Month: May 2007

Catholic Dissenter
Chris Kessing of Assumption College has a blog. Like everybody else, he blogs about Tom Lewis.

Anarchism begins in the home
Michael Iafrate, thinking about Howard Zinn:

From a radically Catholic perspective, since the central social reality is the Church, and not the state, it is more helpful to think of the family as the basic building block of the Church — the new society — rather than the basic unit of the state, or of society. Indeed, in Catholic circles you sometimes hear it said that the family is the “domestic church.” If, as I believe, the Church is (also) a political reality, an alternative social body and way of life that will always be at odds with the societies in which it finds itself, then the family, as the “domestic church,” will also be a revolutionary society that resists indoctrination into the system of domination and violence, or, drawing on Zinn’s terms, an ecclesial “pocket of insurrection.”

Worst op-ed ever
This NY Times anti-vegan op-ed is so bad, Erik Marcus issued an “emergency podcast.” You might want to compare the op-ed with the thoughts of an actual nutritionist, the staff of Vegan Outreach, or Isa Chandra Moscowitz.

Nameless Mike
One nice thing about digitizing videos as a WCCA volunteer rather than an employee is that I can post whatever I feel like on a particular day, without taking other things into concern.

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Here’s an interview from 2005 with vegan ultra-athlete Mike Benedetti, talking about his hikes of the Appalachian Trail, Pacific Crest Trail, and Continental Divide Trail. (This happens to be the first time I met Mauro. Kinda neat to have a recording of the beginning moments of a friendship.)

Rolling your own municipal network infrastructure
The cable/phone duopoly has done a cruddy job wiring our nation. DIY on the local level is one solution sometimes tossed about. Doc Searls shares his thoughts:

Q: Isn’t local infrastructure build-out a case of government competing with private industry?

A: No.  It’s a case of citizens finding a way to do what a protected duopoly cannot.  What we are doing is also not competitive.  We want to open our new fiber infrastructure to use by anybody, including cable and phone companies.  We have their interests at heart too.  By building out pure Net infrastructure — rather than competing with cable TV and phone systems — we are protecting and supporting their core businesses.

WoMag interviews Corey Dolgon
Allen Fletcher interviews Worcester State sociology prof Corey Dolgon on the socio-economic vibe of the city. If you like this, you might want to listen to an interview I did with him last year.

I had a little bit over-romanticized some of this post- industrialism in that it really wasn’t a post World War II de-industrialization, as much as it was like other New England towns, a kind of post World War I de-industrialization, and that Worcester has been struggling with these issues for a much longer time.

Plenty interviews OKC Catholic Worker Bob Waldrop
A nice article about Bob (who sometimes contributes to Pie and Coffee). Food co-op people take note:

Waldrop is the founder of the Oklahoma Food Cooperative (OFC), a monthly buying club that connects Oklahoma customers with Oklahoma farmers. The first month it existed, the cooperative generated $3,500 from 60 members. Fewer than four years later the April 2007 order stood at nearly $36,500. That’s a lot of local food and a lot of money in farmers’ pockets, and OFC board members expect that number to nearly double by the end of the year.

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