DiGennaro Family

I have been working longer hours this week–didn’t leave last night until about 11:45. But that is really not much, since a guy I work with put in 92 hours during the last week period.

We have been trying to get some generators ready to leave, and we are in a hurry. But we should be done this afternoon and then we can get back to what we normally do.

I missed the first football game last night (unless it was canceled, like all the previous games). Maybe I am just paying attention to the complainers, but it seems like things are getting worse. There is a breakdown between the students and the powers that be. Mutual distrust, dislike and each party caring much more about itself than the others. There are departmental power struggles, and bureaucratic complications. The students are cynical and selfish, and the conditions only add to that.

I read “The Big U” by Neil Stevenson last semester and for a while it reminded me of our great institution (then it got worse, and the similarities were not as striking). But it makes me wonder how long before the whole place goes down.

It turns out that the school is just a small, magnifying mirror of the rest of the country, and I just see the problems up close. But when a project is slowed down for months just because a department claims to have power, and many of the problems faced are not technical, but simply bureaucratic, it shows that something is wrong.

So, what is my reaction? Leave? Burn things? Work to change the system? If the system gets in the way, just quietly do what I want?

Where are we going and why are we in this handbasket?

hello family,

well, here i am in my second week at rosedale. i’m having an excellent time, though the classes make me study, and stuff like that. imagine. i’m in general epistles (barr) and philosophy (kouns). i’m loving philo, but it’s a lot of work and all that thinking hurts my head! kouns is such an awesome teacher and incredibly brilliant. i’m getting a lot out of the class, but it might be lethal to my grades. i goofed off too much this weekend when i had three papers due and two books to read, and found that that staring me in the face the rest of the week is detrimental to my stress level. i guess i learned something. and, congrats to me, i made chorale. first soprano. so that’s exciting and is cool, but takes a lot of time. yesterday we had a day of prayer, and fasted and prayed all afternoon; it was really really awesome! so yeah, i’m making friends and trying not to feel too out of place. here my first name is digennaro and my last name is simeon’s sister. so i feel like eveyone expects me to live up to…to something. i’m not sure what, and sometimes it’s irritating; you guys didn’t have to be so awesome! but i’m finding out i’m related to half the population of rbc. as chris yoder (queena’s brother) said “if someone had killed one bender back there, half of rosedale wouldn’t exist.” so these are a few random notes for what’s going on in my life! gotta go read for philosophy… i love you all! ~the tirzah

Try this little experiment to show that uncooked veggies are actually ALIVE!

Take two onions, and place one in the cupboard. Peal and chop the other onion and put it in a jar in the fridge.

Wait several weeks.

Now take out the two onions and compare them. The one in the cupboard looks, feels and smell just fine. The one in the fridge smells bad and is rotten.

A live onion has a set of passive and active defences against rot. By destroying these defences we opened the onion up to degradation.

I drove to MO Wednessday afternoon and spent the weekend with my family. I went to a party new years eve, and played pictionary, as well as singing hymns and dancing.

I worked in the shop some, but didn’t make anything that worked amazingly well. I did help move vehicles around–chickenmobile and black van are out by the road, Nancy made the trip to the woods behind Beaty’s.

I drove home sunday after church–stopped by and dropped off “Emily”, and was fed again. Got to talk to Eli and Jim some. Went the wrong way leaving and ended up making a loop that cost a half hour. Made it home at 12:15