June 2006

I’m getting ready to move this week. Right after Independence Day I’ll be spending a little time with family, then I’ll spend the rest of the summer at the Catholic Worker community in South Bend, Indiana.

(I am mildly excited to be moving to Chocola County.)

Cleaning out the attic has also inspired me to clean out my e-mail. I have 28 e-mails still on my “action needed” list, the earliest being an e-mail from this January from Kaihsu titled “Ken Wilber vs Herman Dooyeweerd.”

Pictured: Two more things to move–Happy Birthday Mike Leslie “rent club” poster, and a painting by John Guida.

Chart: This video of a talk by Hans Rosling features some fantastic animated data.

Not guilty: Catholic Worker Jim Dowling found not guilty in Brisbane “on June 1 on a charge of obstructing police when they arrested him last year at a public debate about civil liberties.”
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Slate has an article on the Michael Lerner religious left vs. the Jim Wallis religious left.

Plowshares: Boing Boing mentions a Plowshares action by Greg Boertje-Obed, Carl Kabat, and Michael Walli. They hammered on a silo and spread their blood about while dressed as clowns.

If I could Update my comment on Boing Boing, it would read:

. . . hammering on a missile silo is meant to be purely a symbolic act.

The interplay of symbolism and practicality is what makes these sorts of actions tricky to write about.

Tom Lewis points out that this is the third time Carl Kabat has tried to sabotage a missile while dressed as a clown.

Mike: I met Carl Kabat once, for ten seconds.

Scott: You’re doing pretty good—I met him once for ten minutes!

…

Claire: I think I met Carl Kabat once. He’s always in jail.
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Both houses of our state legislature have finally voted, with veto-proof majorities, for the legalization of over-the-counter sales of hypodermic needles in the state.

Delaware and New Jersey are the only other states where needles are so restricted.

Our governor is planning to cast a symbolic “Yes to Hepatitis!” veto, and the Globe quotes our lieutenant governor and gubernatorial candidate, Kerry Healey, as supporting this decision:

“Imagine your children not only coming upon dirty needles in the park, but standing next to a drug addict in the checkout line of CVS who is there to buy more needles,” said Healey, over the chorus of advocates standing nearby chanting, “Clean needles save lives” and “We need to make sure that this bill goes no further.”

Yes, apparently in states where needles are legal, the kids might as well be pincushions for all the dirty needles that stab them every day.
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This article notes some of what happened at the Saints Francis & Thérèse Catholic Worker community in Worcester, Massachusetts, between 1986 and 2006. It first appeared in the June/July 2006 issue of The Catholic Radical. In a week and a half there will be a gathering to celebrate the community’s 20th anniversary. 52 Mason St, Worcester MA 01610 - 508.753.3588 - theresecw@gmail.com.
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Kudos to Milton Valencia for putting together an article on local govt responses to illegal immigration, with a Worcester focus.

“Police unwilling to be immigration agents:”

WORCESTER— Police Chief Gary J. Gemme doesn’t see his officers assuming the role of immigration agents. Saying it would spoil community relations, the chief echoed a chorus of opposition against Gov. Mitt Romney’s proposal allowing state police to arrest illegal immigrants, saying it would create fears of a police state.

“You don’t want victims to not report a crime because of a greater fear of police,” the chief said. “Part of community policing is reaching out to the community and developing support.”

[…]

The chief said his officers have worked with immigration officials before, as they have with other federal agents. Recently, ICE agents were asked to review a list of Worcester’s most notorious criminals, with the chief checking whether their immigration status could be a way to keep them in jail and off city streets.

It wasn’t a solution, however. Each person on the list was a U.S. citizen, the chief said.

A Romney spokesman is predictably quoted as saying “We are a nation of laws.” Just once, I’d like a reporter to ask the follow-up question, “What do you mean by that?”

Bruce is 50. Happy birthday! Here’s a video we made on Worcester Commons.

The good thing about having him as my spiritual advisor is that he’s always ready with advice. The bad thing is, it’s not always good advice.

(I’m hoping to put together a massive video roundtable discussion featuring Bruce before I leave Worcester in a couple weeks. Keep your fingers crossed.)

Noah writes:

In that Lt. Gov debate on the Ch. 5 web site, Janet Wu asks the candidates what is in their ipod.

Of course, none of them own such a device, although Deb Goldberg tells us she’s a big Aerosmith fan. Then Worcester Mayor Tim Murray announces that he likes all kinds of music, but the only kind he doesn’t really like is loud metal.

Now there’s certainly nothing wrong with this sentiment—I pretty much share it myself, with a few exceptions, and it’ll certainly go over with the geriatric crowd that will turn out to the Democratic primary (without turning off the Patrick activists like he would have had he named hip hop)—but I found it amusing that the elected ambassador from the city that hosts MetalFest, gave birth to WAAF, and, between the Palladium and Lucky Dog has several metal shows a week would admit to not liking the genre. It’s sort of like the mayor of Detroit admitting he doesn’t like Motown.

Thanks to Noah for allowing us to post this. Disclosure: I am currently wearing a Motörhead shirt.

Well, I wish I was Mr Gates
(Pay me my money down)
They’d haul my money in in crates
(Pay me my money down)

So it broke elsewhere awhile ago, and on BoingBoing today, that Bruce Springsteen’s new Pete Seeger tribute album has some sort of nasty digital restrictions management on it, and that the DRM kept people from listening to it on computers, some CD players, and ripping it to iPods.

I’ve been listening to it on two Windows machines, my housemate’s CD player, my iPod, and, as I write this, under Ubuntu, without any trouble. So the story struck me as bogus.

But Amazon customers, among others, have been having trouble playing it on their devices, so I took a closer look at my disc.

This is not a copy I bought in a store—it’s a promo disc I snagged a couple weeks ago. And it isn’t a CD on one side and DVD on the other, like the ones in stores, but CD-only. And it presumably follows the standard CD format, as it has the “Compact Disc Digital Audio” logo on it.

So I guess I should treasure this disc. This free, promotional, audio-only copy provides someone like me with much more value than a store-bought, ultra-DRMed, maybe-it’ll-play-maybe-it-won’t “Dual Disc” would.

If I were going to pick up a copy as a present, I’d check the used bins at my local record store for a promo version, rather than order the real thing and risk disppointing my friend. Pretty weird.

In an attempt to slim down “Items,” I’ve added a sidebar of “Worcester News.” (One of these days I’ll rip off Bory Kem and title it “Worcester News For All To Learn.”)

Nunavut: Zack forwards this depressing New York Times report: “7 Years Into Self-Rule, Inuit Are Struggling.”

Darfur vigil: Jay McGinley continues a “22 hour a day” vigil at the White House for Darfur that he’s been keeping since May 14, 2006.

Indymedia: Most of the feeds on our local Indymedia are broken. I live half of my life in RSS, so I made some screen-scraped feeds with a commercial service. Maybe you’ll find them helpful.

• Local newswire: http://feed43.com/2002714333612622.xml
• Incoming articles: http://feed43.com/2815873668846283.xml

The incoming feed contains lots of cross-posted chaff that has nothing to do with Worcester, and is destined to be sorted as “Contributions From Elsewhere.”

Dave Winer suggests describing RSS as “automated web surfing” when addressing a non-technical audience.
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