But the end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the beloved community. It is this type of spirit and this type of love that can transform opposers into friends. The type of love that I stress here is not eros, a sort of esthetic or romantic love; not philia, a sort of reciprocal love between personal friends; but it is agape which is understanding goodwill for all men. It is an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return. It is the love of God working in the lives of men. This is the love that may well be the salvation of our civilization.
–Martin Luther King, Jr.

Deborah Plummer, Associate Vice Chancellor for Diversity and Equal Opportunity at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, will be speaking on “The Beloved Community” at St. Peter’s Church in Worcester, Monday, April 11, 6:30pm.

The church is at 929 Main Street in Worcester, across from Clark University.

Worth noting that not only does Dr. Plummer specialize in the issues surrounding “diversity,” she was a nun for 13 years.

Happiness Pony

Asa Needle, Sarah Assefa, and I have published the first issue of a new newspaper for Worcester, Happiness Pony. We’re still figuring out distribution stuff–if you have a suggestion of a place you want to be able to find it, please post a comment.

And yes, we’ve talked about this title before.

The video will be posted to the net and cablecast on WCCA TV13.

How to contact the 508 show.

Worcester bloggers

Shaun Sutner, investigative reporter for the local paper, tells me there’ll be an article about local blogs on Thursday*.

This got me thinking about this blog, and about why I write here so rarely these days.

Some of my blogging energy has gone into 508 and my Facebook account. It’s like Cory Doctorow says: “. . . Twitter is siphoning off all the stuff we used to put on blogs that really wanted to be a tweet.”

Mostly, though, it has to do with lifestyle. There have been times in my life when I was doing things, and learning things, that I wanted to share with the world, whether to brag or to help people or to help accelerate those things through publicity. For some time now, and certainly since I returned from DC, life has been a little quieter, with much lower-profile “doing” (with the exception of hosting a TV show), and with “thinking” that’s more focused on the roots of things than the day-to-day news.

I’ve always wanted the entries on this blog to reflect the lives of those who write them, and in my case that seems to have happened. I think it’s a good thing.

This reminds me of the question I’ve heard a couple times this month: “Who will replace Jeff Barnard?” If “Jeff Barnard” was a job description, and Wormtown Taxi the result of someone’s plan, maybe the question would make some sense. But it doesn’t.

Update: Talked to Shaun on the record this morning.

I think when people ask “Who will replace Jeff?” they mean “Who will be the influential, prolific online critic of the Telegram and City government?” It’s those three factors, influential + prolific + critical, that define Jeff in these people’s minds.

I wish I could ask Jeff, “When did you become influential?” Because I think even Jeff Barnard didn’t become “Jeff Barnard” by this definition until he’d been blogging a good long while.

(* Note: Didn’t run on Thursday.)

Advent reading

The New York Times Magazine interviewed Garry Wills:

You’re an observant Catholic. What are your thoughts these days about Pope Benedict XVI?
I think he’s irrelevant.

Irrelevant to what?
To religion; to the Gospel.

As it happens, this Advent I’ve been trying to listen to the audiobook of the Pope’s Jesus of Nazareth while reading Fr. Raymond Brown’s Birth of the Messiah. The Pope begins with Jesus at 30, so there’s not a lot of overlap, but every time he dips back into the “infancy narratives,” I experience a surprisingly distracting cognitive dissonance.

There was a time when I’d read James Ellroy and Tom Swift books at the same time, switching back-and-forth at the end of each chapter. It could trick my brain into finding bitter humor within Chow’s latest slapstick, or leave me totally unprepared for an Ellroy character’s double-cross. Not sure I’m getting any of those benefits with my Advent reading. It’s just making it harder to stay with it.

JFK, Obama, and the Unspeakable: A Parable of Turning

Catholic Worker and author James Douglass will be in Worcester this October 5 to talk about the Kennedy assassination. He is the author of JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters. The event is Tuesday, October 5, 7pm at the Saxe Room, Worcester Public Library.

James Douglass traces the “turning” of President John F. Kennedy from the Bay of Pigs Invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis right up to the week of his death. He is transformed from a conventional Cold Warrior to someone determined to pull the world back from the edge of apocalypse.

Douglass views Kennedy’s change from a contemplative perspective, particularly attuned to the grave moral and spiritual matters at stake. President Kennedy saw his mission in similar terms. Those who plotted his death were determined to kill the vision. Only by unmasking these forces of the “Unspeakable,” Douglass argues, can we free ourselves and our country to pursue that vision of peace.

Jim Douglass has written four books on the theology of nonviolence, served as a theological advisor, on questions of nuclear war and conscientious objection, to Catholic bishops at the Second Vatican Council, taught theology at Bellarmine College, the University of Hawaii, and in the Program for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence at the University of Notre Dame. He and his activist wife Shelley are founding members of the Birmingham, Alabama Catholic Worker house of hospitality for homeless families.

Support contemporary Yiddish poetry

For years, Zack Berger has been out there for you translating Dr. Seuss and Curious George into Yiddish. Now he’s asking for help funding his next project, Not in the Same Breath: A Yiddish & English Book of Poetry. I hope you’ll join me in supporting this.

Audio: mp3 link, other formats, feed

Video: Downloads and other formats

[0:56] The George Street Challenge is coming up.

[2:15] They’re doing The Taming of the Shrew in Green Hill Park the next few weeks.

[3:00] Billy Blue is coming back to Worcester Saturday.

[3:30] Gary Rosen thinks Brendan is running for City Council next year.

[3:46] There was a Tea Party protest Saturday at which an interloper attempted to desecrate the flag.

[5:46] We oppose the City Council’s planned anti-pit bull ordinance, as does the Worcester Animal Rescue League.

[14:33] New York Times operating profit is up, whereas the Globe + T&G’s revenue is down. (To clarify, their circulation revenue is up, but circulation is probably down.)

[15:10] We revisit the long and frustrating history of the South Worcester Industrial Park. Thanks to Nicole for helping produce this segment.

Catholic anarchism
Michael Iafrate excerpts an essay from the latest Catholic Worker. If I find the thing online I’ll post a link.

Telegram & Gazette paywall
Our local paper, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette is planning to charge for some local stories on their website, starting this summer. The first few stories each day would be free, after that you’d have to pay. Jeff Barnard has an impressive rant about the modern economics of newspapers and how they relate to the T&G and its plans.

New Ubuntu released today
For the past few years, I’ve mostly used computers running the Ubuntu operating system, the most popular flavor of Linux. The latest version is out today.

“Song for Holy Saturday”
Following tradition, here’s a link to this poem by James K. Baxter.

“Enjoy the Silence: Triduum, sexual abuse, and the disappearance of the crucified”
Michael Iafrate:

It is truly difficult to hear the continued reports of children raped by priests and not be struck by the presence of the Crucified One there. But this presence is denied—“I do not know the man!”—each and every time church leaders and members alike remain silent or utter words of defensiveness that embarrassingly fill nearly every news story or ecclesial statement covering the abuse.

“Who’d win in a wrestling match, Lemmy or God?”
Not sure about the theology here:

(Very much looking forward to the Lemmy documentary.)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Michael Iafrate makes the case against Thanksgiving, then admits:

. . . I am not about to be so politically smug that I would simply refuse to participate in my own family’s traditions.

Me neither. I love celebrating a fall feast with family, and I love celebrating a utopia in which natives and immigrants could co-exist. I’d embrace a chance to have a more honest celebration without giving up the joy.

Don’t forget that the day after Thanksgiving is Buy Nothing Day. I’ll be doing my bit to “keep the Christ in Christmas” by keeping myself out of the mall. For a great example of a joyous Buy Nothing Day, see Mark Dixon’s 49 Hours at Wal-Mart.

Worcester Police on Twitter

The WPD’s Twitter feed makes me wonder when we’ll see our first Worcester crime blogger. Seems like anyone could gather quite a bit of info with a computer, police scanner, and telephone.

If you’re interested in the Catholic Worker movement in 2009, you might want to read about River’s ministry, read his blog, or follow him on Twitter.

Michael Spencer on the death of Michael Jackson
From the Internet Monk podcast:

We should remember how many people came to Christ because they had concluded that the gods of the old world were empty and meaningless. Our task is to keep Jesus from being one of the gods of the old world.

Amen.

Bonus mp3 link: Stale Urine covers “Billie Jean”

Organizing a Janitor’s Union in Worcester: July 8, 7pm, 52 Mason St
A presentation at the SS. Francis & Therese Catholic Worker:

Chris Patterson, a community organizer with Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 615, will speak about the campaign to expand membership in Worcester’s union of janitors. Discussions and refreshments to follow. The event is free and open to the public. All are welcome. For more information, please call 508 753-3588.

“Pope Calls for New Economic Order”
Dave Griffith:

So, I know that the any headline that begins with “Pope” is going to be divisive–either you’re on the bus or off right away. But I think the new encyclical “Caritas in Veritate” ( “Charity in Truth”) should be of great interest to many, Catholic or not, because it calls for an end to capitalism as we know it.

Haven’t read this encyclical yet. Will revisit the topic when I do.

I would say, by-and-large, the answer is Yes.

• The Catholic Worker movement is decentralized, and there’s nobody in a position to enforce these things.
• Many folks in Catholic Worker communities are not Catholic or not church-goers.
• That said, based on visits to dozens of communities and meetings with hundreds of Catholic Workers, I think that most Catholic Workers are at least occasional churchgoers.
• Some Catholic Workers make churchgoing a priority. Co-founder Dorothy Day attended mass every day. There are Catholic Workers who are priests, nuns, and deacons. On this website, we have archived many homilies from masses at the Mustard Seed Catholic Worker in Worcester. I think most of those who go to mass there on Fridays also attend at their own churches on Sundays.

Guantanamo Uighurs to be released to Palau, Bermuda?
This is years overdue. Having spent a good chunk of 2009 agitating for their release, I’m still not very satisfied. Time will tell how this works out–some of them seemed to have ended up in Bermuda rather than Palau.

Rick Rushton, gangsta councilor
A friend passes along this exchange from Councilor Rushton’s Facebook wall:

Frederick Corr Rushton can’t shake the line “Mix em and cook em in a pot like gumbo” ….
May 27 at 11:27am

Kevin Murray at 11:56am May 27
NWA?

Frederick Corr Rushton at 2:32pm May 27
straight outta compton…is Ricky’s 7th birthday today…getting him the Striaght Outta Compton album

George Plimpton, RIP
My personal Worcester summer theme song will be Jonathan Coulton’s “A Talk with George.”

I’d never heard of him before fellow RNC arrestee Drew Wilson told me about him; turns out several of my friends worked with him and admired him.

If you’ve listened to the radio piece, it’s worth reading Scott Crow’s critique. (Scroll past the first few comments to see it.)

Worcester Chopped Sea Clams
Holmes looks up trademarked items named after Worcester.

The Foundation of All Activism . . . Dental Floss
Erik Marcus makes a point about taking care of yourself.