Fiery Crosses

I found out on last week that this really nice lady in my Sunday School class once had a cross burned in her front yard.

My husband and I are very happy with the church that we have found in the city we moved to in August; a progressively minded Episcopal congregation that is just the right size for us and has terrific music. Most of all, this parish is blessed with an outstanding priest who is “about our age”, as they say, and inspires us. One of the things we enjoy most is the Sunday School class that takes place between the two weekly services every Sunday morning. There are usually between eight and twelve people there, as well as Father Marc. We have been going through the Catechism, but occasionally detour onto other subjects. Okay, so there is some sort of detour every Sunday; that is simply the nature of the group and the structure of the task at hand. Last Sunday, we talked a little bit about history.

Our church is part of the campus of the University of Alabama, in Tuscaloosa. We are located across the street (and share a parking lot on Sundays) with Foster Auditorium, the site of George Wallace’s famous Stand in the Schoolhouse Door, where he tried, unsuccessfully, to stop two black students from enrolling at the University.

During our time at Canterbury Chapel, people had mentioned that the church was very supportive of the Civil Rights Movement, and served as a staging area for protests on campus. On last Sunday morning, we learned that two crosses had been burned by the Ku Klux Klan on the front yard of our church. It served as a reminder that the violence and the fear inherent in such an act is a very real thing; something that neither of us can fully imagine nor appreciate. People around the table used phrases like “walking on eggshells” to describe their fears and feelings at the time.

But I was most shocked to learn that one of our “church ladies”, a sweet, grey-haired, grandmotherly type, a Daughter of the King and the foundress of the Flower Guild, had a cross burned in her front yard by the Klan as well. Why? She was a teacher. I’m not sure what or whom she taught or why that made her the Klan’s target, but I was overcome by a sense of awe and amazement.

Her name is Elizabeth. She was a teacher, and that’s why the Klan burned a cross in her front yard. Oy.

W3D3 of C25K is in the can

Yesterday I managed to successfully complete the third week of Cool Runnings’ Couch-to-5K training program. The goal of the program is to take a total couch potato (moi) and turn her into an active healthy person who can run a distance of 3.1 miles, or run for approximately 30 minutes. I’m getting support through a Facebook group and also by listening to podcasts that some guy put together to help get through the program.

My husband is a runner; I’ve tried to become a runner before but have always failed. Either work got in the way, or I got sick or managed to injure myself. This time, things are going well. I have been running on Mondays and Wednesdays after work and on Saturday mornings. This week could be a little different because it is Spring Break and I am also apparently fighting off a bit of a cold. So we’ll see how it goes. Right now, though, everything is fine.

The podcasts were made by a guy named Robert in Northern California who decided to do the C25K program shortly after his 43^rd birthday. He’s done a nice job of putting together this podcast that times out the various warm-up, jog, walk, and cool down interludes by each of the nine weeks it takes to make a runner (or jogger, or in my case, schlogger) out of a spud. I’m not crazy about the music, as it is kind of mindless techo-stuff that is mostly just rhythm track. I keep listening to the introduction for each piece and wondering when the song is going to start, but then the music changes enough to let me know that if there was a song, I missed it. So it’s not music that I would like to listen to on my own, but is it good for running? Yep, so it’s good enough for me.

Week Four starts tomorrow. I’ll be running three and five minute intervals with walking breaks in between them. Depending on the weather and time of day, I’ll either run along the Northport River Path (probably not its official name) or the Tuscaloosa River Path (which is just across the same river but down the road a piece) or on the indoor track at the Rec Center. My strategy is to not measure my running in terms of performance until my first race; I’m afraid that if I know what my pace is that I will get focused on that. I need to leave myself alone and just work the plan. I will be a runner one day!

Honourable Mentions

As much fun as it was to put together a list of great Canadian musicians, it hurts to have left so many off the list. The McGarrigle Sisters would have been at the top of any list of great Canadians for any occasion, but I posted a blog tribute to them last month in honor of Kate’s passing. Here are a few artists who make me wish the Olympics had gone on a little longer:

k.d. lang

Bachman-Turner Overdrive

Rush (for the husband)

Dan Hill

Jann Arden

Measha Breuggergosman

Robert Goulet

Rufus Wainwright

Michael Buble

Alanis Morrisette

Nelly Furtado

Bryan Adams

Paul Anka

The Band

Electric Light Orchestra

Loverboy

Buffy Sainte-Marie

Dan Akroyd – for his work with the Blues Brothers

Jane Siberry

Bryan Adams

Crash Test Dummies

Gordon Lightfoot

Bruce Cockburn

Leonard Cohen

Avril Lavigne

Daniel Lanois – producer

Oh, and if you are wondering where Celine Dion and Shania Twain are, don’t.