Dispatches from a very busy man

I haven’t said too much these past couple months on this blog so it’s due time for me to give a rushed update on my life. It seems as if it is harder and harder for me to find “internet time”. If I’m not working, which is much more rare these days, then I often despise the thought of willingly starring at a computer screen without getting paid to do so.

Which leads me to my first update on life. I work a lot of hours (45-60) each week and spend most of that time staring at a computer screen. None of that time, obviously, is spent writing posts or pontificating on land value taxation. Rather, I just make money. More than I ever have in my life. And, quite honestly, it’s a welcome change. More on all this in another post.

My personal life has been a mixed bag of happiness and sadness. We recently made a visit to St. Louis where we met up with many of our friends. I miss them all greatly. We spent so much time developing good friendships in Stl that it’s a bit disheartening to go at it again in KC. We’ve been lucky though since, come to find out, we have awesome neighbors. We’ve been spending a good bit of time with them just hanging, watching movies, and eating food. I’ve also gotten to know a group of 6-7 coworkers all of whom are very interesting and enjoyable people. We all go out for lunch once a week and our times together are filled with laughter and stories.

Finding a church has not been so successful. We were very lucky to be a part of Memorial Pres in Stl. There doesn’t seem to be any churches anywhere near as good in the KC area – at least within a decent driving distance. A few of the churches have some promise but no matter the choice we’ll have to compromise some important issues for us.

Henry has been doing great. He walks now and we spend a lot of time hiding under the bed sheets, wrestling on the floor, and playing with the big blue ball in the gym. We recently left mom at home at hiked to the library together to listen to a lecture on “natural capitalism”. Tons of fun. It’s really exciting to be able to go out on the town with Henry and leave mom at home to rest.

Lastly, I just took my GMAT test and was accepted at Rockhurst University for evening MBA classes. Never thought I’d be going back to school for a business degree but it’s hard to argue against “free” and “near”. Plus, it will give me an out for my interest in economics, finance, and social structures.

So that’s my life these days. There are many things we are looking forward too in the coming months and I hope to write some posts on each of them. These include the First Friday’s art walk, Saturday morning farmer’s market in the City Market, and the turning on of the water pumps for the city’s many fountains.

I don’t really want to bump Jeremiah’s manifesto off the top, but I had to share this site, which many of you may already be familiar with.

La Blogotheque is a french blog which can be a bit difficult to navigate, but they do this amazing thing called Take Away Shows, where the artist and the videotaper just wander around, or tape the show in a bathroom, or in an elevator, just on the run.  It’s a great idea and produces amazing videos with so many artists!  Animal Collective, Andrew Bird, Sufjan (my roomate calls him Soofahn, which makes me laugh) Of Montreal, Grizzly Bear (If you’re not listening to Grizzly Bear, you’re missing out.  Highly recommend Yellow House), you know.  A who’s who kind of thing. 

http://www.blogotheque.net/spip.php?page=cae_all

Here’s a link to the Beirut video page, and their music is heavily inspired by Balkan orchestras, I highly recommend them,  the singer was 19 when he wrote their first album, and if you do nothing else, listen to the first video on that page, the song Nantes.  His voice is perfection.

http://www.blogotheque.net/Beirut

Here’s a link to the Sufjan page,

http://www.blogotheque.net/Sufjan-Stevens-and-friends

Also, I got rejected from NPR for the Kroc Fellowship.  As with colleges, they just sent a tiny envelope. 

“It ain’t easy being Green.” – Kermit the Frog  

There is something of an iconoclast about me. I find myself dissatisfied with so much of what I see in conventionality that I frequently feel at war with the whole of mainstream living. My visual world is bombarded with aggressive advertising from business giants, yet I am an adamant opponent of commercialism. I cannot stand music played on the radio as it all strikes me as insincere and contrived expressions of money-hungry record mogols.

My culture nearly forces me as a working class citizen to purchase mass-produced products of all types from box-shaped corporate chain stores; and I am a hater of capitalism. Insurance won’t cover visits to a naturopath, even though they line up with my views of wholistic living more than does the typical MD. Most movies sell best when filled with exciting violence — the kind that tempts me to compromise my views of peace and justice — yet I am a pacifist.

Some have said this temperment of mine is the sign of a prophet. Not one who divinely fortune-tells the future, mind you, but one who warns of the coming wrath based on the obvious evils of present injustice. To be sure, not too many have told me that. More often than not, I recieve perplexed looks of dismay in response to me exposing my political persuasions or my taste in music. It sometimes makes for a lonely life.

But it also makes it all that more special when I find another person who holds similar interests, which I suppose is why I stay in contact with my friends on this forum. Most of them come as close as any others I’ve found. And I haven’t found many.

So I’d like to take this time to explain some things for those who continue to position facial gestures of disgust when I write or speak. This desire has been provoked by the many great, fruitful dialogues I have had on this forum as well as in person with many of you, but most recently on the last post about abortion.

See, I hate that shit. It’s despicable. I love children, and I see abortion as a direct attack on their pure lives. And when I think of being a child, I think of the Muppets. They were (although I have since renounced television) an important part of my childhood. For me, they represent a kind of innocence, yet one that is full of adult humor. That’s the balance. Pure and innocent AND mature and wise. Not too often do we find both. So it is with politics.

Let me begin by stating why, as a Catholic Christian, I have come to the point where I usually identify myself as a leftist libertarian (or anarchist, if you will). So don’t think I’m head-over-heals for Obama. Instead and in particular, let me explain why I am a member of the Green Party.

First, as Eugene McCarraher points out, the party calls for easing voter registration; twelve-year term limits on public officials; and full public financing of election campaigns. It endorses the repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act, one of the chief obstacles to a robust revival of the labor movement; worker control of pension funds; a proportional, single-chamber Congress; long-overdue cuts to the military budget, and an end to the “war on drugs” that has violated civil liberties, entangled the United States in a counterinsurgency war in Colombia, and distracted attention from urban poverty — as well as failed to stem the consumption of narcotics.

It demands universal health care through a single-payer system; a thirty-hour work week so that “working families” (a phrase that unwittingly ratifies the assimilation of family life to corporate designs) can be just families; and not a minimum but a living wage, something Catholics especially should endorse with historical pride.

Indeed, the Green conceptions of ecology and economics recall some of the oft-forgotten but most desperately needed notions of Catholic social thought. In genuinely “personalist” fashion, the Greens call for an end to the legal fiction of corporate personhood and the gradual breakup of large corporations. Moving beyond the “regulatory” approach to corporations and an idea of civic virtue that does not extend much beyond recycling laws, the Green environmental program encourages bio-regionalist approaches to ecology and production that used to be championed by people such as E.F. Schumacher, John Seymour, the Catholic Workers, and the National Catholic Rural Life Conference.

In what could be considered an imaginative extension of the “seamless garment” ethic, Greens call for the prohibition of patents on life forms in order both to preserve genetic diversity and to guarantee farmers’ access to seeds and other biotechnologies. And by insisting on “workplace democracy” — meaning not only a reanimated union movement but complete worker control of management, supervision, and technical design — the Greens revive not only syndicalism and guild socialism, but the democratic corporatist schemes of Jacques Maritain, as well as the ideals of Dorothy Day and the “small is beautiful” tradition.

While the Greens’ support for unlimited abortion rights should trouble Catholic voters, its conjunction with opposition to capital punishment should also highlight the contradiction and falsity of the positions taken by the consensus parties. Both parties unequivocally endorse the death penalty. But while the Democrats’ advocacy of “choice” is rhetorical, the Republicans’ stated antithesis is, I strongly suspect, bogus – a rhetorical and even cynical ploy to attract Evangelical and Catholic voters. (Decades of relative inaction, the prominence of prochoice governors, and the prochoice sentiments of many Republican voters are additional reasons to suspect Republican integrity on this point.)

I would argue that both major parties fail, in theory as well as in practice, the litmus test of any serious “life ethic.” So, partly by default and partly by conviction, the Green platform is the ensemble of positions most palatable to Catholics. (Although Obama may still get my vote to prevent another war-mongering Bush-type from getting in the White House. Or should I attempt to bunk the whole system and vote my conscience?)

And to think it was the social teachings of the Church that largely influenced the Greens. My theory is that E.F. Schumacher is the medium between the two. He was an ardent student of Church encyclicals on social justice who went on to breathe “Green” politics to life. So I guess I am okay calling myself a pro-life progressive. If by that one means that I align myself in the good company of the Distributists, the Consistent Life Ethic advocates, the Agrarians, the New Feminists, the Democrats for Life, the Catholic Workers, the Greens, Wendell Berry, the Dalai Llama, and Catholic Social Theory in general. Yeah, I’m okay with that. And I think Kermit would be too.

Frank Schaeffer, son of the renowned Presbyterian philosopher Francis Schaeffer, has announced his support for Obama — for pro-life reasons. Read about it here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-schaeffer/why-im-prolife-and-pro_b_85636.html.

In fact, Schaeffer, along with his father, are actually the founders of the pro-life movement, so his opinion is rather intriguing. And with my main men Paul and Kucinich both dropping out, Obama seems like the only viable candidate left (I like Nader, but whatever). What are ya’lls thoughts?

 “Jazz music was invented by the first generation out of slavery. I thought that was beautiful because, while it is music, it is very hard to put on paper; it is so much more a language of the soul … The first generation out of slavery invented jazz music. It is a music birthed out of freedom. And that is the closest thing I know to Christian spirituality. A music birthed out of freedom. Everybody sings their song the way they feel it, everybody closes their eyes and lifts up their hands.” – Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz 

Trevor’s Kansas City post provoked some comments from me about music. This is due to K.C.’s rich musical heritage, particularly in the area of jazz. The topic is an important one to me, as I find it to be extremely interesting. I guess you could say it’s a passion of mine.  And jazz is interesting because of it’s unique blending of various styles.

The only way I know to discuss the subject is to address it the way I think about it. And I tend to think whollistically. So I’d like to go back and initially talk about the roots of jazz, which are the roots of American folk music.

There is a music that can be called uniquely American. And that music came about when the banjo met the fiddle. It’s representative of the historical migration of two cultures — European and African — to one land. It’s the artistic manifestation of this collision.

Tons of people think bluegrass is what folks were playing during the Civil War, but really that genre is the close cousin to rock and roll, both having originated just after World War II and being the slick production of corporate radio moguls. Bottom line: it’s just pop music.  

So what is this “true” American music? It’s the music of the people before the world wars, before radio, before capitalism even destroyed this universal human language. It’s the music of the Negro cotton field hollers, kazoo-totin’ jug bands, handed-down English ballads, Celtic-based fiddle tunes accompanied by African-based banjo rythms, and on and on to an infinite variation of all the above.

The beauty of this historic situation was that a fiddler in the Ozark played differently than a fiddler in Appalachia. A banjo picker in Texas had a style different than a picker in Tennessee. One jug band on this side of the hollow sounded different than the one on the other side. Now all we have are a bunch of robots that sound alike.

So interested yet? A great place to start is Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music. It is the premier collection (along with the movie Songcatcher) of this so-called “primitive” music, the artistic expression of what music critic Greil Marcus labled the “old, weird America.” This is also a great piece to read to give one a taste of what I’m talking about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old-time_music.

So let this be our start into the great world of American music. I’ve given you a small taste of the history, a recorded collection to check out, and a movie to watch. These are the roots of jazz.