Been there.

I heard on the news tonight that the national unemployment rate is up over 10%, the highest unemployment rate since 1983. That’s the year I graduated from college. I think that experience has shaped my assumptions about jobs and careers ever since:– I assume that I will not be able to find a good job, or any job at all, and I assume that finding a job is in large part a matter of luck.

I’ve been wondering about the people who will graduate from college this year. How difficult will it be for them to find a job? How will the recession shape this assumptions of this year’s graduates? And I wonder how this year’s college graduates will cope with their student debt. My final year of college cost a mere $7,000 — about $15,000 in 2008 dollars — but today that college now costs something like $50,000 per year. What will it feel like to enter the job market during the current era of high unemployment, when you have perhaps $100,000 in student loans to pay off?

Petty writers are not to be despised

Samuel Johnson, that 18th century English writer better known today by his reputation rather than by his works, published The Rambler, a twice-weekly periodical, from 1750 to 1752. I think of The Rambler as a sort of 18th century blog: Johnson took on subjects that others had already written about, expressed firm opinions that had been heard before, and often wrote about matters that no one would care about a year later.

In the issue from 6 August 1751 (no. 145), Johnson apologized for those writers who write for ephemeral periodicals. “These papers of the day, the Ephemera of learning, have uses more adequate to the purposes of common life, than more pompous and durable volumes,” said Johnson. We have little need to know what happened in ancient kingdoms, about which we expect little or nothing; we have a real need to know about events that shape our lives today. “If it be pleasing to hear of the preferment and dismission of statesmen, the birth of heirs, and the marriage of beauties,” he says, “the humble author of journals and gazettes must be considered as a liberal dispenser of beneficial knowledge.” And so we should not despise such petty writers, even though what they write will be forgotten tomorrow.

Today’s petty writers can be found on the Internet. You can read blogs about cats who are trying to lose weight. You can read innumerable blogs about babies, reporting when baby gets its first tooth, when baby takes its first step, when baby vomits for the first time. You can read a seemingly infinite number of political blogs which tend to report on what other political blogs have said, often using vituperative language and relying on ad hominem attacks as their primary rhetorical strategy. I can enjoy reading blogs about overweight cats. I don’t mind reading blogs about babies that I know. I won’t read political blogs myself, but I can understand why people are fascinated by them. I’d be willing to call blogs generous dispensers of mildly beneficial knowledge, if I can qualify that by adding that they can be too generous in their dispensing. And if I think of Twitter, Facebook, and other popular social media as micro-blogging, then these newer social media are even more generous in dispensing their ephemeral writings. In the last half minute, dozens of petty writers have been posting such ephemera statements as “Sad story at fort hood. God save the world.” and “grey’s anatomy, you make me cry everytime. and i dont cry over television shows!” to Twitter.

What would Samuel Johnson make of blogs and Twitter? Would he have despised the petty writer who just wrote “i’m saying doe, if Britney can have 100million$ music career basically doing what kim just did. why cant kim?? lol” in a tweet to Twitter? Or would Johnson have found some fleeting value even in that? If I’m honest with myself I often find such ephemera to be more vigorously written and more entertaining (in the short run, at least) than Thomas Pynchon’s latest novel. And I don’t even know who “kim” is.

Bitter chocolate?

Today’s New York Slime, er, Times has a kind of fluffy article on the celebration of John Calvin’s 500th birthday in Geneva, Switzerland. The story, titled “A City of Mixed Emotions Observes Calvin’s 500th,” mentions in passing some of the ways that John Calvin has been consumerized:

But the show [“The Calvin Generation,” a musical,] was one of a vast program of commemorations — theatre, a film festival, conferences, exhibits, even specially concocted Calvinist wines and chocolates — described by some who have tasted them as somewhat bitter — of the birth of John Calvin 500 years ago.

OK, I can understand exhibits and conferences. But a musical about John Calvin? What, does Calvin fall in love with one of the heretics he’s about to burn at the stake? Calvin commemorative wine I can sort of understand (maybe you could use it at communion?), but Calvin chocolates I find incomprehensible, bitter though they may be.

“The sound of all of us…”

Last summer I learned a song that has stuck with me ever since. I was at a religious education summer conference, and Laurie Loosigian taught us “This Is the Sound of One Voice,” written by Ruth Moody of the Wailing Jennies. The melody reminds me of white spirituals, and it easy to harmonize. The lyrics sound equally good around a campfire or in a liberal church. The first verse says:

This is the sound of one voice,
One spirit, one voice,
The sound of one who makes a choice;
This is the sound of one voice.

The second and third verses are about two voices and then three voices singing together, and then the song says:

This is the sound of all of us:
Singing with love and the will to trust,
Leave the rest behind it will turn to dust;
This is the sound of all of us.

There’s an online video of the Wailing Jennies singing the song here. They sing in close harmony, with the usual slightly breathy voices of the commercial folk music circuit. I’d rather sing it full-throated, with more dispersed harmonies, and more emotion — less like commercial folk, and more like a spiritual. Either way, I think it would make a pretty good song to sing in church.

Mr. Crankypants is in awe

Mr. Crankypants is seriously impressed by the brazenness of the health care industry. Dan, Mr. C.’s stupid alter ego, went into the hospital back in August. A few days ago, Dan got a statement from the San Mateo Medical Center. The hospital charged Dan’s insurance company more than $10,000 for a 24 hour stay. The insurance company, Blue Cross Blue Shield, decided that they would reimburse all but $546 of that amount. Dan now owes the San Mateo Medical Center $546.

So where does the $546 come from? Of course they didn’t tell Dan what that money paid for. The statement Dan received does not tell what that $10,000 went towards, nor does it tell what the insurance company refused to reimburse the hospital for.

Mr. Crankypants has got it all figured out. The hospital and the insurance company have figured out how much they can nick people for before they start to get complaints. You stay in the hospital for a day, they figure they can nick you for about half a grand. Oh, sure, if Dan were to ask them what that $546 went to pay for, they would make something up provide documentation listing all the charges, and they’d show that the insurance company refused to reimburse a few dollars here, a few dollars there — nothing that you could really complain about. And besides, Dan was in the hospital, right? He can’t deny that he got the treatment, right? (Of course he can’t deny he got the treatment, they kept him drugged up most of the time so he has very little idea what they did to him.) So Dan, being essentially stupid and good-natured, will pay up.

Mr. Crankypants, being essentially evil and mean-spirited, is in awe at the techniques of the hospitals and insurances companies. This takes greed to a whole new level. Yes, Mr. Crankypants is in awe.

More on Eliza Tupper Wilkes

In the 2/9 June 1888 issue of Unity, a Unitarian newspaper, reported that Eliza Tupper Wilkes was the pastor of the Sioux Falls Circuit in Dakota Territory (p. 197). C[aroline]. J. Bartlett (later Caroline Bartlett Crane) was pastor of All Souls Church in Sioux Falls. Wilkes had founded the church in Sioux Falls, and Bartlett joined her there in 1887; by 1888, Bartlett had become sole pastor (Standing before us: Unitarian Universalist women and social reform, 1776-1936, by Dorothy May Emerson, June Edwards, Helene Knox, p. 128).

The following biographical notices from History of Minnehaha county, South Dakota, by Dana Reed Bailey (Brown & Saenger, ptrs., 1899, p. 740) tell about Eliza and her husband William. Note that William and Eliza lived apart for three years while Eliza was in California:

Wilkes, William A., was born in Fremont, Ohio, in 1845. He was educated in Marion, Ohio, and at the age of eighteen years removed to Dodge county, Wisconsin. He studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1871: then practiced law at Rochester, Minnesota, and at Colorado Springs, Colorado, and was elected prosecuting attorney of El Paso county two years. In 1878 he removed to Sioux Falls, where he has since resided. In connection with his professional work he engaged in the real estate business for some years. In 1893, and again in 1897, he was nominated judge of the Circuit Court of the Second Judicial Circuit by the Populist party, but was defeated by Judge J. W. Jones, the Republican nominee. At the general election in 1896 he was elected judge of the County Court of Minnehaha county, and re-elected in 1898. While at the bar he was engaged in some of the leading cases before the state tribunals, has always taken an active part in public affairs, and is a good citizen.

Wilkes, Rev. Eliza Tupper, was born at Houlton, Maine; was fitted for college in New England, and graduated from the State University of Iowa; was educated for foreign mission work; entered the Unitarian ministry in 1868, and took charge of the Universalist church at Neenah, Wis., the same year; in 1869, was married to William A. Wilkes at the last mentioned place; moved from there to Rochester, Minn., where she had charge of a Universalist church; in 1872, removed to Colorado Springs, Col., where they resided six years, and during part of that time she preached in the Unitarian church at that place; came to Sioux Falls in 1878; was one of the foremost workers in the establishment of the Sioux Falls Public Library and the Ladies History Club; started the project of building All Souls church, and labored zealously until the work was accomplished; has been pastor of the Unity church at Luverne, Minn., for the last twelve years, except three years, when she was assistant pastor of the Unitarian church at Oakland, Cal. With such a record of good works, comments would be superfluous.

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“Fundamentalists in reverse”

Currently, I’m reading Sacred Song in America by Stephen Marini (Urbana/Chicago: University of Illinois, 2003). Marini is a religious historian who is probably best known for his studies of Revolutionary-era religion in North America (Marini has also founded a well-respected group that sings 18th century American choral music and Sacred Harp music, has composed music in the singing school tradition, and has edited a collection of such music).

One of the chapters in Sacred Song in America covers the conservatory tradition of sacred music. Half of this chapter consists of an interview with Daniel Pinkham (1923-2006), long-time music director and composer-in-residence at King’s Chapel, a Unitarian Universalist church in Boston. There are many delightful moments in the interview, inculding Pinkham’s revelation that he was an atheist, and his story about how he got the New England Conservatory to stop having a prayer at commencement, and his comments on the singability of choral music, but I found this exchange particularly delightful:

Stephen Marini: The Unitarian tradition seem especially right for you, given your sense of things, because they are not going to push you on beliefs and doctrines and dogmas.

Daniel Pinkham: But Unitarian churches, they are fundamentalists in reverse!