January 2008

What are Pie and Coffee readers and contributors doing for Lent?

Among other things, I’ll be participating in the Worcester Lenten fast and prayer for an end to the Iraq War. I’m not sure yet what form my fasting will take.

Feel free to post your thoughts below, or link to a blog post. Contributors, feel free to add resources to this post.

From the pope’s Lenten message:

The Gospel highlights a typical feature of Christian almsgiving: it must be hidden: “Do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing,” Jesus asserts, “so that your alms may be done in secret” (Mt 6,3-4). . . . If, in accomplishing a good deed, we do not have as our goal God’s glory and the real well being of our brothers and sisters, looking rather for a return of personal interest or simply of applause, we place ourselves outside of the Gospel vision.

So I assume everybody is giving alms, and you don’t have to mention that.

As Roman Catholics who love the Church, we listened closely to Pope John Paul II who called the 2003 Iraq War “a defeat for humanity” and to Pope Benedict XVI who said, “There were not sufficient reasons to unleash a war against Iraq,” and went on to say, “We should be asking ourselves if it is still licit to admit the very existence of a just war.”

We remember that, despite the Vatican’s clear opposition to the Iraq War, only one American Bishop, Most Rev. John Michael Botean, condemned it. In a 2003 Lenten Pastoral Letter, Bishop Botean called the Iraq War “objectively grave evil, a matter of mortal sin.”

On March 19, the Iraq War will enter its fifth year. More than 150,000 Iraqi civilians and nearly 4,000 American soldiers have perished. Hundreds of thousands of our sisters and brothers have been injured, orphaned, or left homeless.

We cannot help but wonder if this war could have been prevented with a stronger voice of opposition from all of us in the American Catholic Church. We admit our own complicity by our failure to raise our own voices more forcefully. But, even now, we believe that the voice of our Church can help end the bloodshed.

Therefore, inspired by the witness of Blessed Franz Jagerstatter, we join concerned Catholics in twelve other dioceses around the United States to call for a Lenten prayer and fast for peace. Like Jagerstatter, the only known Roman Catholic to refuse service in Hitler’s military during World War II, we believe that the Church must not stay “silent in the face of what is happening.” Starting on Ash Wednesday, we invite all people of conscience to join us at Saint Paul’s Cathedral for midday Mass each weekday, followed by a peace vigil outside the church and, shortly thereafter, at the nearby United States Federal Building. We will conclude our prayer and fasting during Holy Week on March 19th with a special Catholic peace witness at the Federal Building.

We hope and pray that this witness in Worcester and other dioceses around the country will draw the Church closer to the nonviolent Christ and help our nation to end the Iraq War and Occupation.

This weekend, 4 of us played with 2 gadgets that are intended to establish new market niches and which embrace “openness”: the XO (aka OLPC, a tiny laptop for developing-world kids) and the Chumby (a tiny wifi-enabled Linux box intended to compete with clock radios).

My blog post “The Chumby Is a Waste of Money” is coming soon, but I have to admit that watching the Worcester Commons webcam on this thing was pure fun.

Whatever the faults of OLPC’s strategy, their project already seems to have scared for-profit companies into making laptops for developing-world kids. And boy, the XO is a sweet piece of hardware: playing with it, I got the same thrill as when I first used the Wii and iPhone.

Odd UI: A big plus, in my book. What’s life without challenges?

Interesting apps: Two friends, much less geeky than I, had great fun seeing what they could get this thing to do. If there’s a fine line between confusing and intriguing, this is on the right side of that line.

Durable: I’m very hard on gadgets, so I love the solid feel of the XO. This is the only laptop I’d be comfortable using as a club or cutting board.

Cute as heck: Your iPhone will look sleek this year, old-fashioned next year. A thing of cuteness is cute forever.

We were telling one friend about the arty video game Passage (via Kottke), and Nick got it running on the XO. A cool end to a cool afternoon.

Related:
The XO in Darfur
XO vs. Macbook Air
Using the Chumby to build a robot car

God, on this Sunday after the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity,
we again thank you for your Church;
and for our sisters and brothers united in your son, Jesus Christ,
who taught us to pray to you as our father in heaven.

Lord, in your mercy,
hear our prayer.
Read the rest of this entry »

508 is a show about Worcester. This week’s co-host is Brendan Melican. This week’s guests are Jeff Barnard and Anne Lewenberg.

 

 Standard Podcast [25:03m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The City and EPA disagree about Worcester’s water treatment; we explore the social dynamics of having a city councilor as a Facebook friend. (Here’s the Cory Doctorow essay.)

We respond to some claims by Anthony Hmura, and note that his blog is totally avant garde. Brendan updates us on the median income debate. Note that he’s now Chair of the Cultural Commission!

HBML is “expanding,” and Mike won the giant plush squid.

Jeff Barnard talks about why there’s no “top story” in Worcester, and Anne Lewenberg describes the ongoing, successful Anarchist Theory and Action Skill Share Series.

Listen to the mp3 or other formats.

Update:Jeff created this fun short video using his own footage and the 508 audio: