summer according to my iphone

I'm still trying to figure out the beginning and ending points of summer since now school isn't in the picture. In terms of weather, summer is still here, but Libby is off to school next week and Kelsey the next, so in a way "summer" in school terms is ending...so I guess it's an appropriate time for a blog post reflecting on summer 2013.

My summer highlights include: my work's softball team (we played Thursday nights at Elings Park -- so. much. fun), family vacays to Washington and Lake Arrowhead, and beginning to play soccer Sunday nights on the Westside. 

Here are some pics to document!

post-running with the padre.

Trip to Washington! Perfect way to begin? BERRIES GALORE. We were in heaven with all those delicious raspberries, blueberries, and blackberries. 

Visiting with Grandma -- Dad even wore an apron. It was very cute.

Aaron's wedding! Here the cousins are -- just missing Kels. The wedding was BEAUTIFUL. One of the highlights was the long days of sunlight ..sun doesn't go down until like 9:30! The wedding was in a beautiful chapel and the reception was outside and there were lawn games, delicious BBQ dinner and lawn games, and pie too!

It was a highlight to be with my dad's family and I treasured time with my uncles, aunts, grandmas, cousins, and cousin's baby! 

Stephie is getting married! My cousin is getting married in October and we had a fun time going down to Orange County one weekend to help in celebrating the soon-to-be Mrs. Mertz!

And my other cousins, Andrea and Scott, are home from Cambodia, with their adorable son Zachary in tow! He's pretty fun to hang out with

Lake Arrowhead: we celebrated Grandpa's birthday in style with a week in the mountains. I'm so thankful for good vacation benefits and was able to take the whole week off. We enjoyed swimming, jacuzzi time, reading, sleeping in, good food (too much of it!), and just being together. And, I didn't wear make-up for a whole week! That's definitely a highlight on my list :)

And Kelsey came home. The Baker girls are back together again. I guess I'm the only one who's excited about it.

Jean Bethke Elshtain 1941-2013

photo courtesy of Chicago Tribune

Considering the fact that I have a rather small blog following (but I love the 10 of you consistent readers!! Thank you for reading!), I'm assuming that of those 10 readers, none have heard of this woman named Jean Bethke Elshtain before. She passed away earlier this week and I wanted to write about her because she had an impact on my studies in Political Science. And a year after graduating, I realize how much I miss reading her work, among others. It still blows my mind a little that I grew to love political theory (well, it's more of a love-hate relationship ...loving the class discussions, hating writing long papers), and she was one of those thinkers who helped me write papers and ask good questions in class.

She wrote about pluralism. She wrote about gender. She wrote about the common good. She wrote about politics and ethics and so many important things in a way that kept political theory sort of "grounded"...what I mean by that is you can easily make political theory something so distant from reality, or you can think about political theory in the ways it touches all aspects of our social order. Elshtain went with the latter which is probably why I liked her so much. She was also easier to read than Plato, but equally brilliant. 

One of the last papers I wrote in college was for my "Justice" class, taught by one of my favorite professors who always encouraged me to read Elshtain for my papers. In the paper I used some of her works such as Public Man Private Woman, which challenged the idolatry of reason and hte separation between the public and private spheres -- as well as men's isolation to the public and women's isolation to the private

Thinking about her work, and now her death, I realize that good thinkers pass away. That's a strange thought, but I wonder what was on her computer before she passed away -- what was she writing about that she didn't get to finish? 

Thinking about her death also makes me nostalgic for college days. But in reflecting on some of what I learned from Dr. Elshtain, I am encouraged to keep thinking, to keep asking the questions and writing the papers, and challenging the assumptions of society. It means I must always be a student in some capacity, and I really like that.