Month: February 2025

Turning twenty

(I wrote this a few days ago, then forgot to post it. Here it is now….)

On February 22, 2005 —twenty years ago last Saturday — I wrote my first blog post. If you want a summary of this blog’s boring history, try here, here, and here. But I don’t want to look at the past, I want to think about the ongoing role of independent blogs like this one.

Twenty years ago, most blogs were a mix of day-to-day trivia, snarky commentary, and a few more serious long-form posts. All three of these have now migrated to other platforms.

The day-to-day trivia gets posted to social media outlets like Facecrook, TikFok, YouCrude, Instacrap, etc. Much of it consists of images, graphical memes, and videos. There’s no longer much interest in text-based day-to-day trivia.

Snarky commentary has also moved to social media outlets. Again, there’s been a movement away from text-based snark to videos, graphical memes, and images. Snark has also declined in intelligence, creativity, and kindness; I wouldn’t even call it snark any more, I’d call it Rage Porn.

Long-form text-based posts have moved to outlets that cater to that format, such as Substack and Medium. This move is generally a good thing; writers can focus on writing, and they can stop worrying about the technical challenges of publishing online.

In short, most of what appeared on independent blogs twenty years ago has now moved to other platforms. There’s a good reason for these moves: it has become increasingly challenging to stay current with web technology.

Take, for example, WordPress, the blogging platform I use. I started out in 2005 using WordPress 1.5, when it was simple and uncomplicated blogging software. Today, WordPress has morphed into a major CMS capable of running today’s most complex websites. I no longer have the time to stay current with its capabilities. That’s one of the reasons I still use a nine-year-old theme: I don’t have the time to make the move to a new theme. Sure, I could hire a WordPress consultant to do it for me; but that gets away from the DIY ethos that I found so appealing about blogging back in 2005.

Whatever platform you choose, web security has become increasingly difficult, as the evil hackers get bolder and more skilled. I’m lucky I have a good web host who helps me keep current with security issues. But it’s getting harder and harder for me to stay current with web security. I can thoroughly understand why writers would want to move to a platform like Substack or Medium.

Beyond the challenge of staying current with technology, I don’t think there’s much of an audience for independent text-based blogs any more. Most of my early readership long ago migrated to social media platforms. Once you’re hooked in to a social media platform, there’s not much reason to go visit an independent website. Potential new audiences tend to prefer audio or visual podcasts; they don’t want to read text, they want to watch or listen to content.

The only reason to write an independent text-based blog like this one is because you like to write. That describes me. I enjoy the process of writing, and I write all the time. As long as I’m writing something, I might as well publish it. And even though publishing a blog has gotten more difficult in the past twenty years, it’s still far easier than the printed fanzines I used to publish in the 1980s and 1990s.

So what if the audience for independently hosted blogs is tiny? I’m still having fun, which has always been the point of this blog. I hope you’re still having fun, too — and thank you for continuing to read.

When to open

Since COVID, I’ve noticed a growing trend among Unitarian Universalist congregations — decisions about whether to close on a given Sunday. Here in New England, that often takes the form of deciding whether to open up when there’s a winter storm on Sunday morning. This has been especially noticeable because we’ve had a winter storm hit on each of the past Sundays.

Typically, three options are considered — (1) Have both an in-person service and a livestreaming option; (2) No in-person service, service available via livestream only; and (3) Cancel the service entirely. Congregations within a couple of miles of each other can wind up making different decisions based on their livestream capabilities vs. their in-person capabilities, as well as the needs and interests of their members and friends. There is no one correct answer. Yet although there is no one correct answer, canceling in-person services carries a significant risk.

Here’s how I explain that risk: Congregations are operating in an increasingly competitive market for people’s leisure time. We used to place based on the assumption that congregations were in competition with one another, e.g., the Unitarian Universalist congregation was in competition with the local Congregational church and Reform Jewish synagogue. But now our primary competition is with other leisure time activities. For many people, our primary value may not be religion and spirituality, but community and interpersonal contact. So here at First Parish in Cohasset, our most direct competition includes both the liberal UCC church across the street, and the local coffee shop a block away.

As it happens, I live above the local coffee shop. The past two Sundays, the coffee shop opened promptly at 7 a.m. as usual, regardless of the winter storms. Because I’ve noticed that the coffee shop is always open, I’m reluctant to cancel in-person services for a winter storm — if we do cancel, we’re essentially saying that we’re less important than a cup of coffee. At the same time, we offer livestreaming for anyone who’s still snowed in, or who feels physically unable to wade through snow and ice to get to services. (And maybe there’s a sense in which livestr4eaming allows us to out-compete the coffee shop.)

Yes, in-person attendance was low both weeks (on 2/9, 11 in person, 32 livestream log-ins; on 2/16, 20 in person, 20 livestream log-ins). Foot traffic at the coffee shop was also low, from what I could see. But First Parish wants to remain competitive with other leisure time activities, and that’s reason enough to stay open for both in-person and livestreaming during both winter storms. — Mind you, that’s me speaking as someone who’s worked in sales and marketing; I can totally understand why other congregations would think this strange.

Noted without comment

From “The American Taboo on Socialism” by Robert N. Bellah in The Broken Covenant: American Civil Religion in Time of Trial, 2nd Edition (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1992), chapter 5, pp. 112-138:

“Inevitably when a dichotomy becomes magnified in such a way that both sides of it are distorted, one begins to suspect the presence of the psychological mechanism of projection. The ‘rugged individualist’ decrying every form of collectivism, above all atheistic communism, as the very embodiment of evil, may be projecting his own dependency needs and needs for community, ruthlessly repressed and denied in himself, onto his alleged enemies. Even granted the unspeakable crimes committed in the 20th century by Communist nations (a close inspection of the history of the century, however, would disclose that such societies have had no monopoly on unspeakable crimes) the morbid anti-Communism of the American right, and the tendency to assimilate every kind of socialist or even liberal position to that of Communism, indicates, I believe, some serious failure to come to terms with the balance between dependence and independence, solidarity and autonomy, that are part of any mature personality or society. This morbid obsession may be a symptom then, not of the genuine Americanism that it claims, but of its distortion and pathology.”

Another point of view

My friend Rabbi Michael is a member of the South Jersey Board of Rabbis and Cantors. They just issued a statement about the Trump administration’s proposal to turn Gaza into a luxury condo development. Not surprisingly, they oppose it on several reasonable grounds. But what I especially like is that they call out the Trump proposal as a kind of ethnic cleansing — something that they are adamantly opposed to. Here’s a PDF of their statement.

As politicians spin off into fantasy worlds, it’s nice to see how religious folk can help keep us grounded in reality. Theology has a bad name amongst the elite classes these days, but training in theology and philosophy includes both training in analyzing texts and discourse, and training in moral and ethical analysis. The latter training is especially important — and seems to be almost entirely lacking amongst the elite classes and the politicians these days.

Critiquing the concept of “White privilege”

I’ve long been uncomfortable with the concept of “White privilege,” mostly because I feel that the concept doesn’t really tell White people why they should give up their White privilege. I envision a conversation that goes something like this: “Hey, check your White privilege.” [reply spoken externally] “Oh, right, sorry!” … [reply spoken internally] ((Wow, I got White privilege? that sounds pretty good, I’m gonna hang on to it.))

That’s not a serious critique of the concept of White privilege. It’s just this feeling of discomfort that I have. Yet the feeling is strong enough that I find myself not wanting to use the phrase “White privilege,” due to some kind of nameless fear that it’s just going to reinforce the behavior in us White people that the phrase is supposed to put an end to.

In an essay titled “How ‘White Privilege’ Obscures Black Vulnerability,” Mukasa Mubirumusoke, a professor at Claremont McKenna College, provides a more serious critique of the shortcomings of the concept. Mubirumusoke ends his essay with this rhetorical question:

“In what ethical universe could the possibility afforded by whiteness to dominate another human being just because they are Black be considered a ‘privilege’? In the ethical universe of white America today, apparently.”

(Parenthetical note: The essay appears on the Public Seminar website, which I hadn’t seen before. Looks like a lot of good stuff there.)

But wait, there’s more. In a recent post on the American Philosophical Association blog, Lewis Gordon offers a constructive critique of Mubirumusoke’s critique. SCroll way down to find it, and (as I understand it) Gordon’s basic point is that Mubirumusoke’s critique is based on Afropessimism, an intellectual approach that Gordon finds unsatisfactory.

In the course of his longer discussion of Mubirumusoke, Gordon asks a question that may provide a better grounding for a critique of “White privilege”:

“[W]hy center so much of reality from white perspectives?… Fanon, after all, stated that the Black (‘Le Noir’) had no ontological resistance ‘in the eyes [that is from the perspective] of the [White].’ But he never claimed the White was correct. The White needs that lie. I can go on, but at this point, it should be clear that I’m concerned that Mubirumusoke gives too much credence to the problematic, almost Zeno-like forms of problematic argumentations of impossibility as well as the concomitant Stoicism of individual resignation — perhaps even ressentiment — that such arguments occasion….” (N.B.: in this quotation, the notes in brackets are Gordon’s.)

Gordon’s philosophically nuanced critique of Mubirumusoke takes the critique of “White privilege” to a whole other level. It’s a level above my pay grade, to be honest. But let’s be clear, Gordon is not some “anti-Woke” political conservative, like the ones who dominate U.S. politics these days. Trump and company cannot take comfort from this philosophical conversation. By the same token, political liberals who get uncomfortable when their White privilege is called out aren’t going to find much comfort in Gordon’s critique, either. Gordon even goes so far as to criticize that idol of liberalism, the individual:

“Added to all this is the larger history of Euromodern thought as emerging with the global expansion of enslavement while centering freedom in its discourse. The history of political theology and its role in racism and the advancement of capitalism offered rationalizations of a philosophical anthropology in which ‘the individual’ collapsed into stoic models of rationalization instead of understanding the fundamental incoherence of an individual, treated as real in and of itself like an Aristotelian substance, or, worse, a minor, or perhaps egologically inflated sense of self as, a god.” (N.B.: in this quotation, the emphasis is mine.)

Whoa. Take that, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Gordon is striking at the root of our theological commitment to “the individual.” Because — following Emerson — we Unitarian Universalists really do have this tendency to treat the self as a god. Which is idolatry. And we are fundamentally opposed to idolatry.

Well, as I say, all this is well above my pay grade. But I’d also say both these essays are worth reading. Every time I read Lewis Gordon, I find myself getting insight into problems that have been bothering me. And based on what Gordon says about Mubirumusoke, he might be another one of those thinkers….

World Ukulele Day

February 2 is “World Play Your Ukulele Day.” This holiday was established in 2011 by Mike Lynch (a.k.a. “Ukulele Mike”; see below). In the original announcement, Mike Lynch kept his expectations low. “Take your uke out of its case,” he said, “and play it.”

Simple enough.

Screen shot from a video showing a man holding a ukulele and talking
Screen grab from Mike Lynch’s original Youtube video announcing World Ukulele Day. Click the image to see his video on Youtube.

OK. I did that.

What else can I do?

Mike had a suggestion: “Find someone who needs a smile. You might take it to an elder care, you might take it to a shut-in….” In other words, try to make the world a better place by playing your ukulele. But I went on a field trip with teens from our congregation’s youth group, which didn’t leave time for ukulele excursions.

Since I don’t have time to do anything else, I’ll share a ukulele song sheet for “It Was a Lover and His Lass,” Thomas Morley’s 1600 setting of poetry by William Shakespeare. Before you get all critical, yes I know it’s a pretty primitive song sheet. And no, I didn’t attempt to transcribe Morley’s lute accompaniment for ukulele (way above my pay grade), I just put in chord indications based on a simplified form of Morley’s harmony. Yet even in this simplified form, it’s kind of challenging. We tried it at our Cohasset ukulele circle, and people noted the nine different chords you have to know, the fast chord changes, and the tricky rhythm in mm. 22-23. Whatever, it’s a great song — and this is the best I’ve got for World Ukulele Day 2025.

(N.B.: Public domain music, public domain words, and I’m releasing my mediocre typesetting into the public domain. Go ahead and copy it all you want.)

More about Ukulele Mike

Michael B. Lynch (1945-2018) was a career music educator and an accomplished ukulele player. As a youth, he played in a ukulele ensemble led by the legendary ukulele educator Chalmers Doane. Beginning in 2009, he produced a popular series of instructional Youtube videos under the name “Ukulele Mike.” He also published a number of instructional CDs and books, still available through his website that his wife continues to maintain.