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  • Smithfield Meeting

    While at the FGC Gathering in July, I decided that I would address my recent spiritual malaise by attending some programmed meetings and liberal churches. Last Sunday I began my experiement by visiting Smithfield (RI) Meeting with DC. In contrast to other programmed meetings I’ve attended, Smithfield felt much more like the programming arose from silence, rather than the open worship being a piece contained within the programming. Here’s the approximate order of service (nothing was printed or handed out; before and between almost every element was a period of silence/open worship):

    • instrumental of “Amazing Grace”
    • lighting of candle of remembrance for casualties of war, Bible verse
    • hymn
    • scripture reading to focus time of sharing of “joys and concerns”
    • open worship
    • hymn
    • message (“Grace for the Night Journey: Five Years On”)
    • open worship (there was at least one message)
    • hymn (Amazing Grace)
    • handshake
    • introductions and afterthoughts (there were two messages)
    • announcements
    • refreshments in the basement

  • Summer recap

    It’s certainly not that there hasn’t been anything happening, or that I haven’t been reading. But it’s been a busy summer–full, fun, difficult, challenging, all over the map.

    I’ve kept intending to sit down and write catch-up posts. Perhaps the best way to get started is just to summarize:

    • One of my best and oldest friends, BH, has pancreatic cancer. I’ve been to Philadelphia, oh, five times since June.
    • I went to the annual Gathering of Friends General Conference, where I saw many old friends; took a splendid workshop (five days, 2 1/2 hours a day) on Sacred Harp; discovered that while I like Boston better than Philadelphia, I’m not as happy; and decided that perhaps I should address my now going-on-two-years spiritual malaise by trying out programmed Friends meeting and/or local liberal Christian churches and/or trying Buddhist practice. And I saw Mt. Ranier every day for nine days. Woot!
    • I got an aquarium, which is a return to a favorite hobby of childhood and some parts of adulthood.
    • I went to Provincetown overnight for my birthday, taking the ferry and also going out on a late-afternoon whale-watch. We saw many, many whales, very, very close. It was also the hottest day of the summer, and I spent the night in an air-conditioned room at a nice b&b. What a great decision to go!
    • I attended a convention of typography enthusiasts (or rather, geeks). It was fun, I learned some useful things for work, and I took a letterpress workshop. Which leads to...
    • I’ve started a letterpress/book arts course at MassArt, which will go through mid-December.
    • And I’ve read various and sundry books that I do hope to list eventually.

  • More evil in Iraq

    The Observer is reporting:

    There is growing evidence that Shia militias have been killing men suspected of being gay and children who have been sold to criminal gangs to be sexually abused.

  • Catching up

    I’ve been intending to post about a whole raft of books, a trip to Seattle, spiritual rumblings, and a birthday adventure, but the summer heat and humidity sap most of my initiative. Soon!

  • In praise of cruising

    Mark Turner in The Observer: Welcome to the cruising capital of the world

    Whether he was careless, reckless or foolish, as some have claimed, really isn’t very interesting. I also don’t care if he takes drugs (‘Shock! Horror! Pop Star Smokes Dope!’). I don’t care if he’s a well-adjusted homosexual. I don’t care about his pending ‘wedding’.

    The article includes not only a defense of George Michael but also brief reviews of some London cruising locales.

  • The Time Machine

    H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine had been on my to-read list for a very long time. Since I’ve enjoyed so many novels in which time travel of one sort or another has played a role, I thought I really should read the granddaddy. Well, now I have, and I don’t have to do that again.

    Nope, I didn’t much like it. Too heavy-handed, and I don’t agree with what seems to be his political philosophy.

    It didn’t help that the edition I was reading (and to which the link will take you), a “Barnes and Noble Classic”, was atrociously footnoted and end-noted. Some of the footnotes are moronic (they explain the metaphorical use of the word “tentacles” and the plain use of words like “acacias” and “tree-bole”), yet the editor lets “In the matter of sepulture...” go undefined. But the worst offense of both the endnotes and the footnotes is to reveal information about the plot and characters in advance. Avoid this edition at all costs!

  • What price global fellowship?

    Here’s the NYT’s coverage of the big religious news of the weekend: Woman Is Named Episcopal Leader Amongst the reporting is this nugget from one of those who is unhappy:

    “In many ways the election speaks for itself,” Bishop Robert W. Duncan Jr. of Pittsburgh said in a statement. Bishop Duncan is the moderator of the Anglican Communion Network, a theologically conservative group of Episcopal dioceses. “For the Anglican Communion worldwide, this election reveals the continuing insensitivity and disregard of the Episcopal Church for the present dynamics of our global fellowship.”

    So the Episcopal Church should deny the truth it knows (that women can be priests and bishops) for the sake of fellowship with those who still haven’t got it? Let them turn to Rome.

    And this from the other side of the pond: The Guardian.

  • Regeneration: Species Imperative #3

    Julie E. Czerneda’s Regeneration was eagerly awaited and eagerly read. My hopes were exceeded. (This is the book I was reading at Dance Camp instead of dancing).

    It would be nice to have another story about Dr. Mackenzie Connor, but this trilogy was fully resolved with this volume. There was plenty of tension, both in plot and in character relationships, which was satisfyingly resolved by the end of the book.

  • Travelin’

    I’ve had a month of not always knowing if I’m coming or going. It started off the second week of May with a visit to Fry Communications, which prints and mails UU World, to meet our account rep, see the magazine on the press, and get a tour. Fry is located in Mechanicsburg, Pa., so I flew to Philadelphia, had a lovely visit with my friend Barbara and dinner at Vortex House, then drove west. The press visit started early and went right up until I had to start back to the airport.

    As interesting as the press tour was (and yes, I guess I really have become a thorough magazine editor, because I did think it was fascinating), the best thing about the trip was the countryside. It’s nothing like what I grew up with, but from my first visit to Philadelphia I loved the countryside of SE Pa. The rolling hills and plentiful open space and vistas raise my spirit. There’s a lot of hayfields and cattle, which supply two odors from childhood that somehow make me feel like all is right with the world. And mechanicsburg is a small city. All in all, it renewed my disattisfaction with living in a city.

    The weekend of that week was the biannual Lavender Country and Folk Dance (LCFD) dance camp. It was at a new place for us, a YMCA camp in Connecticut. That was the weekend there was so much rain and flooding in Mass. It was pretty wet at the camp, but not terrible. It was on a lake, lots of trees, very picturesque. I didn’t do a whole lot of dancing, but there was a fantastic hambo workshop where I really got the woman’s role down–not with everyone I danced with, but with three of the guys especially. I also finished a good book while there. Very satisfying weekend.

    The I went back to Pa. (by car) to facilitate the Quaker Workers Gathering the following week. It was held at Kirkridge, an ecumenical retreat center in the Poconos. I had had mixed feelings after having accepted the invitation, but it was a good experience. And the participants liked it, too, so that turned out well.

    And then the next week I was at a two-day Certified ScrumMaster training. (You may now say “sir” when you address me.) Scrum is a management method used in software development, but my colleagues and I will be giving it a try with magazine production. (We started our first sprint on June 1.)

    Then the Massachusetts Sheep and Woolcraft Fair was a must-do on Memorial Day weekend, combined with a visit in Amherst with my friends Jan and Ken. I tried (briefly) a spinning wheel at the fair, but ended up buying two more drop spindles (so I can have more than one spinning project at a time, of course!), some raw fleece (because I’m curious to see how it spins. I’ve felted raw fleece and loved it.), some laceweight yarn, and a locker-hook rug kit (because you can never have too many hobbies).

    Jan and I also went to the National Yiddish Book Center (ייִדישע ביכער-צענטראַלע), where I bought a great yiddish alef-bays poster and several books. (Sonja and I have agreed to learn yiddish together.)

    For those keeping score, that adds up to the coming week being my first full week in the office in a month!

  • Cosmopolitanism and globalisation

    A very nice article about cosmopolitanism and globalisation written by a man from Ghana (via Arts & Letters Daily).

    People who can afford it mostly like to put on traditional garb — at least from time to time. I was best man once at a Scottish wedding, at which the bridegroom wore a kilt and I wore kente cloth. Andrew Oransay, the islander who piped us up the aisle, whispered in my ear at one point, “Here we all are then, in our tribal gear.” In Kumasi, people who can afford them love to put on their kente cloths, especially the most ‘traditional’ ones, woven in colourful silk strips in the town of Bonwire, as they have been for a couple of centuries. (The prices are high in part because demand outside Asante has risen. A fine kente for a man now costs more than the average Ghanaian earns in a year. Is that bad? Not for the people of Bonwire.) Besides, trying to find some primordially authentic culture can be like peeling an onion.