Santa Fe: A Retrospective by Kolby

Friends and Family,

Here's a quick synopsis of my time in Santa Fe and my thoughts surrounding this graduate program. Better late than never, right?

I am currently enrolled in the Masters of Fine Arts program at Seattle Pacific University. The program utilizes a low-residency model, which is becoming a pretty trendy thing in the field of creative writing. By pooling resources toward the twice-a-year residencies, the school is able to afford terrific visiting faculty. And, due to the nature of the curriculum, there are even advantages to this distance relationship with faculty.

Some have asked what the point of such a program is. A valid question. An MFA isn't exactly the most employable degree. Technically, it is a terminal degree for the arts, but because it isn't a true Ph.D., most colleges will probably hesitate to give me a gig. While it could also lead to publishing, I am in the poetry concentration of the program and I'll let you figure out whether or not even the most celebrated poets actually make a living from publication.

Truthfully, I am in the program because I am still trying to follow a train of thought that left the station when I was quite young. It's what led me to poetry in the first place, what excites me about teaching, and what keeps me frustrated at this ever obscured view of my future vocation. What I mean to say is that for no small length of time I have felt deeply that I have something to say. I mean I think that I have something that is truly worth the speaking. Believe me, I have wrestled like Jacob with the angel over whether this is a part of my semi-enormous ego or some real call. Heck, I wrestle with what it means to have a call. But I digress.

It seems poetry is the best way to say anything. I won't go into the details on that, you'll just have to trust me. So I took up poetry some time ago. This may come as a near surprise to some of you, and that's understandable. It's never been something I've felt too comfortable speaking about at length. I find it usually isn't conversation for social gatherings.

Seattle Pacific is allowing me to pursue this interest that I have within the context of a community of faith. The program is specifically interested in writers who are engaged with matters of the Judeo-Christian tradition. My particular interest is in looking at the Christian scriptures outside of a typical evangelical modernist perspective.

My inaugural residency was a few months ago in Santa Fe--a pretty glorious place in which to begin an artistic endeavor. The program holds two residencies a year, with quarterly classes in between. This first residency is held in conjunction with Image Journal's Glen Workshop. If you are a Christian interested in the arts, you should absolutely sign up to attend. Guests included Lauren Winner, Marilyn Nelson, B.H. Fairchild, and Luci Shaw. Of course there were more, but you wouldn't believe the feeling to get to spend over a week rubbing shoulders with people who are doing precisely what it is you want to do with your life. Fantasy Camp for the literary nerds.

I will try to wrap up this convoluted post by saying that so far I have found the program to be a pretty affirming experience. The people I met were really great and everything I have experienced so far tells me that this is a great spot for me to be at this time in my life.

House Guest

We had our first house guest last week--- Kolby's college friend, Jarrett, came all the way from Illinois to visit us. Kolby has been working like a dog on the house for over a month now, and having one of his best friends in town for several days was a great way celebrate the fact that we finally finished the house! Jarrett was due in on Wednesday so Kolby and I stayed up late on Tuesday night finishing up some painting in the kitchen and tying up some loose ends (like installing a new ceiling fan in the pitch dark with only a faint flashlight to help us, etc.). There are a handful of small things that still need to be done, but for all practical purposes- we're saying the place is complete. And just in time!

Kolby and Jarrett lived the dream... playing catch in the backyard,

going to a Rangers' game, hitting golf balls, talking about life, eating out, staying up late (past 9:30, at least!), and playing lots of Super Nintendo.

Over the weekend, we headed down to my parents' ranch and then on to Austin. The guys rode around on the 4-wheeler and dirt bike, shot guns,
and hooked up an electronic scanner to my dad's nice telescope (star-gazing/astronomy is Kolby's new favorite hobby since the sky is so clear down there).

On Saturday we met Kolby's family at their ranch down in Wimberley and had an eventful evening-- eating BBQ and attending the UT vs Texas Tech game.

Since we were +1 in the car, I got to ride in the backseat with Maya, who come to find out also sleeps with her front paws crossed. She does this all the time while she's awake and laying down looking out the back door etc., but seriously... is it totally necessary while she's asleep? Always a lady, that one.

We had such a great time with Jarrett in town and we are certainly rooting for him to relocate down here once he finishes grad school!

In other news, on our walk to the park tonight Kolby asked me to please hold Maya's leash while he tests out the new slides at the park playground. I may not have mentioned this before, but we moved into the same neighborhood that Kolby grew up in. We live just a few blocks away from the playground that he spent hours upon hours playing at until his family moved when he was 3rd grade. Apparently the City recently renovated the playground and put in two huge slides. So yes, Kolby did in fact slide down both of them tonight.

Kolby started substitute teaching today. And he's getting tons of hours at the SAT prep place he teaches at. And the next term for his graduate program starts on October 1st. Busy kid! I'm still working on getting him to write a post about his time in Santa Fe and his grad program in general. I noticed he started it the other day but I'll remind him to get it finished sometime soon.

Now that the house is put together, I'll take some pictures and post a tour. I haven't decorated anything yet because I can't bring myself to go shopping for decorative stuff and we don't have much from our apartment. But I don't know when I'll get motivated to decorate, so I may just take pictures as is. We'll see.

Speaking Of

Here is the family picture from Labor Day that I finally got off of my mom’s camera.

Speaking of getting pictures off of cameras… here is one from my birthday dinner that I just stumbled upon. Kolby has his hair in a mohawk because it was my birthday and I asked him to. What a sport, that guy. Speaking of sports, you will never guess what I did on Tuesday evening. On our daily after-dinner walk to the park, I broke into a jog. Yep, for the first time in my entire life--- I went running.* I know this comes as an earth-shattering shock to anyone who knows me well, but I swear it is true. And no one was even chasing me with a knife and I wasn’t participating in an organized sport. I didn’t last long and the whole time my body was saying “what is this?”, “what are we doing?”, “who do you think you are?”, “what’s the plan here?” etc. I survived, though, and I even ran again on Wednesday while Kolby was playing golf with his dad. It’s all part of my new healthy lifestyle… a concept that has been foreign to me for the past 21 months (aka since I got married and no longer had to worry about fitting into my wedding dress). It all came about when returning from a Labor Day weekend of Olympic-level overeating coincided with the unpacking of our scale. And the fact that we’re in a new place and a new house and can start our new life here however we want. Why not get back in shape and pay more attention to what I eat? We’ll see how it goes….

Speaking of our new house, it is SO CLOSE to so many people and so many places. Here are some drive times, for example:
My parents’ house: 22 minutes
Kolby’s parents’ house: 12 minutes
Brad & Remy’s house: 24 minutes
Tommy & Alayne’s house: 28 minutes
Katie’s house: 22 minutes
Brittany and Andrew’s house: 14 minutes
My office: 17 minutes (28 minutes during rush-hour)
Schools where Kolby will substitute teach: 3 minutes, 6 minutes
Grocery Store: 3 minutes

*OK, maybe the term “running” is a bit strong. Kolby and Maya were basically able to continue walking beside me. And the path to the park and around it is probably less than 2 miles total, and I walked a lot of it. But as I’ve said before, Webbs don’t run… so I’m calling whatever it is that I did this week astounding progress. You have to start somewhere, right?

House Progress/Labor Day

Here’s what’s new in our household these days.

We’ve been in our house for 12 days now and have spent the vast majority of our waking hours doing work on or around the house. For the first 10 days or so, the tag line for our progress seemed to be ‘one step forward and two steps back’. Every project either didn’t work out like we thought it was going to, or cost way more than should be allowed by law.

Botched project number one was repainting the doors. We removed all of our interior doors to sand them, paint them, and replace the old brass hardware on them with nice new oil-rubbed bronze ones. During the sanding of three of the doors, one of the MANY previous layers of paint started peeling off like crazy and the damage was irreversible. So, Kolby had to manufacture three new doors out of large pieces of wood. Then, when we went to re-install all of the doors we discovered that although the doors measured to be the same size as one another, 50+ years of shifting and warping had caused each door frame to only fit one specific door. Of course we didn’t think to label any of them, and the screw holes for the hinges were way too stripped to risk playing merry-go-round with each door. Other compounding problems were that the new hinges are the slightest bit thicker than the old ones, and Kolby mismeasured the doorknob holes on the new doors. Long story short, we now have all of the doors hung but only two of them can actually close all the way. Plans to fix this problem have been postponed indefinitely. Live and learn, I guess!

Next on the list was getting the dryer fixed and the outlet in the living room grounded so that we could get our cable hooked up. After three visits from various Sears repairmen, we dropped $400 on fixing an old stackable washer/dryer that the previous owners had left for us. It started out at $160 but then other things kept happening and once you spend any money to fix something you feel obligated to finish fixing it so you don’t just lose the initial money you spent. Oh well. Then, can you believe that electricians charge $300 to ground an outlet? Sheesh. We found someone who could do it for cheaper but it turns out he didn’t actually do what we paid him to do and ended up becoming this battle between us and the electrician company that I don’t think anyone ended up winning.

There was also a huge issue with the water line to the refrigerator and also the news that we have tree roots infringing upon all of our plumbing, but those aren’t worth delving into. I ultimately reached my breaking point when we went to install a gate for our driveway and it just flat out failed. It is a massive, heavy wooden gate with a metal frame that we found laying behind our garage and it was way too much for the fence post that we were attaching it to to hold. We should have foreseen that the post wouldn't be strong enough, but we didn't.

BUT, we made it through the series of unfortunate events and things are looking up. We now have cable and Internet and we even sprung for DVR and are loving it! We installed our pantry and although the doors aren't on it yet, it looks great and is providing some great kitchen storage space for us. On Thursday, Kolby's dad came over and we constructed a shorter, picket fence-type gate for the driveway that the pole was strong enough to hold. So Maya finally got an enclosed yard and was able to roam around off-leash. She enjoyed tasting all of the various leaves and plants---enough so that she threw up afterwards. She said it was totally worth it.

We have a friend coming in town to visit us on September 16th, so that's the date we've set to have the house finished. It may be a lofty goal, but I think we can do it. It'll be so nice have everything done and to just enjoy it all!

***

In non-house news, we had a delightful Labor Day weekend at my parents' ranch. My dad's side of the family all got together for the whole weekend and it was so nice to finally have a place that can fit all of us! My dad only has 2 sisters and they each have three kids, but since a lot of us cousins have gotten married, we are now 22 in number. It's quite a brood, but we're all really close and we have so much fun when we're together. We played a ton of games (in typical Webb fashion), ate a TON of food, tooled around on the dirt bike and 4-wheeler (with three mild injuries... also typical Webb fashion), and chatted the nights away out on the back patio. It was a great getaway for us and I just love, love, love spending time with family. My brothers and I each have our own bedroom at the ranch but we all slept in Brad & Remy's room this weekend to make room for everyone else. It was fun to feel like kids again-- sleeping on bunk beds and laughing until we fell asleep.

As usual, I wasn't great at taking pictures. Here are a few, and I'll post a big group shot once I get that photo off my parents' camera.

Part of the gang playing dominoes.

A family game of whiffleball.

My cousin Kyle is by far the biggest, strongest person I've ever known. Russell should have taken this fact into better consideration before following through on Kolby's/Brad's/Tim's thought that "wouldn't it be funny if someone snuck up behind Kyle and hit him in the back of the knees with the whiffleball bat?"

A similar event happened a few years ago when Russell was dared to give Kyle a wet willy. Some kids never learn.