In her last years with us, Granny used talk about the Sweet By and By. Today, I was listening to a collection of old American gospel tunes when I caught the phrase. I looked up the whole song to see the context. Here are comforting words:

There’s a land that is fairer than day,
And by faith we can see it afar;
For the Father waits over the way
To prepare us a dwelling place there.

Refrain:
In the sweet by and by,
We shall meet on that beautiful shore;
In the sweet by and by,
We shall meet on that beautiful shore.

We shall sing on that beautiful shore
The melodious songs of the blessed;
And our spirits shall sorrow no more,
Not a sigh for the blessing of rest.

To our bountiful Father above,
We will offer our tribute of praise
For the glorious gift of His love
And the blessings that hallow our days.

Been awhile since I posted. Excuses? We don’t need no steenkin excuses.

At work I’ve taken to signing certain emails “TcT” instead of using my full email signature. (I think my dean knows who I am. As do people with whom I’m having a lengthy email conversation.) I thought today that folks unfamiliar with my employment and family history may not know what “TcT” means. It’s even possible that my family doesn’t really know how it got started.

It all got started in the yellow-walled backroom of The Good Book Shoppe in North Olmsted, Ohio. I was a youngin’, 14 maybe, when I started working for an actual wage doing actual work at the stores my family owned. Previously I had been handed a quarter to go dust books or straighten pencils, but I was now being trained in actual bookstore operations and being paid hourly. My grandfather was teaching me the shipping/receiving procedures. At some point, there was some confusion over a packing slip or something that I had initialled. I was supposed to initial the paper, but the problem was that my father and I have the same first/last initials: TT. Also, in typical son-copying-father tradition, I was even making my initials in the same fashion as he; I made something that looked like the Greek letter pi, or stonehenge. Obviously, having both of us making the same sign was going to get confusing, and equally obviously my dad was not going to be the one to change since he did have the very true claim of having “done it first.” So, I decided that I would continue making the TT like a “pi” but I would insert a “C” (my middle initial) between the uprights. I’ve continued to initial items this way ever since, even when one around could ever confuse who TT is.

When I handwrite the initials, the “C” sinks a bit, the “C” beginning half to all the way down the stem of the “T”. When it came time to start doing this electronically, I thought the lower-case “c” hinted at the stylishness of the handwritten version. Is that vain? Yes. Probably.

Now you know not only who TcT is, but why it’s TcT.

And knowing’s half the battle.

Colleges rarely have weather-related cancellations. In fact, in the 10 years Sherry and I have been teaching, I think I can count on one hand the number of suprise days off we’ve had. So, one of the unforeseen pleasures of having a teenager in the house for the first time is that we’ve been swept up in the wintertime weather watch. Before S, Sherry and I would just listen to the NPR news in the morning while we got ready. We never had the TV on, nor did we really do much online news checking. Now, we’re signed up for text-message alerts from a local TV channel, we know who’s got the best school-closing lists, and there’s always an extra bit of energy in the air on mornings, like today, when the weather has gone the least bit touchy.

Of course, what all this does for me mainly is make me think about the fact that there seem to be many more school closings and delays today than when I was in school walking barefoot in two-feet of snow uphill both ways.

I know it’s just about the middle of January, but I’m finally getting my act together in re: photos. I just sprung for the Flickr Pro account, so I must be a pro. At any rate, for the fam out there, I’ve uploaded pics from the two Christmas celebrations we attended.

BLTs, you can go here.

Members of the GJLMTW clan can go here.

Enjoy!

Check out the lefthand sidebar. Sherry’s book has a release date and an Amazon page! How much more official can you get? Doesn’t look like it’ll be available for you Christmas needs, but you know you’ve always wanted to start an Epiphany tradition in your home.

Seriously, we’re very excited.

Charles L. Crow, Professor Emeritus of English, Bowling Green State University, is also impressed. He’s written:

Professor Truffin’s elegant study defines a literature about school days.
Since the Gothic always reveals an alternative history, the hidden underside of experience, these are not the bright happy times of school anthems and graduation speeches, but a history of power abused and trust betrayed. Schoolhouse Gothic makes us looks at education and American literature with new eyes. This is an important book, and it will be widely read and admired.

I hope he’s correct in his predictions.

Grandparents’ Day was on Sept. 7. In keeping with my being late for just about every holiday, public and private, here’s my homage.

I only have one grandparent still living (Hi, Nana!), but I have fond memories of Granny & Grandpa, and Papa. On this Grandparent’s Day, I’m resurrecting a poem I wrote in the fourth grade. One of the finest of my juvenile works, I present to you,

Grand Ol’ Grandparents

Grandparents are sweet,
And so very, very neat.
They live threw some grand times
And carry some grand chimes.
They carry memory
And maybe some History.
They ride the first car,
And become my star.

Grandparents are smart
And eat raspberry tart.
They sleep, sleep, sleep,
And are sweet, sweet, sweet.
They won old, old rocking chairs,
And have stories of their afairs.
They have an old wood tub,
And stuffed animals to rub.

—1980

As I get older, I marvel at the sagacity I displayed in recognizing the wisdom of eating raspberry tart.

…my true love gave to me…

a Fender Standard Stratocaster HSS and Fender M-80 amplifier.

Rock on!

Yesterday was quite the day for competition in the Truffin household. In addition to the Bucyrus Bratfest, Sherry and I each were participating in competitive sporting events. [NOTE: I didn't actually see any of the Bratwurst Festival events this year. Sherry and Wade report that it was up to its usual fun. I DID get to have some of the Methodist women's bratwurst casserole, and it was as good as ever!]

Huzzah! for Sherry
After a very long hiatus, Sherry returned to the running races. She ran in the Findlay “Up, Up, and Away 5K,” evidently held in conjunction with a hot air balloon festival. Before I tell you how she did, I feel compelled to point out that Sherry was competing with two major handicaps: on Tuesday she tweaked her back, and it’s been very sore all week, and, as if the back pain wasn’t enough, her mysterious stomach pains seemed to be making a come-back.

However, despite these physical obstacles, Sherry perservered and ran the race set before her. She ran the 5K in 29:13, which works out to 9:25/mile. Not bad. She also placed 11th out of 21 in the 35-39 Female age group and 239th out of 372 finishers.

So, HUZZAH! Sherry for a race well run!

Bratfest Open

While Sherry was out running, Todd drove over to Bucyrus for the inaugural tournament held at Aumiller Park. The course is quite nice, with a Jekyll and Hyde character. The front 9 holes are tight, wooded holes that are all basically short. The back 9 is rather open, still with trees, and mostly loooong. I finished the first round +8, and I was feeling pretty OK about it since I didn’t have any holes that just blew up on: 8 pars and 8 bogeys. Given my usual tournament performance, I felt I was off to a good start.

The second round, however, was once again my giant killer. Interestingly enough, I only finished up 2 strokes worse than the morning, but it felt much, much worse since I had both a double and triple bogey. Fortunately for my finishing place, it seemed that alot of the other players had rough second rounds as well. I ended up taking 5th place out of 17 with a +18. My prize was a disc shaped bottle opener and an Innova Valkyrie disc.

So, over all, I think the Truffins did pretty good.

So, Tuesday, Sherry and I celebrated our 14th wedding anniversary. (Yeah, us!) We celebrated by attending back to back Cleveland Indians games. Before the eyes roll back in various heads, it must be understood that going to ball games and following the Indians has been one of those “couple” things that we do. Sherry loves the Indians as much as I, and we love loving them together. Also, one of the big events of our honeymoon was attending a Toronto Blue Jays/ Orioles game. So, the Indians games were both enjoyable in their own right as well as a reminder of our nuptiual celebrations 14 years ago.

My folks joined us Tuesday night, and we ate at the phenomenal Flying Fig restaurant in Ohio City. Mom claims that her short ribs were the best meal at the table. My gnocchi, seared scallop, and veal meatballs wanted to argue, buy Sherry’s soup, seared tofu, and scallop were clamoring too loud, and Dad’s amazing hanger steak kept waving a hand and saying what about me?

After catching “The Fatty Wagon”–a shuttle bus run entirely on recycled vegetable oil–to the game, we settled in for a nerve-wracking pitchers duel. In the end, both pitchers were outstanding, and we went home disappointed with a 1-0 loss. The evening ended with a nice walk across the Lorain-Carnegie bridge, which gave us beautiful views of the Cleveland skyline.

Last night, we returned to the Jake, meeting up with some friends from TU. The rain stopped just in time for the game to begin, and we once again settled in for a tense pitchers’ duel. Fausto Carmona turned in a brilliant performance, and the Red Sox’s Beckett was almost as sharp. This night however, we were rewarded with an Indians victory, 1-0.

Two games, two nights, two 1-0 ball games. Some stat junky figured out that the last time the Indians lost a 1-0 game and came back to win with another 1-0 game was in April of 1942, 65 years. Not a bad way to celebrate an anniversary, watching a once in 65 years event.

I now have to go have my left ear drum replaced. Sherry is not afraid of root, root, rooting for the home team.

Sherry’s essay “‘Terrors of the Night’: Salvation, Gender, and the Gothic in Go Tell It on the Mountain” is being published in a collection of essays celebrating the 50th anniversary of James Baldwin’s groundbreaking novel. The collection is a bit pricey (encourage your library to order it!) but you can now pre-order it at the publisher.

I just got the news this morning, but perhaps soon I can coax a short synopisis of the piece from Sherry. Anyone interested in an insightful analysis of one of the most effective conversion experience depictions in fiction should be drooling.

ps: go visit sherry.truffin.com