Climate Change, Population Change

So I was listening to my birthday present from Heather - Death Cab for Cutie's new album Narrow Stairs, which is good, but has a certain fatalistic bent (see, for example, the lyrics to "No Sunlight,"). It got me thinking about what's going to happen when the sheets of ice in the Arctic melt, and so on, raising ocean levels and (ideally) making my house beachfront property. Could the economy's woes, and the flooding and monsoons be part of the global warming trap we're caught in?

This scientist (James Lovelock) seems pretty sure that we've passed the point of no return. He may be engaged in a certain amount of hyperbole, but on the other hand, if our carbon dioxide emissions are irreversible and long-lasting, who knows when we will have passed the point of being able to do anything about this?

This shouldn't seem like a cheery topic, but on the other side of the coin, people in Europe have been experiencing lower-than-replacement-rate birthrates for many years. And, the worldwide average birthrate is down from 6.0 per woman to 2.9. A major shift like this might be the only thing that can really make a difference in our consumption and emission habits. The question is, will it have come too late?

Confession Time - Things I Like to Read Online

This may qualify as the lamest confession ever, but here goes. Things I like to read online:

--Advice columns
--Ideas about saving money, especially in list form
--Weird news about human genetics
--Movie reviews, especially bad ones
--Weird crime news

Wow, I feel cleansed. Thanks, guys!

Sorting Through Papers

Before sixth grade, my family moved from Iowa to Minnesota, and I remember my mom asking me what I thought about moving. I told her it would be a good opportunity to get rid of some stuff - to simplify & pare down.

I believe that I have always been inclined - whether because of genetics or early influential childhood experiences - to be a "saver," although I'm not this bad. If something is old, unusual, or memorable, I'll stick it in a file. I like to go through things later, and wonder what I was thinking when I saved them.

I was wrong, at age 11, to think that moving is a motivation to sort through your things and get rid of stuff. Now that Heather and I have lived in our house for two years (as of next week), I've discovered that it's actually reasonably long periods of stability that make throwing stuff out possible. The thing is - when you're moving, you don't have time to sit down and decide what's important and what's not. Now that we're in a small house, though, I have the time & motivation to go through the old papers and sort the truly memorable from the detritus.

The thing is, though, there's something fun about even the detritus in my little walks down memory lane. Sure, they may not carry much actual meaning for me, but they are a physical remnant of a time gone past. And these bits and scraps are evocative in their specificity. For example, the church bulletin from the day I was baptized is hand-typed. Who would remember that's how the old programs used to look? Still, cuts have to be made, and I am only keeping one copy - rather than three - of the paper I wrote for the ordination committee in 2003.

George Dies

So, I was taking my cat to the vet, which is a horrible, stressful event for me. (She doesn't like it, either). And as I'm listening to the radio, they announced that George Clooney had died. I was kind of surprised, especially when they said that he was 71 years old and had invented the 7 words you don't say on TV. Seemed odd, but I figured, maybe there's another George Clooney out there who was some kind of sociologist or something.

Actually, it was George Carlin. Seems appropriate on a day when my cat lost her breakfast twice. (The performance I remember most vividly of his was a disgusting routine from The Aristocrats).

Best wishes to you, George.

Happy Juneteenth!

Today is my birthday, and growing up I knew that I was exactly one year older than Garfield the cat. (The link will probably only work today - sorry.

But on my 20th birthday, I was doing a summer of service in San Marcos Texas, and I learned that June 19th is also known as Juneteenth. Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation -- freeing all the slaves in the United States -- on January 1, 1863, but that order couldn't really be put into effect until the rebelling states were brought back into the Union. On June 19, 1865, slaves all over Texas learned that they had been freed from slavery. In Texas, this is a state holiday.

Last night on NPR, they had a story about the importance of freed and escaped slaves to the North's war effort. African American soldiers were 25% of the (integrated) American Navy, and it was a troupe of African American soldiers who captured the capital of the Confederacy - Richmond, VA. It hadn't occurred to me before the difference freed slaves made in the Civil War. I'd always imagined an intra-white fight, with slaves waiting passively to be freed. The truth is, free slaves fought to bring an end to slavery in the United States.

When the colonies fought in the Revolutionary War, they were fighting to end taxation without representation. They were fighting for political and economic freedom. When former slaves fought, it was to end the brutal and dehumanizing practice of slavery. They were fighting for political, economic, personal, familial, cultural freedom. It is hard to capture quickly the suffering, the cost of slavery, and it is indeed America's original sin. But it is also a tremendous accomplishment that the slaves had an important part in winning their own freedom. This is no less an Independence Day for Americans than July 4th.

The Bus in Baltimore

So, I try to ride the bus about once a week, but the bus system is not helping me be excited about that. Today, I got on a bus at 5:30 at North Avenue (Schedule here), but he was only going as far as Monroe (about a mile short). So I got off the bus and waited another half hour for the next bus. Time spent on the bus: 30 minutes. Time spent waiting on a sidewalk: 40 minutes.

To paraphrase Obama (from somewhere, I forget where): programs for poor people are poor programs. It's too bad, with all the environmental challenges presented by the one-person per car approach, that using the bus can't be just a shade more convenient.

The Obamas leave Trinity

Well, this has been out in the news for a while, I know, but I have still not decided how I feel about it. It is a shame that this year, at least, it isn't possible for a successful presidential candidate to be a serious, committed member of a progressive Christian church.

When I was a volunteer in DC, Bill and Hillary Clinton attended Foundry United Methodist Church, which was reasonably progressive. There was a GLBT fellowship group, for example, and during one uncomfortable sermon moment, the pastor looked directly at the President and told him to expand a nuclear arms treaty. But he was a white pastor, and this wasn't being recorded for YouTube.

In all, this is a clear reminder to me of the value of separating church and state. The aims of faith and the aims of politics diverge quite a bit. How much worse would it be for Trinity to compromise its faithfulness to God for the sake of political gain! I agree with Obama that his staying at Trinity would continue to provide a wealth of resources for journalists interested in scandal.

I know this, and yet it's still sad.

Readership

So, based on some conversations lately, I've learned that people actually do read this 'ole thing. Now that I am getting the hang of my new job, I will try to be a little more frequent in my postings. You are always welcome to make comments of encouragement, since I chucked my little widget that counts readers a while ago, and can therefore no longer be numbers-driven. Thanks for reading!