Between moving and closing — Thomas Williams

Thursday, being the Feast of Saint Augustine of Hippo

There’s the occasional effort to portray Augustine, who was certainly African, as black. But as much as I’d love to be able to say that my career is not devoted exclusively to Dead White Guys, it is. Augustine had a tell-tale North African accent, but he was physically and ethnically indistinguishable from the Romans and Milanese among whom he spent four and a half books of the *Confessions*.

It’s my first day of class. My Ignatius Seminar on Augustine’s Confessions meets at 9:30. I arrive quite early because I’m not sure where Reynolds 130 is. Reynolds Hall is a dorm with a couple of seminar rooms on the ground floor.

Somewhere.

A small crowd of folks who I guess—correctly—are my students are likewise a bit adrift. We go in search of Reynolds 130.

Ah . . . a map of the building!

A map that shows no room 130.

Great.

One resourceful student finds another map., which tells us that we can find room 130 by going outside the building, walking around to another entrance, and going in that way,

Somehow we manage to start just on time. I ask the students to pair off and introduce themselves so that they can then introduce each other to the class. The liveliness of the chatter bodes well for the semester.

Ditto for my 2:00 Philosophy Writing Seminar, but that is in our department conference room, with the location of which I am tolerably familiar.

Sunday, being the Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

Christ Church, Georgetown, at 31st and O.

My plan had been to go to St Paul’s, K Street, where I expect to spend most Sunday mornings doing conspicuously Anglo-Catholic-priest things, but I overslept. (There is, apparently, a sound evolutionary reason why we tend not to sleep well on our first night in a new place—and Saturday night was my first night in my transitional apartment after my transitional hotel room—but I can never remember what it is.) Fortunately, my other DC parish—Christ Church, Georgetown—has a 5 pm Eucharist.

I learn during the announcements (which I would imagine the rector, who is Scottish, thinks of as “the notices”) that next Sunday there will be proper Memphis-style (aka “real”) barbecue, thanks to the associate rector, who brought his smoker with him to DC.

In accordance with the prophecy.

Monday, being Labor Day

I’m eating at Duke’s Grocery. The waitress and I have informally agreed that we will speak Spanish, even though her English is leagues better than my Spanish., But my accent is decent (an advantage of being a musician), and I have enough Spanish to ask whether the corn elotes is really spicy and to understand her assurance that she’ll put the sriracha on the side,

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