Category Archives: Arts & culture

Network of Spiritual Progressives conference

I wish I could attend the conference held by the Network of Spiritual Progressives June 11-14, “Strategies for Liberals and Progressives for the Obama Years.” It looks like it will be an educational opportunity, a time to worship with spiritual progressives from many faiths, and an opportunity to work on regional strategies (and yes even an chance to demonstrate in front of the White House for those who need it).

This conference has a truly ugly Web page, but I’m impressed by the list of people who will be speaking or leading workshops: Rev. Brian McLaren, Bill McKibben, Rabbi Michael Lerner, Sharon Welch, David Korten, Rev. James Forbes, Gary Dorrien, and other prominent spiritual progressives (Sharon Welch is the only Unitarian Unviersalist whom I recognized). Good grief, even Marianne Williamson will speak. Some of the workshops sound pretty good: “The Legacy of Racism and How It Continues in Obama’s America”; “The Growth of an Indigenous American Fascism”; “America’s Endless Wars: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, North Korea, and What’s Next?” (Pacifist that I am, I would love to attend that last workshop.)

I can’t attend — I’ll be on a service trip with our church’s youth group — but I’m wondering if there are any Unitarian Universalists besides Sharon Welch who will be there. Are you going to this conference?

Facebook and privacy, redux

This week, Facebook has faced severe criticism from European data protection officials, the ACLU, and prominent tech bloggers about its privacy policies. Most of what came out was unsurprising. But then I saw this: “A number of high-profile users have … deleted their Facebook accounts after the site introduced a new feature that lets non-Facebook websites, or third parties, post the personal views of Facebook users without their consent” (full BBC article here).1 Blah. Does this mean I have suddenly given up my copyright protection for material posted on Facebook without my knowledge? I don’t have the patience to read through Facebook’s constantly-changing user agreement and privacy policy to find out. At least when I post things here, on my own Web site, in the highly unlikely occurrence that someone should rip stuff off, I can feel righteously indignant about it.

1 Doesn’t this an awful lot like what happened at MySpace a couple of years ago, when they suddenly claimed they had the rights to anything posted on MySpace? Rupert Murdoch and Mark Zuckerberg seem to have about the same low level of morality.

Waiting for Diaspora

Remember how Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook by allegedly ripping off some code from a Harvard classmate? (I have to say “allegedly” because the lawsuit was eventually settled by Facebook for $65 million, and there was no finding of guilt.)

Well, now four hip programmers, students at New York University, are working on Diaspora. They’re not going to rip anything off, because they’re going to create open source software. BBC reports: “Maxwell Salzberg, Daniel Grippi, Raphael Sofaer and Ilya Zhitomirskiy are the brains behind Diaspora which they describe as ‘the privacy aware, personally controlled, do-it-all distributed open source social network’.” They have raised $25,000 for a summer coding sprint to make the first iteration of Diaspora public.

Boy do I hope they succeed. Facebook sucks. The platform is “disorganized and buggy,” Facebook clearly has no concerns for your personal privacy, and it’s a closed system that reminds me of the bad old days of LiveJournal.

District assembly or…?

The Pacific Central District of Unitarian Universalist congregations managed to schedule its annual meeting, district assembly, for this Saturday, the same day that Wordcamp is taking place. So I could go to district assembly and hear Paul Rasor talk about theology, or I could go to Wordcamp and learn more about using WordPress as a Website platform.

Much as I’d like to hear Paul Rasor, it’s no contest: if I didn’t have to run an OWL retreat at church on Saturday, I’d go to Wordcamp. Theology is cool, but learning more about how WordPress could power online religion feels like a more pressing need right now. After all, I can always read Paul Rasor’s next book when it comes out. (If you go to Wordcamp SF, leave a comment and let us know what you learned.)

Another desperate phone call

I got another phone call today from someone whose family is on the financial edge, making enough money so they don’t qualify for any assistance, but not making enough money to live on. I had basically no money to give away; no agency has much money to give away right now; there are too many people in the same situation.

When you get phone calls like that, it is difficult to hear about the huge sums of money Wall Street bankers get. It is difficult to watch as the news media pay too little attention to the fact that tons of people are out of work, underemployed, or otherwise financially desperate. And it is difficult to listen to the selfish rhetoric that passes for politics in this country.

What I do in my spare time

One of my pastimes is singing Sacred Harp music, traditional American four-part sacred song. It is rough, loud, driving music, sort of like hardcore punk rock for church, with the same punk anyone-can-do-it ethos. The soundtrack of the video below is a live recording from last Saturday’s Golden Gate All-Day Singing (the visuals are just random photos from the same event).

A little bit of explanation: (1) In Sacred Harp music, you almost always sing through each song first with four solfege syllables: fa, sol, la, and mi. Since each part is singing their own solfege syllables, this can sound like some bizarre Phillip Glass opera. (2) The music is loud — my ear were ringing by the end of the day — so to get the full effect, plug in your earphones and crank up the sound. (3) If you want to know more, visit www.fasola.org. If you don’t want to know more, and instead want to run screaming in the other direction at the unpolished sound of this roots music, feel free to do so at any time.

Bay area singing event

If you’re in the Bay area, come check out the sixth annual Golden Gate Sacred Harp singing in Berkeley this Saturday, April 24. You’ll experience singing from an American tradition of sacred music that can be traced back to the 18th century, when New England ministers and musicians banded together to improve the poor quality of congregational singing in their day.

Sacred Harp singing is bold and loud, full-throated singing with a strong rhythmic drive that’ll get your feet tapping. According to this short video, it is increasingly being sung by “young urbanites.” (And yes, my regular Sacred Harp group has a much greater percentage of people under 30 than does my Unitarian Universalist church.)

We’ll be at the Finnish Brotherhood Hall, 1970 Chestnut Street, Berkeley (close to BART). Look for me at the registration table mid-morning. Free and open to the public — beginners welcome — loaner books available. Check out the website for all the details: http://www.fasola.org/sf/goldengate/