Author: Daniel Harper

Using Jamulus to sing online in real time

The Bay Area Sacred Harp (BASH) singing community has been using Jamulus to sing together online, in four part harmony, in real time. The big problem with trying to sing online together is that the Internet has built-in “latency,” or lag time. Jamulus is free open source software that minimizes latency to allow people to make music together in real time.

Last night, we had eight singers logged in to our Jamulus server, including two singers from Southern California. And it finally felt like we’re getting the hang of how to do this.

We started experimenting with Jamulus back in June, and since mid-August we’ve been singing twice a month, so this is our seventh regular meeting. Singing online requires several adjustments on the part of singers. First you have to get used to the Jamulus platform, including watching your volume level, adjusting the volume levels of other singers, etc.

Beyond the technical learning curve, there’s also a musical learning curve. You have to get used to the fact that you have no visual cues, so instead of watching someone beating time you have to maintain a very sure sense of the tempo. You also have to get used to the fact that there’s more lag time than when singing in person; in person, you can rely on another singer by listening to them and following a split second behind, but singing online has just enough lag time that you have to be exactly on the beat (or even the tiniest bit ahead). In short, you have to be very confident of your part.

No, it’s not as good as singing in person. But because of the pandemic, singing in person simply isn’t possible. This is the best alternative; and really, given how good it feels to be able to sing with others, it’s a pretty good alternative.

I’ll continue after the jump with more technical details.

Continue reading “Using Jamulus to sing online in real time”

Possum still feels stressed, part one

A few months ago, Dr. Sharpie showed Possum some spiritual practices that might make him feel less stressed. Possum says those spiritual practices don’t work any more for him, but Sharpie has an idea….

Click on the image above to view the video on Youtube.

The full text of the video is below the fold.

Continue reading “Possum still feels stressed, part one”

Puzzles

A significant part of our congregation’s outreach to kids during the pandemic has been to send monthly packets, via U.S. mail, with word search puzzles, other puzzles, coloring pages, and mazes. Sometimes there’s a little learning in these packets, but mostly they’re a form of support and ministry to parents and kids: kids get mail addressed to them, which they love; kids get an activity that doesn’t require more screen time; and parents get a few extra minutes of free time while the kids are working on the puzzles and mazes. And it shows that our congregation remembers the kids, and cares about them, even though we can’t see them.

It’s also fun for me, since I love making puzzles. Problem is, when I get into puzzle-making mode, sometimes I make puzzles that aren’t suitable for kids. Like the one below, which is derived from the old Boggle game — and rather than waste this puzzle, I’m inflicting it on you by posting it on this blog:

Find six words that begin with the letter “c” and end with “ate.” To make words, you can join letters going up, down, sideways, or diagonally; but each letter in the puzzle grid can only be used once in a given word.

Update: Carol posted this to Facebook, and both Clarissa and Deb found another word. So now you have to find eight….

ARkstorms

We Californians always worry about The Big One, the next big earthquake.

Apparently what we should really worry about is ARkstorms. These storms come along every couple of centuries. During the last ARkstorm, in the winter of 1861-1862, it rained for 43 days straight, and the subsequent flooding turned California’s Central Valley into an inland sea 300 miles long. If such a storm happened today, some scientists estimate that it would cause three times the amount of death and destruction of a magnitude 7.8 earthquake.

Just wanted to give you something else to worry about….

Making organized religion look bad

Warren Throckmorton has been watching prominent evangelical Christian pastors and leaders during this election cycle, documenting how these “court evangelicals” support Donald Trump. Two days ago, Throckmorton wrote a blog post asking, “Trump’s Denial of Election Reality: Will Court Evangelicals Play Along?”

The answer, of course, is “yes.” Many prominent white evangelical pastors continue to support Trump, and are now issuing statements accusing Joe Biden of stealing the election.

While these pastors doubtless think they are doing the Lord’s work, sadly what they are really doing is undermining organized religion. The many American citizens who are not white evangelicals are going to watch this kind of behavior — tweets that undermine democratic process, statements that deny reality — and begin to wonder about Christian churches. And by extension, wonder about the purpose of all organized religion — read the comments, and you’ll find someone calling for an end to tax-exempt status for religious organizations.

I’m a bit resentful because even though I’m about as far from these white evangelical pastors as you can possibly be (OK, I am white, too, but there aren’t many other similarities), as a minister I’m going to experience an erosion of trust because of the way they come across as hypocritical (Christians implicitly inciting violence), violating the separation of church and state, and out of touch with reality.

Sadly, these “court evangelicals” will not drive away the white evangelicals who fill their churches — but they will reduce the overall number of people who are willing to have anything to do with organized religion. So I predict an upwards tick in the “nones,” those with no religious affiliation, following this election.

Equally sadly, I’m increasingly convinced that what these “court evangelicals” do is really politics, not religion. So they’re destroying organized religion, but not actually doing religion themselves.

A Khan Academy for religious education

In one of the “lightning talks” in today’s session of the Religious Education Association annual meeting, Dr. Eileen Daily of Boston University’s School of Theology posed some questions about how the pandemic is going to change religious education. One of the questions she asked is whether this is an opportunity to reach out to the “nones,” those who are not affiliated with organized religion (remembering that many of the “nones” are “spiritual but not religious”).

A few hours later, I was in a small group conversation with some scholars and practitioners, and we wound up talking about online learning — not surprising given that the pandemic has driven both the academics and those of us working in congregations to doing all our teaching using distance education techniques. I posed the idea that a nonprofit structured like Khan Academy, but devoted to religious education, could be a worthwhile project. Then the conversation moved on….

But I’ve been thinking about that idea since then. What if there were a Khan Academy for online religious education? I could envision three main curricular areas such an entity could address: (1) religious literacy, including resources to introduce young people to the wide variety of religious expression in their community and in the wider world; (2) skills associated with the practice of organized religion including leadership in nonprofit membership organizations (voluntary associations), social justice organizing, group singing, etc.; and (3) building community including building both interpersonal skills (social skills) and intrapersonal skills (self awareness).

I’m leaving out a fourth major curricular area: the kind of “faith formation” that is instruction on how to participate within a specific religious or denominational tradition. Should a nonprofit producing interreligious learning material produce this kind of faith formation? Well, no — if we’re trying to serve the “nones” as well as though affiliated with organized religion, denominational faith formation will not be a central concern. But what if we think big? If this nonprofit is designed from the beginning to scale up (think: Khan Academy), and if this nonprofit builds expertise in delivering online religious education, then when it grows in size and expertise the nonprofit will eventually becomes able to enter into partnerships with various religious groups to produce this kind of faith formation material.

So what are the funding sources for this nonprofit going to be? I think at the beginning, this nonprofit is either going to be the brainchild of someone like Sal Khan, and inspired charismatic leader with the skills to create content and then bring other people into the project — in this first case, the project is self-funded until it gets big enough to scale up — either that, or it could be hosted by a university that has both experts in religious education and some level of IT support (but if such an organization starts in the academy, I would hope that the plan is to quickly spin it off as a separate nonprofit). Then as the nonprofit grows, because it’s not tied to a specific religious organization, I would expect that a substantial part of the funding would be grants from philanthropic organizations. And why not target Big Tech for grants? — using research that shows that religious literacy can reduce religious bullying and religious violence, you could make a pretty compelling case that this kind of education is important and worth funding.

I’m sure others have already come up with the same idea. And who knows, maybe there’s already such an organization out there….

Pelicans

We’re all dealing with election stress in our own ways. I took an hour away from work to go birding.

Brown Pelicans flying over Charleston Slough, with the hills on the eastern side of San Francisco Bay in the background.

This is a messy election. As we all know, the pandemic means far more people mailed their ballots in than ever before, so the counting is going to continue for days. This gives both presidential candidates lots of time to badmouth each other.

Enough of that. That’s what I went birding to get away from. Sometimes denial is a fruitful way to deal with a stressful situation, especially a situation where you really can’t do anything to alter it. And look at birds; birds don’t care who wins the election. Sort of puts things in perspective.

Mushroom

When I was walking around the cemetery this evening, I saw some spectacular shelf fungus growing on the side of a eucalyptus stump.

Sulphur Shelf (Laetiporus. gilbertsonii)

David Arora, in his comprehensive 1986 book Mushrooms Demystified, identifies this as Laetiporus sulphures, but the more recent book Mushrooms of the Redwood Coast (2016) by Noah Seigel and Christian Schwarz identify it as L. gilbertsonii — turns out L. sulphures was split into three species in 2001.

Close-up photo of the underside of L. gilbertsonii showing pores

Common names for L. gilbertsonii include Sulphur Shelf and Chicken of the Woods. As you’d guess with a name like “Chicken of the Woods,” you can eat it, and supposedly if it’s cooked correctly it does taste something like chicken. However, in a few individuals it can cause vomiting. (This apparently happens more often with the two western species, L. gilbertsonii and L. conifericola; not so much with the eastern species, L. sulphures.) I have a weak stomach, and I’m not an experienced mushroom hunter to begin with, so I didn’t try to eat it.

But it is beautiful, and finding it made my day.