Obligatory comments about the medium

Here are a couple quotes I found interesting re: the use and influence of the Internet.

First, near the end of an essay in The Atlantic, "Four More Years? The Invincibility Question," by Patrick Buchanan:

Bush . . . has something Nixon and Reagan never did: what Daniel Patrick Moynihan called "second and third echelons of advocacy." Conservatives, libertarians, and populists of the right dominate talk radio, the Internet, and the cable-TV channels that are nibbling the network news to death, and they are fully competitive on the op-ed pages of the national press.

Second, a piece in Sunday's Opinion section of the LA Times by Kevin Starr, California's state librarian and an author of many books on California's history, "Politics, Wired: Recall may be dizzying, but it portends a revolution in governance."

As Marshall McLuhan foresaw some 40 years ago, the media revolution has expanded the bandwidth of politics. We live in an around-the-clock information environment in which radio, television, the Internet, newspapers, e-mail, instant messaging, entertainment, blogs, etc. are continuous and interactive. This situation has four major political effects.

First, people are becoming increasingly high-speed and interactive in the way that they absorb and process information. This is especially true of younger people, whose dexterity and speed in navigating the Internet can be breathtaking. Even Californians who came of age in the pre-Net world have broadened their sources of information. Just consider how often you acquire information by word of mouth from someone who picked it up on the Internet, hours in advance of radio, TV or newspapers. . . .

A continuous multimedia environment, secondly, has expanded the universe of governance to include entertainment celebrities, radio talk-show hosts, sports figures, electronic and print pundits, blogs and mega-wealthy activists. One doesn't have to hold office, in other words, to participate in governance. . . .

The high-speed Internet- connected multimedia culture, thirdly, cannot be controlled at any one point. It is open, unfiltered and rabidly democratic. Now it helps spawn political candidacies. For example, Huffington said that one reason she's running for governor is because of all the e-mails she'd received urging her to run. Candidates open Web sites, not headquarters. The political debate is conducted in cyberspace, with blogs of virtually all political stripes and voters providing the dialogue — and it's instantly accessible. . . .

The new environment, finally, demands a personal connection. In the early 1900s, pioneering film theorists — Hugo Munsterberg, Vachel Lindsay and William Dean Howells among them — contended that motion pictures offered audiences a form of collective dreaming in which contact between individuals on screen and in the audience was of a direct and personal kind. We do not merely watch our favorite film actors. We enter into subliminal dialogue with them.

Californians seem to be demanding a similar connection with their political leadership. This doesn't mean they want to press political flesh, though physical contact always seems to help. Rather, they look to media to provide the contact, as Franklin D. Roosevelt did with his fireside chats. Roosevelt exploited what McLuhan later described as the vivid intimacy of radio, second only to the telephone as a mode of person- to-person subliminal contact. Seen in this light, the "Arnold" phenomenon seems more than mere celebrity worship.

Read the full piece for Starr's conclusion that "[g]overnment is just too slow compared with the ways other sectors of society go about their business."

Knitted lace patterns

Wendy recently collected links to free knitted lace patterns on the internet from her many readers and posted them on her website.

Good mood

I'm in a really good mood tonight. I think it's because of music. I substituted for the substitute musician at church today. Playing occasionally is more fun than trying to come up with new music every week. For the offertory, I played the accordion! This is the first time I've ever solo'd on the accordion. At the Spanish service, I also played it for the congregational song right after the offering was received. It went OK. I really do need to take formal lessons, though, to learn how to play the bass buttons properly.

Then, after church, I had a two hour rehearsal for a wedding next week. I'm playing piano and organ with a violinist, saxophonist/flutist, and bassoonist. It was really fun going through the music. They're all professional musicians, but the music wasn't too difficult for me. They'll make sure the tempo is correct, the bassoon will fill in the bass for the organ pipes that aren't working, and they'll have a direct line of sight to the back of the church to keep track of how many more times we need to play a piece of music before everyone's down the aisle. So I don't have to worry about quite as many things as I do when I play by myself.

Tonight, just to reinforce the good mood, I went for a walk, something I've been neglecting to do recently. Right now the crepe myrtles are in full bloom—pinks, purples, and white. So there is color around, in spite of the heat.

Preaching to the world

I am so proud of my pastor, Rev. Dr. Peg Schultz-Akerson, who preached yesterday at the Churchwide Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

She was assigned to preach on the day of Mary, Mother of our Lord, for which the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55) was the Gospel reading.

My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. (Luke 1:46b-48a)

Fourteenth-century mystic Meister Eckhardt preaches that the essence of true humility isn’t how little one has; Queen Esther is lifted up as a humble person. Nor is true humility about putting one’s self down, or putting others down. Eckhardt teaches that true humility despises being despised. True humility wants more than anything to be like an instrument– like a flute, a reed – like an artist, a musician, a dancer, a lover, a father, a mother – some way of being a means of grace. True humility knows that it’s not about us, but about what or whom we are called to birth into the world through the particular means of our lives. True humility is about breathing in God so that we can breathe out not ourselves but God for the healing of the world – claimed, gathered and sent. True humility knows this process, this dance of receiving our identity in Christ and contributing out of it. True humility is the yearning to do this, and it’s not all selfless. It’s for the sake of the world, as Bishop Hanson keeps reminding us, but the mystery is that the more we dance our part in this turning – however major or minor the part – the more we dance our part, the more healed we become. True humility despises being despised, despises being dismissed, because those acts violate our baptismal calling. . . .

Mary’s vocation is that of God-bearer for the sake of the world, but it is a healing that heals her as well. True vocation as we see it in Mary delights to be asked; delights to be invited; is moved to praise when taken seriously as one who has a song to sing, a gift however small or great to offer. The radical witness of the Magnificat is that God causes the voiceless to burst into song. The disregarded become the bearers of God. The healing of the world draws near in the empowerment of the voiceless. Mary models God’s unexpected ways of bringing all of us – all of us – to song. The dawn draws near when a peasant girl becomes the mother of God. How radical is that?

HTML for blogs

Via clicking on a name in a comment box on somebody's site, I found Mandarin Design Daily, a site with all sorts of html and css help, code, and ideas for jazzing up websites.

Pondering electricity

With all the stories and news coverage about the electricity outage on the other side of the continent, I've been reminded of my growing up days with limited electricity.

The generators came on from 6:00 PM to 10:00 PM, as well as two mid-mornings a week so that people who had electric washing machines could wash their clothes. When we went into town where they had 24 hour electricity, I would get up early in the morning so that I could turn on the light and play.

Later, when the Zambian government was given antiquated Soviet generators, we had quasi-24 hour electricity. It wasn't always reliable, however. We had a voltage meter on the wall, and when the voltage dipped too low, we made a mad dash to unplug first the freezer and then the fridge.

I enjoyed visiting friends who lived about 100 miles away and who used paraffin (kerosene) lamps at night.

My kitchen is fairly electric appliance free, although I do regularly use a blender and, of course, a refrigerator. I have an electric breadmaker, about which I debated with myself before finally purchasing. I occasionally use an electric hand-held mixer, too.

I sympathized with Amanda's coffee deprivation ordeal due to the electricity outage. My coffee contingency plan has been in place for a few years now—spurred on by living in So Cal and the Y2K survivalist emphasis around the time I moved into my current house.

I have a gas stove, which I light with matches. And if the gas is cut off, I have a small charcoal grill on which I can boil water. I use a manual coffee grinder, so I can even have freshly ground beans. And I have both a stove top percolator and a recently purchased filter cone that sits on top of a mug into which I pour boiling water over the ground coffee.

Reading good writing

I really need to move to a more productive stage in my studies. It's so easy only to read what everyone else has written instead of doing the hard work of writing my own stuff. Even this weblog reflects that attitude. I link to and enjoy reading other people's well-written, interesting posts but haven't been spending much time composing my own or even commenting with wit and insight on the posts to which I link.

Well, the weblog probably won't be changing too soon. But hopefully the output of my studying will.

Meanwhile, go read the excellent writing at dervala dot net. Try an entertaining story about jogging and bears or an essay about shedding stuff.