Category: Uncategorized

There are eight million stories in the naked city, and many more than that among the people with their clothes on. Take, for instance, last night.

The plan was simple: go to Heather’s for the first hour of her birthday party, leave for O’Hare, where I would pick Joi up and walk him to the hotel (where he’d leave his bag), roll into town where we’d connect with Jeff, have dinner at the Bad Dog, from which I’d scoot out a little early to return home to pick Pippa up. Easy as pie, right?

Well, there’s some backstory. Joi needed a battery for his Powerbook (and I couldn’t let a brother technophile face a plane flight to Japan without a battery!), so I made some weird phone calls to Apple venues around Chicago trying to track down a battery for him. The first place I called got confused and tried to tell me that batteries are now classified as “service items” and they’d couldn’t sell me one without looking at the machine, running diagnostics, and perhaps sending the Powerbook in for service. As you may guess, I was utterly incredulous; even Apple isn’t usually that bizarre. But I called around several other venues, the first of which was willing to sell me a battery but didn’t have any on hand, and the second of which had batteries and was willing to sell, but was inconveniently remote. I decided to call back to the first place and see whether I dould reason with them. It turns out that I got through to a different call-answerer this time, and he was delighted to sell me a battery. Cool. (I brought my iBook with me, since I needed a replacement for one of those little gray rubber feet on the bottom, and the same guy who helpfully sold be Joi’s battery took me to the Genius Bar and insisted to the Genius that I needed a Powerbook thingy. “No,” I said, “I need an iBook thingy.” “No, a Powerbook — you just bought a Powerbook battery.” So I took my iBook out of its carrier and showed the Genius and sales guy the missing foot, after which they finally believed me.)

So Pippa and I drifted down to Heather’s, where we gave her her birthday ice-cream supplies (a bowl, some fudge sauce, and a water bottle — Pippa chose them). I excused myself and headed out for O’Hare, where I picked Joi up right on time. Everything was going like clockwork.

It was, until Joi pointed out that his hotel reservation was at the O’Hare Westin, not the O’Hare Hilton. I knew where the Hilton was (right dead center at the airport), but I had no idea where the Westin was, and the helpful security guy who offered us directions sent us out to Terminal Five (why? I don’t know). We sat in the breakdown lane for a while as Joi connected to the Net via Bluetooth, to get a map to the Westin. Eventually we called the Westin and got directions, and drove directly to the hotel, only a little behind schedule.

Joi registered and dropped his bag in his room, and showed me a couple of video clips on his Powerbook (he wants me to join his tribe, or guild, or something in World of Warcraft). We descended to the car, and headed off to dinner with Jeff.

We had a lovely, far-reaching conversation. We covered Warcraft, family systems theory, theological education, current events at the Creative Commons, music, Joi’s Chicago period, and various other topics. Our conversation was so vivid that I had to point out a couple of times that I was keeping an eye out for Lincoln Avenue (our destination), and I’m sure Joi was looking out, too.

Unfortunately, we missed Lincoln, and had to stop for directions at a gas station. Chicagoans being as helpful as they are, we got a whole boatload of directions — none of which agreed with the others. It was all I could do to get back into the car and suggest to Joi that he call Jeff directly, and get directions from him.

It didn’t take that long for us to get to the Bad Dog — or more precisely, the Bad Dog’s neighborhood. We ended up circling the tavern several times, peering intently out the windows, trying desperately to spot our restaurant destination.

By now — due to traffic, confusion, lostness, engaging dialogue, Warcraft video clips, et cetera — the time had come for me to pick Pippa up from Heather’s. Only one catch — I was no where near Heather’s. The logical thing would have been for me to call Heather up and explain, but (sad to say) I didn’t have her phone number. No problem — call information! But Information claimed not to know anything about Heather Voss, H Voss, the Rev. H Voss, the Rev Heather Voss, or Canterbury Northwestern. Phooey. OK, call Beth — she was at the party. But Beth diidn’t answer her phone. Call Josiah — no answer. Call Frank — he doesn’t have any of the phone numbers (he lost his directory when he moved). Call Jane — she has Heather’s and Hope’s numbers. Whew. Called Heather — no answer.

Called Hope (last — that was unintentional, but richly evocative) — she answered, brava! We straightened things out (by now I had dropped Joi off; it was great visiting with him, wish I could have joined him and Jeff for a fascinating dinnertime, and although I brought my camera along to take the canonical dinner-with-Joi picture and maybe stealth disco him, I didn’t have an occasion to take any pcitures) and was talking with Pippa on Hope’s phone. The exchange went this way:

AKMA: I’m sorry, princess, but we got lost; I’m not wasting time, hanging around on a street corner somewhere, gambling.

Pippa: Of course you aren’t gambling!

AKMA: Thanks, sweetie.

Pippa: You’re a priest!

AKMA: (flustered, thinking of several priests for whom that would not constitute prevention against profligate behavior): Well, thank you, Pip — I appreciate your confidence in me.

Pippa: And a responsible teacher!

At this point, I was quite speechless.

Anyway, I got back to Heather’s before the Big Domino Game was over, and Pippa triumphed over all her older competitors, so no one was put out at me. I was ravenous, wolfed down some carrots and hummus, edamame (thanks again for the tip, Kevin), chips and salsa,washed down with an Iron City (which Whole Foods now sells, for reasons I can’t quite fathom, but I buy out of cheapness and historic loyalty).

And so to bed.

Here’s a follow-up on yesterday’s shout-out to the Rev. David Knight of St. Patrick’s Church, Long Beach, Mississippi. Someone took a picture of David standing where the church used to be (this is what it used to look like):

Here’s the message I got from David last night:

Today was better. We saw at least 1000 people. The medical clinic was booming and we almost ran out of food in the relief center – but more is coming.

Jennifer went with a mobile medical clinic to Waveland, a town that basically no longer exists. They went door to door and saw about 40 people who have no way to travel. Good work.

Today our diocese came down with some clergy who are coming to help us. I have two WONDERFUL Priests assigned to St. Patrick’s. The BIG question everyone asks is – what do you need? It’s the one question that is impossible to answer, other than to say, everything. Beyond that, I don’t know what I am supposed to be doing, so I just try to do something every moment. Some of it helps, some of it does not, but if I HAD a manual about this, it got blown away with every other book I have ever owned (they were all in my office – including all my notes from every class in seminary. I grieve that as much as anything).

A couple of Seaburians will be traveling down to Long Beach to lend David a hand — blessings to Mitch and Patrick, and take our prayers and hopes with you.

I’ll be sending some books to David once I hear that package deliveries are getting through (at 982 Glen Oaks Dr., Pass Christian, MS 39571) — maybe you also have some duplicates to help one of our former top students restore his library. And I’m sending a check to St. Patrick’s. You can, too, at

Katrina Discretionary Fund
C/O St. James Episcopal Church
1026 S. Washington Ave
Greenville, MS 38701

(A note to the cautious: Discretionary Funds are carefully restricted in the Episcopal Church these days (they used to be a lot more discretionary than they are now!), and David is a model of integrity; I vouch for his trustworthiness, and church structures will be keeping a close eye on how the money gets disbursed. It’s not just for parishioners — it’s for anyone who walks in the door.)

Most importantly, everything I write here reflects what I read and hear elsewhere, and my inferences from that. I haven’t been to the Gulf Coast for several years, not to Washington DC since my participation in F2C this spring, never to Crawford, Texas, and nobody in a policy-making position has been filling me in on the behind-the-scenes details. I’ve been writing out of my horror and frustration that people who can command vast resources to evacuate and rescue people stranded in Katrina’s path did not put those resources into play promptly (I trust this is not a controversial point, since the President himself described the government’s response to this emergency as “unacceptable”), and out of my continuing anger at the mixed reports about how relief efforts are going. In part, also, I’ve been writing out of my frustration that much of what I’ve seen has focused solely on New Orleans (for obvious, painful, reasons) and has neglected the devastating effects of Katrina on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. I spent some sleepless time and pained prayer worrying about people I know down there.

That said, I defer entirely to my brother and trusted friend David, whose comments on a post below I’ll reproduce up here where they’ll be more visible:

As someone in the thick of it, I wonder if you should turn a critical eye to the media? The story in Mississippi is about UNREAL destruction. Beyond that I see people (about 500 today at our relief center) determined to rebuild AND to help one another. We are seeing groups from as far a way as Canada, many from the east coast, all helping SO much. We have thousands of National Guard here and they are ALL, EVERYONE, so polite and helpful and wonderful to us all. In our center there were white faces and black faces and old faces and young faces and crippled bodies and old bodies and just-born twins bodies. And all were together, bonded in this crazy time where we have all been reduced to just being humans without power or privilege or prestige.

And yet at a press conference in Biloxi, several media folks just wanted the EOC director to admit that the poor in Mississippi were treated differently than others.

It just ain’t so. And if the reporters would DO THEIR JOB and REPORT ABOUT WHAT IS GOING ON and TALK TO THE PEOPLE – ALL THE PEOPLE they would see a very very different picture.

Maybe that does not sell papers or CNN ad spots. But it’s the truth. I know it. And today I lived it, seeing Jesus over and over and over again. It was SO very hot and SO very hard and the people, ALL the people were SO very grateful and expressed it.

There is a different story out there. And it has nothing to do with feeble administrators and aid that is too slow (although we have been pained by both). I wish they would report that.

And guess what – tomorrow, we do it all over again.

David has more to say in his blog. The school at the place where his church used to be has been set up as a medical clinic and relief center; David’s been knocking himself out cleaning up and fixing up the school buildings, and his Lovely Wife Jennifer has been putting her extensive experience in medical missions to work administering the clinic. I can’t think of anyone with less patience for racism, or more determination to build a community grounded in love and respect. And David’s mileage in Long Beach will differ from somebody’s in Slidell or the Ninth Ward.

It won’t be over for David and Jennifer and the people of St. Patrick’s any time soon; I just emailed David to ask how I could contribute directly to their work. Maybe you could, too.

I’m probably unbearable in any number of ways, but let it not be said that I’m only grim and sobersided. Susie and Beth have an iTunes meme going, and I can enjoy taking part in almost anything music-related.
So:

How many total songs?
8905 songs, 40.58 GB

Sort by Song Title – first and last songs?
First: ¡ Que !, by Phil Manzanera (followed by ‘Antmusic’ by Adam and the Ants)
Last: “Zydeco Gris Gris,” by Beausoleil

Sort by Time – first and last songs?
First: (0:4) Brad Pitt saying “Kuasehfgaiurgh” from the Snatch soundtrack
Last: (56:31) “Music for 18 Musicians,” by Steve Reich

Top Ten Played Songs
1. “Wilder Than Her,” by Dar Williams
2. “She’s Losing It,” by Belle & Sebastian
3. “Bread And Circuses,” by Billy Bragg and Natalie Merchant
4. “Walking Down Madison,” by Kirsty MacColl
5. “Days,” by Kirsty MacColl (this one comes as a surprise to me)
6. “Nao Esperando,” by Kirsty MacColl
7. “Anchorage,” by Michelle Shocked
8. “Dreaming Of Violets,” by Shannon Campbell
9. “You’re No Rock’n’Roll Fun,” by Sleater-Kinney
10. “As Is,” by Ani DiFranco

Okay, I should own up to some ideological manipulation of data here; I have a playlist of songs by women musicians that I play frequently, to balance out my otherwise male-dominant listening patterns, and that shows up here. To get a different take on my most-listened to songs, you could look at my Audioscrobbler page.

Last Ten Played

1. “Didn’t Leave Nobody but the Baby,” by Emmylou Harris, Alison Krauss and Gillian Welch
2. “Blister In The Sun,” by the Violent Femmes
3. “Dear Mr. Fantasy,” by Traffic
4. “Deeper Than Beauty,” by Sloan
5. “Flower,” by Moby
6. “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me,” by Culture Club
7. “Buddy Holly,” by Weezer
8. “Go Down, Moses,” by Mavis Staples & Lucky Peterson
9. “Jerusalem,” by Steve Earle
10. “When I Was Young (Shake It Baby),” by Sunnyland Slim

Find ‘sex.’ How many songs show up?
59, counting Ron Sexsmith and the Sex Pistols. Oddest inclusion: “Missa L’Homme Arme Sexti Toni – Agnus Dei,” performed by the Tallis Scholars

Find ‘death.’ How many songs show up?
72, including a lot of Death Cab for Cutie and several variations on the “O Death” theme made popular by Ralph Stanley’s version from O Brother Where Art Thou

Find ‘love.’ How many songs show up?
581, including big representations by Dorothy Love Coates, Lyle Lovett, and Magnetic Fields (69 Love Songs)

I’d be interested to consider other categories too, such as “Most Recently Added” (and its opposite), total of “Greatest” and “Best,” or “Number with Play count = 0,” but then I could do this kind of thing all night. That reminds me to get back to my “Years in Review” posting. . . .

I’m stuck. If I say what I think about the Bush regime, I’ll evoke defend-at-any-costs apologists, and perhaps convey the impression that I think Democrats can’t be corrupted and don’t make mistakes (even though I’m all the more furious about Bill Clinton’s adultery and mendacity, since it now provides a functional (if bogus) “equivalence” that obscures the scale of the Bush regime’s deception and failures).

Here: there’s no excuse for the negligence that cost the lives of thousands of New Orleanians — particularly, African-American New Orleanians who already endured poverty, exploitative labor conditions, threadbare educational conditions, and the short ends of numerous other sticks — and that cost the material well-being of plenty of working-their-way middle-class New Orleanians. There’s no excuse for suppressing journalists’ access to the catastrophe. There’s no excuse for resisting an independent investigation of these failures.

Jon Stewart (as quoted by Joey) is correct: “Those who complain about the blame game? They’re usually to blame.”

The charge of “racism” comes in various types, in varying degrees of subtlety and deliberation. I doubt that more than a handful of vile hatemongers have taken any satisfaction in the gross disproportion of Black casualties and evacuees — but the shrugs, the self-justifying “who could foresee?” disclaimers, the delays, the evasiveness, the crass manipulation of emergency resources, all testify to an insensitivity that amounts to a great deal more than mere cluelessness. Read through Jeneane’s posts, and then let’s talk about what it adds up to.

Dave and I have disagreed about the semantics of accountability before — I’m relieved to say that at this point, I fully affirm his reflections.

[Later: as I check Google News at 12:41 PM Central Time, there are no stories reporting on the conditions in Louisiana and Mississippi (and I have the page set to show five “National” headlines). Google News highlights one story about how the government is handling the catastrophe, as though the political fallout is the real story, and one on conditions among evacuees in Houston — but in order to learn about people living and dying, coping with disaster, I have to resort to Boing Boing and the Times-Picayune. Does this show the success of the government’s suppression of news coverage of the disaster zone, or has the media’s attention-span just flickered?]

I’m having a day with more bother than real productivity. A large part of my day involved writing some business letters, and I’m a dreadfully slow letter-writer, and when I write letters of any importance I feel queasy. Between that and fiddling with budget requests relative to the Disseminary, I was stultified for the day. (Good thing I had a couple helpful ideas for my paper at the SBL meeting.) I decided to do something useful by recording and uploading some of Pippa’s art from her summer in Maine.

Tonight I’ll try to sketch my presentation for Clergy Day (meaning that Jane Ellen will have a peek ahead of time — not that any of what I’ll say will come to her as a surprise anyway). . . .

Have you already ordered your copy of Andrew Huff and the Well of Lost Souls? I know I have. Moreover, I downloaded ’echad, Chris Heard’s snazzy Uno-style game for learning about the history of biblical Israel.

It’s hard to leave Durham, to leave my dear heart Margaret (superlatives sound cheap as Katrina’s devastation reverberates around us, so I’m holding back on modifiers concerning how hard it is). There’s work to be done in Evanston, though, and Margaret has work to do here. Time to go.

Any church — heck, any reader — who’s even vaguely interested in developing an online presence should hustle over to TextDrive where Dean is offering another limited number of lifetime hosting offers for a mere $400. Don’t hesitate. (The Disseminary is VC201 at Textdrive, although we’re also lifetime members at our regular host Cornerhost, with whom we’ve been entirely pleased and who has also offered lifetime hosting deals from time to time, of which we took advantage. This is the first time I’ve noticed one of these offers in time to call it to readers’ attention.)

David W. cites a new venture to peer-review manuscripts by hitherto-unpublished authors, in order perhaps to raise their profile and help them garner attention from acquisitions editors. I dunno, but it sounds to me like the kind of idea that Teresa and Patrick could shed some light on in a nanosecond.

Maybe you’ll believe Bart Ehrman, Prof. of New Testament at UNC-Chapel Hill. The Teaching Company is giving away downloads of two of his lectures on The da Vinci Code; I haven’t heard them yet, but I have full confidence that Bart will bring to bear his vast erudition and sober historical reasoning to the farcical fictions of Dan Brown.

We’re having perfect weather in Durham, doing a lot of walking and napping, and spending a fair amount of time offline. Still, a lot’s been going on.

Margaret met with her precept section of Prof. Berger’s “Prayer and Providence” course (that’s for Kevin). I love hanging around Durham, except that it’s so congenial an atmosphere that it’s hard just to visit. Kevin, we’re working on rebooting the Disseminary — had a small hang-up over last weekend — but I’ll get back to you as our agenda comes into focus more clearly. Right now, we’re on a first-things-first schedule.

Thursday, as I was traveling, I noted this graphic from USA Today: . It depicts the levees in New Orleans, but evidently someone got a little distracted in grouping and resizing in their illustration program, because the pumphouse in the diagram floats free of the levee wall and in the last diagram it’s floating in the middle of the lake. This isn’t exactly a Tuftean information-design problem, but it does exemplify one of the pitfalls of communicating information graphically — a sort of graphical typo, a “graph-o.”

Meanwhile, Pippa went on an art binge and executed a number of lovely drawings and collages for Margaret’s apartment, as we get ready for relocating Pippa back to Evanston. She drew the vase of sunflowers that Margaret’s friend Sarah left in the apartment to greet her, and this penguin parent-and-child collage of cut-paper, pencil, and marker. Margaret has a rattan screen that she uses as a gallery wall for Pippa art, and Pip has been filling it up impressively.

Meanwhile, Si is settling in at Marlboro, where Jennifer covered his moving-in process with an array of photos.

I’m working out my plans for the Clergy Day in Northern Indiana next week, thinking about my paper for the SBL meeting, and reveling in the company of my lovely wife and marvelous daughter, in terrific Durham. Now, we’re off to church, to pray for our sisters and brothers in Long Beach and New Orleans and all around, who’ve been battered by this week’s dreadful events. I’ll be in touch.