YCGL - Nov 6, 2024 - Laramie - Don't Stop the World, I Don't Want To Get Off, But It Could Slow Down a Little - 1/10/2025

 Whoa!  What a couple of weeks this has been.  \

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We celebrated our 140th Anniversary at my church, Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church on October 19th.  For some reason, I was on the organizing committee.  However, rather than being in charge of plates and silverware and such, I was asked to write and present a history of the Internship program which I helped start in  1995 and which lasted until 2014.  And since I was chairman of the Internship Committee for that whole period of time, it kind of made sense, and I really couldn't duck out of it.  

And I volunteered to coordinate our keynote speaker who I've been in contact with in the last couple of years.  Kristin Johnston Largen was our first intern, who, after graduating from Wartburg Seminary, went on and obtained a PhD in Comparative Theology at Berkeley.  She taught at Gettysburg Seminary for many years and became the Dean of Students.  And she is now the president of Wartburg Seminary, so has made a complete circle.  And is a really nice lady!  So I was happy to do that also.

I really started thinking about it when I got back from my trip this summer and decided if I was going to write about the program, I should get the interns' perspective as well.  I gathered the locations and emails of the former interns and sent an email to them in late August requesting information about their churches and families.  I got about five back the first week and then nothing for a while.  I sent a second letter in mid September and got about seven back that time,  In early October, I sent another letter individually to those who hadn't written and got a few more back, then a couple right before the talk (a deadline is a good time to start!) and one more afterwards.  Two are no longer rostered, so I didn't expect anything from them, and two just didn't write back for some reason.  Eugh.  So, I finally got fifteen out of the nineteen, which is pretty good.  

One of the first reports I got came from a person I had thought was angry about the way the internship went, and he and his wife left town without saying goodbye to me.  But his report was glowing, how much he had enjoyed Laramie and the area, working with the junior high, high school and college students, just a really positive letter about what he felt was a great experience.  And he and his wife were one of three interns to attend the banquet.  I was really pleased to learn that I had been wrong all that time.  Only three of the interns were retired by that time so it would have been difficult for them to get away for a weekend in Laramie.

I had started writing my report and it actually went pretty well.  The more I thought about those twenty years, the more I had to write.  It ended up being five, close-spaced pages.  I was asked to give the presentation during our Wednesday evening service, and once the PowerPoint was completed that afternoon, the 15 minute presentation went smoothly.  

There had been one incident early in the program that created some significant problems.  One of the interns started dating a 17-year-old high school senior and got engaged as her graduation present.  That obviously was against both Wartburg Seminary's rules and Trinity's expectations.  It had been kept relatively quiet until the girl started showing off her engagement ring to her classmates.  One of the girls who was disturbed about it told her mother, who told me, who told Pastor Rohr, who immediately called the seminary and the young man was relieved of his position that afternoon and told to report back to the seminary the next day.  He spent the next year at a non-Lutheran seminary, returned to Wartburg, did another internship and was finally ordained.  He and the girl got married that summer, had three children and finally got divorced 15 years later.  He subsequently dropped out of the ministry and I believe is a councilor now.  I bring this up because after I gave my presentation at the Wednesday service, one of the parishioners came up and was quite angry that I didn't discuss that incident.  

When I finally gave the presentation at the banquet, it was a comedy of errors.  To save paper, we had only put out two copies on each eight-person table.  Which would have been OK if they could have seen the PowerPoint.  It ended up being shown on one TV screen on the far corner of the room, so only about four tables could see it clearly.  When I got to the table listing all the interns and where they are located now, I picked up my laptop and showed the screen in a sweep around the room.  Oh Well, I did the best I could in a crazy situation.  I mentioned there had been one incident that had created some problems, that we-Trinity and the Seminary had dealt with it and that the intern had eventually been ordained.  And that's about the way I presented it in my report.  Unfortunately, the parishioner who had complained before was still very unhappy that I hadn't discussed it in depth as a warning if we ever start up an internship program in the future.  Yep, you can't please everyone.  

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So, that was Saturday, October 19th.  The next day, the 20th, was my 75th birthday which was actually a relatively quiet day.  We were going to have the Edgar-Wojahn celebration the weekend of Oct 31-Nov 4.  

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The same can't be said for the next week.  I had a film crew from California show up on the 22nd - 25th of October to do an extended interview of me.  

History---- back about 2012, I started having some problems breathing after exertion (exercise, hiking in the mountains, trying to keep up with my students on field trips, etc.).  I went to a cardiologist, had several tests performed on me including an ECG and a treadmill stress test, and was informed that I had mild stenosis of my aortic heart valve.  (What is Heart Valve Failure?) Essentially, the blood flow through the aortic heart valve is normally flowing at a rate of 95-120 cm/sec, about a foot per second.  Mine was at a rate of 175, indicating that my aortic valve was starting to harden and not open all the way.  Yearly checkups indicated that it was getting progressively worse but I wasn't feeling bad.  My checkup in 2017 indicated a flow rate of 425 cm/sec, which is classified as severe.  I did a treadmill stress test and kept easily talking to the doctor at the maximum rate where they usually stopped the test.  My cardiologist asked if I could still keep going, and we increased the speed two more increments before I start having labored breath.  At that point, I was diagnosed as having Asymptomatic Severe Heart Stenosis.  The usual prognosis for this is "do nothing until the patient shows severe signs of symptomatic distress."  However, my cardiologist was a member of a research study investigating the effects of having a new heart valve implanted while the patient was asymptomatic.  I was an early patient.  The idea was to perform the operation while the patient was still heathy and could recover quickly because s/he had not lost significant strength.  

We performed the procedure on October 17th, 2017, three days before my 67 birthday.  You can see an example of the procedure at Edwards Video Library and click on the last video "How is TAVR Performed".  Everything went fine except for one little glitch and it has performed well since.  

So, back to the video team.  If you clicked on the Video Library link, you saw several videos of patients who have had the TAVR procedure.  (By the way, TAVR stands for Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement.)  Well, they wanted to do a video about me.  We ended up with three days of intense video production.  I thought that my interview (which was done with the interviewer in Park City, UT) did not go well.  The third day, we went up into the mountains to video me working with one of the telescopes that I've built.  Luckily, it was a clear night.  Unluckily, it was 25 degrees that night.  When we finally quit filming at 9:00, I think everyone was exhausted.  I know I was.  

The lady from Edwards (who made my heart valve) sent me a pre-production copy of the video.  It has not been approved for distribution, so I can't let you see it, yet.  It may be available mid-March or so.  Knowing how I did, I really wasn't expecting much.  Well, I was blown away.  They did a fantastic job putting pieces together, including pulling some pictures from this blog.  When I'm able to post it, Ithink you'll be blown away also.  

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So, here's what has happened to me in two weeks in October.  It was fun, but tiring.  Like I said, I don't want to stop the world, but it would be nice for it to slow down a bit.  

The next installment will be what has gone on in November and early December.  I hope. 😄

YCGL - December 20-26, 2024 - Portland, OR - Homes Away From Home

YCGL - Sept 20, 2024 - Where should I Begin....?Currently located at North Fork Campground