Live and Archived

    The last several weeks have been a little overwhelming.  Between my four classes and Glee Club, there seems to always be a test or paper or project or concert every week, sometimes two in one week.  The projects and tests are not particularly interesting to talk about, but the concerts may be a little more interesting to you.  For one, we performed Brahms’s Ein Deutches Requiem once again, this time in downtown Chicago at the Symphony Center, and the previous performance in Edman Chapel (on Wheaton’s campus last November) is now online: http://www.wheaton.edu/wetn/conservarchive.htm (November 20).  Also, our spring concert will be this Friday at 8:00 (6:00 AZ time).  The performance should be broadcast live, so if you want to watch it or part of it you can go to http://www.wheaton.edu/wetn and click the watch live link.  It should be a fun concert.  We have a really wide variety of songs in Glee Club.  We performed two in chapel today.

    I wanted to put some sort of picture in here, but this is the only one that I have taken recently.  This is Ryan Bilton carrying Josh Hershberger and Sam Cortez, and Bryce Walpus is touching Sam’s head.  A few comments.  Sam is going to be one of my roommates next year, Lord wiling.  In our last raid, Ryan played a significant role, and one of the other guys on our floor sang the song “Gaston” from Beauty and the Beast, replacing the word Gaston with Bilton. I also have been reading a few Father Brown stories for a reading group at the Wade Center, in one of them, detective Valentin mentions a caper of the extremely brilliant and athletic master criminal Flambeau in which he carried two policemen down the street, one under each arm.

    It snowed today….  Everyone here feels as if spring has betrayed us.  We had two weeks of very nice weather, then this afternoon, it got a bit chilly, just enough for me to contemplate wearing a sweater.  Then when I looked out the window a few hours later the snow had returned.  I don’t think any more than an inch fell, but it’s the principle of the matter.  The last remnants of winters hold on our campus had begun to disappear, the former eight foot mounds of snow had been reduced to tiny piles a few inches in diameter and then completely obliterated, but now reinforcements have come, and we must brace ourselves for one more skirmish against this foe.  We must keep our fleece armor at the ready and our heaters vigilant.

From the front lines,

Daniel Flavin

Homesick

    I’ve never entirely understood what the word “homesick” meant.  When I was younger, sickness meant a mixture of physical discomforts and disabilities.  It meant running noses, headaches, soreness, exhaustion, etc.  I still think of sickness in a similar way, but when I was younger I could not imagine how not being in a certain place could make someone feel physically sick.  I do remember missing home while on vacation and wondering if that was homesickness.  That may have been why I had trouble understanding homesickness: I had experienced sickness and I had experienced missing home, but in my experience there was very little connection between them.  In the time since then, both ideas have grown closer to each other.  As a child, when I was sick I don’t particularly remember longing to be well.  More recently, when I am sick I spend a significant portion of my time remembering what it felt like to be well and wishing I could be well.

    Sometimes in class, sometimes in a conversation, and sometimes walking across campus, I have had a sudden, vivid memory of a particular location.  The odd thing about it is that most of the time, it isn’t “home.”  It is not necessarily my room or my house or even a place that I would list as one of particular significance or emotional attachment.  It may be Freestone Park, the parking lot of Sam’s Club or Fiesta mall.  Somehow, even though that place does not seem to hold any particular meaning to me, I feel an intense longing to be there, not to do anything particular there, merely to be there.  You might say that this is merely my sub-conscious telling me to go somewhere warmer.  That may be part of it.  (As a side note, I have learned a few things about cold weather.  One: it is not hard to freeze hair, just walk outside with slightly damp hair and wait fifteen seconds.  Two: hoodies and beanies were not invented just to look cool.  Three: there are two ways to get rid of a farmer’s tan.)  But there's something about those familiar places that is comfortable and inviting.  Even though Wheaton is more comfortable than it used to be, it does not have the same level of memories and emotional attachment that places in Arizona do.