Month: March 2008

Toward the end of this afternoon’s session on Open Broadband, I got a text message from Margaret. It didn’t say what was up, just told me to call her — which I knew was not a good sign. My father, Donald Geikie Adam, apparently will not come out of the sedation that has been enabling him to tolerate having a breathing tube; sometime tomorrow, the life support machinery will go off, and Dad will die.
 

 
I don’t have garlands of ornate rhetoric to offer in his honor. Give me a few weeks, and I might be able to compose myself and such a tribute. He will not have left a big footprint online; he was an early advocate of digital technology in education (I remember my recoiling in horror when he described the possible benefits of a spelling- and grammar-checker; I sniffed that people should just learn that!), but he didn’t share my involvement with the internet. But look at me: he was the one who lauded the Apple II to me back when I was a mainframe snob, and now I’m going to tech conferences about the Freedom to Connect. He was a lifelong teacher of English literature and composition, and I’m an Anglican priest who teaches interpretation theory and emphasizes writing skills. He taught a comedy seminar for years, and I. . . well, my preaching comes to a great extent out of what I learned from him about stand-up. Four decades of Chatham students learned from him how to write better, how to read with deeper joy and more expansive understanding. When I visited him this summer, he was teaching summer exchange students English as a second language. At Christmas time, he was grilling my kids on what they’ve been learning in their various studies. Once, when he came to visit me in college, my classmate John Cunningham described him to somebody who hadn’t met him before, saying “He looks exactly like AKMA, cut off at the knees” (my sister did call him “Stumpy” sometimes, for his short legs).
 
Seventy-threetwo is too few years, especially when he gave so many of them to teaching others. I’ve been plying the family trade for almost twenty years myself, and this spring I stand at the edge of turning in my professorial card. I can’t give a good reason, but his dying will make that harder to do. There’s so much left to do.
 
The Phone Call did not come as a shock; Pa had been in the hospital for ten days or so already. But knowing the odds and hearing the news are two different things. Tomorrow Margaret and Pippa will swing down to Maryland and pick me up to drive me to Pittsburgh, to be with other family members. Between now and then — and for a while after — I have some weeping to do.
 
Almighty God, look on Donald your servant, lying in great weakness, and comfort him with the promise of life everlasting, given in the resurrection of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord.

For as long as I can remember, every time I’ve been to an airport, the public address system has reminded me that the “threat level” for air travel is orange. That means it’s “High,” a riskier condition than “Elevated” (= yellow). But it makes me wonder how long the “threat level” has to stay at a certain (“high”) level before that threat level becomes “pretty much average.” The Homeland Securitarians don’t tell you, but the “pretty much average” color code is beige.

Not politically progressive, but I’ll just put notes in here as I observe stuff at F2C. Right now, Micah Sifry is announcing an initiative to get legislation onto the Web before it’s enacted.
 
The panel is interesting and impressive — Micah, Alec Ross, Matt Stoller, and especially Donna Edwards. They’re good-hearted, well-intentioned, alert participants in a weighty discussion.
 
By the way, I got my “it’ll all work out” count down to about 484 last night; I am sure Margaret’s job will work out just fine (483).
 
Lunch boxes from Whole Foods = teh nutritious. David I. threw me a t-shirt with a quotation from Thich Nhat Hanh; this happens, when the conference organizer knows you’re a theologian.
 
Afternoon session on Open Fiber, featuring Dirk van der Woude, John St. Julien, Adam Peake, Tim Nulty — moderated by Jim Baller. The topic is intensely important and intriguing, but the presentations fall somewhat short of vibrant. Plus, the roomful of geeks has overloaded the wireless network, so the backchannel and web access are molasses-slow.
 
Intriguing session this afternoon led by Rich Miner of Google’s Android project; Michael Calabrese, Director of Wireless Futures; Richard Whitt; and Brett Glass of Lariat, the first wireless broadband provider.

Woke up this morning, got myself a train. . . .
 
Woke up at 4:45 this morning, caught Amtrak to Washington DC, Metro to Silver Spring, walked up Colesville Road to the AFI, and ducked directly into the Freedom to Connect conference, where the first face I saw was Frank Paynter. Skulked into the conference room (already in session), grabbed the first open seat I could find, and turned out to be just down the row from Suw and Doc. David grabbed my hand and welcomed me at the break. It’s old home day.

First, Margaret keeps wondering whether her job [prospect] will work out. She asked, “If you tell me 500 times, will it be true?” So far, I’ve worked down to 487, but it’s only been two days. I’ll count this as knocking it down to 486: “It will work out, and it’s great, I’m very proud of you, sweetheart.”
 
Second, Bruce pointed to Cringely’s follow-up to his post on the pivotal change in “learning” that we’re about to confront. As with last week’s, I don’t agree with all this particular observations, but in his favor (a) he warns against assuming we know what’s coming down the pike at us, and (b) he is at least wrassling with the unknowable intricacies of the future, rather than insisting shrilly that the structures developed over the past hundred or so years must determine the next hundred.

My sweetheart has a very intriguing job prospect; I long to blab about it to the world, but I have to wait till everything is signed, sealed, and delivered. Nothing can stop me, though, from beaming with pride and affection.

This article about Jim DeRogatis’s change of heart relative to a recent R.E.M. album underscores my interest in retrospective evaluation of popular culture. As DeRogatis admits, reviews written in the heat of anticipation (positive or negative) are liable to mislead; a glance through the yearly awards lists shows how great the difference is between “what seems like a great album/movie/book right at this moment” and “what has shown its merit by impressing listeners/viewers/readers over and over again.” Maybe next time I’m wrestling with writer’s block I’ll renew the Year in Retrospect series.

I can’t speak for you, but I see in Chad Jordan’s t-shirt design just a little too close a resemblance to Dorothy’s Transylvanian character in Cat and Girl.

Video of Clay Shirky’s presentation of Here Comes Everybody at the Berkman Center, and — well, I don’t buy everything Robert Cringely says in the following column, but these are the kinds of question with which we need to be grappling (Hat tip to Bruce).

Stephen Downes reports on Larry Sanger’s call for “philanthropists to ‘liberate’ educational content by buying it from publishers and posting it for free online.” It’s a very Disseminary idea, but even more so is Stephen’s reaction: “The money would be better spent helping volunteers make their free content better.”

My dad’s in the hospital with some fairly serious lung problems. Margaret’s mom has had a persistent fever. Margaret has had a nasty cough for several days. She caught it from Jennifer, who is feeling a little better, and who went back to Manhattan for a couple of days. Josiah and Laura will arrive for a spring-break visit latter this afternoon. And more!

Friday afternoon’s sermon from Christ Church, New Haven.
 
Continue reading “Good Friday”

Advice for the time that you’re the guest preacher, participating in the footwashing at an Anglo-Catholic parish: Don’t do what I did.
 
That is, somewhere between when Fr. Cobb washed my foot (only one each, here) and when I had to put my shoes back on to take my shift as a footwasher, I lost track of my sock. Since people were already lining up, I just jammed my shoe back on and hoped I would be able to see it when this phase of the service was over. Alas, the last congregant left the bench, I went to wash Fr Cobb’s foot, returned to my place, scanned the floor discreetly from my seat, to no avail.
 
On the other hand, when it’s a very liturgically savvy parish, things like this happen: at the peace, I sidled up to the MC and said, “Did anyone by any chance find a sock?” He inclined his head toward the servers’ seating area, where my sock had been retrieved and deposited. (I put it back on during the offertory, all was well.)

Euan quotes Steve Jobs about excellence, and (quite apart from quibbles over the quality of rival product lines) Steve gets at the heart of my frustration and impatience and ardor for teaching:

We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know? So this is what we’ve chosen to do with our life. . . And we’ve all chosen to do this with our lives. So it better be damn good. It better be worth it.

I’ve said something along these lines numerous times, but as often as not my interlocutor looked at me as though I were from outer space, or a drama queen, or just foolishly anxious. I admit to a degree of anxiety, especially now, but more to the point, I want the few years that I’m afforded to be worth it, for me and for my family and for my students and for whatever small effect I make during these dwindling days. I’m not a genius, who can make a lightning-like contribution in a moment and coast the rest of their life; I’m a workman who knows there are homes and hospitals and libraries and sanctuaries to be built, and I can’t do it on my own, and I can’t bear to see it done shoddily, discrediting everyone involved.
 
(Seth Godin strikes a related note.)

Speaking of CSS, can anyone point to a site in the wild that takes advantage of Safari’s compatibility with downloadable web fonts? Has anyone seen the result?
 
My typography lists are sizzling with intimations that this is a sign of the Beast rising from the abyss (“serif shall rise up against sans, and ornamental against unicase, but the end is not yet!”), but I’m inclined to think that we’ll see designers with bad taste use downloadable type badly, and designers with good taste will use downloadable type well. And as in most endeavors, the bad will outnumber the good, but as in most endeavors, the good will tend to attract the most attention.

I spent a couple of hours consulting with the Hispanic Theological Initiative about a second iteration of their website. I discussed with them the virtues of Web 2.0 technologies, suggesting that their small office (without a hardcore techie) might benefit most from a CMS such as WordPress. They liked the idea of a template-plus-CSS front end over the CMS, and asked me whether I knew anyone who could design such a thing for them.
 
I’ll send an email to Kevin, but I thought I’d ask around online. I suggested they browse through WordPress themes and CSS schemes to see a few that they like, and write to the designers. And if you know anyone who’s interested, please contact HTI (it’s a very small not-for-profit) through their website.

Jeneane posts transcripts of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s “Audacity of Hope” sermon and of Barack Obama’s brilliant response to the firestorm that detractors of Wright have stirred up. Like Jeneane, I’m impressed that Andrew Sullivan can talk through some of the non-issues by which Obama’s opponents want to purchase an advantage at the cost of intelligence.
 
Maybe this controversy marks a watershed in the quality of public discourse in the U.S. Dare we hope so?