Nests

At lunchtime, I went for a walk at Baylands Nature Preserve along the Bay in Palo Alto. One of the first things I saw was a baby American Avocet, still with downy plumage, sweeping the water for small invertebrates. American Avocets are a precocial species, so this little baby was pretty much on its own; there were no adult birds nearby.

A little further on I saw a line of Cliff Swallow nests on a building. The swallows pick up some mud in their bills, then fly up and apply it to the nest, gradually building the structure out so as to completely enclose the nesting birds except for small entry holes. The two nests closest to the camera are darker around the entry holes; that’s where mud has been recently applied, and the damp mud is darker than the dried mud.

I kept walking out the dike along Charleston Slough, past other birds that are I guessed were nesting, though I didn’t actually see a nest or babies: Forster’s Terns, Marsh Wrens, a Northern Harrier, Snowy Egrets, Mallards. About a mile and a quarter from the parking lot, I could finally see the California Gull nesting colony. The gulls were screaming and flying in swirling circles above the colony, and as I got closer I could see why: two researchers had kayaked out to the colony, and were walking around with clipboards checking out the nests. The gulls were divebombing them, and through my binoculars, I could see that the researchers were wearing helmets and jackets for protection.

I watched for a while; I like watching gull nesting colonies, and the addition of the invading researchers made it even more entertaining. Then it was time to head back to work, so I walked back to the parking lot, my mind completely emptied of everything except for birds, sun, mud, and nests.

Sex in the news

Three of the biggest stories in the news today involve sex or sexual morality: Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund, is in the news for allegedly committing sexual assault on a housekeeper at a New York hotel; Arnold Schwarzenegger has admitted that he fathered a child with a woman who was a domestic worker at his mansion; and the Roman Catholics say that the incidence of priests sexually abusing minors increased greatly during the 1960s due to the sexual revolution.

Each of these news stories centers around someone in power engaging in sexual acts with someone who was relatively powerless — a domestic worker, a low-wage hotel worker, legal minors. Or to put it another way, these stories aren’t about sex so much as they are about the misuse of personal power.

Universal musical genres

Musicologist Susan McClary writes about how the blues was adopted by white British middle class men in the early 1960s, e.g., by Eric Clapton, and turned into rock (from Conventional Wisdom: The Content of Musical Form, pp. 58-59):

“Thus the priorities of the genre [i.e., the genre of blues music] changed when it was adopted by British rockers — as they had, for that matter, when the blues had passed from Bessie Smith to Robert Johnson. That the principal interests of the British differed from those of the African American musicians they initially idolized became clear when musicians and critics alike announced that they were ready to leave their black mentors behind and move forward into art rock. As Motown historian Dave Morse complained in 1971: ‘Black musicians are now implicitly regarded as precursors who, having taught the white men all they know, must gradually recede into the distance’ ….

“When middle-class kids and British art students ‘universalized’ blues by making it the vehicle for their own alienation, many black musicians chose to develop other modes of expression. For some of them, in any case, the blues had come to recall times of rural poverty and victimization — the genealogy sedimented into the blues had moved to the foreground for them, drowning out other registers of meaning. Thus it is no coincidence that rap musicians have worked to construct a different heritage, tracing their roots through sampling and quotation back not to the blues per se but to James Brown and soul — a genre of black music that emerged during the decade when white rockers arrogated the blues unto themselves. For African Americans the blues was always just one particular manifestation of a number of deeper elements that live on in other genres. It was never a fetish, but simply a vehicle for expression. When historical conditions changed, when it became reified, it could be left behind.”

I read this as a healthy reminder that the genre of rock is not somehow universal — and therefore rock can not become the be-all and end-all of liturgical music; indeed, no musical genre can serve as some kind of a universal liturgical expression.

Link to report on District Assembly

Although I went to the annual meeting for Pacific Central District (also known as “District Assembly”), I spent most of my time on business that had nothing to do with the business of the district.* Fortunately, my good friend Pastor Cranky has written a long and detailed report on District Assembly so I can find out what I missed. If you want to find out what happened at Pacific Central District’s annual meeting, go read Pastor Cranky.

* I’m the secretary of the district chapter of the Liberal Religious Educator’s Association, and incoming Good Officers Person for the district minister’s chapter, and needed to do some face-to-face communication relating to those two positions; I also did lots of professional networking with district staff, other ministers, and other religious educators. Important stuff, to be sure, but not exactly district business.

Chalice edge matching puzzle

Most children’s programs in congregations are pretty touchy-feely, which means that kids (and adults) who love logical/mathematical thinking can feel a little left out. So here’s an edge matching puzzle, with obligatory flaming chalice designs so it can masquerade as religiously educational, which can be fun for both children and adults (since this type of puzzle is NP-complete, there is no fast and easy solution). The image below links to a PDF, with instructions for cutting out the nine puzzle pieces and solving the puzzle.

PDF of Chalice Edge Matching Puzzle, 13 May 2011

P.S. No, I’m not going to give you the solution, because I know you don’t really want it.

In vain

Old Isaac Watts has a poor reputation among religious liberals. He’s old-fashioned. He writes those four-square hymns we love to hate. He’s rooted in the Bible and talks about God as male. Bad hymnodist!

Yet here’s an Isaac Watts hymn that would be a very nice addition to today’s liberal religious hymnody:

In vain the wealthy mortals toil,
And heap their shining dust in vain;
Look down and scorn the humble poor,
And boast their lofty hills of gain.

Their golden cordials cannot ease
Their pained hearts or aching heads,
Nor fright nor bribe approaching death
From glitt’ring roofs and downy beds.

Thence they are huddled to the grave,
Where kings and slaves have equal thrones;
Their bones without distinction lie
Amongst the heap of meaner bones.

— “The Rich Sinner Dying,” Hymn 1:24 from Hymns and Spiritual Songs by Isaac Watts.

Summer fog

The summertime morning fog has begun rolling in again. I came vaguely awake early this morning as a morning bus turned the corner at the traffic light below our bedroom. The light was dim and diffuse, and I knew that the fog was hanging a few hundred feet over San Mateo, blocking the sun. There’s cold water welling up from the depths of the Pacific on the other side of the Coastal Range,. It’s making a huge fog bank every morning, and every morning some of that fog drifts inland. In San Francisco, and on the coast side of the hills to the west of us, the fog might be at ground level, but here in downtown San Mateo it hangs above us as low clouds. I love the summertime morning fog. By mid-day, the fog will disperse, exposing us to the relentless California sunshine, and most afternoons the San Mateo Gale will start whipping through town. But summer mornings are dim and cool.

Hard-boiled

My guilty pleasure: I love hard-boiled pulp fiction. Every once in a while, I come across a passage that is just so — so hard-boiled, that I have to read it twice to make sure it really says what I thought it said. Like this one, from Gold Comes in Bricks (1940) by Erle Stanley Gardner. :

“I kissed her.

“‘To hell with that stuff,’ she said. ‘Really kiss me.’

“Fifteen minutes later, the kid came up with the half case of Scotch.

“I showed up at Ashbury’s place about two o’clock in the morning. I still couldn’t get the girl’s hair out of my mind. I thought of that strand of the hangman’s rope every time I thought of the way the light glinted along those blonde tresses.”

I will never look at blonde hair again in quite the same way. I’m not sure that is a good thing.

 

Henry, our music director, stood up during joys and concerns (what this congregation calls “Caring and Sharing”), and spoke poignantly about his mother. Henry said his mother had died in 1999, which was a while ago. But he has learned over the years that while the pain immediately after someone dies does lessen, it never goes away, and remains always, as a kind of “dull pain” (to use Henry’s words). He managed to put into words what I’ve been thinking myself. My mother died in 1999; Carol’s mother died just over two years ago; and this year I’ve been very aware of that dull pain of which Henry speaks. This is not exactly a profound insight; but it’s funny how I manage to forget this repeatedly, until suddenly there it is again.