Moving by the numbers

We’re getting ready to move to Massachusetts, some 3,150 miles away (give or take a couple of hundred miles).

Right now, we’re packing all our belongings into four moving containers that are approximately 8 feet deep, 5 feet wide, and 7 feet high, or 1120 cubic feet. When we moved to California in 2009, we fit everything into a moving container that was 8 feet by 8 feet by 12 feet, or 768 cubic feet. Somehow in the last 13 years we’ve accumulated another 352 cubic feet of belongings. We would be poster children for consumer capitalism, except that many of our belongings have been scrounged or otherwise obtained outside of consumer capitalism.

We’re using a lot of cardboard boxes to pack up all these belongings. I find myself astonished at the number of cardboard boxes we’re packing up, and schlepping out to the moving containers, and then stacking up. After a week of this, my muscles feel a little sore. I don’t like owning all this stuff. But I have enjoyed spending this past week not sitting at a desk, or logging onto videoconference meetings, but instead engaging in constant physical activity. I’ve lost an inch around my waist, and I feel fit and strong.

We’ve also been giving lots of stuff away. Carol is part of the local Buy Nothing group, and they’ve taken some of the stuff we don’t want to move. One woman just came up and mostly filled the back of her small SUV with things she wanted to take away, including a Tree Mallow (Lavatera sp.) we had growing in a galvanized metal washtub. Another of Carol’s friends is coming up this afternoon to take away an eight foot high potted bamboo plant. Carol has also sold some clothes on Poshmark, and we’ve taken other things to Goodwill. There is a thriving network of exchange that exists partly within the dominant capitalist economy (Poshmark, Goodwill), and partly as a non-capitalist parallel economy (the Buy Nothing Project).

Time to get back to working, putting cardboard boxes into moving containers. Watch this space for further updates….

Far too many cardboard boxes inside a moving container

View from Grizzly Peaks

In the 2003-2004 school year, I drove to work every day from Oakland to Kensington along Grizzly Peaks Boulevard. The road winds through the Berkely Hills, rising to almost 1,500 feet above the level of San Francisco Bay, just a few miles away. That commute had the most spectacular views of any commute I’ve ever driven. On my way home from work, I could stop at a number of roadside pullouts, and admire a spectacular view of the Bay, the Golden Gate, and the Pacific Ocean beyond.

Today we went to visit my cousin Nancy, who lives in North Berkeley. Nancy suggested we drive home via Grizzly Peaks. We wound up on the highest point of the road right after sunset. The city has blocked off the roadside pullouts and posted No Parking signs everywhere, but scores of people parked along the road anyway to enjoy the last red-gold light of the setting sun over the Pacific Ocean. We pulled over (right in front of a No Parking sign) to enjoy one of our last views of the sun setting in the ocean. In another month, we’ll be in New England, on the other side of the continent, watching the sun rising up out of the ocean….

Foreground: Slopes of the Berkeley Hills. Near distance: University of California and downtown Berkeley. Middle distance: San Francisco Bay with (l-r) the lights of the Port of Oakland, the Bay Bridge, Yerba Buena Island, Treasure Island. Opposite side of the Bay (l-r) part of San Bruno Mt., San Francisco; the Golden Gate is just out of the picture to the right.

Quoted without comment

From Ursula K. LeGuin, from her science fiction novel The Left Hand of Darkness:

“To be an atheist is to maintain God. His [sic] existence or his non-existence, it amounts to much the same, on the plane of proof. Thus ‘proof’ is a word not often used among the Handarata, who have chosen not to treat God as a fact, subject either to proof or to belief: and they have broken the circle, and go free.”

“Whitened Buddhism” and the opiate of the masses

Carolyn Chen, a UC Berkeley sociologist who studies religion, spent the last few years studying religion in Silicon Valley. She’s especially interested in the way work has become a religion for the tech workers of Silicon Valley — and in the way tech companies use religion to keep their workers in line.

Not surprisingly, given the stark realities of Silicon Valley, Chen finds that White supremacy is alive and well in this toxic mix of work, religion, and corporate control. In her book Work Pray Code, Chen writes about how tech companies co-opt Buddhism in service of making workers compliant and more productive:

“Most White Westerners don’t realize that the Buddhism they know is a particular brand of Buddhism that has been repeatedly altered and adapted to appeal to them…. This brand of ‘nonreligious’ Buddhism, however, has racial implications. It associated Asian Buddhism’s ‘rituals, robes, and chanting’ with ‘the complications of religious tradition.’ It dismisses the religious reality of most Buddhists who are Asian and is therefore a form of White supremacy….”

For this last insight, Chen cites Race and Religion in American Buddhism: White Supremacy and Immigrant Adaptation by Joseph Cheah (Oxford Univ. Press, 2011); looks like I’ll have to add that book to my reading list. Chen then goes on to detail the ways in which Whitened Buddhism ignore the religious realities of Asians:

“For the vast majority of Buddhists who reside in Asia, Buddhism is a devotional faith that involves the veneration of deities and beliefs in the supernatural. For example, in Chinese, the phrase that describes practicing Buddhism, ‘bai Buddha,’ translates to ‘worship Buddha.’ Most lay Buddhists in Asia orient their devotional practices — offerings of incense and fruit, ritual chanting, praying, bowing, donating money to temples and monasteries — to the attainment of merit or a favorable rebirth….”

Of course, for Silicon Valley tech companies enamored of Buddhism, what Buddhism is really all about is things like meditation. And meditation is supposedly a value-neutral “technology,” not a religious practice. Whitened Buddhism focuses on things, like meditation, that can increase worker productivity and worker compliance. Whereas non-White Buddhism is deliberately ignored:

“Whitened Buddhism tends to protray the ‘religious’ Buddhism of Asians and Asian Americans as burdened by unnecessary accoutrements — ‘complications,’ ‘culture,’ ‘folklore,’ ethnicity,’ baggage’ — that distract from the essence of the Buddha’s teachings. For example, Mandy Stephens, whose company runs a meditation app for corporate clients, explains that they distill medication to ‘the fundamentals,’ ‘the part that isn’t religious or spiritual.’ Her company gets to ‘the fundamentals’ by getting rid of teachers who are ‘zany gurus’ [i.e., non-White] and replacing them with ‘strait-laced [White] trainers’ in [Western] business casual clothes. The chanting at the local Asian temple is ‘folklore,’ says former tech executive Pierre Beaumont, irrelevant to ‘what’s good for me in meditation.’ Mandy and Pierre dismiss the very elements of Buddhism that tens of millions of Asians hold most dear.” [my comments in brackets]

Because if you’re White, it’s apparently OK to co-opt whatever you want out of other religious traditions, and use it for whatever you feel like. And then you can say it’s not even really religion: “This Whitened Buddhism becomes a ‘universal philosophy’ and ‘science.’ It become ‘White’ — floating above context, invisible, and normal….” [Chen, excerpts from pp. 165-167]

I find the entire Silicone Vally Religion of Work to be repellent. But I find this especially repellent: co-opting a non-White religious tradition, perverting it from its original purpose to stop the endless cycle of rebirth, and instead using broken bits of it to control workers.

Indeed, as Chen notes elsewhere in her book, when tech companies offer things like meditation and mindfulness training to help tech workers deal with the overwhelming demands of Silicon Valley overwork, these companies are merely offering “therapeutic interventions, Band-Aids lovingly applied to deep and gaping wounds. Their programs might not be too distant from the ‘opiate of the masses’ that [Karl] Marx wrote about.” [Chen, p. 85]

Nine more copyright free hymns

Nine more copyright-free hymns. Yes, you can use these hymns online without having copyright trolls harass you. They’re in this Google Drive folder, along with 91 others — making a total of 100 copyright-free hymns in that folder.

Of interest in this batch of copyright-free hymns:

There are 3 hymn tunes by Thomas Commuck, the first Native American composer to publish his music. In two cases, I found texts in a current UU hymnal with copyright-protected music, and substituted one of Commucks’ tunes instead. In the third case, I found a lovely text by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, the African American Unitarian poet from the mid-19th century, and paired it with a Commuck tune. These three hymns will be of interest if you’d like to include an Indigenous composer in your worship music.

For “Hush, Somebody’s Calling My Name,” I found a 1923 arrangement by J. B. Herbert, based on melodies provided by Rev. Turner Henderson Wiseman (1881-1939). T. H. Wiseman was a charismatic African American minister of the early twentieth century. On Feb. 7, 1914, the Kansas City (Mo.) Sun called him “a brilliant young minister,” adding: “Perhaps there is no young man in the ministry of the African Methodist Episcopal Church who has made such an enviable reputation as Rev. T. H. Wiseman…. Rev. Wiseman is not only a pleasing and intellectual preacher of the Gospel, but is one of the most accomplished and sweetest singers of the race.” He made a number of recordings in the 1920s, many of which you can find online. His quartet’s recording of “Hush” is online at the Internet Archive, and is well worth listening to. In the notes to this hymn (see below), I discuss what Wiseman’s contribution to this song might have been.

(Researching these nine hymns was painful. My brain hurts. I need to take a break from this copyright-free hymn project.)

Notes to all nine new hymns below the fold.

Continue reading “Nine more copyright free hymns”

Two Oaks to Coe State Park HQ via Poverty Flats

At 5 a.m., I got up to make breakfast. The temperature was about 45 degrees — cool enough for a sweater, a jacket, and a warm hat. After eating breakfast and packing up, I spent some time looking at the huge mistletoes growing on a nearby oak tree. Two of them must have been more than fifteen feet long, huge dark masses hanging among the branches of the oak.

I started hiking at 6:25, climbing up and then turning right to hike down the Middle Ridge Trail. In about three quarters of an hour, I passed the junction with Fish Trail, then went up a little knob through a stand of Bigberry Manzanita (Arctostaphylos glauca). The dramatic contrast between the rich green leaves and dark-red twisted trunks of the manzanitas was quite beautiful. More visual drama was to come. As the trail wound down Middle Ridge, every so often I’d catch sight of a huge bank of white fog filling the valleys beyond Poverty Flats.

Fog in the distance from Middle Ridge Trail, Coe State Park

Walking through such a landscape didn’t leave much room for other thoughts, which was fine with me. I looked at flowers, and walked, and that’s about it.

At about twenty past eight, suddenly I heard the sound of running water, and then rounding a bend I could see the Middle Fork of Coyote Creek. After crossing the creek, I dropped my pack, and spent half an hour resting. An Anna’s Hummingbird buzzed close to my head, and lots of other birds were singing in the brush along the water. A female Wood Duck was startled when I walked too close to her, and flew low along the water to another hiding place.

Middle Fork of Coyote Creek, looking back up at the Middle Ridge Trail

Poverty Flats Road climbs fairly steeply up from Coyote Creek, rising about 800 feet in a mile and a half. I took my time, pausing frequently to look at flowers, or to admire the view of Middle Ridge across the valley of the Little Fork of Coyote Creek. A couple of state park trucks drove down the road; those were the only two people I saw for most of the morning. Then once I got to the junction of Forest Trail and Corral Trail, at about 11:45, I passed several groups of people — dayhikers and backpackers starting the Memorial Day weekend early.

At ten past noon, I arrived back at park headquarters. While I ate my lunch, I talked with one of the park rangers. Then it was time to head home before the Memorial Day traffic got bad. And as I drove north up Highway 101 to San Jose, I could see that it was already stop-and-go traffic headed south.

Coe State Park HQ to Two Oaks

Coe State Park is a magical place, and I decided to return there one last time before we move to Massachusetts. I left the park headquarters at 11:50 a.m., and began hiking up Monument Trail. It was slow going with a full pack, but even at my slow pace I overtook an amateur herpetologist who showed my a Southern Alligator Lizard he was photographing. Naturalists walk even more slowly than old backpackers.

Southern Alligator Lizard

After four-tenths of a mile, I turned onto Hobbs Road. As I passed the Frog Lake campsite, I stopped for a moment to talk with a parent and child who were just setting up camp there. I asked the child if they enjoyed Frog Lake, and they told me they liked throwing rocks at the sunfish to “bonk them on the head.” I explained that the Bluegills were probably close to shore guarding nesting sites, and that it wasn’t a good idea to throw rocks at them when they were trying to raise the next generation of fish. The child was not fully convinced, but their parent, sotto voce, thanked me for reinforcing that message.

I climbed up to Middle Ridge Trail, for a total elevation gain of 800 feet in about 2 miles, turned right on the Middle Ridge Trail, and walked down to the Two Oaks campsite. I laid out my ground cloth and sleeping bag, emptied my pack of everything except food and water, then went back up to Hobbs Road. As I walked down the switchbacks of Hobbs Road, I admired the view of Blue Ridge rising steeply up on the other side of the Middle Fork of Coyote Creek.

Blue Ridge, as seen from Hobbs Road, Coe State Park

Although it’s late in the season, there were still quite a few flowers in bloom. Patches of Elegant Clarkia (Clarkia unguiculata) made a faint pink wash on some steep hillsides. Yellow Mariposa Lily (Calochortus luteus), Butterfly Mariposa Lily (Calochortus venustus), and Globe Lily (Calochortus albus) stood out in the dry brown grasses. Dramatic white clusters of flowers covered California Buckeye trees (Aesculus californica). I had hoped to hike all the way down to Coyote Creek, but it was getting late and my legs were tired. Discretion being the better part of valor, about two thirds of the way to the creek I decided to turn around.

Back at the campsite, I could hear Wild Turkeys gobbling up the hillside above, and down towards Frog Lake. One got louder and louder, and a big tom walked within 50 feet of the campsite, stalking angrily along, presumably looking for a rival to confront. I made dinner, walked down to Pajahuello Spring to fill up my water bottles, and then sat and enjoyed the evening. I was in my sleeping bag before dark. I awoke later in the evening to see the Big Dipper overhead, but fell back asleep almost immediately.

Field trip

We went for a hike in Henry W. Coe State Park today. There were still quite a few flowers in bloom, of which my favorite was the Butterfly Mariposa Lily:

Butterfly Mariposa Lily

The terrain was the usual steep hillsides of the Coastal Ranges:

Carol on the trail heading back from Frog Lake

The weather was ideal: 65-75 degrees, with a steady northerly breeze. We walked about 8-3/4 miles with 1360 total elevation gain, enough of a workout to make it seem worth while, but we took it slow so we didn’t get burned out. Just about a perfect day.

Still more copyright-free hymns

Five more copyright-free hymns added to this Google Drive folder. Full info about these newly added hymns below the fold. There are now 91 copyright-free hymns in the Google Drive folder.

66 of these are copyright-free versions (tune, text, and arrangement) of hymns from one of the two current Unitarian Universalist hymnals.

For the hymns not in the hymnals, I’ve tried to increase racial and gender diversity: 8 are from the African American tradition; 4 by women authors; 1 by a woman composer; and there’s 1 South African freedom song. I’ve also tried to add a little theological diversity: 1 Buddhist hymn; 1 Jewish hymn; 1 Neo-Pagan chant.

In the future, I’m planning to add tunes by Native composer Thomas Commuck, who was the first Native American to publish composed music. I’m also planning to add another 34 copyright-free versions of hymns from the current UU hymnals, bringing the total to 100 (plus the 25 hymns not from the current hymnals). Eventually, all these hymns will be gathered together on a static webpage. (But I don’t know when I’ll finish all these tasks, since we’re moving in a few weeks.)

Info for the newly-added hymns is below the fold.

Continue reading “Still more copyright-free hymns”

More ambiguous copyright status

Here’s yet another example of a hymn in a current UU hymnal, with an ambiguous copyright status.

The lyrics to “This Old World Is Full of Sorrow” — no. 315 in Singing the Living Tradition — apparently first appeared in print in 1983 in New American Songster, ed. Charles W. Darling (Univ. Press, 1983). Darling provides the following source for the lyrics:

“Howie Mitchell learned the words to ‘This Old World’ from Bernie Lourie while attending Cornell University. Its message is universal. Test: Golden Ring, Folk-Legacy FSJ-16 (used by permission of Folk-Legacy Records, Sharon, CT).”

The album Golden Ring was first released in 1964, and is still available from the Smithsonian Institute (which bought out Folkways Records). You can still purchase the individual track for “This Old World” on the Folkways website. I can’t find any earlier publication.

My guess is that these lyrics are a product of one or more anonymous authors during the Folk Revival of the 1950s and early 1960s. Given the spirit of sharing during the Folk Revival, and given that they resemble other folk lyrics, the authors/redactors of the texts doubtless considered them to be in the public domain. From a legal standpoint, Folkways Records slapped a copyright on the recording, although they really didn’t have the right to do so. During the Folk Revival, this was standard practice: companies slapped copyright notices on public domain tunes and lyrics, often to prevent other companies from claiming copyright on public domain material. However it would be difficult to enforce any copyright claim, and it’s unlikely the Smithsonian Institute, current holder of the putative copyright, would even try.

Regardless, the attribution in Singing the Living Tradition should be changed. Instead of “Words: American folk tune, adapt.” (which doesn’t even make sense), a better attribution would be “Words: probably U.S. Folk Revival, 1945-1964.”

Here are the words as they appear in New American Songster:

This old world is full of sorrow,
Full of sickness, weak and sore.
If you love your neighbor truly,
Love will come to you the more.

We’re all children of one Father,
We’re all brothers and sisters too.
If you cherish one another
Love and pity will come to you.

This old world is full of sorrow,
Full of sickness, weak and sore.
If you love your neighbor truly,
Love will come to you the more.

So what about the other two verses printed in Singing the Living Tradition? It’s a good bet they were written by the compilers of the hymnal. (They certainly don’t sound like folk lyrics, or even composed lyrics from the Folk Revival.) So Unitarian Universalist congregations can safely use the last two verses in Singing the Living Tradition. But if you use them for any other purpose, assume they’re copyright-protected.

As for the music provide from hymn no. 315, it’s adapted from The Southern Harmony. There are enough changes in the arrangement that it may be protected by copyright. Again, it’s probably fine for Unitarian Universalist congregations to use, but for any other purpose assume that there’s a copyright.