Bob and Jason,
Thanks for your kind note. The campus of OCC was not directly affected by the tornado, other than losing electricity and internet for a few days. Our e-mails go through a server at OCC, so even though the "occ.edu" e-mail addresses are google/gmail accounts, we were without e-mail for a few days, while our server was being restored.
I had one student who was killed. She took my final exam on Friday morning, and went home to be with the Lord on Sunday evening, being one of 4 people killed from the Joplin Full Gospel Church, during (or just before) their evening service was to begin. She was not named in the article published in the Tulsa World, but she was the 17 year old mentioned in this article:
http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article. ... rss_lnk=12.
We also had some casualties among college alumni. Of the current faculty/staff, nobody was killed in the storm, though numerous families lost their homes. An excellent article was written by the Co-Director of our library, on a CNN opinion page. My younger sister is the director of the Joplin Public Library, and she received a call from CNN wondering if she could suggest a Joplin insider who might be able to write a short piece. She gave CNN my name. I
could have written a piece, but I gave them the name of John Hunter from our library, whose home was destroyed and who survived the tornado by taking refuge in his bathroom. You may be interested in reading his note:
http://articles.cnn.com/2011-05-29/opin ... PM:OPINION.
Jason, of course I remember you. Since I have been a long-time lurker on the B-Greek list, I have seen some of your posts, and knew that you were in Israel. I started teaching 1st year Greek about 10 years ago, and in recent years have been in 2nd and/or 3rd year Greek. I team-taught both levels with Kenny Boles before soloing. When I started teaching the more advanced classes, I was told that they weren't taking 1st year Greek away from me forever, but I have not returned to that level. I am kind of the stop-gap measure for when Kenny Boles finally retires, until they hire a younger guy to take over in the Greek program.
As a B-Greek lurker, I have more interest than K. Boles in the verbal aspect debate. I am also intrigued by the whole Erasmian/Historical or Modern Greek pronunciation debate. Once I finish my dissertation (if money were no object), I would love to spend 6 weeks some summer at Randall Buth's Ulpan in Israel.
Thanks again for responding to my post. I may end up doing more than just lurking. Though some have lamented that the e-mail version of B-Greek has
numbered days, I applaud the new format, and expect that the transliteration scheme will soon become a thing of the past.
ἡ χάρις τοῦ κυρίου Ἰησοῦ μεθʼ ὑμῶν.
David G. Fish
Ozark Christian College
Joplin, MO
dfish@occ.edu