Ai Haz uh Confused

I passed my PTK multiple choice portion today.  Nowhere near acing it, but good enough, considering how much I (didn't) study.  Now I'm beginning the four to six week wait for the score on my memo/essay.

I probably did myself no good this evening haunting the ABCTE Writing Component forum, because everything I read there confuses and discourages me dreadfully.  So many people there, who like me have been writing, supposedly effectively, most of their lives, lamenting about flunking the essay over and over.  So many writing professionals, who somehow fell short of the mysterious, esoteric standard that divides a pass from a fail.

So what hope do I have?  And if I fail (maybe because I didn't spend enough time proofreading), could my fault be a paranoid fixation on content?

Content.  The one point that none of the rubrics and none of the forum comments seem to address.

Content.  An essay or memo can't be written without it.  But as embryo teachers, we PTK examinees are really winging it on theory when it comes to actual classroom practice.  A typical prompt for this exam asks the candidate to write a memo suggesting a solution to some hypothetical school problem (I can't say more than that-- confidentiality issues).  Well, suppose my grammar, spelling, vocabulary, etc., are all fine, but my ideas are way out in left field?  What if I'm in error about a matter of fact?  And what if I in my inexperience omit some "obvious" supporting detail?

I suppose I'm worried about this because I was taking pains to avoid it.  And therefore ran out of time on my final proofread.   I felt compelled to cover the subject realistically and thoroughly, and at the end I thought of a detail of this sort and went back to insert it, totally convinced the graders would think I was an inadequate fool if I left it out.  But maybe I'm wrong.  I wonder what those who pass the essay would say about this.  Can you write piffle with good mechanics and still sail through?

Something else.  The experienced souls on the forums keep saying one should avoid being "eloquent" in one's PTK essay.  Why is that a bad word, anyway? It means fluent and persuasive! What's the difference between the dreaded "eloquence" and having a strong, diverse, communicative vocabulary, as called for by the rubric?

I read on the forum that to pass, one should write like a fifth grader.  I'm sorry, but I've substitute-taught fifth graders, and I doubt the scorers want us to write as incoherently and clumsily as that.  Frankly, I can't write like that.  Maybe the advice should be, "Write as if your correspondent were a fifth grader."  Fine.  But what principal (a typical addressee) would put up with being talked down to in that fashion?  And how does fifth-graderism result in writing that is "fully develop[ed, with] elaborate[d] ideas," where "[t]he writer . . .  uses great variety and complexity in sentence structure"?  The very rubric seems to militate against anything so simplistic.

Or is the rubric so much piffle and they really score these essays by using them as targets at the corner pub darts tournament?

I hope that in a few weeks I'll be embarrassed because I've passed and find out I've been ranting for nothing.  But given what I read on the forums, I doubt it.  I doubt it very much indeed.

Sink or Swim

In approximately a half hour I'm getting in my car and driving nearly 25 miles to a testing center, where I will take the Professional Teaching Knowledge examination for the ABCTE English Language Arts teaching certificate.

I signed up for this online program a year and a half ago, in late January of 2010.  I've already been granted one six-month extension, which ends July 31st.  If I do not take both my exams before the end of this month, I forfeit my tuition.  If I do take them, and fail, I can apply for another six months for a retake.

So I'm venturing my PTK today, ready or not.

So why am I not ready?  Several reasons, some more reasonable than others.  In the first place, the ABCTE website is not the clearest to navigate and it wasn't easy to find out where the material even was to be found.  In the second place, I was diagnosed with possible ovarian cancer the month after I signed up.  Going through surgery and chemo isn't conducive to study and retention.  In the third place, I can be a terrible grasshopper.  Sing and hop from task to task and do what seems most attractive and best at the time, oh, yeah, and never mind delving into hard and esoteric new subjects.

And my biggest reason of all for putting off really, really studying until the past three or four weeks?

I've been a substitute teacher for the past two years.  And as much as I love and enjoy the kids (even the mischievous, difficult ones), as much as I enjoy sharing and enciting knowledge, understanding (and all the rest of the Bloom's Taxonomy levels of learning), I hate, hate, hate educational politics.  I hate the prospect of having to join a union that does not reflect my political views.  I hate the squabbles that go on in the media and sometimes literally on state capital grounds over the perceptions of teachers and their rights.  And most of all, I hate the squirmy, slimy, cuttle-fish-ink-squirting politics that goes on in individual schools, where policies both official and unspoken make it difficult to maintain good discipline, let alone to guide the students to high levels of understanding.

But I paid the money.  It's a big chunk of change and I mustn't waste it.  And like it or not, becoming a public school teacher may be my only hope at this stage of my life of getting a steady job and getting my debts paids off.

So I'm going.  Wish me luck.

Too Much Drama

A rant, with a moral in the tail:

Got a call early this afternoon from the mechanic's, saying my car was done and I could come get it.

I've known since late Saturday afternoon that my neighbor was right, the front brake rotors needed replaced. And since I pulled the codes off the car myself on Thursday, I knew that the check engine light was on because of something wrong with the knock sensor and because the car was misfiring on all cylinders. Yesterday, the mechanic called and said he'd located a Technical Service Bulletin from Chrysler describing this problem and recommending tackling it by replacing the sparkplugs and wires and installing (reflashing) an update onto the engine computer. This turned out to work, and now the car was fixed.

I'd picked this local garage-- I'll call them O'Brien's*-- over the dealership because the latter is several miles up the Interstate and I was nervous about driving the Little Red Dragon far and fast with an undetermined misfiring problem. True, last time I dealt with this mechanic, he'd expressed some odd and alarming opinions on the moral wrongness of customers bringing in parts for him to install, on the principle that to deprive an auto serviceman of the markup was to take food out of his children's mouths. He thought the same about shade tree mechanics who fix friends' cars very cheaply or for free: not that it might not be wise in terms of getting a good repair, but that it was actual theft from the professionals. But this time there was no question of bringing in pre-purchased parts or letting an amateur have a go at it; I needed a shop that had Chrysler diagnostic equipment and didn't require too much driving to get to, and O'Brien's fit the bill.

So I walked over to pick up my car. As I wrote out the check to pay the bill, I asked Mr. O'Brien some questions about what had been done so I understood it. Everything seemed to be amicable and informative. One thing I inquired about just before I went was, should I expect anything different about the way my PT drove at first, since I'd read that a computer reflash could necessitate its needing to "relearn" some things about how you drive and all. He told me it might be a little rough on idle for a bit, or maybe stall out when I stopped at intersections. But it'd get over that soon.

Good, that's the kind of information I needed. I took my keys and my paperwork and went out and got into my little red car. No check engine light on, great! but it was making a high-pitched jingling sort of noise!

What is this? I know it wasn't doing it when I brought it in. Was this part of the computer's relearning things? I nearly reparked it and went back into the shop to ask, but thought well, maybe it was.

I had to go by the Post Office to get stamps, and by the time I got over there I decided I had to find out. The noise could be heard on idle or while driving, and it wasn't going away. I got out my cell phone and called.

Mr. O'Brien was put on, and when I comfirmed that yes, it sounded like crickets, he said, "That's probably a belt."

"Is that part of the computer relearning things? It wasn't doing it before."

No, he said, it wouldn't have anything to do with reprogramming the computer, and I should bring it back and he could take a look at it.

So I did. By the time I got there, it wasn't jingling at idle anymore (maybe because there had been slightly-rough idle, which now had settled out), but when I revved the engine, there it was. He located the problem belt for me (found out a little later it's the one for the alternator), and that's when things got very bizarre.

I can't guarantee the chronology of the conversation, and maybe it doesn't matter. But Mr. O'Brien proceeded to inform me that he'd been very offended when I'd told him that "It wasn't doing it before," because that was as much as to accuse him of having caused the belt noise himself. That it probably was doing it before, I just hadn't noticed, and now I was noticing only because he'd worked on it. That when he used to work for a dealership, customers would bring cars back with issues like this and they'd put a new belt in for free, but he couldn't afford to lose that kind of money on things that most likely had been going on before anyway; indeed, he said, he'd noticed the noise but I hadn't mentioned it for repair, so far be it from him to run up my bill by being like the dealerships and suggesting it be replaced! And, he said, he has Asperger's Syndrome so he's very precise and does everything in a very set, determined way and now I was bringing my car back and implying that he'd done something wrong by-- by what, I'm not quite sure. Close as I could tell, he thought I was accusing him of some incompetence that made the belt suddenly start to jingle and chirp.

All through this, I'm in conciliation mode, telling him no, not at all, it's just that it was new to me and that I wanted to make sure all was well with my car before I got it too far away. I tried to adduce an example of a time when something unrelated did go wrong with a car just after I'd picked it up from the repair shop, thinking to say, "Hey, it happens, that time I was glad I brought the car back, I learned from that experience, so now I'm doing the same."

He wouldn't hear it. "That makes as much sense," Mr. O'Brien said, "as me saying I had a bad experience at the dentist when I was five years old and now I won't go to the dentist." I could not get him off his idee fixe that by noticing the belt noise I was somehow insulting or condemning him and his work. And once he mentioned his Asperger's, I went into pastoral care mode. Let's be understanding and gentle and all the rest of it.

It did no good. He kept insisting the noise had been there all along and to "prove" it, told a story of how his sister-- his own sister!-- had started hearing some noise or other right after he'd fixed her car for something, and the noise and the repair had been totally unrelated! If his own sister could do that, why then, certainly I--!

His anecdote was even less to the point than my story about my old Mazda twelve years ago in Fremont, Nebraska, but no use in mentioning that. Especially not when he was growing ever more defensively emphatic that I had deliberately insulted him by bringing the car back when he'd said it was the belt. There was nothing wrong with the belt, he said; his own car has been making noises like that for a long time, and, he was sure, so had mine!

I nearly got angry back at him as he kept on like this, imputing thoughts and motivations to me that were grossly unfair and untrue. But I remembered who I am, and I considered his Asperger's, and kept my anger down. But when he wound up by saying that he's a trained professional and he knows what he's talking about, I couldn't help it-- I said, "Well, I'm a singer, and I would notice if my car was making a high-pitched noise like that."

"You're a singer?" he said. "So am I." And he goes back into the shop and brings me a CD of country-western tunes penned and sung by his brother and himself. I haven't listened to it yet.

But back there on the street, I was so busy playing pastoral counsellor that I never got around to saying, "Never mind when the noise started, how much would it be for you to make it go away? How much just to replace the belt right now?" Maybe since he thought it was actually still good . . . He certainly never suggested that solution, he was too busy questioning my motives and assumptions.

So I took the CD in the PT and drove away. I had errands to run. The belt noise was a maddening, headache-inducing whine. At the supermarket, I decided, no, I didn't want perishables in the car until I'd dealt with this. Screw Mr. O'Brien's attitude towards customer- bought parts, I was going to the neighborhood AutoZone to do something about it.

The nice clerk there first tried to set me up with a can of belt conditioner. He even came out with me and sprayed it on.

It didn't work. The belt chirped and jingled as much as ever.

He looked more closely at it. "It could cut soon," he said. (The clerk, by his nametag and appearance, seemed Persian in origin. So it didn't surprise me that his English was a little creative.)

"You mean, break?"

"Yes. Break, cut. Especially out on the highway. It's getting worn."

Now, you could say this is just the opinion of a guy at the auto parts store. But let's say he's right. Mr. O'Brien said he didn't do anything with the belt because I hadn't mentioned it. Well, I originally booked the repair session because of the engine light only. I only mentioned the brakes because my neighbor said something to me about it later on. You mean if I hadn't said anything about the brakes, Mr. O'Brien wouldn't've fixed them, either? I'd been thinking I wouldn't go back to him because I can do without the defensiveness and the drama, but if he's going to use his Asperger's as an excuse to overlook unsafe situations, I don't want to go anywhere near his shop again.

I bought a replacement belt. The auto parts guy said it would be easy to put on, pointed out how under the hood, and even printed me out a diagram on how to do it. He said the area repair shops get their parts from them anyway, so it'd save me time if I had it already. And if the shop preferred to get it themselves, I can bring it back. Sounds fair to me.

Then I called another repair shop in town. They didn't seem to mind me bringing the belt, but they couldn't get to it till Friday. Friday! I've got places I have to get to! Maybe I know some guy that'll put it on for me?

After that, more errands (no highway driving). Noise still there, drilling into my brain. And the feeling of depression, weighing into my soul. Damn! a week later, and my car still isn't fixed, I'm having to spend more money on it, and here I can't insist on sensible treatment from the repair shop because the owner has an autism spectrum disorder? Why don't I just start whining about having cancer? (Oh, yeah. Because I don't want to go on the assumption that I still "have" cancer-- the chemo is only for "just in case"). Or maybe I can justify being a pain in the ass because I'm going in for chemo this next Monday? Does having Asperger's absolve a person from trying to see something from another's point of view, especially when the one who has it is aware of his condition? I hated being falsely accused! I hate being broke! I hate that my hair won't lie right and looks awful all the time! I got more and more depressed and had to make a special effort to smile and be kind to the people I encountered as I finished my shopping.

Getting home and making a meal of lots of fresh fruit and tons of (homegrown) lettuce elevated my mood. But now that I've had my rant, I have to remember that defensiveness is not pretty or productive, no matter what causes it. I have to buck up and remember that in the weeks to come, my feeling pleh from chemo will give me no license to inflict my discomfort on other people. It's not their fault I'm fighting cancer. May I refrain from doing drama unto others, as I would not have them do drama unto me.

The Practice of Architecture as Benedictine Monasticism

This afternoon I picked up a phone message from the client for the little drawing I did, per the last post. The fabricators, he says, want to know the deflection and the loading for the new beam that's going in.

Fine, I tell him, I can work that out.

What I didn't mention was, hey, um, this wasn't in the original scope of work. The fabricators were supposed to take care of that themselves, given the info supplied. I finished the drawing I was asked to do, and he's paid me for it. Which is good. But the invoice I handed him last week was already discounted to reflect what he was willing to pay.

So now do I tell my EP that doing these calcs will be extra?

Golly Moses, no. I'm going to revert to the style of my past employers going back to the '70s and '80s and eat the fee to retain the good will.

I have to wonder, had they not beaten it into our heads in architecture school that we'd better not be in it to enrich ourselves and that becoming an architect was equivalent to taking a vow of poverty, chastity,* and obedience; if my early architectural practice role models had had harder heads for business; if I didn't have a neurotic attitude towards money such that I believed and accepted this bs, I'd be a Rich and Successful Architect by now. But back then, Architecture wasn't about making money, it was about Serving the Public and/or Doing Beautiful Design. Good grief, we practically paid the clients for giving us the privilege!

And now the concrete has hardened in the form and it's too bloody late for me to change.
______________________________
*Well, sorta, but mainly because we'd be too busy cranking out drawings to indulge in any such frivolity.

Are We Smiling Yet?

Sandy at Curly's Corner invited me to come round to her place and pick up this cute award, which came to her by way of her good blogging friend Carol at Charli and Me. Sandy's passing it out to everyone on her blog roll as well as anyone who stops by to read her blog. Thank you so much, Sandy!

By their example and in the spirit of their kindness, I'm also passing this lovely little award on to everyone who stops by to read my blog as well as those already on my Favorites list. Every blog I visit can give me reason to smile . . . in some way or other . . . so feel free to pick this up for yourself and pass it along.

But of course there is one tiny little catch..... The tag that goes along with the award. The tag is this: Name five songs that you are embarrassed to sing.

. . . Five songs I'm embarrassed to sing. Hoo-boy! If my pipes and my wind are working, I'm not exactly embarrassed to sing anything . . . that is, if it's actually singable and it won't scandalize the parish (when I've got a parish) . . .

But then, there are those songs I'm embarrassed to sing, where the scandal comes because I am embarrassed to sing them. Here, then, is my own Hall of Shame:

1) In the Garden. Yes, I'm aware that a lot of very nice people get a lot of comfort out of this hymn. Maybe that's you (are you smiling yet?). A lot of people also get a lot of comfort out of Sugar Frosted Flakes. The perpetrator of this religious ditty, C. Austin Miles, claims he was inspired by the story of Mary Magdalene coming to the empty tomb of Christ the first Easter morning. If so, his Mary Magdalene and Jesus of Nazareth were a pair that would warm the cockles of Dan Brown's heart. A prettier lovers' tryst you never stumbled upon. Gnostic, sentimental, unbiblical. And I'm supposed to sing this? Feh!

In the same vein is

2) He Lives. "You ask me how I know He lives? He lives within my heart!" No, you poor creature, you know He lives because the Holy Spirit has revealed that fact to you in the Holy Scriptures! Your feelings will tell you all sorts of lies. Go through some horrible tragedy, and your heart will tell you God has abandoned you, even though He's right with you all along. Feelings are great, if they fit the facts. But even if they don't, the truth of what God did in Jesus Christ keeps on going and you can grab hold of it by faith. That's how I know He lives. That's a song worth singing, not a poor pitiful piece of pietistic poetry set to a circus tune.

(So are we smiling yet?)

3) Here I Am, Lord. The basic idea of this hymn is fine. It's about responding to God's call to serve Him in the world. It's used a lot for ordination and commitment services, and appropriately, too. But there's this phrase in the chorus: "Is it I, Lord?" I'm sorry, but without fail that reminds me of what Judas said to Jesus just before he betrayed Him. And what's up with this "I will go, Lord, if You lead me"? Am I supposed to proclaim that God might call someone to do His will, then carelessly forget to guide that person into how and when and where? I sing that, and I feel like I'm putting conditions on my obedience. Before God, that's something I'm embarrassed to do.

4) Any modern "praise" chorus where you could excise the word "Jesus" or "Lord" and put in "Baby" instead, and it wouldn't make a dime's worth of difference. See my DaVinci Code reference under Embarrassing Song No. 1. Especially when I have to stand there for ten minutes singing the same damn words over and over twenty times. Are the Catholics right about Purgatory? That's where these perpetrations make me feel I am. Embarrassing.

5) Any good traditional hymn that's been bowlderized and politically-corrected by modern hymnbook editors, a la the efforts of the committee that patched together the 1990 Presbyterian Hymnal. Witness what was done to Be Thou My Vision, one of my favorites. As a woman, I was never offended by "Thou my great Father, I Thy true son." Give me credit for some sense: It's about relationship, not sex or gender. Never mind! That line is out, out, out! Ditto the parts about "High King of heaven." That title for God brought us the rich Irishness of the hymn, with its echoes of all the petty chieftains pledging fealty to the high king at Tara, now signifying the desires and demands of our lives bowing the knee to Christ as universal Sovereign. That's gone, people! We don't want to offend anybody with any reminders that there might be a hierarchy in creation, with the uncreated Lord at the top, oh, no! I'm surprised the wise editors left in the part about "Ruler of all" at the end. But I guess they knew they had to draw the line somewhere, and they wanted a ruler to draw it with.

This version embarrasses me so much, I won't program this hymn without putting the unaltered version in as an insert in the bulletin. Preferably with the third verse that's always excised from American hymnals:

Be thou my breastplate, my sword for the fight;

be thou my whole armor, be thou my true might;

be thou my soul's shelter, be thou my strong tower:

O raise thou me heavenward, great Power of my power.

That's something I'll never be embarrassed to sing.

But O, Sandy! Are you embarrassed you passed this award on to me? Are we still smiling?

"All In," Part 2

I learned something critical at my last fulltime architecture job. You never, ever, ever give a client a set of estimated costs at the beginning of the job and say they are "all in." Not unless you and your gimcrack attorney define very, very precisely what the "all in" includes.

In my previous post I described how I was taken off a design job for which I was project manager and subsequently laid off altogether because my boss Egbert* had grossly underestimated the fee. And the clients, a nonprofit organization, insisted that "all in" meant "anything we ask you to do connected with this job, and we don't have to pay you any more than you originally mentioned for it, either."

You may be wondering why I'm harping on this a year later. It's dead history, get over it!

Well, I take up my harp (Welsh, triple, if I could play it!) to lament partly for the same reason that my ex-boss could never say No to any of the client's demands.

Why? Because the educational facility cum meeting space cum museum project involved is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, a jewel of a job that will be known far beyond the folded hills of southwestern Pennsylvania, a project of national and even international interest. It's the sort of gloria famaque project you want yourself and your firm to be identified with. It's a project to make your resume and reputation shine.

And definitely not a project where you want to piss off the client and have them badmouthing you or taking their business elsewhere.

The other reason I can't escape is because I am, as stated in the previous post, on the client organization's governing board, and so for me it is not dead history.

In fact, this past year it's been a present and painful reality.

First in the early days, when Reginald* the fundraising lawyer continued to take donations but refused to let them go towards allowing for the horrendous inflation in materials and labor costs that's accrued since 2002 when my ex-boss Egbert* submitted his initial estimate. Nope, said Reginald*, it was all going to go towards exhibits and programming. So after I was gone the firm had to "value engineer" again, making equally horrendous and shameful cuts in the scope and quality of the design.

Then when I'd hear about these things, when Devin*, the former colleague now managing the job, would call or email me for help on matters only I knew about. He told me the butchery of what they'd had to settle for was so awful that Egbert* didn't want to go near the job site.

Then again when Reginald* would sit in board meetings making his building progress reports. Money. It was always about money. Oh, woe, we have less in our account this month, because we had to pay the contractor! It was never about the design, or the facility they'd be getting.

And did Egbert* and I and the rest of the architecture firm sweat blood and money because we thought that project would bring us such fame? Ha! Reginald* would sit there insulting and belittling the architects who gave them so much, one of whom was sitting right in front of him. Talking as if I'd never been involved in the project, talking as if I weren't even there. Writing articles for the national organ of the nonprofit organization's parent group, mentioning the contractor and the contractor's foreman, but never one word about there officially having been an architect involved.

And now the project is almost completed. And this month's board meeting is to be in the facility itself, because we have the say over the exhibits and artifacts to be displayed at the opening in June. I had not set foot on the job site since I was laid off. As a member of the client group's board, I had permission to. As the former project architect, I didn't dare.

But now, there I was, having to show up in a couple of weeks, to be confronted with-- what? Could I keep my blasted mouth shut? Could I control my irritation over the parsimony and downright bloodyminded cheapness that so unnecessarily had kept this facility from being all it should have been? Would I be grossly ashamed of ever having been involved with it at all?

Then the other day, our board publicity chairman emailed me. She is charged with writing up the official guidebook description of the facility, its architecture, and its historic significance. She knew my discharge from the project had been irregular and uncomfortable; she apologized for any awkwardness she might be causing me. But Egbert* couldn't be reached. Devin* knew how it was built but not all the design rationale behind it. So if I would . . . ?

It was up to me. We arranged to meet at the job site yesterday morning. And I'm damn glad we did.

Overall, the final product isn't as bad as I thought it might be. The contractors mostly did a good job with what they were allowed to do and what they had to work with. The elements I had the most involvement with were fairly faithfully executed. I cannot say that overall it comes up to the standard set by other facilities of its type, but if I can only close the book on what might have been, what ought to have been, I can smile at the opening and let the dedication ceremony visitors think everything's just as it should have been all along.

Well, maybe. Because there were several very unclerical "Oh, shit!!"s that emerged from my mouth when I laid eyes on certain things. Things that compromise the integrity and historic value of the work. Things I would have drawn the contractor's attention to if I had been the construction manager. Things that were done more expensively than they should have been, given the nature of the project.

And one or two things that I really may talk to Devin* about on Monday and see if something can be done about them before the opening.

But I'm glad I got my first, frustrated reaction out in front of the one person it was safe to do it with, versus popping my gut in front of the whole board. I have to become reconciled to this project as built, because again, I can't just walk away.

Not when I as a board member will be using it frequently. And not when I'm responsible for part of the dedication ceremony. I'm to give the invocation-- in my capacity as a clergywoman, not in my former role as project designer and architect.

So unless I refuse to appear, unless want I convince everyone involved that I deserved to lose my role in the project, I have to be there, present and involved with my most inglorious former project. I'm all in.

"All In," Part 1

Yesterday I got something over with, something I've been dreading, but something that needed to be done.

Some background, first.

Last year I was laid off of my job at the architects' office, because first I was taken off the biggest job I was working on.

Not because I wasn't doing a good job. Not because I wasn't pleasing the clients.

No, because, as far as I can piece it together, my boss thought I was pleasing the clients too well.

The project was an education facility cum meeting room cum museum. The client was a nonprofit group on whose board I serve.

My boss Egbert*always knew I was on that board. That's how I came to his attention in the first place. He'd come to our meetings to present schematic drawings and apparently I impressed him with my questions and suggestions. Eventually he hired me, and after a few months he made me project architect of the museum job.

I was not on the nonprofit's building committee. I never was. And I was formally asked to recuse myself in our board meetings whenever anything to do with project financing came up. To this I readily agreed--and adhered.

I worked on the project for well over a year. Then after the drawings had gone out and the bids had come in, my boss began to exclude me from client meetings. The first time he said, "They're yelling at me because the bids all came in over the original estimate. I don't want them to yell at you, too."

The second time, I noticed I'd been left off the meeting invitation list and that morning went to him to ask him if there'd been a mistake.

"No, Blogwen. At the meeting the other day the client building committee said they thought it was a conflict of interest for you to be on their board and also be the project architect on the museum. They want you off the job. They're afraid some big donors might think something's wrong and want their money back."

Gobsmacked. Floored. But it was done. Fiat.

After that, I researched conflict of interest law and wrote letters to the board president, asking him why they'd given me no choice of which office to give up. But answering me was postponed for nearly two months, until after I'd been laid off.

I was called to a meeting with the nonprofit's building committee and Egbert*, my former employer. There he admitted (and that without shame) that he was the one who'd suggested there was a conflict of interest, that I ought to be relieved of my duties just as the project was being "value engineered" and shortly before it was due to go into construction.

What could I say? I still needed him as a reference!

But what conflict? Where? Not against the client! They were getting a better job because I was identifying with them, as well as with the firm!

And not even against my boss or his firm. I was on salary. If I spent extra hours getting things right, it was no more money out of their pocket! If there had been other projects in the office that this museum was keeping me from working on, it would have been different. But there weren't.

That's what I thought. Over the past year, the picture has become clearer. Some of it should have been clearer to me a year ago.

I knew the day I was laid off that there were some projects the firm had expected to get and didn't.

I learned from other architects I've interviewed with that the firm laid several others off after I was put "on contract."

I'd discovered last winter that my boss had grossly underestimated both the building cost and the professional fees years before when the project was merely in concept drawings. And had no clue about the expense-inflating government regulations and jobsite conditions we'd be hit with by the time the project went to bid.

I'd learned around New Year's that my salary for the past several months, maybe since I'd come onto the project, had actually been paid out of other projects' profits, since our portion of the fees was long since shot.

I knew that every time my boss tried to update the estimate according to a current price given by a friendly contractor, Reginald* the lawyer, the head of the nonprofit's fundraising committee, had refused to listen, that he'd always said, "You said in 2002 that $X was the price all in! You have to stick to it!"

And I knew-- at least, I was pretty sure--that Egbert* never asked for higher fees. The price he'd given, he'd given for our services, all in.

"All in." I'd always taken that to mean only basic architectural services: Concept drawings. Design development. Construction documentation. Client relations. Construction administration.

But what about all those other things my colleagues at the nonprofit were always asking us to do? A rendering for fundraising. Publicity pieces and illustrated donor's catalogues for more fundraising. Writing newspaper articles and talking with reporters for even more publicity and fundraising. Every time the committee would say, "Egbert*, could Blogwen do this or that for us?" Egbert would always say "Yes, Blogwen will do it."

And I did it. What was the problem? I was on salary, wasn't I?

Yes. I was on salary on a job that wasn't pulling its weight. Being done for a client that always wanted more and more and more. For a client who apparently took "all in" to mean "any damn thing we ask you to do, regardless of whatever it is, even though we'd owe you over a hundred thousand dollars for legitimately billable hours, if you hadn't been so careless as to give us a minuscule "all in" fee bid back in 2000!"

The "conflict of interest" wasn't really with me, it was within my boss himself. If he'd told me, "No, Blogwen, we can't do that, not unless they negotiate a separate contract for that work," I would gladly have told them so. But I associated with these people outside work hours; it was far too easy for them to make arbitrary demands on my work time. And when I reported these requests to Egbert*, he apparently felt he couldn't say no. He'd given his word. The contract and fee were "all in."

This is becoming a long post. I'll finish the story next time.

Some Easter "Hymns" Need to Be Egged

A brief rant before I retire to bed this Easter Sunday evening:

I was just downstairs, plinking out Easter hymns on my new old piano, out of the 1933 Hymnal. "Come Ye Faithful, Raise the Strain." "Welcome, Happy Morning." "The Strife Is O’er." "Jesus Christ Is Risen Today." Good, solid hymns with good, solid doctrine about what Jesus really did for us on the cross and at the empty tomb.

So what did I get for one of the two hymns in the church where I preached this morning? "He Lives." What were people singing all over "evangelical" America this morning? "He Lives." Which is not really about Jesus and His resurrection and what He’s accomplished at all, it’s about "me" and how Jesus makes me feeeeeeeeel!

I was stuck with it because the organist at Indian Hill* picks all the hymns and, in the absence of a regular pastor, what he says, goes.

Lord help me, every year I’m less able to tolerate that piece of gnostic, sentimental chozzerai.

This morning I barely sang it. I went "la-la-la" to the melody line in first verse, and for the other two I made a half-assed attempt at following the alto line, still on "la-la-la."

Irreverent, you say?

Ha! I gave the bloody piece of tripe exactly what it deserved, and more.

No, I didn’t disrupt anyone else’s worship "experience." The organ was behind me and it quite effectively drowned me out. Which was the idea.

. . . I need to stop feeling angry about this. It’s not my calling to go on a one-woman crusade against bad Christian music. It is my calling to preach the gospel of Christ crucified and risen again, and Lord helping, I believe I did that this morning.

But I see I've gotten sidetracked in my rant. It ultimately isn’t about disgust. It’s about sadness.

Sadness that so few modern hymnals have the great classic Easter hymns in them at all. Sadness that it's not popular or fashionable to sing them even if they are. We’re losing our musical heritage, and with it, a great support to our faith. Something like "The Strife Is O’er" goes a lot farther is teaching a Christian what he believes and why he should believe it, than something like "Christ Arose."

But even "Christ Arose" is better than "He Lives." Gaaahhhhggghhh!

Painful

I have a Village Singers concert to sing in early this afternoon at a church over the other side of the metro area. No way I could make it to an 11:00 o'clock service and be on the risers on time. So I attended the 9:00 o'clock service at a large church in my area.

It's the "contemporary" service. I'd been to it a couple times previously, before the congregation added on their big new informal worship/multipurpose center.

This morning, I learned that the addition means not only a lot more space, it also means a bigger-and-better sound system and a lot more noise.

Lay aside the tunes and words of what was being sung. I'm talking about loudness. Volume. Decibels. Noise!!!

An ear-shattering, deafening force of sound that socked me in the senses as soon as I walked in the door.

And that was with only the worship team performing. This was the "prelude," after all.

I looked around to find some friends who attend this church, to see if I could sit with them. As I did, my eyes fell on infants, small children, elderly people, all folks whose hearing would be especially vulnerable to such an onslaught. But the kids' parents were sitting there quite happily with their little ones, and the white-haired elders seemed totally unfazed, all oblivious to what the amplification was doing to their ears.

Me, I could tell what it was doing to mine. By the next-to-the-last chorus, started by the praise team alone, I had to cover my ears and hope my friends would not be embarrassed to be seen sitting with me. At the first da capo, the congregation rose and joined in. I followed suit, and tried covering just one ear so I could hold my song sheet with the other. But on the second repeat (third go-round), the sound technician ramped up the volume a few dozen more dBs, and I had to drop the paper and cover the other ear as well. Jesu iuva me, it was painful. By the time the chorus was over, my left ear was ringing.

I made it through the rest of the service and greeted my friends now that it was acceptable to raise my voice over the din of the postlude and the babel of other shouting voices. Then I beat it back to the relative silence of my home, where I quietly played a hymn on my new old piano.

And to let my hearing recover in time, I hope, for this afternoon's concert.

But it's nearly noon and my left ear is still buzzing.

But I have to wonder about the hearing of all the members who attend that service every week, and services like it all over the world. Don't they know what that level of volume is doing to their ears? Or are they so used to iPod buds in their ears, surround-sound home theaters, and mega-boost car stereos all turned up to Level 10, that worship at that decibel level is only what they're used to?

More ominously, do they and all the other proponents of big loud worship services think the sound has to be cranked all the way up in order for them truly to worship? Just writing this, I have an uneasy feeling that some pastors and worship leaders would say I'm just being cranky to object to this, or old-fashioned, or worse-- that I just don't want people to worship Jesus.

But that's what I do want. I want people to worship Jesus, the eternal Son of God, who is not hard of hearing and who doesn't need the needle to fly off the sound meter in order to hear our praise. I want us to worship Jesus, the lover of our souls, who receives the sincere songs of our hearts and minds and voices but isn't impressed by the power of our technology.

Kyrie eleieson! I'm reminded of Elijah on Mount Carmel with the prophets of Baal:

"At noon Elijah began to taunt them, 'Shout louder!' he said. 'Surely [Baal] is a god! Perhaps he is deep in thought, or busy, or relieving himself. Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened.' So they shouted louder . . . . "

We are not worshippers of Baal. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is not deaf, or distracted, or asleep. Why do we Christians persist in acting as if we were, and He is?

i can has sacrilege?

Not sure how it is, that I can get through fifty-odd Christmasses with their trappings and customs, when suddenly something will just go Boiiiingg! and I'll think, "I. Cannot. Stand. That."

Not anymore. Not this year. Not ever again.

It hit me the other day in our town's biggest gift store. This shop has great stuff if you want festive linens and platters and folk-arty salt-and-pepper shakers and hand-blown glass ornaments shaped like fruit and that sort of thing. But I got wandering amongst the Nativity scene displays and noticed how many of them feature big-eyed mindless-looking children or goofy animals or any number of permutations and combinations on sickly-sweet kyewt.

Like this one here

(Courtesy of It Came Upon a Midnight Weird's "Cavalcade of Bad Nativities")

And it's like my eyes were opened. I just wanted to yell, "NO!! Enough! Don't you know what you're making a sentimental farce of there? Do you realize who it is you have the temerity to represent in that ridiculous, minimizing, idolatrous way? It's the eternal holy Creator God of the Whole Freaking Universe who's allowed Himself to go through the mess and pain and hassle of human birth and human life and human death! That's Almighty God there in that manger, not a blinking teddy bear! And no, He's not come to bring sweetness and perpetual kyoot, He's here because we human beings made such an infernal muck of the world He gave us and now He has to come in person and straighten our gosh-awful disgusting mess out by Himself!"

The birth of our Lord is beautiful. It's awesome. It's overwhelming. It's stupendous. It's humbling.

But it bloody well isn't kyewt.

Modern Life

I've just spent the past seven-plus hours on the phone trying to get a clean copy of Windows XP onto my little IBM ThinkPad 240X. I have three operating systems sitting in parallel on my computer, the bootleg XP Professional that came with it, the genuine XP Professional I paid a fortune for last year, and a vestigal version of the Windows 98 OS that was on it when the computer was new.

I want one system. Period.

I've been everywhere by phone or computer since 2:30 or so-- MicroSoft, the IBM/Lenovo website, IBM support in Atlanta (three or four times), and an auxiliary group called Experts Live. I've got a charge against my credit card for a service I didn't ask for and isn't looking to do me any good. And still, nobody can tell me what I didn't already know from the last time I tried this marathon in March.

To-wit:

a) this computer can't boot from an external USB CD-ROM (which is all I have to get stuff onto it, unless you include the thumbdrive, which plugs into the same USB port), because

b) the BIOS doesn't support booting from a USB device, and

c) This is a hardware limitation. I have to use the Boot Disks for clean installing Windows XP.

I knew all that before I even picked up the phone! All I wanted today was to find out, where do I get the boot disks that weren't included when I bought the little laptop off eBay over a year ago? And how do I use them to get a clean, genuine, non-parallel version of XP onto the thing once I do have them?

But seven hours later . . .

The problem is, everyone wants to be helpful. Everyone wants to be the one who Finds the Solution. So all these techies take me through all the steps with the BIOS Setup, etc., etc., etc., that I've been through before. And I humor them, because hey, they might just magically find something the last guy didn't. And they never want to give up! They always want to try One More Thing! There's always One More Patch to download and run through the system!

In fact, I'm even trying installing a Data Killer program, to see if maybe that'll get rid of the redundant systems and let me start over.

But I'm probably whistling in the dark. The fact remains that for some silly reason, this laptop with no integral A:\ or C:\ drive will NOT allow one to boot via the USB port.

And what all these enthusiastic, well-meaning, but ultimately not very effective people should have told me in the beginning is

a) I can't get a boot disk from IBM. They just don't provide them anymore;

b) I might be able to get one from some website or via eBay. Maybe;

c) If I do find one, I should Google for some other website to tell me how to install it; and

d) It's sure as shootin' that I won't be able to install it without purchasing or borrowing an external A:/ drive that runs off the serial port. Or I can try some local computer geek who has one and can do it for me.

The hilarious thing is I was trying this now because that I wanted to take the laptop with me when I go away tomorrow. I'm assembling with the rest of the North American Welsh Choir to sing a concert in my hometown this coming Saturday. I'm bunking at a friend's, and I really don't want to have to borrow her computer all week. Or to shlep my bigger, heavier Toshiba Satellite along.

But it looks like I'll have to, one or the other, if I want to keep up on my email, blogs, accounts, and so on.

But think of it-- twenty years ago, this would not have been a problem. Computer? Why does anyone want a computer with her on vacation?

But I've travelled with a laptop since 1995, and how can you expect me to stop now?