Author: AKMA

Dorothea’s in danger of landing a gig that entails entering some polytonic Greek (Modern Greek does fine with a greatly-simplifed system of accents compared to classical-Hellenistic Greek; “polytonic” refers to the fully-accented text that classical texts rely on). Of course, I’m pleased — the more polytonic Greek in the world, the happier I am — and especially pleased that it may draw Dorothea further into the world of Unicode Greek. But don’t keep a secret, Dorothea; what’s the new-and-improved method?

For those who find my persona wearisomely, hyperbolically solemn — and justly so; I take everything too seriously — I offer the following morning scene.
 
Picture a tall but, ahem, padded middle-aged guy down in the basement pedalling furiously on his stationary bike, perspiring copiously, reading a monograph about the “Gospel of Peter,” singing along to the falsetto parts of “Number Nine Dream.” No photo- or audio-recording would do the ludicrousness justice.
 
But I’ll be ready to go for Diocesan Convention today, and for the Adult Forum at St. Augustine’s Church, Wilmette, tomorrow morning.

I should have blogged today — technically, I had time and everything — but I didn’t even though I owe responses on the Druid clergy dust-up, Dave “used to be Time’s Shadow, now Groundhog Day, but not Connect & Empower-Music Alert” Rogers’s blog about the politics of “life,” and the Cobb County creationism brouhaha.
 
I just didn’t feel like it today; during the time I had free to write, I preferred to chat with friends, orfiddle with the redesign of the Seabury website, or just plain take it easy. I have an Adult Ed class to prepare for on Sunday, I’m going to Diocesan Convention tomorrow, and I have to put together a response to some of Stan Hauerwas’s writing for the annual Society of Biblical Literature meeting next weekend. I’ll get back to these IOUs, but today, tonight, I’m putting them off another day or so.
 
But while I’m blogging about not blogging, I was repelled by the gall of Bill “I gambled away more than you’ll earn in two lifetimes” Bennett in pontificating about moral values in the aftermath of the election. Moral values my ear!
 
And a few days ago, Jeff wrote about his fascination with composition. Yes, exactly!

My colleague Paula had a last-minute appointment come up, so I’m suybbing for her at tonight’s Community Eucharist in commemoration of St. Martin of Tours. I haven’t had much time to mull things over, but will clutch at a few homiletical straws from the neighborhood of Matthew 25:34-40, Isaiah 58:6-12, and Psalm 15.

I’ll post the sermon below, when I found out how it ends. . . . .

Continue reading “Happy Martinmas, Unexpectedly”

As I was clearing a spate of uninvited comments today — yes, I should get around to the MT upgrade, who has time to do that as carefully as I would need to? — Margaret pointed out that seventy-two of these messages ended up appended to my post that linked to Alasdair MacIntyre’s essay on not voting.
 
So, do unsolicited drug advertisers feel a special attraction to Aristotelian-Christian theologians? Or was a spambot just caught in a loop?
 
Whatever the case, if you came to this blog looking for online pharmaceuticals, you’ll have to keep looking in some other place. I cleaned them out, again, for now.

For the past six weeks or so, I’ve been keeping my eyes open at the grocery store for a cup of banana yogurt. They’ve had strawberry-banana pretty regularly, and countless exotic new flavors such as key lime pie and strawberry shortcake, but no plain old banana.
 
I don’t even remember how banana yogurt tastes — but it figures in a Proustian moment.
 
I first tasted banana yogurt, first considered any yogurt worth eating, when I went on a date with another Bowdoin student. We went on a picnic out in a field somewhere outside Brunswick, and she suggested that we each have a yogurt. My taste was governed by the prospect of making a good impression, and she could have said “Let’s each have a bowl of worms,” and I’d have been inclined to say yes. I chose a banana yogurt in the waxy cardboard cups Dannon used to sell, with the cardboard discs on the top.
 
The day was lovely, the picnic pleasant (and entirely cordial), and to my surprise the banana yogurt was tasty. I never went out with her again, don’t recall her name (it was a few weeks at least until I would meet the one true love of my life), but since then I have liked yogurt, and I would have liked to have tasted banana yogurt once again. from a waxy cardboard cup — but that train has left the station.

I’ve spent a little time around hospitals lately, so when I heard (at Tom’s place) that Mena had popped her kneecap, I felt a pang of sympathy — but the story and photos make the whole matter much more compelling.
 
Best wishes for rapid healing, Mena, and honest — we believe you can catch us. No need to prove anything.

I was marking some papers tonight when what to my wondering eyes should appear but a ten-year-old goddess of wisdom, with her familiar owl. What wisdom tries to evaluate essays on Arianism when it might gaze in adoration at such regal beauty? Specially when she’s your daughter. . . .

Tom Matrullo calls our attention to the most extraordinary success that the Republican ticket attained in Florida — or, more precisely, in those counties in which the votes were tallied by optical scanners (not touch-screen devices).

Isn’t that an amazing bit of luck for Bush!

Well, I scribbled away all afternoon, and traded instant messages with my theological consultant in North Carolina, and eventually came out with a sermon for the Canterbury Northwestern service (which will appear in the “extended” section below).
 
Then Pippa and I motored down to North Shore Baptist Church, site of Tripp Hudgins’s ordination. We arrived not in time to catch my Disseminary brother Trevor, certainly not in time to hear what I’m told is the best ordination sermon ever, but just in time to scarf down some delectable canapes and to be pointed toward Tripp’s house, where the party would continue indefinitely. A splendid time was had by everyone I could see, and Tripp introduced me to some interesting family members and leaders of the North Shore Baptist community.
 
Now, a full day of meetings and appointments for Monday — whee!
 
Continue reading “Cantering To Tripp’s Ordination”

Alasdair MacIntyre — a philosopher-theologian who has influenced Margaret and me greatly — makes a case for not voting, even in this fraught year. We’ve fallen on each side of this puzzle at various times, and every year we revisit the subject, but MacIntyre makes an articulate case for one rationale for abstaining.

The basic economic injustice of our society is that the costs of economic growth are generally borne by those least able to afford them and that the majority of the benefits of economic growth go to those who need them least.

Margaret and I tend to take a different tack — but it’s satisfying to see somebody intelligent mounting an argument against voting, whether or not it’s the one that finally might motivate us.

My mom sent a clipping from the Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror, the island’s weekly news source (the site seems not to be searchable, and Google doesn’t turn up the story online, so I can’t link to it).

The headline reads, “Atheneum has no problem with outdoor wireless use,” and the story begins, “Rumors notwithstanding, the Nantucket Atheneum’s wireless Internet signal is welcome to those who come within the signal’s 300-foot radius.” It goes on:

“We have no objection to people tapping into our signal,” said Frank Jewell, the library’s interim director.
Questions arose about the library’s stance on the issue after the Nantucket police a month ago intercepted [!] a man tapping on his laptop while leaning against the rear of the Atheneum during the day.

Deputy Police Chief Charles Gibson said he noticed the man while driving up Oak Street behind the Atheneum. Gibson asked a nearby summer police officer to check into what the man was doing. He said he would have done the same if he’d seen someone with a laptop tapping at the rear of a business or residence.

The summer officer told the man to “don’t be hanging around back here.”

“It did look a little suspicious,” Gibson said.

From there, word began to spread that the police considered outdoor users of the signal to be engaged in a theft of services.

Jewell, however, said the service is free to all comers.

The story goes on to explain that the Atheneum restricts usage within the library (to the second floor, to permit more space for reading print books on the first floor), and that there have been some acts of vandalism in the past year (though not electronic vandalism, just old-fashioned hooliganism).

After I first read the story, I was amused, and put it aside to blog here. In transcribing the story for this entry, though, I’m struck by the odd inconcinnity of this account with my own experience. The Deputy Chief’s story sounds very little like what happened to me.

• The mysterious “tapper” was leaning against the rear of the Atheneum; I was sitting on a public bench beside the Atheneum.
• The newspaper story says that this incident gave rise to a “rumor” that “the police considered outdoor users. . . to be engaged in a theft of services,” but in fact that’s exactly what the officer who rousted me told me.
• The story says that this took place “a month ago,” but if the article was published last week (when the weekly paper would have had to go to press in order for it to get to my mom, who then clipped it and mailed it to me), the incident couldn’t have taken place longer ago than two weeks, give or take a day.

Now, it could be that the police had chased away some other laptop-user two weeks before my surprising run-in with the constabulary, and that word just hadn’t gotten around to the officer who chased me off. Oddly, though, the officer who asked me not to hang around the Atheneum with my laptop open himself used the specific charge of “theft of signal,” amplified with the explanation that the Secret Service had instructed the local police on this point, when this was the precise allegation that the newspaper identifies as a misguided rumor. Or it could be that the story is indeed about me, and that the reporter, or police spokesperson, muddled the dates a little and was confused about exactly where I was sitting — while explicitly disavowing the felony warning that the officer made against me.

Whatever — the end of the story, assuming this is actually the end, turns out to be just as weird as the beginning. At least the librarians come out as heroes of free use!