The Doctor is in.

June 2014

Death Visits SPU, June 5, 2014

On June 5th, I began my summer Bible class at Emerald Heights Retirement Community. Since the BCS Track & Field banquet was that same evening, I'd decided to take the entire day off, even though it was the second-to-last day of spring quarter.

About 3:30 p.m. that Thursday afternoon, 26 year old Aaron Ybarra drove to the SPU campus, having visited twice earlier to plan his murderous assault. He killed his first victim, 19-year-old SPU freshman Paul Lee, shooting him with a shotgun in the back of the head outside of Otto Miller Hall. Entering OMH, he aimed at other students but critically wounded 19-year-old Sarah Williams, as she was coming down the main stairs. (Sarah, thankfully, was released from the hospital on June 13th.)

Building monitor (and now national hero), senior Jon Meis, pepper-spayed and tackled the intruder. I met Jon when he was a member of the Seattle Christian Cross Country team. Jon was in Fifth Hill with Nathanael. And all of us know his older brother Chad who ran so well for three years with Nathanael.

The final tally: one dead, two injured, one insane shooter with a death wish in custody, one hero who admitted that "a hero cannot come without tragedy," and one paralyzed and hurting Christian college campus.

I have occasionally taught in Otto Miller Hall, and had taught two classes there during winter quarter. I am a "BEC," a Building Emergency Coordinator for McKenna Hall, one block south-west from OMH. Kathy Stegman, the other BEC in our building says she locked down the second floor, but the first floor I normally lock down, was not attended to. Fortunately, three of the four classrooms have automatically locking doors, which is also the case for the exterior building doors.

We first learned of the shooting from Jeannie Beth who called from her apartment. She got the Emergency Alert an her cell phone. She and her roommate Andrea could see OMH and the emergency response from their window.

Amazingly, Otto Miller Hall, is the only building on campus that has a student monitor near the front door for theft security due to all of the scientific and computer equipment in this Math/Physics/ Engineering/Computer Science building. It remains closed at the end of June. I needed to move two MBA classes to other classrooms.

Seattle Pacific University is a different place today because it was visited by such evil. But unlike so many other school shootings, we responded in love and prayer. The nation took note. I thought the reflections by our staff and faculty described the event especially well. Christianity Today and TIME magazine articles written by SPU staff and faculty were faithful accounts.

I was not personally too much affected by the event. Sometimes I wonder why I am often so emotionless in the face or tragedy. The Puddleglum in me runs to thoughts like, "or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them — do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem?" Luke 13:4. But my friend and colleague Dr. Al Erisman reminded me of the other proper response to heartache, "weep with those who weep," (Rom 12:15b) and, "Jesus wept," (John 11:35).

Jeannie Beth Has Her First ACL Surgery

On June 16th, Jeannie Beth had her first ACL surgery early that morning. She was home that afternoon. From the first day she was able to hobble to the powder room from her temporary quarters in front of the big screen TV in the family room. She seems to be taking the experience in stride well. Toward the end of the month, she set her crutches aside and now walks carefully. She has a special machine which exercises her leg (which we are renting), and an ice machine to cool her knee (which we now own). She'll use it again on the right knee, perhaps in August.

Fast Forward through Matthew

At the Emerald Heights Retirement Community, we are moving through Matthew's gospel more quickly that I'd expected. In June, I took the class from the Mount of Transfiguration in chapter 17 to near the end of chapter 20. A guest teacher covered chapter 18 on June 12th as I was busy giving two final exams at SPU. As the month ends, I'm just starting to prepare my talk for July 3rd. Now that we have reached Holy Week, our pace will slow — and, of course, the chapters get longer too.

Mariners 6, Padres 1

It was Grand Slam Family Package Day at this Mariners home day game at Safeco Field on Tuesday the 17th. That meant our upper deck front row seats came with a free hot dog and soda. I grabbed mine on the way up to our seats. This was a staff outing in line with the style of our new dean. He is much the sports fan. I sat next to him and got to know him a little better through the nine inning Mariners win. His assistant, Kathy Stegman, shared some candy she'd been given by departing Associate Professor of Economics Jon Deming. I'm glad we had the food and drink department covered because I was shocked to see that even the bottled water was $4.75. Yikes! No wonder I only go when the tickets are free. It was nice to see a win, but I was surprisingly uninterested in the game. Perhaps if I followed the team like I did in 1995 or 2001, it would have been different. Fortunately, Joseph was not against talking shop, along with beer and baseball, during the game.

Mid-June, right after graduation, was an awkward time for an outing since I am swamped with work. I had my own exams graded on Saturday the 21st, two days before they were due. Joseph graduated from a rolling scooter to a walking boot this weekend. The stadium attendants, seeing his boot, took him to and from his seat in a wheelchair.

After 23 Years, I Get a Corner Office with Windows!
It's amazing how much I fit into my 206 McKenna office over my 23 year stay there. It was no doubt a good thing to move to a new similarly sized office. I found my missing 18mm-55mm Nikon lens, and more memorabilia than I need to keep. It took a full week to move down to 123A McKenna, if you throw in all my normal interruptions, er... duties. That same week, I finalized the office plan for the move of nine of my colleagues. Everybody seems to be happy with their new offices, or the fact that they can stand pat in their old ones.

My new office is 15' long but only 7.5' wide. The windows help make the east end look huge though. The door to it opens from the "Collaboration Lab," the same room as my old computer lab. Students have not chosen to congregate there much yet. It's a big flexible study space.

Already I've managed to sort and cull and clear out much of the stuff I brought downstairs. It already looks better than this early photo (right). I put my workspace right in front of the large east facing and smaller north facing windows. Alas, the door opens just to my chair's right, so it will be problematic when students come by for office hours. Of course, I can always just move out into the big study room. My pictures don't show much of the large metal storage cabinet that divides my large office into two smaller spaces. The west end stores my photography lights, laptop, and computer which runs the large display monitor in the foyer. A 65' DVI cable runs through the ceiling to the foyer monitor.

There is a large color copier in the foyer to which I can easily print, and I suspect I will be its primary user. And I've wired up my regular printer for when I need to print envelopes or small jobs, as well as the large heavy-duty printer I saved from the computer lab. It is fast and will come in handy when I print batches of student's homework. There is a microwave in the nearby lounge.

The new office is both snug and bright. Few First Lieutenants in one of his majesty's frigates ever had such a large cabin, not such a large port-side view. When the wind blows, the bushes that screen my window from passing pedestrians really sway.

Would anyone be surprised that I setup my stereo before I setup my computer? I brought my quarter-size refrigerator home because I now have the half-size refrigerator that used to be in the student lounge. When we shut down the computer lab, there were no student lab assistants to monitor that frig.

I must like my new bright office. I'm getting to work a half hour earlier than I used to before the move downstairs.

Big Changes in McKenna Hall Mean Added Duties

"Onboarding" seven new faculty and as many as three new staff members coming to the business school are just some of the things that are on my page-long summer To Do list. I'm so far behind, I just finished preparing the summer overload teaching contracts on the 30th. But "contracts" will move off of my plate once we hire the half-time Budget Manager we are searching for. I am one of three on that search committee. We like one of the four applicants, but he is not available until mid-August. He may lose the position if we get another capable applicant in the next few weeks.

Dr. Daniels has asked me to add yet another unique duty to my chores. She wants me to take professional portraits of all of our BUS 2910 Internship & Career Strategies students, as many as 35 of them each quarter. The students can then use the portraits online on their LinkedIn accounts. The two Political Science professors I took portraits of this month were delighted with how they turned out. I can put up with some odd jobs I'd rather pass on to others, when I get so many fun ones like designing for the web, using my photography skills, and teaching.

Bits and Pieces

♦   Laurie and Tom's house in Maryland went on the market and apparently sold quickly. They expect to start moving west by the end of July -- but they'll be officially homeless until they can move in to their new home in Loveland, hopefully in December.

♦   Randy will throw out the first pitch at the Everett AquaSox game on August 11th. Don, Nathanael, and I will join him in the special reserved box seats he has been offered.

♦   All SPU staff received a 1% pay raise with any additional to come from a remaining 2.5% pool. So I expected a raise of anywhere between 1% and 3.5%. The 4.0% raise that I actually received was therefore a pleasant surprise. It means somebody thinks I’m doing good work. My gross salary for 2014-15 will grow from $63,636 to $66,180. Onward and upward!

♦   Track and Field at BCS is a labor of love. Coach Sloan told the gathered team and families at the awards banquet that it will be a sad day when I announce my retirement. I'm thinking I'll be sad too. But it still was a ton of work. Here are the awards I prepared. BCS Track & Field

♦   I purchased a left-handed recurve "Bear" brand bow on eBay on June 9th — but the seller has not shipped it, though I've twice reminded him. I've never had this kind of trouble with an eBay seller. I suspect he was hoping for a better sale price (I paid $91 including shipping). He may hope I ask for a refund and then he may try to sell it again. [UPDATE: In July, I requested and received a refund to my PayPal account from eBay. The seller did not reply to my last two messages.]

♦   The Saturday Morning Men ended our study year on the 21st. We start up again on September 6th at Romans 10.

Nancy's little Canon point-and-shoot camera does a fine job if the subject stands still.
I'll stick with my Nikons for sports action.

Taproot Theatre upgraded their signage big time!
Nancy Rutherford Sleight and Nathanael Rutherford Sleight approve!

My Quotes from June

"You better start right now. Don't wait till the game is called on account of darkness. Wake up, John Doe. You're the hope of the world." From Frank Capra's Meet John Doe (1941)
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