Sermon Report

I stopped writing last night at about 12:15, came back and went to sleep. I woke up this morning, had a half-cup of coffee, and set to rewriting the ending. I wrapped up the rewrite in the sacristy at about 9:45, and the service started up at 10:00, right on time. I think the sermon went all right. I’ll tuck it into the extended section, and when St. Luke’s posts the MP3, I’ll link to it here.

The version I post here will differ in some details from the PDF that I’m sending off to St. Luke’s office, and will differ from the MP3 version, too. Is there a text in this sermon?
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Call It “Pseudonymous Bosh”

Now, both Micah and David have pointed to a relatively foolish article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, the point of which is that academic job-seekers shouldn’t blog. Why? Well, if a search committee sees your blog and doesn’t like what they see, they might not hire you. They will fear that you’d tell a reading public about what their institution is really like. They prefer to hire someone about whom they know less, on the assumption that the bits they don’t know about will all be agreeable and impressive.

The fatuities and fallacies therein defy enumeration. To take it from the top, the article assumes that a job-seeker should want a job so desperately that she or he would want to be hired by a department that wouldn’t choose her or him if they knew the truth. It assumes that if they don’t know you’re a blogger when they hire you, you won’t embarrass them at any point in the future (and that if you’ve blogged soundly and discreetly for years, you’re more apt to spill tawdry details than someone who hasn’t established a track record for public discretion). It assumes that blogs constitute a unique mode of public communication — so that a disgruntled blogger poses more of a decorum risk than would a disgruntled academic novelist.

The article puts the search committee in a bad light, since it demonstrates that they made unsatisfactory choices for finalists. The problems among these candidates weren’t the blogs per se, but with character flaws that came into focus through the blog (or, in one case, apart from the blog — though the columnist seems to count the blog against that candidate anyway!). Does the pseudonymous columnist think that Duke wouldn’t have hired Mark Goodacre if they’d known? that George Mason wouldn’t have hired Dorothea if they’d known? Maybe Penn [State] can find a way to dump Michael Bérubé; what an embarrassment he must be!

The article says a very great deal more about the competence and insight of the author and the search committee than it says about blogging.

This Rocks Mightily

The other day I was pestering Stewart about when Flickr would incorporate e-postcard capability; I imagined a “Send as Postcard” button right there beside the “Blog This” button. Stewart suggesteed that they’d been holding off on this function so as not to overburden their servers, but that it might come soon.

What I didn’t anticipate was that somebody else would use the Flickr API to send Creative Commons-licensed photos as postcards — but that’s just what Delivr has done (link via Tom Coates). Ultra-cool! I’ve already sent a Pippa-postcard. . . .

Millionairian Dispensationalists

Until the day that nobody ever reads another Left Behind novel (except, perhaps, as an exercise in historico-literary curiosity), one cannot link often enough to Fred “Slacktivist” Clark’s painstaking dissection of exactly what makes these The Worst Books Ever Written.

Right now, if you Googleleft behind,” Slacktivist comes in behind a number of the LaHaye/Jenkins franchise moneymakers and the federal government’s underfunded education initiative. If we all link to his Left Behind category archive, maybe we can push him to an above-the-fold PageRank, so that searchers can see the antidote on the same screen as the theological, literary poison.

Checking In

Having a hard time with the sermon. That is all.

[Later: One of the side benefits of being stuck for a sermon has entailed a rush of good ideas for my Ekklesia Project talk. The sermon, however, is still resisting. I’m considering the possibilities of homiletical Pictionary for tomorrow morning. . . .]

Intriguing Argument

Margaret and I enjoyed meeting Philip Blond a few years back at the annual theologians’ meeting — but we hadn’t heard or seen much from him since. I was interested to see that he and a friend of his have a column up in the International Herald Tribune on “how the West gets religion wrong.” I’d wish for more precision, less punch, at a few points — but it’s worth reading and considering, anyway.

Bless the Web

Last week, I received emails out of the blue from a high school friend (with whom I don’t think I’d communicated since we left for our colleges) and a former student. (Hi, Rob! Hi, Vito!) Now I’m trying to track down a couple of former students, whose wedding sermon had mysteriously vanished from my digital archives. This afternoon, as I was straightening up the study for a visit from Nate, I found the missing wedding sermon, and want to pass it along to my friends. I’ll post it here in the extended portion of the post, sans names, while I try to pull together the shards of a sermon for St. Luke’s this Sunday.

Now Micah’s just checking in as he and Laura make their way languorously to California.

So this Web thing — it’s really great for sociality. I worry that people who don’t get thoroughly involved with the Web will become isolated, cut off from the people around them.
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Just Asking

Does anyone in the U.S.A. need another tote bag?

I think we could solve a great many problems by the creative re-purposing of the cornucopia of tote bags that we’ve received at various conferences over the years since the conference tote bag has become a de rigeur tschochke. Maybe the irrepressible imagination of Gary Turner can devise appealing uses for these otherwise redundant vessels. (Yes, we can start by taking them shopping with us, and not using so many hydrocarbons and paper products — but I’m thinking even beyond that important possibility.)

Belated Greetings

I tend not to pay much attention to my blogroll; I use my bookmarks more for navigation, and my newsreader for a sense of what’s going on at the moment. So the blogroll falls dusty, while I merrily navigate by other means to sites I enjoy.

But then I need to play catch-up, and with the recent arrival of Raisin and Laurel, I needed to add Debra and the Archer along with our newer neighbors to my blogroll to keep up with Seaburian bloggers (I think I’ve got ’em all, now, don’t I?). Welcome to Blogaria, and I hope you find it as refreshing and encouraging a community as I have.

[Later: Whoops! I had a lingering feeling that I had left out whose blog had been an immediate provocation to update. Sorry, Brooke — Seabury alum, former student, current colleague!]

[A few minutes later: Gentle Jane reminded me that I had also left off Mark and Todd, among my own academic progeny, and Emily, who graduated a year or two before I arrived at Seabury. This sort of embarrassing development illustrates my utter detachment from my blogroll, since I knew well enough where to find them.]

Heads Bowed

I’m human enough to give heartfelt thanks that none of the Londoners I know was harmed by this morning’s terror bombings. For those who will endure long years suffering the effects of those attacks — whether in their flesh, in their spirit, or in the heartsickness of an absent love — we’ll keep you in our hearts and prayers.

When tumult forces itself upon us, the church bears a special responsibility to respond out of its compassion and patience, out of the knowledge of a depth that comes to expression not in threadbare imprecations, but in gentleness and constancy. Our worship and our proclamation enact a hope that outshines any gloom that grim spite stirs up, and that hope is the church’s distinct gift to share with a world that stakes its future only on fluctuating configurations of temporal power, that sacrifices the lives of God’s children on the altar of domination. Grace and peace be with every reader who comes here, and may grace and peace prevail in our reactions to every death-dealing fury that assails us.

1980 In Music

I have for a long time wanted to do some work on retrospective review of popular culture — the sorts of work that usually receive immediate reviews in the popular press, receive annual awards (or don’t), and then give way to the next, latest release. How often do entertainment-industry flacks anoint someone as the next Bob Dylan, or assert the monumental importance of this or that movie, when a few years afterward those overinflated award-winning works of genius crowd cut-out bins and used-video sale shelves?

I’m starting with 1980 because it’s twenty-five years ago, a very good round number, and because I was still listening to enough music that my opinions warrant more than derisive attention. We can branch out from there to other years, and to movies (of which I watch relatively few). I’ll base many music observations on my iTunes database, which is subject to misleading labels and outright errors — but gives me a starting point, anyway. (More dangerously, for my reputation, I’ll overlook some albums that I own but haven’t ripped yet, especially risky since those will be the more-often-played CDs by more prominent artists.) Then I’ll sum up by proposing awards that seem fitting to me, in quantities and categories that suit my whimsy.

In 1980, the Grammys lauded the Doobie Brothers (“What a Fool Believes”) and Billy Joel for (Phil “Wanted” Ramone-produced) 52nd Street. Ricki Lee Jones was their Best New Artist. Muddy Waters got an award for Muddy Mississsippi Waters Live, and Irakere got a Grammy for their eponymous album. Donna Summer won Best Female Rock Performance for “Hot Stuff”; Bob Dylan, Male, for “Gotta Serve Somebody”; the Eagles, Group, for “Heartache Tonight”; and Paul McCartney and Wings, Instrumental, for “Rockestra Theme” (I appreciate fundraisers as much as many people, but you’ve got to be kidding). The R&B selections: Dionne Warwick for “D?©j?† vu”; Michael Jackson for “Don’t Stop ’til You Get Enough”; Earth, Wind & Fire for “After the Love Has Gone”; and Earth, Wind & Fire for “Boogie Wonderland.”

Jazz: Oscar Peterson for Jousts; Chick Corea & Gary Burton for Duet; Duke Ellington for Duke Ellington at Fargo, 1940 Live; Weather Report for 8:30; and Ella Fitzgerald for Fine and Mellow.

(Grammy reports courtesy of the Wikipedia.)

Ummm, yes; something was happening, but they didn’t know what it was, did they?

1980 was a monster year for music in my iTunes collection: I’ll just throw out the following terrific albums for starters: Elvis Costello, Get Happy!!; David Bowie’s Scary Monsters; the Pretenders’ first album; Peter Gabriel’s third solo album named Peter Gabriel; X, Los Angeles; Dire Straits, Making Movies; Dead Kennedys, Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables; Jim Carroll Band, Catholic Boy; Bruce Springsteen, The River; XTC, Black Sea; Roxy Music, Flesh + Blood. Friends, that’s a very good year.

On the R&B front, Prince’s Dirty Mind album was released, and Kurtis Blow released “The Breaks.”

I see a handful of “not quite” albums. The Beat’s I Just Can’t Stop It (ooh, now that I take a closer look, that album leaps in my estimation); the B-52’s, Wild Planet; the Specials, More Specials (though their reappropriation of “Maggie’s Farm” came out that year, I think, winning them bonus points for taste and political pertinence); Squeeze, Argybargy. Blondie’s Autoamerican catches them way past their best work, and Devo’s Freedom of Choice likewise seems a sign of falling-off (sad that “Whip It!” captured the public imagination rather than the title cut — can someone re-release or remix that in honor of the present condition of U.S. politics?). The Stones’ Emotional Rescue is just sad.

OK, here are some AKMA awards for the year 1980, subject to correction and amplification when others point out stuff I missed:

1980’s Album Lingering in My Consciousness: Making Movies.

Unfairly Overshadowed Album: (Well, “unfairly overshadowed movie,” with album in tow) Rockers, the amiable reggae potpourri film that will never emerge from the shadow of The Harder They Come.

Great Covers: “Soul Kitchen,” by X; “Stop Your Sobbing,” the Pretenders (I love her a capella intro); “Eight Miles High,” Roxy Music.

Too Late Reintroduction: Professor Longhair got some posthumous press for Crawfish Fiesta, from listeners who should have been paying attention all along. The Muddy Waters album was pretty good, too; I guess the Grammys can’t get everything wrong (though if I were a folk artist, I might be grouchy about the blues taking this award, though if I were a blues artist, I’d respond that at least “folk” had a category of its own. OK, enough bickering).

Best Single: Not the Romantics’ insidiously catchy “What I Like About You,” nor “ ‘Antmusic!’ ” by Adam and the Ants, the prescient “Video Killed the Radio Star” by the Buggles, but the especially deserving “That’s Entertainment” from the Jam’s Sound Affects.

Best Debut: The Pretenders.

Best Album: Top to bottom, I suppose I have to go for The River.

That’s how I see it, anyway; but I’m probably forgetting something, 1980 being so long ago and all.