It all begins…

Forth Worth, Texas

Amtrak’s “Texas Eagle,” train number 21, arived in Fort Worth from Chicago almost on time. Almost, because somewhere in Arkansas, some idiot threw something on the tracks, and we had to wait for nearly an hour for the tracks to be cleared then checked. We made up most of the lost time, but not quite.

Yesterday evening, I was sitting in the dining car, chatting with a fellow who had grown up in Texas, gone to Chicago for a couple of years, and was moving from Chicago to return to college in Austin. It was just after the sun had gone below the horizon, we were pulling in to St. Louis, and we were just getting up to go — when we came around a curve and saw the gateway arch at the entrance to the city. A spectacular view at that hour of the day — we gazed at it in silence for a few minutes.

“That’s just about perfect,” I said to him, “coming on that arch at just this time of day.” It really was incredibly beautiful, all blue and silver and pink against the deepening blue sky, with a hint of pink at the western horizon.

“Before I went to Chicago,” he said, “I never saw any reason to go anywhere else. But then I lived in Chicago — seeing things like this — it’s having experiences like this….

Fort Worth is certainly an experience for me. A New Englander born and bred, this city feels like a foreign country to me. It’s both a Western city and, in some ways, a Southern city, with subtly different social cues that I’m not sure I understand. And I do have a hard time understanding what people say at times, just like in a foreign city.

At the same time, the influx of Unitarian Universalists has begun. I was sitting in a Starbucks, checking out their wifi connection (they wanted too much information from me, so I did not take advantage of the 24 hour free Web access) — sitting there sipping my iced coffee — when my advisor from Meadville/Lombard Theological School came up and sat down to say hi. She’s in town for interim ministry training, since she is leaving Meadville/Lombard and heading off to Ithaca to be the interim minister there.

The clerk at my hotel was looking harrassed when I checked in. He had just gotten off the phone with someone who wanted to make sure her room would only be cleaned with vinegar and water, and from what I could hear of his end of things, it was not a pleasant conversation for him (the word “entitled” comes to mind). Not surprisingly, he had been talking to someone coming to General Assembly. As he checked me in, he asked, “How many of you will there be at this conference?”

“Oh, a few thousand,” I said. He took that stoically — I’m sure every large conference has its share of pushy, entitled people. I just don’t like it when the pushy, entitled people are a part of my religious movement.

A final note to those of you who are coming to General Assembly — you can get free wifi Internet access at Billy Miner’s Saloon, on the corner of Houston and Third, about six blocks from the convention center. Which is where I’m sitting at the moment. Good cheap burgers, $1.50 draft beers, and free wifi — what more do you need from life? Although a quickie Web search reveals that Billy Miner’s got 16 demerits from the city health inspectors at their last visit (30 means things are so gross you probably don’t want to eat there) — so if you’re fastidious, you won’t like it here. Personally, I feel right at home — and the burger was pretty darned good, too.

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Off to General Assembly

Geneva, Ill.

In about four hours, the limo will arrive to start me on my journey to Fort Worth, Texas, site of this year’s General Assembly. (General Assembly, or “GA”, is the annual gathering of Unitarian Universalists from around the United States.) My plan is to post daily installments of a “GA journal” on this blog — my observations and impressions of General Assembly this year.

I’m looking forward to a number of GA events this year. Elaine Pagels is one of the featured speakers, best known for her current scholarship on the Gnostic Gospels. Pagels’s lecture will be streamed live on the Web, as will a number of other key events — a schedule of those live Web broadcasts will be posted within the next few days on the GA Web page. Another event I’m particularly looking forward to — UU theologian Paul Rasor is going to speak. I think he’s the most interesting UU theologian out there right now. And there will be a number of other workshops and events that look pretty good.

Of course, GA is really the business meeting of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA), the association of congregations of which our church is a part. I have to admit that I’m not exactly looking forward to attending meetings for business, but it does feel important. This year, a number of elections worth paying attention to will take place at GA. Bill Sinkford, current president of the UUA is running unopposed for his seond (and final) term of office — while the election itself is of little interest, I will be curious to hear what he has to say about the overall state of the UUA.

Before GA begins, I’ll be at “Professional Days,” a gathering of ministers, Directors of Religious Education, and other church professionals. Professional Days always immediately precedes GA. I’ll also post some reports from that event, but the program doesn’t look all that interesting this year — the big draw of Professional Days for me this year will be catching up with colleagues from around the country, and trading ideas and insights with them.

So that’s my little introduction to GA — hope you follow along by reading this blog, watching live Web broadcasts, and reading the GA reports that will be posted daily on the GA Web page.

My next post to this blog won’t be until Monday evening,as I am taking the train down to Fort Worth (I do hate flying). See you then!

Update: Links removed, some no longer active

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You were probably wondering…

Metra, the commuter rail service for the Chicago suburbs, names all its locomotives after the cities and municipalities it serves: “Village of Oak Park,” City of Elgin,” and so on.

In case you were wondering, engine #136, the “City of Geneva,” is at the engine maintenance facility on the Union Pacific West line.

You were wondering, weren’t you?

Moltman?!?

Mr. Crankypants is baaa-ack. Today, he will be ranting about theology. No fluffy lightweight stuff today, campers — theology.

Other UU bloggers have been taking a quiz that purports to tell you which theologian you most resemble. You can find it at http://quizfarm.com/test.php?q_id=44116 — but really, don’t waste your time, the quiz simply ignores all of Mr. Crankypants’s favorite cranky theologians.

First of all, you know a theology quiz is suspect when they use the term “man” instead of “humanity” — that automatically means that they are not considering cranky feminist theologians like Mary Daly, Rosemary Radford Reuther, or Rebecca Parker. (Actually, Rebecca Parker is too nice to be called cranky, but she is righteous.)

But it gets worse. The quiz has lots of talk about “Christ,” but very little about “Jesus” — so you can be pretty sure that you’re not going to be compared to Howard Thurman, who tended to use Jesus’ name, not the title later applied to him. The quiz goes on and on about retribution, with nothing about universal salvation, so you know cranky ol’ Hosea Ballou wasn’t considered. No mention of racism or oppression, so you can forget the cranky theolgians who fight oppression like James Cone, Anthony Pinn, or Gustavo Guttierrez.

Not even anything about the struggle between the secular and the religious, so rule out Harvey Cox (who’s not cranky), or Stanley Hauerwas (who has described himself as “the turd in the punchbowl,” and is definitely cranky).

Before Mr. Crankypants was even done with the quiz, he knew the quizmakers hadn’t even considered any of his favorite theolgians — that they were going to try to say Mr. Crankypants was like some dead male German. Sure enough — they said Mr. Crankypants was a 33% match for Jurgen Moltmann. John Calvin was a close second, and Jonathan Edwards was in there somewhere.

Mr. Crankypants can tolerate Edwards (who, although wrong, was plenty cranky, and could write reasonably well besides). But this was one online quiz that was so badly designed.

Now that you know you can skip the quiz, take that time to go and read some good, cranky, paradigm-shattering theology. But not Moltmann….for gosh’s sakes….

((Moltmann. Moltmann?! Grrr. Bet those idots haven’t even read A Black Theology of Liberation.))

What music do you like?

The book I’m in the middle of right now is called 20/20: 20 New Sounds of the 20th Century, by William Duckworth. It’s a book about classical music of the 20th C., including composers like Aaron Copland, John Cage, Arnold Schoenberg, Laurie Anderson, and Philip Glass. Very readable book, by the way, and it comes with a CD.

It has a great quote by Meredith Monk:

I’ve always loved medieval music. I love music through Bach and then [I] go to the twentieth century.

Me, too. I know it’s heresy, but I could easily live without Beethoven or Mozart. At one church I served, I worked with a music director who felt the same way. Sure, he played the usual Mozart-Beethoven-Brahms stuff, but he’s slip in some Gershwin, some jazz, Erik Satie, John Cage — once he played Cage’s “4′ 33”” as the prelude to a worship service. It was one of the most memorable performances of music at any church service I’ve ever been to. (If you don’t know the piece, look it up on the Web…if you know where to look, you can find the complete score and good critical commentary and in addition recordings in a variety of formats with bad commentary.)

At the other end of Meredith Monk’s timeline, Lynne McCanne played Variation 22 from Bach’s “Goldberg Variations” a couple of weeks ago here in Geneva. I was in heaven. Wouldn’t it be cool to do a series of each of the variations from the “Goldberg Variations” over the course of a church year? You could run it in parallel with a series of improvisations based on songs by the Ramones.

What kind of music would you like to hear in worship services?

Midsummer’s evening

The meeting at church ended just after 9:00 p.m. It was a mild evening, with a breeze just strong enough to get your blood moving. I took a long walk.

I wandered around downtown Geneva, and got to the depot as the 9:46 from Chicago was just in. Not many people on the train. I headed back home along Second Street, and stopped to listen to a large bird squawking way up in a tree. (I have no idea what it was.) By the time I got to the Lutheran church, it was 9:55, and it looked like some meeting had just gotten out. It’s always good to know that another church’s meetings go longer than those at one’s own church.

Got across State Street in a break in the traffic. The Old Towne Pub there on the corner was mostly full. As I passed the back of the pub, a car went slowly by headed towards State Street, and someone said, “Hi!” I turned to look, but they were talking to a woman who came out the back of the pub just then. “Jesus!” she replied, in one of those Spanish accents that has a slight lisp.

No lights were on in the Methodist church on Second Street. (Maybe they got out even earlier than we did. Or maybe we’re a more active church than they. I’ll pretend it’s the latter. Not that I’m competitive or anything.)

No more thoughts of church the rest of the way home. No real thoughts at all Just: –It’s a beautiful evening.

Summer time

Ryan T. came into church last night for Game Night, and announced it is mulberry season. Ryan is enthusiastic about such things, not just because he’s five years old, but because that’s the kind of person he is. I share his enthusiasm for mulberries.

I first knew it was mulberry season three days ago because of a sidewalk near our house: I saw a bird dropping that was strangely purple. I puzzled over this for a while, suddenly realizing that it’s mid-June and time for mulberries to be ripe.

I kept watching the sidewalks on my evening walks around downtown Geneva. Within a day, I came across a short stretch of sidewalk covered with little purple squished fruits, and here and there a purple bird dropping. A mulberry tree! I picked a handful (all I could reach) and ate them. They were sweet and good.

Since then, I’ve discovered two more mulberry trees, and Ryan told me about yet a third less than a block from the church on Second Street. Ryan is fortunate enough to have a mulberry tree growing over his driveway, and he was gracious enough to bring me a small bag of his mulberries this morning when he came to church.

Mulberries are a little eldery-tasting, and usually you can’t reach the really ripe ones because they’re too high, or too clearly over someone’s yard. But most years they’re the first fresh local fruit I eat each year — for about a week each year, they are my favorite fruit.

Midwestern savannah

Oak savannah, up until 150 years ago one of the dominant ecosystems around here in the Tri-Cities, has fascinated me ever since I first saw restored oak savannah over at Nelson Lake Marsh natural preserve. Contrary to the stereotypes I’d been fed, the prairie was not the only major ecosystem in Illinois.

The earliest settlers found almost half the State in forest, with the prairie running in great fingers between the creeks and other waterways, its surface lush with waist-high grasses and liberally bedecked with wild flowers. Here occurred the transition from the wooded lands of the East to the treeless plains of the West…. The pioneers admired the grasslands, but clung to the wooded waterways…. The waterways furnished timber for fuel and building, a convenient water supply, and protection for the settlers’ jerry-built cabins from prairie fires and windstorms. Fires invariably swept the grasslands in the late summer, when the Indians burned off the prairie to drive out game….” Illinois Descriptive and Historical Guide: Compiled and Written by the Federal Writers’ Project of the Work Projects Administration of the State of Illinois, 1939.

Where did the woodlands go?

Lumbering activities and the pioneer’s early preference for the woodland reduced the forests from their original extent, 42 per cent, to little more than 5 per cent. What is now commonly thought of as prairie is often the increment gained from the clearing of the woodlands. –Ibid.

The oak savannah is neither prairie nor forest, but a separate natural community, a transitional zone between forest and prairie. According to one definition, oak savannah has more than one tree per acre, but less than 50 per cent coverage (some authorities allow up to 80 per cent canopy coverage). The widely-spaced oaks rise out of the grassy undergrowth, giving a park-like appearance. This makes for a beautiful landscape, which feels open yet protected by trees.

How much of Illinois was savannah? According to a 1994 North American Conference on Savannas and Barrens, “No estimate of the presettlement extent of oak savanna has been developed for Illinois.” Since even modern definitions of oak savannah vary, it’s not surprising that no such estimate exists. Yet the reports of early settlers talk glowingly about the park-like settings of early Illinois, so we can be sure they knew and enjoyed oak savannah.

Funnily, the suburban landscape of downtown Geneva superficially resembles oak savannah, with its widely spaced trees and the grassy lawns. But the community of plants and animals is quite different in the suburbs than in true oak savannah, and it is a transitional zone between shopping mall and housing development, rather than a transitional zone between forest and prairie. Some early accounts say the Indians kept the oak savannah open by burning away undergrowth periodically; to shape today’s suburban savannah, humankind uses power lawnmowers and tree services.

You can see a contemporary image of oak savannah at photographer Miles Lowry’s Web site. Link The top two images are of a restored oak savannah about three miles due east of Geneva. Or if you want a technical discussion of oak savannah as an ecosystem, you can find it at the EPA’s interesting Web site on Great Lakes ecosystems. Link

Not midwestern

Living in the Pacific Rim city of Oakland, California, last year, we got immersed in an entirely different culture. For example, ukuleles are not exotic in the San Francisco Bay area — there are plenty of Pacific Islanders in the area, and lots of Asian Americans have picked up the instrument as well. There is a ukulele orchestra in Oakland. There was a fellow in the UU church I served out there who made his own ukuleles. Ukuleles are normal.

Here in the Midwest, the ukulele is mostly an oddity, a toy you give to kids. Which means Jake Shimabukuro is not exactly a household name around here. If he were white, or black, and played an electric guitar, we would have heard about him. But he’s Japanese American from Hawai’i, and he plays ukulele.

Midwestern culture is wonderful, but cross the boundary into Pacific Rim culture for a moment, and go check out Jake’s version of While My Guitar Gently Weeps. He’s incredible.