need a head covering in order to take communion. I probably could have guess both these situations, but I did not think ahead and so was quite unprepared, especially for the Eucharist, which I was unable to take. (I could comment on that, but I won't.) The Mass was celebrated by Fr. Yoshia Sana, who is originally from Iraq and was posted to the Campbell church by Rome. Present-day Chaldeans and Assyrians come from the northern regions of Iraq and the eastern regions of Syria. Ethnically, they are the descendants of the ancient inhabitants of Mesopotamia. Culturally, they are the heirs of the Aramaic language and culture of Jesus; most of the local population in this part of California, particularly those in my employ, speak as their everyday first language modern Aramic (which differs from the language of Jesus's day in that all languages add/drop/change vocabulary and simplify grammar over time). You can read more about Assyrians and Chaldeans here (much of the information is in Arabic, but if you cannot read Arabic, keep digging, there is much information in English, as well. There were helpful missals in all the pews at the church. At first, I thought great, Arabic, but as I looked more closely and tried to read (nary a word could I understand), I realized that there were additional letters beyond those present in the Arabic alphabet. It is rare that I end up somewhere where I cannot understand at least something of what is being said in the local language, but Sunday was one of those rare occasions. We also went to the sitting (an Arabic way of paying respect to the departed that involves men together and women together -- poor Donnie had no way to communicate because none of the men, except my employee, spoke English well enough for communication; at least, I could speak Arabic with the women, but Donnie had learned little Arabic when we lived in Jordan and has forgotten most of what he did know.
4. On Monday, I had the day off! Yes! Happy Fourth a day late! We held a BBQ for my prayer group and others from Old Mission Church. We brought Doah down, and he celebrated with us. Donnie cooked. (No one would have permitted me to cook, given my reputation for burning or otherwise ruining any food I touch.) Shane, Lemony, and kids showed up. It was the first time I saw Nathaniel up close and personal with his new spiked haircut. I almost did not recognize him. "Grandma! You know who I am!" he complained. The prayer group members, who had done a lot of praying for Nikolina but had never met her, were delighted to see her. They were astonished at her progress from nearly hopeless to full of life.
5. Tuesday I attended an all-day, in-house, mini-conference for everyone within the organization. We have one a year. I am not actively involved in setting them up; there is a committee, overseen by my boss, the local head of our organization, that does that. I arrived at the plenary session promptly because a friend and colleague, someone I have worked closely with for nearly 30 years, was coming from the East Coast to be the keynote speaker. Delighted to see me, he immediately made plans for us to get together the next day to discuss some things of mutual business interest, and we did. The best part of the day, however, was an incidental discussion with one of the junior leaders of another division. She had worked for me years ago when I first worked at our organization. (I worked there from 1989-1993, then left for 13 years, returning in 2006.) She told me the history of the annual conference -- me! I was astonished. We had done such a conference on a small scale in my division years ago. A couple of years after I left, she happened to be working on a project where she was in a position to make a recommendation to an advisory committee that the whole organization pick up on this idea and conduct an annual in-house conference, and management agreed. This has now been going on almost 15 years. When she saw me, she said, "Look what your conference turned into!" I did not understand until she explained. Oh, my, it is good to feel that one has made a contribution somewhere! (I do realize, however, that it took many other people with as good or better ideas really to turn it into the major event that it is today.)
6. Wednesday I had my first Pashto lesson. One day not long ago when I was handing out cookies to employees on one of my famous MBWA (management by walking about) afternoons, one of our Afghani employees, learning that I have been involved in some Afghanistan-related projected, offered to teach me Pashto. I emailed him, thanking him for the offer and taking him up on it if he was still inclined to help me. Indeed, he was! He came to my office on Wednesday, nervous as all get-out. After all, he is one of our traveling employees so I don't know him very well, and I am his boss's boss's boss. That lengthy chain can unnerve some folks although most, given my open-door policy and occasional afternoon cookies, have become used to interacting with me. Jamal perched nervously on one of the chairs at the conference table in my office. Seeing his nervousness, I took a slightly lower chair, so that he could look down on me, not up to me. That seemed to do the trick of throwing us into the proper teacher and student roles. Pashto is the 18th language I have studied, so I do not find it difficult. Jamal expected to teach me part of the alphabet that first day and was quite surprised to learn that I already know the alphabet (except for three letters). The alphabet is the same as the Arabic alphabet, which I have known since my days of living in Jordan. He quickly taught me the three letters, the days of the week, greetings, numbers to 1000, all the pronouns in the language, present tense of some verbs, sentence structure, possessive prepositions. In one hour, we were already communicating in the language albeit in short, limited sentences, banal questions and answers. Jamal left his glasses behind; when I contacted him to return them, he said it was because he was so overwhelmed by all the work we had accomplished in such a short time that he lost his head! :) We had our second hour today (well, actually, 30 minutes is all I could squeak out, but now I can talk about things in the future and past tenses, can describe my town and state, saying such things as "San Ignatio is a beautiful, historic town located in California in the southwest part of the USA," "I will be going to Jordan on the 19th of August and returning on the 25th," "I come to work every day at 7:00 in the morning but today I came at 7:30," and "I have seven children, four boys and three girls." Jamal is so excited about having an experienced language learner that he came in from vacation today and is coming in again tomorrow to teach me. I guess he got over his nerves!! The downside? I don't do homework (no time for that), but I warned him about that in advance. 
7. I finally got around to reviewing a book proposal for Cambridge University Press. They tend to ask my opinion before giving contracts for new books because the two books I have published through them have been their most successful. Unfortunately, I could not give even one thumbs up to this particular book. I always feel a tad guilty when this happens because I know how hard it is to put a book proposal together and how disappointing it is to get a negative response. On the other hand, the editors/authors should have done their homework a little better and been a little humbler in their presentation. They claimed that the whole world would be excited about their book. Well, probably not. In fact, I suspect that only libraries would buy it and then only if it were to carry the CUP label. They claimed that their work was seminal. Well, no, they even listed others who had written on the topic in their bibliography. They listed someone with a well known name in the field as writing the final chapter. Well, perhaps he would do that but they had not included an abstract, so clearly he had not cooperated with them on a deadline and, while famous (and a bit infamous), in my opinion, he does not have enough experience in the narrow field about which the book editors were collecting chapters to make reliable and valid commentary. While I always dislike giving a thumbs down on proposals, it is not fair to either authors or the press to encourage the publication of a book that is likely to be a bomb. That, I suppose, is why I have a reputation for honest and frank reviews, which I would prefer to retain. 
