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!