Asheville Photos

We had a great time. Thanks so much for letting us use the house. Check out our photos at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisboundy/sets/72157604280489573/

Asheville

Now that our trip to Asheville is on the horizon, I've been trying to plan out some activities and wanted to get some specific advice. Obviously, there is the Biltmore. I've also heard great things about the Barley Taproom & Pizzeria. Any other suggestions?

I also wanted to make sure that I was clear our Irene and my traveling plans. We'll be arriving in Asheville in the afternoon on Sunday (the 23rd) and leaving together on the 27th. In Charlotte, Irene will take a flight to Baltimore, spend the night at St. Paul's School for Girls, interview there, and fly home on Friday. I'll be coming straight home. The difference is that St. Paul's is paying for Irene's change in travel plans.

We are very much looking forward to our time at the High House.

Bachelor Parties in Florida

I just returned, red as a beet, from Dave Webster's Bachelor Party in Florida. We had a good time, in our distinctively Westminster way--there were more games of whiffle ball and all night Monopoly than wild nights at the bars; more the bonhomie of a reunion than the reckless dissoluteness of a Miami bender.

I can feel your skepticism across the miles.

In any event, it was more the nature of where we stayed in Florida that captured my attention. We were in Ft. Lauderdale, so Amy can confirm or deny my experience based on her time in the Sunshine State, but what was most surprising to me was the willingness of people there to let certain parts of their town--lots, old buildings, unused golf courses, for example--to slowly decay. The first morning we were there half the group went golfing and the other went to a casino, so, left to my own devices, I took a short run around to get the lay of the land. Among other things, I found the back nine of a golf course slowly deteriorating a short distance away, separated from a grouping of hotels by two-lane highway. We may hold space to a premium in the Northeast, but seeing the course's slow state of decomposition was a memorable event. Coupled with the impressive March heat, one got the sense that the course was somehow slowly rotting away.


I may be becoming too much of a North easterner. What have been your impressions of Florida when you've been?

Matthew, Mark, Luke & John

A funny thing has happened since I've become a born again church-goer. As it turns out, and only in my opinion, there is a lot of filler in the average UCC service. You've got to get the collection plates, pass'em out, and take'em back, and then get the bread and wine, pass'em out (slight difference from Episcopal services), and take'em back, and so on. To pass the time, I've started leafing through the only reading material available.

I think of the Four Gospels, I prefer Luke. He comes at the issue as a historian, and I've got a soft spot for historians. Of the remaining books, I'm still trying to figure out where they all fit and whether they all fit together (and I'm growing more and more skeptical all the time). I like Ecclesiastes pretty well (all is vanity, after all) and I've enjoyed the parts of Paul's letters I've read, even if they do sound a bit like a boss sending plaintive notes back home.

To be honest, I was surprised what an elevated post Paul has on the religious hierarchy. Second in importance to the big guy, some say.

Next Year

So, on top of her work as a Student Minister and finishing her final semester at Harvard Divinity School, Irene has recently become enmeshed in the job hunt. I think she mentioned this, but she's focusing her search on elite boarding schools on the East Coast. I don't have much experience with boarding schools generally, but I find them fascinating. They are there own little world. Tuition for several of the schools runs around $35,000 for boarders, and several have endowments that equal more than $500,000 for every current student. And the campuses are beautiful.

A few she's looking at include the Pomfret School in Pomfret, CT, the Kent School in Kent, CT, the Deerfield Academy in Deerfield, MA and the St. Andrew's School in Middletown, DE.

And the campuses. Yowzer.



Of course, according to a recent article in the Globe, Boarding Schools have problems of their own, so maybe they're not so idyllic after all.