Mín Englisc Blog

About to leave for a few days — I'm to be visiting the School of Library and Information Science at Indiana University and seeing friends in the Lafayette area.

Today was a milestone for me: this morning I took the last of my Dilantin pills. Unless a disaster happens, I will never again take this kind of medicine. I was put on it in the ambulance on the way to the hospital on the morning of my first seizures, and except for the occasional time that I forgot it, I have taken this medicine every day since then — 3½ years. God willing, I'm done :-)

These past few days have been quite productive: I've finished transcribing another book of session minutes, and I'm mostly done with proofreading.
Seeing the bright moon tonight reminded me: when I was little, I never realised how bright the moon was. I remember first observing — at a rather late age; I may have even been in high school — that I could see my shadow when there was a bright moon but no other light, whether in the sky or from the ground.

I just found this great newly-posted photograph of a courthouse in rural eastern Nebraska. A good picture of a beautiful building on a great day :-)
Nothing much has been going on here since Monday. I did make some progress on Tuesday, finishing transcription of another book of session minutes (the final book for Morning Sun, Iowa), so I hope to be able to complete proofreading soon.

This was the weirdest of yesterday's churches — while most of the old Catholic churches in the region are High Gothic with towering brick spires, St. Louis Church in the village of North Star (built in 1914; it's among the newest of these churches) is a stuccoed single-story Mission Revival structure. We virtually never see Mission Revival in this part of the country, and the contrast with the other churches makes this quite a significant building.
For the first time in several months, I can close the back door without pushing it closed. Our screen doors have now been replaced; as well as performing minor tasks, I essentially removed the old door from its hingest: quite the difficulty it is when the screws' heads are in tightly and are damaged enough that a screwdriver can't easily grip it.

Dad and I went for a drive in the farthest western part of the state: not exactly to where I went on my birthday, but somewhat farther south.

This is St. Peter Evangelical Lutheran Church, located in the countryside southeast of Versailles in northeastern Darke County, about 65 miles southwest of here via the (admittedly rather circutuous route) that we took to get there, stopping for pictures here and there. Built in 1850, it's no longer an organised congregation; the building is only used once annually.

I have just learned via email of the sudden death of another retired RP minister: the Rev. Robert Tweed, Ph.D., who passed away between 8 and 9 PM last night. The pastor of three different churches and twenty years a Bible professor at Geneva college, he went the farthest from home of all of our ministers. Dr. Tweed was the only man to be the pastor of an RP church in Alaska, serving our former Anchorage church from 1979 to 1987, its entire existence.