Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

Last weekend we had the first snow of the season here. Although today is bright and sunny with a temperature late in the afternoon of 40, we had several days of rain followed by intermittent snow and cloudy days. The snow was the nice kind--pretty first thing in the morning (when I took these photos) and mostly gone by the end of the day. 

Since we appreciate all moisture, the rain and snow were a welcome change but it was great to see the sun again!

This is our first full year here so we're still learning about the seasons and the weather. So far we haven't had a hugh surprises. This summer was one of the hottest in history in Phoenix and we certainly had our share of too warm days. But so far winter's been pleasant with rain or snow once in a while and temperatures cool enough to pull out the sweaters and warm hats but not bitterly so. How's the weather were you are? Want a change? Our guest bedroom is looking for some company. We'll be here throughout the holiday season so . . .

My Religious Birthday, Aug 24, 2007

I'm finally getting around to posting photos from my religious birthday this year. It was a great party with about 35 friends from Manzanita Village, my new neighborhood, and the Granite Peak Unitarian Universalist Church. I was sad that neither my godmother nor my godfather were able to make it. But the Orisha were happy with their new home and have blessed me as Art and I begin this new phase of our lives. I put a slideshow of photos on my website.

There's something magical about a bunch of friends listen raptly as I talked about the Orisha and my trono. I took a chance inviting so many new friends but my trust was repaid a thousand-fold. I love being in a place where I can be who I am and I don't have to be afraid. I am truly blessed.

Revealing Religion in America

A year ago my dear friend Alice Wood and I were commissioned by Thinking Strings to write a CD-based textbook for them on Religion in America. We got together the end of June and the first part of July to work together (we'd already been working separately). My new desk proved the perfect site for working together as you can see by the photo.

We've already begun uploading draft portions of the text to the Thinking Strings site with the goal of having a nice piece completed for their display at the American Academy of Religion conference in San Diego in November.

This is a great project. Every module (chapter) will focus on a different type of religious tradition in the US, Canada and Mexico. We've divided up the modules so that Alice is responsible for all of the Jewish and Christian traditions and I'm responsble for all of the others including Muslim and Baha’i traditions, Asian traditions, new and alternative traditions, African-based traditions and liberal traditions. We've both having a great time learning and writing about these traditions most of which are outside our primary areas of expertise.

Rain Drops Keep Fallin' on my Head

Yea! After over two months with nary a drop of rain we are in the midst of beautiful thunderstorm!

Living in a desert region gives you in increased appreciation of water of all types but especially rain. Today's storm marks a change in the seasons for us. After about six weeks of very hot (as high as 100 degrees) and very dry (as low as 2% humidity), today marks the beginning of what is called the monsoon, the rainy season. Now those of you in Houston won't think much of our "rainy" season as we only get about 20 inches of rain a year (!) but for us it is a welcome change. Out temperature has dropped a full 10 degrees in the last couple of hours.

As I understand it, about this time of year the prevailing winds change, bringing moist air up from Mexico and the Gulf to water the poor thirsty desert. This is the ocean brought hundreds of miles to us. Although we've leave the ocean when we moved away from Houston, we haven't been abandoned by it.

The local (actually Phoenix) newscasters have been talking about this change for weeks. They even had a special several weeks ago talking about the dangers--flash flooding mostly. I had to agree with my dear friend Alice who was here for the last couple of weeks from Florida that the overwrought newscasts concerning the monsoon practically equaled that of hurricane season in Texas and Florida. LOL

This break in the summer weather may not last but we should now be past the hottest part of the summer as we should get a similar (more or less) rainstorm every afternoon. Yea!

An Introduction: Big Talk

Back in the spring before we left Texas a couple of Rice University students asked me to participate in a project they called Big Talk. This project would bring together six or eight people from different religious (or non-religious) traditions to talk about some of the big question in Religious Studies. As one of the participant I was asked to submit a biography and the answer to the first question, What is God?

After submitting my responses I got involved in moving cross country and haven't heard anything more about the project. So I assume it's died. (That often happens with student projects, especially when they depend on a bunch of non-students who have no real incentive to complete the project--that is, aren't getting graded.)

Since I still have the information I put together, I thought I'd post it to this blog in an effort to more the blog from a personal diary to a forum for thinking about some of these kinds of issues. My biography is below. It's framed specifically for the Big Talk project so it emphases some things and ignores other--as all biographies do. As my family and friends you will probably know a bunch of this stuff about me but I'm betting everyone will learn something new.

In a couple of days I'll publish my answer to What is God? In the meantime, feel free to join me in this conversation about the Big Questions.

Update I just uploaded this on Friday and on Sunday I got email from the students putting together the Big Talk project. Instead of dying the project has been picked up and funded by the Boniuk Center for the Study and Advancement of Religious Tolerance, and an Envision Grant from Leadership Rice. They've put together the beginnings of a website and hope to release it on 8/1 with an official project launch on 8/29 during the first week of school.

Consequently I've deleted the introduction from this posting and encourage everyone's who's interested to check out their website at www.betweenaduck.com and to watch for the first release the end of Aug.

Sold! For Real This Time!

The sale of our former home in Houston was final last week and the money electronically transfered to our checking account. Yesterday we used part of those funds to pay off the mortgage on our current home in Prescott! So this morning we should be mortgage free! Yea!!!

Although the housing market in Houston is still strong we had a few stumbles along the way (see my posting from April 23). But that's all behind us now. Someone else is the lucky owner of the little house on Deal St. I hope that have a good of a life there as we did.

Selling the house cuts our final tangible ties with Houston. That doesn't mean we won't come back to visit once in a while but we're not Texans any longer. That's kind of sad as we had a long and fulfilling time there--over 20 years! We've made good friends and good memories. Now we're working at making the most of this new period in our lives. Manzanita Village is all that we expected and more. The folks are wonderful and there's plenty to do both work and play--so we're never at a lost for "something to do". We've joined the local UU church and are becoming active there. Those were two good ways to become involved in this area and there's lots of overlay between the two communities since many of our UU friends live here at the Village and many Villagers are members of one or other of the local UU churches. Other connections will come with time but we've got a good base for the rest of our lives here.

No! I'm Not Retired!

Just because my husband retired and we moved to a different state doesn't mean that I've retired. I'm continuing to work, albeit at a different pace--at least during the summer.

As many of you know, I'm working with Dr. Alice Wood of Bethune-Cookman College on a textbook Revealing American Religion(s) for Thinking Strings. Although we've both been working on our identified parts, we'll be getting together to work together for a couple of weeks this summer. My part includes all the non-Judeo-Christian religious traditions, including Islamic traditions, the Asian traditions, African-based traditions and what we're calling Made-in-America traditions. Recently I've been researching Spiritualism and its related traditions which has been very interesting. I just started reading Catherine Albenese's A Republic of Mind and Spirit where she traces the history of what she call the metaphysical religious tradition in the US. I can't tell you how much fun this is, but it does require dedicated time reading and writing.

I have also committed to teach an online section of HUMN3031 Basic Texts I for the University of Houston Clear Lake. Although I've taught this before, I've been putting together some new/improved "lecture" materials for this fall's class. I'm also dropping the unit on Aristotle and adding one on Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. That means reading the book and putting together new teaching, discussion and testing materials.

Yesterday, I also agreed to teach a face-to-face class here at Yavapai College, the local community college. Some of you might remember that I applied for the full-time position in their Philosophy and Religious Studies department. However, they decide not to hire anyone for that position "at this time." So rather than working full-time for them I agreed to adjunct for them. This fall I'll teach one section of their Introduction to Philosophy class, so I need to get that organized over the summer. Although I taught a similar course for Kingwood College (a community college north of Houston), it's been a while. I need to check out the textbook(s) that the other sections are using. Determine which one I want to use and put together all the materials for the class. I also want to put together a small web component. In Houston all the schools I taught at used WebCT for that but here they're using another product called Blackboard. I'm sure it's not that much different but I'll need to get up to speed over the summer. Luckily they're doing a training class next week, so I should be able to jump start the process.

It's not the same as working 20-30 hours a week, teaching and writing--much more relaxing. But all of that along with doing my share of work in the village and getting connected at the local UU church is keeping my busy enough!

That Lil’ Ol’ Band from Texas

Well, we couldn't escape too far from Texas! When we heard that ZZ Top was going to be playing at Tim's Toyota Center, the Prescott Valley Convention & Events Center, we had to go! The guys still have it after all these years! The music was great and we were close enough to feel the bass through our whole bodies.

We had great seats right up front, just far enough back to see over the folks that rushed the stage. The audience was mostly people our age and older although there were some younger folks and even some kids who came with their folks. We went to dinner before the concert (found a good Mexican restaurant in PV) but we weren't drunk enought to fit into the crowd! Of course, Tim's is also home to the Sundogs, a minor league hockey team, so a fight broke out during the concert in the aisle by our seats!

All in all a fun evening. Art wore his Rice sweatshirt and got a wave from the warm-up band. We didn't think to take the camara but Art got some pics on his phone. As soon as he gets them downloaded, I'll add them here.

Sold--Not!

4/23/07 After I wrote the entry below we found out that the buyer was reneging on her offer and would not be buying the house. After some ugliness--the erstwhile buyer hired a lawyer so she wouldn't lose her ernest money--we've put the house back on the market today. Isn't real estate fun??

4/18/07 Today we signed the papers to sell our Houston! Yea! We were very lucky. The day after we put it on the market we had four offers three of which were for more than the asking price. With very little messing around one of those lucky folks will soon be the proud owner of a new home. Congratulations!

We bought that house with the hopes that we'd be able to make some money one it--the first time in our history of buying and selling houses. Our old realtor was right! The neighborhoods been appreciating like crazy and we caught the wave.

Bye-bye Houston!

Santeria: Correcting the Myths and Uncovering the Realities of a Growing Religion

My new book, Santeria: Correcting the Myths and Uncovering the Realities of a Growing Religion, has just been published by Preager/Greenwood. Amazon has it in stock as does the publisher. This was written to be a good starting point for folks who want an easy-to-read introduction to the religion of the Orisha. It is scholarly yet accessible without the academic jargon that peppers many of the most recent additions to the literature about this tradition--including my own Where Men are Wives and Mothers Rule. As I understand it the primary market for this book will be public libraries. You can help that along by suggesting that your local public library buy it.

Also out, from Preager/Greenwood, is Eugene V. Gallagher and W. Michael Ashcraft's five volume Introduction to New and Alternative Religions in America. This is a great reference--and the piece on Santeria in vol 5 is my attempt to provide the best 20-page introduction to the religion. The other chapters I've read have been excellent so I strongly encourage anyone interested in religion in American to check it out--and encourage your library to buy a set for their reference collection.

Moving In

Our new living room, pretty empty. Not completely since we'd brought some things from Houston during earlier trips and we'd gotten a TV cabinet over the last Christmas holiday.

The truck's unloaded and returned but the house is a mess--boxes and stuff everywhere!

But pretty soon we're moved in and ready to begin our new life. Noxy, our scaredy-cat (pictured here), must like it here. She's come out to greet several of our neighbors when they've come to call. She keeps crying to go outside, just like she did in Houston, but as soon as we open the door and everything is different from what she remembers she's not at all interested in the out-of-doors. That's just as well, we've got coyotes in the ravine behind the house and when cats and coyotes get into it the cat inevitably loses. Better to say indoors where its nice and warm!

Our New Arizona Home

240 Jacob Lane
Originally uploaded by Dr Mary Ann.

Our new Arizona adventure has begun. We left Houston March 10 and arrived here in sunny Arizona two grueling days later. By now we've unpacked, joined the local Unitarian church and started our new lives as full-time co-housers. It took a couple of weeks but we've gotten high-speed internet services, a local phone number and satellite TV--all the amenities of home.

We're still learning about the community and hope to become more involved as we get more settled.

But before we could move into the new house we had to leave the old one--boxes boxes everywhere and not a place to sit!

Here's Art standing by the half-loaded truck. He will have a close, personal relationship with this truck after driving it for two very long days to Arizona.

The cats were really freaked out to watch the whole house disappear. Of course the next day was worse, from their point of view, since we put them into their carriers and drove them across the country.

But we made it. Here we are getting ready to unload at our new home. Our nephew Andrew, help by driving Art's Mercedes for us. We look pretty happy to have arrived, don't we?



Check out the link below for information about our new neighborhood.

Manzanita Village