Muchness And Not Muchness

The last few days have passed without the my feeling the fiery inclination to address to the internet my customary gems of insight. Either I see someone else saying all that needs to be said, or I don’t and it saddens me, or I don’t and I don’t see a way to articulate what seems important, or I’m just plain tired. (“And I’m ti’ed — T-I-D-E, ti’ed,” as Katie Webster sings to B.B. King in “Since I Met You Baby”).
 
At the same time, various items have come to my attention. Emily pointed out the “texting in church” practice of a St Louis congregation; I’m pretty pro-technology, but this one hasn’t convinced me yet. On the other hand, it may be the kind of congregation where texting questions to the preacher is as natural as it feels for me to take notes on the bulletin or in my Moleskine.
 
After Tim and I went ’round about digital and paper books, BoingBoing pointed to an article in New York magazine about the publishing industry. Cory had some apposite criticism of the article, and the article itself ignores what I expect to constitute the sweet spot for publishing in the digital epoch: freely available online text complemented by pay-for-printed bound copies. I reckon the article neglects that option because the industry itself disregards it. (It should be said here that all I know about publishing concerns the tiny academic-theology market, which I persist in believing to be distinctly suited to providing a foothold for alternative publishing/distribution practices — but I have no experience of the inside of trade publishing.)
 
I wanted to point one of my students to Jeffrey Lewis’s delicious “History of Punk On the Lower East Side,” so here it is on WFMU’s “On The Download” web page.

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