Louisiana state law now requires that the Ten Commandments shall be posted in every classroom. But if you compare the Ten Commandments found in the Bible with Louisiana’s Ten Commandments, you quickly see that they are not the same Ten Commandments.
In other words, the Louisiana version of the Ten Commandments may be inspired by the Bible, but it is not Biblical. If you’re a Biblical purist, you could say that Louisiana’s rewriting of Exodus 20:2-17 is actually a type of graven image or idol — something that seems like it comes from God, but is actually made by fallible humans.
Below the fold, I’ll include several translations of the relevant Bible passages so you can compare them.
In just two days, it’s time for everyone’s favorite holiday — Pee-on-Earth Day!
When you flush your urine down the toilet, you use a gallon or more of drinking water. From there, your urine enters the stream of wastewater, typically joining human feces to be processed in a wastewater treatment plant or a septic system. By treating urine like feces, our society wastes clean water and energy (energy to purify the drinking water, and energy to run the wastewater treatment plant).
Here in the northern hemisphere, human urine doesn’t spread pathogens. And human urine actually makes a pretty good fertilizer, for plants that want a lot of nitrogen. So instead of flushing urine away, you can spread it directly on plants, although urine is such a concentrated fertilizer you probably will want to dilute it so you don’t give the plants fertilizer burn.
The one problem with human urine as a fertilizer is that First World humans tend to eat way too much salt, and excess salt gets processed out of our bodies through our urine. There are a number of ways to deal with this problem. First, you could eat less salt, which would be good for your health. Alternatively, you can spread urine on a compost pile; some salt will leach out during composting, plus the addition of other compostables will lessen the concentration of the remaining salt significantly. Composting is probably the best alternative, because when you compost urine you can adjust the inputs to the compost to balance the high nitrogen content of the urine.
My spouse, Carol, who writes about ecological pollution prevention strategies, invented the term “peecycling” to describe recycling urine as a fertilizer. She peecycles year round, using urine collection bottles made of used plastic juice bottles (thus turning a single-use plastic bottle into a multiple-use peecycling jug). We’re apartment dwellers, but we have a tiny side yard where we have a compost pile. Then we use the compost to fertilize our tiny eight foot square garden.
However, not everyone can peecycle year round. That’s why Carol has declared June 21, the longest day of the year in the northern hemisphere, as Pee-on-Earth Day. Everyone can save at least some of their urine and return it to the earth on Pee-on-Earth Day. Find or make a peecycling jug now, so you’re ready for June 21!
Learn more in Carol’s book, Liquid Gold: The Lore and Logic of Using Urine To Grow Plants.Order her book online here. UPDATE: Carol’s webhosting service has bonked her website — if you want a copy of the book, leave a comment or email me and I’ll make sure you get one. (If you order it through Amazon, Carol gets almost nothing from the sale, so if possible please order direct from her.)
(By the way, I’m the one who coined the phrase “liquid gold” to describe reusing urine, some thirty years ago. It’s my one claim to literary fame.)
There’s a stereotype that all the old colonial-era meetinghouses in New England were covered with white paint both inside and outside.
Not true.
According to Peter Benes, in his definitive book Meetinghouses of Early New England, there was a wide range of exterior colors, ranging from unpainted to blue to green to orange. The Cohasset Meetinghouse was built in 1747; the first record of its exterior color dates to 1812, when it was pea-green with white trim.
As for the interior color, an architectural consultant hired for the 1986 renovation found what he thought was a bit of the original interior paint color under the pulpit. When the steps to the pulpit were remodeled c. 1837, a board was left behind with pale yellow paint marking out where the former steps were. The architectural consultant believed this was the original color. While he didn’t give his reasoning, the layer of paint is quite thin, thinner than you’d expect if it had been recoated at some point.
Pea-green outside, and pale yellow inside, not stark white. How tastes have changed over the years.
The great Universalist showman P. T. Barnum once said his success was due in no small part to self-promotion: “I thoroughly understood the art of advertising, not merely by means of printer’s ink, which I have always used freely, and to which I confess myself so much indebted for my success, but by turning every possible circumstance to my account….” (Struggles and Triumphs, ch. VIII)
Donald Trump has been convicted of felonies, and it’s the best thing that could have happened to him because he knows how to turn the circumstance of this guilty verdict to his own account. He gets lots advertising for which he pays nothing. And now he will be able to appeal the verdict, thus garnering even more free advertising, right up through the November election.
By contrast, Joe Biden doesn’t seem to know how to turn every possible circumstance to his account. As the incumbent, he should be grabbing headlines, but he’s not. He needs to learn from P.T. Barnum.
P.T. Barnum never actually made the statement, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity.” But it’s a principle by which he lived his life. People today could learn a lot from that sly old Universalist showman.
“The predictive text bots labelled as AIs that we have now aren’t any more sentient than a coffee cup and a good deal less useful for anything other than generating spam. (They also use up an unconscionable amount of our limited energy and water resources, sending us further down the road to climate disaster, but that’s another essay.)”
That’s at least three uncomfortable truths about “AI” (or as Ted Chiang calls it, “applied statistics”):
(1) “AI” is not sentient, i.e., it’s not an intelligence. (2) The only thing “AI” can really do is generate spam. (3) In order to produce spam, “AI” takes an enormous amount of energy.
I’m generally enthusiastic about new technology. But not “AI,” which strikes me as a boondoggle start to finish.
The Eurovision song contest is usually ignored here in the U.S. That might change a teeny bit with this year’s contest, which was won for the first time by a non-binary singer, with a song about how they came to terms with their non-binary identity. (This song will surely be condemned by the U.S. right-wing, and perhaps embraced by some of the U.S. LGBTQ+ community and their allies. But most Americans will probably ignore Eurovision, as usual.) Good for Nemo for winning.
But this is the only Eurovision contest where I actually had a song that I wanted to win. The nu-folk duo Puuluup, from Estonia, teamed up with the Estonian hiphop group 5miinust on the song “(Nendest) narkootikumidest ei tea me (küll) midagi.” They came in 20th, out of 25 finalists. Of course they didn’t win; if I like them, they’re not going to win.But wouldn’t it have been cool if someone playing a folk instrument — in this case, the talharpa — won Eurovision?
Sadly, some of the illustrations are just as topical today as they were 117 years ago. Like this one, titled “The Monster of Monopoly”:
“Monopoly is rapidly swallowing the whole country. We are thankful, however, that all this greed cannot and does not escape the public eye. It is to be hoped that very soon public opinion will deal a crushing blow to this monster.”
I also like this illustration, titled “Montain of Money,” showing a rich man with too much money:
“It is time to call a halt when the income of one man is so great that he could not handle it himself in cold cash, while the income of his workers is not enough to keep them decently alive.”
But my personal favorite of all the many illustrations in the book is this one, titled “The Idol of Monopoly”:
“The workers of America have made unto themselves an idol called Monopoly, which many of them still admire and worship. Oh workers! This is not your god.”
I’m sure that Rev. Harris felt that even the golden calf of old was not worshipped with such devotion as the idol of Monopoly.
On May 1, 1886 — 138 years ago today — the American Federation of Labor called a general strike to demand the eight hour day. The strike culminated in Chicago with the Haymarket Massacre a few days later. As the demonstrators were peacefully leaving the demonstration, someone exploded a bomb. The police fired wildly into the crowd, killing and wounding both police officers and demonstrators. Eight people were arrested, even though there was no evidence that they were involved with the bomb, and four of them were executed. In 1893, it was finally declared that all eight were innocent —far too late for the four who had been unjustly executed. Unitarian Universalist blogger Patrick Murfin tells this story better than I can.
Eventually, the eight hour day was established as the norm for workers. But that began to change in this twenty-first century. With hardly any workers in unions, many corporations have been been emboldened to do whatever they want. Amazon delivery drivers are often forced to work 10-12 hour days (I used to hang out with an Amazon delivery driver, who told me this). Walmart employees are only given part-time work (which means no benefits), then forced to work irregular schedules that don’t allow them to pick another job. By the 2010s, Google hired contractors to run its infamous Google buses; the contractors paid crap wages and forced the drivers to work split shifts. As for the big executives, they just kept giving themselves raises. By 2020, the typical CEO was paid 351 times the salary of the average worker. There are still lots of great companies out there, places you’d want to work (some ofwhich are owned by Unitarian Universalists), but on the whole the conditions for workers are getting worse, not better.
As for the two political parties, neither one of them seems to care much about the shrinking wages of the middle class, lower middle class, and working class. The Democrats used to be the party of Big Labor, but with the demise of unions, I guess they figure they have little incentive to deal with workers’ issues. The Republicans at least pretend to pay attention to the needs of workers, and I give them credit for that — but when push comes to shove, they always seem to support the big corporations.
The Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) has never been a strong supporter of the needs of workers. The denominational magazine often carries articles about supporting the rights and needs of people of color, immigrants, LGBTQ+ folks, and women — all of which is great, we need that. But there aren’t many articles about workers needs.
I understand. It’s just not our thing. I can accept that. We’re a small denomination. We can only do so much; we’re probably overextended as it is. If the UUA doesn’t want to support unions, or workers’ needs and rights, that’s OK with me. Focusing on a few things is a good idea.
But personally, I support unions and unionization. I spent 12 years punching a time clock in various jobs in the residential construction business, and another year and a half punching a time clock in a health food store. While I never worked in a unionized workplace, I was grateful for eight hour days, overtime pay after eight hours, workers compensation, OSHA, and benefits packages — all of which, as I learned from older workers, only happened because of unions. Even though I was never a union member, I would have been much worse off financially through my twenties and thirties if it hadn’t been for unions.
With these songbooks, you can get lead sheets for Malvina Reynolds’s most famous songs — for free. I’m especially pleased to see this, since I lost my copy of There’s Music in the Air during our move from California to Massachusetts.
The Malvina Reynolds Songbook has “God Bless the Grass” (p. 29), “It Isn’t Nice” (p. 40), “Little Boxes” (p. 44), “Magic Penny” (p.50), “Turn Around” (p. 81), and “What Have They Done to the Rain” (p. 90).
There’s Music in the Air has all of these except “It Isn’t Nice,” but it also includes “You Can’t Make a Turtle Come Out” (p. 94). This songbook also has the lesser-known but hilarious song “Let Us Come In” a.k.a. “The Party-Crashers’ Carol” (p. 48). (Somewhere I have a 3-part madrigal-type arrangement of this latter song, which I’d be happy to share to anyone who wants it.)
Tweedles and Foodles has songs I’ve never heard before. It’s also unusual in that it has both guitar chords and simple piano accompaniment. Looks like there’s some fun songs in there — “Rabbit Dance” looks like fun, and maybe I’ll learn it.
Thank you, Nancy Schimmel, for your generosity in giving away your mother’s music for free!
Nym Cooke, well-known scholar of early American music, will be offering a webinar on “The Sounds of New England Congregationalism in the 18th C.” under the auspices of the Congregational Library and Archives. Info about how to register may be found here. And to whet your appetite, here’s the first sentence of the description:
“The ‘sound of Congregationalism’ — the musical sound, at any rate — changed markedly several times during the hundred years from?1720-1820, as musical philosophies shifted between two sets of poles: ritual and art, and worship and performance….”
I signed up as soon as I heard about it. I’m fascinated by the soundscapes of New England congregational-polity churches, so I’ve already been using Nym Cooke’s website “Early American Sacred Music.” I can’t wait to hear more from this top-notch scholar.
