The Corner

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I gotta get out more !

#IranElection: ma hameh baham hasteem

Naghshe Jahan Sq / Esfehan / IRAN #iranelection

natarseen, natarseen, ma hameh baham hasteem.

be not afraid, be not afraid, we are all together.

extraordinat image from the geniuses @ 37signal

Neat infographic: A beat-by-beat breakdown of a single track by “mashup DJ” Girl Talk.

Shift: An Animated Essay from Heather Arment on Vimeo.

great poem from milton

If you were speaking in parables
this afternoon, would you still talk
about seeds and birds and trees?

You see, what we know of farming
are supermarket shelves of Costa Rican
bananas and Peruvian asparagus;

a flower box of basil in the yard,
summer trips to the farmer’s market.
(Why is it so expensive?)

In our world of uniform tomatoes,
our apples sit, shiny and stacked in rows,
our Blackberries know nothing of time.

We fly so fast down the highway
we fail to see the clusters of muscadine
on the fence line, wild onions in the ditch.

I’m answering my own question. True
theology isn’t thirsting for a technological
upgrade: it’s still God 1.0: Christological kudzu.

Tell me the story again, in this summer
of kale and catastrophe, greens and grace;
and I will do my best to see and hear.

question ~ MILTON BRASHER-CUNNINGHAM

Expialidocious

Grace Pettis @ Journey

Pure South Austin

Perfect Austin bumper sticker

so thankful to be back home

icanread:

(via thisbloghearsmyconfessions)

And In That Moment, I Felt Infinite from Karen Abad ♥s Dinosaurs. on Vimeo.

David Scharfenberg: So maybe the slackers had it right after all

I wonder how long it will be - if ever - until all of us Baby Boomers swarm admit some of the truth of what David Scharfenberg writes about here:

All that job-hopping and freelancing? We were dilettantes, on some level, it's true. But we also understood, before most, that something had shifted - that we were moving to an economy of telecommuters and independent contractors and less-than-loyal employers.

And while the best minds on Wall Street cooked up the real estate mess that destroyed a global economy, we were sensible enough to steer clear of that overpriced condo and move into a dingy, three-bedroom rental with a few of our meathead friends.

You see, while Alan Greenspan and Countrywide Financial were creating a capitalism of disastrous excess, we were busy working on a more workable model. Not without its indulgences, of course. The exuberance of the dot-com bubble was undoubtedly irrational. But we did pretty well, this little slice of Generation X.

We brought you the Internet, worked on green technology, and filled the ranks of Teach for America. We crossed the color line, ate local produce, and bought secondhand clothing. We lived in smaller spaces, drove smaller cars, and took the subway to work.

It all seemed like a quaint liberal fantasy at the time. And on some level it was. But now, with a creaking economy and an overheated planet, it reads more like a survival manual: a guide to multicultural living in an increasingly diverse society, an incubator for the technology that might save the American auto industry, an antidote to our awful adventures in sprawl.

Of course, we could abandon this life as we get older, I suppose. We could grow impatient with our little apartments and cramped hatchbacks. We could set our sights on the kind of suburban existence we've forsaken. But I'd like to think we're smarter than that.

We created something worthwhile - a sustainable neighborhood, a tech future, a life we can manage. And we won't let it go too easily.

At least I hope not. As the nation rebuilds a crumbling capitalism, it could use a little perspective, a little wisdom. Bet you didn't think you'd get it from us.

Perfect Austin bumper sticker

Walk with me just a while, body of sunlight,
body of grass, surface of trees,
head bending to the earth we have tasted,
body of death, surface of leaves.
Sinking hooves in the mud by the river,
root of the live earth, live through my body.
Sinking body, walk in me now.

Walk With Me  Annie Finch

I wish I was at the Bjorcharist

I am fan of U2Charist, a worship form that a buddy of mine Sarah Dylan Breuer helped give birth to a little over 5 years ago.  These gatherings have spread around the globe, inspired by Bono's anti-poverty crusade.

Today, Church of the Beloved in Seattle will be hosting a Bjorcharist, a mash-up of the lovely and inspiring music of Bjork & the Book of Common Prayer liturgy for the Eucharist.    I so wish I could be there.

Björk Guðmundsdóttir is the most fascinating artist I know of right now in culture.  Hailing from Iceland, she has sold 15 million albums worldwide.  Her music incorporates pop, alternative rock, jazz, ambient, electronic, classical, folk and trip hop.  Björk and her partner, artist Matthew Barney, have a daughter, Ísadóra Bjarkardóttir Barney.

My favorite recent piece is Who Is It:

Lisa @ The Wildflower Center

The joys of South Austin

The Loving Kind from Howie Klein on Vimeo.

One of he areas that is the most significant whirlwind of change is the rate of information creation that we are living thru.    Andreas Weigend is a sort of tornado hunter of the information whirlwind - he is the former Chief Scientist at Amazon.com and an expert in data mining and computational marketing. He currently teaches the graduate course Data Mining and Electronic Commerce at Stanford University. 

His post The Social Data Revolution(s) is sensational:

In 2009, more data will be generated by individuals than in the entire history of mankind through 2008. Information overload is more serious than ever. 

The first data revolution came about when web commerce got going in earnest. It arose from the dream of collecting data from consumer decision-making. With the advent of the web, firms pondered whether it might be worth saving the vast amounts of data that customers were generating through their clicks and searches. For consumers, there was no hiding: after all, there is no online equivalent of discreetly checking out a magazine while a bookstore employee is looking the other way.

The second data revolution brought about a new dimension to data creation: users started to actively contribute explicit data such as information about themselves, their friends, or about the items they purchased. These data went far beyond the click-and-search data that characterized the first decade of the web.

In the last few years, users have gone a lot further than contributing metadata to movies and music: in fact, they have taken center stage. The center of the universe has shifted from e-business to me-business. Customers are also starting to discover and interact with each other. Knowing that they are not alone has shifted the balance of power from companies back to consumers. And they have begun to demand transparency. Customers are beginning to have a voice. They are realizing that the data they voluntarily contribute can help them and others with making decisions, providing true value. In turn, they want to be treated fairly as individuals by the companies they pay attention and money to.

holding hope: 2 hands on a greased watermelon

when I was growing up, every summer two things were constants:  being on a swim team, going to camp.  family structures could change, friends came & went - but just as certain as the texas rangers baseball club wilting in august was the fact that I would swim on a swim team and I would go to camp.

at both constants, I LOVED greased watermelons:

if you are not familiar with this scrum of joy, here's how it goes:

• Take the Crisco and cover the watermelon thoroughly.
• Heave the greased melon into the swimming pool. (It should float.)
• Blow the whistle, or shout "On your mark, get set, Go!" at which point everyone jumps into the pool and swims towards the watermelon.
• The object of the game is to be the person who gets the watermelon out of the pool. Meanwhile, everyone else is trying to take it away and get it out themselves.

this is yet another example of the transcendent truth that we in the south know: most things in life are made better with Crisco, that magical blend of blend of soybean oil, fully hydrogenated cottonseed oil, and partially hydrogenated soybean and cottonseed oils

hope is a slippery thing for me to hold on to. like a watermelon in the river, it slips out of my hand.  i rush to grab it - and it drops over and over.

these last few weeks have been personally very very very hard.  loved ones struggling, a new job that is consuming.  i want to be there and there and there - not on a bus trip or struggling to be present with hurt.

one of the tricks of greased watermelons is that you are swimming and trying to grab them - you are not on solid ground, you are not standing on 2 feet, you are in a liquid state trying to grab hold of something coated with stuff that slips.

hope is a slippery thing for me to hold on to.  sometimes I need help holding it.

cheryl lawrie pointed to a quote from Rudolf Bahro that helped me a lot get some perspective:

When the forms of an old culture are dying, the new culture is created by a few people who are not afraid to be insecure

Imagine that - being insecure is a GOOD thing, open hands are a good thing.

hope is a slippery thing for me to hold on to.   I do not mean the hallmark card kind of hope - more like the Václav Havel kind of hope:

Hope is a dimension of the soul. . . an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart. It transcends the world that is immediately experienced and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons. . . . It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out.

as a logic-based operating unit, i am not so big on "transcends the world that is immediately experienced".  as a person who thrives in a predictable world, I loathe things "anchored somewhere beyond its horizons".

but that is hope, huh ? "the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out".

that, my dear friends, that is a big watermelon, that certainty of sense regardless of experienced outcomes.

hope, like a greased watermelon, is best held by two hands:

And it feels like giving in
It feels like starting over
It feels like waking up, and
you know it's coming
It feels like a brand new day
Open your eyes

Shameless Commercial Plug: Green Day ~ 21st Century Breakdown

i just LOVE the new Green Day - they have produced rock opera for '21st Century' generation.  21st Century Breakdown is bold, even audacious - it includes elements of mariachi ('Peacemaker') and klezmer ('¡Viva La Gloria!').    Billie Joe Armstrong swings for the fences, aiming to be the Pete Townsend of the punk pogoing, lizard brain set.  This is protest music, in the tradition of Patti Smith,  Joe Hill, Josh White, Public Enemy or Manu Dibango.

The first single is KNOW YOUR ENEMY

Green Day - Know your enemy
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These lyrics have cycled thru my head for the last few days:

Overthrow the effigy
The vast majority
Burning down the foreman of control

Silence is the enemy
Against your urgency
So rally up the demons of your soul

Via SAI

wrestling feels a lot like making love: musings on the location of my soul

Much of Western culture - regardless of the religious affiliation - views the soul as the animating principle in humans and other animals, as opposed to σῶμα (soma) meaning "body".  I grew up being told that my soul was located somewhere between my heart & my belly.  Priests and leaders would point in that general vicinity when they discussed the place when God resided me in me, the part of me that would persist after my body passed away. 

More & more, I see how that metaphor is not enough for me.  It has translated to an existence that translates soul work into a mix of passion & consumption, my heart & my belly in cahoots to steer my God source into places and beliefs that are just not that...um..God-shaped.  If I feel more, then my soul will grow; if I consume more, my soul will expand like my girth.  This idea of where my soul resides keeps me focussed on loving & eating God - those are certainly great things - but it seems like less than God's massive scale.

For the last few months I have been wrestling with a story from the Jewish Creation Book of Genesis.

So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob's hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. Then the man said, "Let me go, for it is daybreak." But Jacob replied, "I will not let you go unless you bless me." The man asked him, "What is your name?" "Jacob," he answered. Then the man said, "Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome." Jacob said, "Please tell me your name." But he replied, "Why do you ask my name?" Then he blessed him there. So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, "It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared." The sun rose above him as he passed Peniel, and he was limping because of his hip.

It sorta blows my mind what that part of the human body is called, where the spine & hip meet, where God wrenched Jacob's body:

sacrum
The resemblance to sacred in this word for the bone that connects the spine to the pelvis is not accidental: it was believed by certain Greeks with naming rights that the soul resided in this spot: they called the bone hieron osteon. It became os sacrum in Latin, a compound from which we've dropped the first part.

The sacroiliac joint - the sacrum - what is sacred - our very soul.

What if I lived out that the soul resided in that place, that my movement - be it walking or making love - was a powerful expression of my God-ness ? There is a gorgeous poem that moves me along these lines from Rabbi Arthur Waskow:

I wrestled again with my brother last week,
First time since I was twelve and Grandma stopped us:
"She won't even let us fight!" we yelled, embracing,
But she said talking was nicer.
Wrestling feels a lot like making love.

Why did Jacob wrestle with God,
why did the others talk?
God surely enjoyed that all night fling with Jacob:
Told him he'd won,
Renamed him and us the Godwrestler,
Even left him a limp to be sure he'd remember it all.
But ever since, we've talked —
weve only talked.
Did something peculiar happen that night?
Did somebody say next day we shouldn't wrestle? Who?

We should wrestle again with our Comrade sometime soon.
Wrestling feels a lot like making love.

But Esau struggled
to his feet
from his own Wrestle,
And gasped across the river
to his brother:
It also
feels
a lot
like
making
war.

Godwrestling: Jacob and Esau

What if the very nature of my life is to wrestle with God ?  What if the location of my sacredness is my walk, that my limp (we all have limps, right ?), that my limp was a message of God with us ?  What is my heart & my belly propelled my sacrum, if they worked in tandem & tension ?

Here is the wildest part for me - that the physicality of the soul can be a lot more like wrestling or making love than it can be like hunger for more stuff or the warm & fuzzy stereotypes of the heart ?  The scarum, at the edges, a hinge in my body, moving like a piston - that part of my soul image is so far from the way I live.

I want a soul life that is like wrestling, that feels a lot like making love.

The biggest baddest Kindle ever. The Kindle 9XXXD

Kindle 9XXXD

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After The Mighty Fall: In sure and certain hope

Reading Jim Collins' cover piece How the Mighty Fall, and How to Stay on Top in this week's BUSINESS WEEK magazine, I am struck by the stages of the fall that he has researched:

• STAGE 1: HUBRIS BORN OF SUCCESS: "We're so great, we can do anything!"

• STAGE 2: UNDISCIPLINED PURSUIT OF MORE: more scale, more growth, more acclaim, more of whatever those in power see as "success."

• STAGE 3: DENIAL OF RISK AND PERIL: leaders discount negative data, amplify positive data, and put a positive spin on ambiguous data 

• STAGE 4: GRASPING FOR SALVATION: common "saviors" include a charismatic visionary leader, a bold but untested strategy, a radical transformation, a dramatic cultural revolution, a hoped-for blockbuster product, a "game-changing" acquisition, or any number of other silver-bullet solutions. 

• STAGE 5: CAPITULATION TO IRRELEVANCE OR DEATH

As is usually the case, Collins does a lot of work surfacing the issues around The Dynamics of Leadership-Team Behavior.  I am fascinated with how Collins zeroes in on questions-to-statements ratio - how comfortable leaders are in hosting a conversation, rather than driving or pontificating.

Collins' primary focus is the business world, so his data is actually less severe than if he had looked at how the mighty in churchianity have fallen.  How the Catholic leadership discounted stories of abuse - how mega churches have gorged on a diet of more, more, more - how old school mainliners search for "saviors" and so quickly discards them.  American churchianity is premised of success - we are the new Israel, our faith can kick your faith's butt, our Jesus is the CEO, your Jesus is the slave labor.

I found myself very moved by the conclusion that Jim Collins drew at the end of his magazine article:

The path out of darkness begins with those exasperatingly persistent individuals who are constitutionally incapable of capitulation. It's one thing to suffer a staggering defeat—as will likely happen to every enduring business and social enterprise at some point in its history—and entirely another to give up on the values and aspirations that make the protracted struggle worthwhile. Failure is not so much a physical state as a state of mind; success is falling down—and getting up one more time—without end.

I do not know Jim Collins, but I do have a lot of experience riding the FAILBOAT, be it in multi-billion dolar companies, start-ups, large media companies - and even in faith communities.  In faith communities, there is a perverse irony in the 5 steps Collins articulates.  Most Christian stories teach that new life comes from death, that faith arises from uncertainty, that we creatures made in God's image live (as the Book of Common prayer says in the funeral rite):

Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope of the resurrection.

The company I work with focusses on a massive, churning river - how people publish & interact with information.   Thomas Baekdal does a phenomenal job visualizing how people have processed information  over last 210 years of + 10 more years into the future:

A week ago, we presented at the Internat'l Digital Publishing Forum - the presentations for all the speakers are now up, as well as the Twitter feed.

Donald Rumsfeld: Religious Extremist or Just a Cynical Manipulator

GQ has posted some disturbing pictures of the daily intelligence intelligence updates supplied by then Secretary of Defense Rumsfield, in which (mostly) white US soldiers and marines are shown as crusaders for a Christian god against the evildoers in a land of non-believers, complete with out of context biblical quotes and apocalyptic overtones.

Donald Rumsfeld covered Iraq briefing papers with Biblical texts

I've watched my own country co-opt messages of Jesus to justify greed, prejudice and murder.  I've been part of a churchianity that showed a fond-ness for Scripture that embraced violence, with a blind eye to context or other passages.

These efforts by a U.S. administration have more in common with the very extremists we are fighting than the Prince of Peace.  I suspect that either Mr. Rumsfield believed thee photos justified the war we were pursuing - either that, or he felt that the viwer of these daily reports (President Bush) would be moved by the verses.

Either way - this is shameful.

Photographer: Amarand Agasi