running, running

i had the most disturbing dream last night. well, maybe not the most disturbing ever in my life, but it certainly ranked itself up there. it was a long dream, but of course the portions that are clearest are those that happened the latest.

there's a house that i've been in before in another dream–or maybe it's a museum or mansion? it's huge, with wide windows letting in bright, clear sunlight, and those wide, square staircases that sweep against three walls–white marble steps with dark railings.

then i'm in another kind of house, and it is chaos. the rooms are all in disorder, and there is an air of evil. there's something wrong going on here, but i don't know what it is. a sweatshop, a brothel? this house seems to be used for a dark purpose. and then i realize i'm being pursued. whatever is going on here, they are either trying to catch me to make me part of it, or kill me so i can't tell others.

i run through the cluttered rooms–bedrooms?–and stop dead in one of the rooms as i see a woman lying facedown on the bed, naked. she's in labor, or has had the baby, and it rests between her legs. her body is so pale, but also bruised, like she's been abused, maybe. i don't know who she is in real life, but in the dream i recognize her and run to her, horrified. she raises her head to me and her brow is covered in sweat, so i run and find a paper towel that i run under the sink in the room, and wipe her forehead. she smiles a little, but she's so weak, and then she begs me to help her hide the baby. i don't know what to do, the baby's umbilical cord hasn't even been cut and i don't want to hurt either of them.

but i can hear voices coming from the other rooms, and i know i have to save both of them somehow. somehow i call out "help", and it's said in such a manner that my friends outside will hear me, but not the evil people in the house. and now these evil people are coming. they can't know i'm here, or they'll take me away and i won't be able to help this woman and her baby.

i hide underneath a desk in a pile of blankets and clothes, and for once feel thankful that the room is so messy that i have things to cover myself in. the evil people prowl into the room, look around, say something, and then leave. and then i jump up again and call out again to my friends, and there they are!

somehow we have gotten the woman and her baby outside, and clothed her in a long white robe. but she and the baby are separated now. it seems she thinks the baby will be safer this way. so one group takes the baby and runs, and she and i and a couple others run another way, down a major paved road by the water. it's very sunny, and there are hardly any cars on the road, and the sunlight is glinting off of the sea.

we are just determining how we should cross the road and which way to go, when we see them start to approach us from all sides. they look like a swat team, or something official and authoritarian, but i know that they are the evil people. alarmed, we all start running again.


<><><> part two <><><>
in my second dream, i'm walking through a sunny park with my friend kristen, and–i kid you not–woody allen. now, in real life, i'm not sure how i feel about woody allen. i don't find him that funny, and while i have no judgments to make on his personal life, i doubt i would covet his company myself. so, you must ask yourself, why is woody allen in agatha's dream, and what does that signify? what indeed.

in my dream, there's a little photo booth, such as you see at arcades and carnivals, where you can duck inside and take rolls of silly pictures. either kristen and i have just done one, or woody allen and i have just done one, or maybe all three of us. i have no idea, because no part of the dream takes place in the photobooth, but it's there as an afterthought, something important for some reason.

so woody allen and i go and sit down on a park bench just on the edge of the park, and look at the sunlight. hmm.

academic integrity

i am morally caught by a small but significant situation happening on our campus; a young woman who has been accused of cheating, has been expelled by our honor commission, and her friends have organized a campus-wide protest on the matter. this young woman has supposedly cheated in the past–to which she confessed–but this time she says she is innocent, and has been given an unfair trial because of past prejudices.

this is a serious matter indeed. academic integrity is of the highest importance at gettysburg–it was our student body themselves who initially created the honor code, and have upheld it to this day. i'm very proud that our students, and certainly i did when i was a student, consider honesty and integrity intrinsic to education. so part of me is concerned that there may have been some personal bias or skimming of the law in this situation, though i trust that the honor commission is acting in the way it thinks is most fair.

and that brings me to the second point: i'm more proud that the student body feels that, in the spirit of what the honor code stands for, they should actively protest its misuse if it fails to protect individual academic work, as it should. if there has been a mistrial, then it should be contested. and if it's still proven that she is guilty, then, like john miller's philosophy, the challenge and reaffirmation of the verdict can only strengthen the system that we hold so dearly.

do you think i'm over thinking the matter? how can that be, when the lessons you learn in college are what you take with you into the "real" world. i'd rather have the next generation of the workforce be very deeply concerned with ethical business and action, than not.

angry dream

i had a weird, frightening dream last night, and i can only remember the very last bits of it, although i know it was much longer. at the very end of the dream, i am in a school, or some sort of house-turned-school, and there is blue in the room somewhere, blue carpet maybe? and metal sinks. that's why i thought it was a classroom. and there was a man there who was the teacher, and i was really angry with him because he brought guns to school for a class assignment, and wanted to let the kids play with them, and one of them went off and shot me in my right hand.

i stared in horror at my hand, which had the flesh torn away over my second and third knuckles, and which was bleeding profusely. the bullet, which was small and round (like a b-b gun? i don't know guns), was lodged between my knuckles in the angry red flesh, and i held my hand gingerly, anxious that i needed to get to the hospital, but also pausing to berate this man for bringing in weapons and creating a dangerous situation.

i don't remember if i was able to save my hand, or what happened before or after this. when i try to think back, it's like i can almost see images and remember feelings and thoughts, but they're just obscure enough, just enough out of the corner of my vision, that when i think too closely about them, they disappear rather than come into focus.

do you know what i mean? it's like when you look at stars at night; your pupils will filter the most light from your direct vision, and thus the stars in your peripheral vision often look brighter by comparison, but when you try to swivel your eyes around to view those, they shrink from scrutiny.

addendum: interesting interpretations from www.dreammoods.com/dreamdictionary . oooh interesting.

barbara kirkpatrick stroup

so, you may think this is weird, but i get google alerts emails with anything that references "gettysburg college," and the other day an obituary came up that interested me because it referenced that she'd taught at gettysburg. i doubted i knew her, but i thought that it would be a shame not to learn a little bit about the life of community member here in gettysburg.

so i clicked on the link, and started reading. as i read, i tried to imagine the progress of the little girl to the teenager, to the young adult, and so on, living through a world that i normally only read about as "history." i am always fascinated by my elders-they have so many stories to tell, and indeed, so did barbara. a graduate in english (yay!) from dickinson college in 1940, and a recipient of a master's from ship u., she also took graduate courses at columbia, uconn, nc state and penn state. plus, she had many interesting adventures moving around the country and teaching in one-room schoolhouses, with "a pot-bellied stove," says the article.

i thought of my own grandmother, who was a wellesley graduate, and who received her own masters in education, and it made me proud of the intellectual ambition of these women, when i remember my favorite 18th century lit. professor telling me once that, when she was in graduate school, one of her older professors told her she'd never make it in the professional world because she was a woman. funny that people still say such things. but foolish people obviously can't stop those who have a will, and spirit, and heart in what they do.

so anyway, if you want to learn more about this incredible woman, i think taking the minute and a half that it takes to read her obituary is a tribute we can all afford to make: http://www.gettysburgtimes.com/articles/2009/12/05/obituaries/doc4b1a54d38dcd9828554081.txt

fist-pumping senior citizens

this weekend was truly unique. yesterday i went down to bethesda, md with my colleague courtney to do some off-campus interviews, but since we had a little extra time, we decided to live it up at the warner theatre in downtown d.c. ....listening to the musical stylings of "young at heart," a group of senior citizens ranging from 75 to 90 years old, who sing and dance to thoughtfully choreographed and arranged hits from the seventies through modern pop.

here, they have a website, which obviously means you have to look at it: http://www.youngatheartchorus.com/

their slogan is "finding the zen in senior citizen." yes!

then we went to a christmas carol singalong w/ courtney's parents and it was amazing. interviews today, shopping, and now back in gburg contemplating the mess that is my house.

mistake

i had an unsettling dream last night. or maybe not unsettling–what should i call it? wistful? longing? i dreamed that i married the wrong man.

in my dream i am in a house that's brightly painted–pink, or purple, maybe, with white trim. there's a pretty yard in the back, and my family is gathered there. my aunt and my cousin david are standing on the back deck and joking about a wooden shed tacked onto the deck that one of my other cousins has been hiding in or something. the air is festive, and i realize that it's my wedding party, and that that is what we're all waiting for.

i go into the back of the house with the expectation that it's time for me to get ready. i feel a sort of excitement, because this is my wedding day, and surely it should be the happiest day of my life! as i walk through the house, i feel that something is unsettling me, but i don't know what it is, and anyway, the unsettled feeling is more than compensated by the thought that i'm about to get married.

so i walk through the dining room, and right before the front living room there are two sets of spiral staircases built into the wall to my right–they are encased in turrets that run through the center of the house straight up to the roof. i climb the winding stairs and arrive in a room that is bare, with wooden floors, pink or purple painted walls, and is an octagonal shape with windows on each wall. the sun coming in the windows is so bright that i can't see what's out them–rather, the bright, white light is coming in and surrounding me in a semi-circle, blinding me–not badly or uncomfortably, just enough so that all the light is on me, illuminating my skin, my wedding dress.

i see it suddenly, lying across a chair by one of the windows and i eagerly pick it up. it's a strapless gown with silver scalloping across the top of the bodice. not quite what i'd choose for myself, but i'm pleased with it, as if perhaps someone else chose it for me but i'll wear it because it's nice. i put it on and look at myself in the mirror and for a moment, i'm very happy.

but it's only then, when i put on the dress and look at myself that i stop and realize that i don't know who the groom is. or–i can't remember who he is. i think wildly, what on earth am i doing? but i know that i must have agreed to this, and this is what i'm supposed to be doing, and this will make my family happy.

so i'm happy to do it, for a moment, because everyone else will be so pleased. and maybe he's really wonderful!, i think. i stand in that room in my bright wedding gown and muse on what he could possibly be like, but after a moment's elation my hopes feel shallow. it doesn't matter what he's like, because i just don't love him. i know who i love and right now all i want is to see his face.

i'm so overcome by this emotion that i run out of the room and dash back down those winding stairs, and run through the front room into the back, and there he is, standing in the dining room, in his tux, looking radiant. there's a white flower in his button hole–a rose, or a carnation. i guess he's either dressed as a guest, or maybe he's part of the wedding. but it doesn't matter. he's not the man i'm set to marry. and he looks at me with anguish, and i look back at him, but neither of us speaks. what can we say? this day is already planned by others, and we don't know how to change it.

i'm so disappointed that i don't know how to keep standing. people are walking back and forth between us, since we're standing in the middle of the dining room, so there's no moment to be alone and explain ourselves. and anyway, i don't know what to explain because i feel that i've pushed this on myself. how could i ever have thought i could bear to marry someone whom i didn't love? i try to recall all of the great reasons that i might have done this, but whatever they were, they won't come to me.

so i stand helplessly in my wedding dress and we look at each other sadly, and i think my heart will break.

i wake myself up before i can bear to watch anymore.

what are these dreams? what's going on with me?

the savvy grouse

just found this blog which reviews events/culture in pennsylvania...pretty fun: http://www.savvygrouse.com/2009/11/16/falldatenightingettysburg/

i always love to hear a visitor's viewpoint about gburg! i had to laugh in reading about the ghost tours...yes, we do have quite a lot of those. but they shouldn't all take 1 hour 45 minutes...maybe they got an 'extended' tour because it was so close to halloween?