Today and tomorrow are the anniversaries of George Gurganus' death and birth, respectively. Every year Irene spends time on these two days reading all of his cards, listening to tapes, and celebrating his life. Tonight she had people over and showed a video of his memorial service in 1992. It was quite an inspiration. I had already known that George and Irene, while in their 70s, had decided to leave the comforts of the United States to help rebuild the church in Japan. That's a pretty amazing example, to me. Tonight I also learned that many years before that they had left their all-white congregation somewhere in Abeline, Texas to join an all-black church nearby, to pave the crossing of racial boundaries. A lot of people thought they were crazy for doing so, but they endeared themselves so much to their new congregation that they were later asked to become elders. Impressive, most impressive.
The video was pretty amusing too in that it demonstrated how long ago 14 years really was. Two words: sweet mullet. Business in the front, party in the back, folks.
I've told a couple people today that I am missing the unemployed life. It's funny that just a few weeks ago I was relishing in the fact that I need to be somewhere every "tomorrow morning," 9am. And now it feels like a chore. Really this is the best of both worlds though — it's a short term commitment and the fact that I can't work more than eight hours a day frees me up at a decent hour everyday and is completely a blessing. One thing that George's video helped galvanize in my mind is my desire to go to school. Apparently he had a bachelor's degree, two masters degrees, and a Ph.D. That would probably be overkill for me but I think a master's would certainly be worthwhile. The only problem is, what to study?
List of Things Vic Could Do When He Grows Up
- Psychology/Psycho-therapy
Medical research
Bio-informatics, bio-systems, nursing-informatics
Teach English and learn Mandarin in Taiwan
Teach computer science (probably save for the last third of my career though)
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