Putting a period at the end of the sentence...

This morning I created a new blog, Faith Seeks Understanding. The new site explains itself, so I won't do it again here, other than to say it is a site for a group of women, not for only me.

I was dismayed to learn halfway through the creation of the new site that my blogger account only allows me one user profile. I had already changed many items in the profile to fit the new blog when I realized that all my changes had also been put into effect on A Ministry for Voices. It seems that it can't be fixed. Sophia Manana is gone forever, and I mean really gone. I can't get her back.

Also, the new site is going to have to keep the profile items from A Ministry for Voices that had not yet been changed, because I can't stand for them to be gone. It is one thing to accept bad things that have happened. It is another thing altogether to let them rob you of everything you have worked to create.

Diana Fuentes celebrates 30 years

Today, UTHSCSA celebrated the 30th anniversary of Diana Fuentes' employment with the UT System. Of course it wasn't just Diana. The foyer of the medical school auditorium was filled with people who have July birthdays and service anniversaries, including Jorge and Luke, and Dr. Littlefield and probably 30 or 50 other people. There were mariachis, and a chocolate fountain, and chocolate and carrot cakes, and lots of people. Dr. Cigarroa, the president of the Health Science Center, welcomed everyone. He spoke in Spanish to the mariachis, who played the Spanish Happy Birthday song. About half the room joined in. Then there was a little musical segue into the English version, and everyone sang. It almost made me cry, and it's not even my birthday! Diana has been with the UT System since she was 17 years old.

...a random view of "some obscure town"...

I especially like this passage Stephen Cox wrote about a picture of Bellevue Street in Leslie, and the feelings it evoked in him. This is the problem I have. What seems like nothing to others... the time I spent as pastor of the Congregational Church in Leslie, is "alive for me with great messages of existence..." I feel like I have lost my path, or at the very least lost a great and precious part of my life.

The picture that you regard as nothing more than a random view of "some obscure town" may be alive for someone else with the great messages of existence. The electronic marketplace — logical but miraculous — invites us all to begin our own odysseys, into whatever worlds have meaning for us individually. Every journey of this kind is a journey into one's memories and curiosities, aversions and attractions. Every picture that grips your imagination is in some sense a picture of yourself. You don't need to argue. You don't even need to buy. All you need to do is look.

Postcards from Leslie and Jackson, Michigan, found on E-Bay

I found this website this morning. I enjoyed reading Stephen Cox's reflections on a place he knew when he was a child. He now teaches literature at UC San Diego.

Leslie, Michigan is a little town ten miles north of the house I grew up in. As a very small child, I was in awe of the size and intricacy of the place. As a teenager, riding my bike there, I was impressed by its absolute deadness and plainness. I remember a movie house with a tin roof, playing hits like "Snow White and the Three Stooges." I remember an elderly gentleman who called himself the Leslie Observer and published a mimeographed newspaper in which he argued that capitalism was the Whore of Babylon, as prophesied by St. John the Divine. Those were the village high points.

Much later, researching the history of anti-state ideas, I discovered that Leslie was the birthplace of Voltairine de Cleyre (1866–1912), a leader of American anarchism. Writing about her, Emma Goldman, a more famous anarchist, called Leslie "some obscure town in the state of Michigan." Right, Emma. Leslie was like a fruit that had dropped off the vine and was lying in the fields, returning to its elements.

If there really was such a vine, it was the interurban railway that once connected Jackson with the capital of Lansing, passing through Leslie. Picture 4 (1910) shows the opening of that former agency of mass transit. I like the sturdy, self-confident people in this picture, standing proudly in front of their sturdy, self-confident iron cars. I like seeing the ocean of mud that their machines have conquered. I like seeing the way in which the train, although it is called "light rail," humbles the buildings around it. (It is stopped in front of the post office, the center of the town's affairs.) I like the train's generic name: "Capitol City Limited." It is archetypically American. Which Capitol? Any capitol! This scene of progress could have been enacted anywhere in America, in the world before the wars. I even like the unconsciously humorous effect of "Limited": if the train stops at Leslie and Rives Junction, as the sign on its prow says it does, where doesn't it stop?

From the NYTimes: A Hipper Crowd of Shushers

Thanks to Amber Galea for sending me this link, from the Fashion and Style section of the New York Times, about young librarians. Amber, along with my former boss Vanessa Morris, director of River Rouge Public Library, is among the very coolest of the cool.

Hell in the Digital Age: Sprint Nextel gets rid of pesky customers

I found this story today about how Sprint Nextel has decided to just get rid of customers who make too many customer service calls.

"The nation's third-largest wireless provider sent letters to about 1,000 subscribers June 29, saying the company's records showed they had made frequent calls for help with questions about billing and other account information. "

This reminds me of something that happened at the River Rouge Public Library. In River Rouge, there are a lot of people who are living below the poverty level, but who have found they can't get by without phones. One day a woman came in for help. She had a new Sprint account, and on the day her first bill arrived, she was dismayed to see that the bill was for more than $700. This was the result of the fact that her two sons had realized they could download music on the phone. I don't think the woman had even realized that this was a feature on the phones she purchased. I'm sure she didn't understand the budget busting financial implications. She had tried to call Sprint to ask that the settings on her account be changed. Somehow, she had gotten the message that she would have to go online and change the settings herself. Sprint doesn't like to provide customer service representatives who actually talk to people, it seems.

I am pretty sure this woman had never used a computer before. At the time, I did not have a cell phone, having terminated my account with two previous providers because I found their billing procedures less than honest. Sprint was one of my previous providers.

I tried to help the woman through the online customer service process. This is a big part of what librarians do these days: help people figure out how to navigate the online environment, which is a wilderness for many people. Because I didn't have a cell phone myself, and because I am not a big downloader of music, I found that I did not have the skill to help the woman resolve the problem. The web interface was not user friendly, or even librarian friendly.

How frightening it is to have someone saying you owe them $700+ dollars, and not even be able to have a conversation with them. How frightening to not be able to get your account changed so that you are only provided with the services you are interested in having.

Another example: Many people in River Rouge came for help with resumes. It is almost impossible to get a job today without applying online, which means typing a resume, then using one of several different available technologies for posting things via web interfaces. People who clean rooms in hospitals, or who drive trucks or provide home health care, or who are welders, as an example, frequently do not have these skills. For librarians, the fact that so many people need help with computers might be job security. It might... Then again, the assistance of librarians with issues like this could be considered just another form of welfare, a cost taxpayers should not have to pay.

I'm hoping that there will be a huge backlash against Sprint Nextel. Maybe all of their customers will start a campaign of calling 3 times a day, every day, and asking for assistance. Demanding it. Crying out for justice. This is now the easiest way to get out of a Sprint Nextel account!

Sheesh. This is a ministry for voices...

Sunday afternoon

It has been a while since I have posted, and those who have been on my mailing list for a long time may have noticed that I am hardly posting to A Ministry for Voices at all anymore.

I started this blog shortly after I was hired for my first full time library position, as children's librarian in River Rouge, Michigan. I was two years out of my last pastoral position, at the Congregational U.C.C in Leslie, Michigan. While I was thankful to have found a full time position (because truly my life would be unsustainable without full time work) I was still struggling with spiritual confusion about the sudden turn my life had taken, a few months after September 11, 2001, when a very few members of the Leslie church made the decision that they were no longer in need of my services.

Crying out for justice is a difficult thing to do, especially in a faith community like the U.C.C. that prides itself on being such a just and caring community. While my parting with the Leslie church was traumatic, I know that I have never left my path. I know that if God had allowed it, I would still be the pastor of the Leslie church. I would have been there for Myra Gross, and Jennett Wood, both of whom I loved, when they needed me. We would have continued with the LOGOS curriculum, and with our stewardship efforts, and if God had allowed it, no one would have been hurt. We would have been much stronger today than we were in 2002. I would still enjoy the friendship of people I was happy to serve.

I started my blog because I wanted a place to share what I was thinking and feeling, as best I could, with the people of the Leslie church, and also with new librarian friends. A Ministry for Voices is one small way of remaining faithful to my calling.

A few weeks ago I noticed that the Leslie church has finally, after 5 years, begun to search for a new minister. Five years is a lot of time to lose. A lot has happened in five years. I find that I still love the people of Leslie and still long for genuine healing and reconciliation in our relationship. Because if that is not possible, what is church for, anyway?

This is the question I desperately press on Kent Ulery, leader of the Michigan Conference of the U.C.C., who once had pastoral oversight of my relationship with the Leslie church and who, if he had kept his word, would have done much better by both of us.

I have been three months here in my new position as assistant to the director of the the library at the health sciences center. Last week the director I am supposed to be assisting announced her retirement. At the same time, she announced that she has accepted a position as director of a medical school library in Florida. So here I am-- a librarian/ assistant-- with no one to assist. I must say this is mildly disconcerting. The field of librarianship, like the field of ministry, is being rocked by deep changes in our culture. I think my boss was feeling beaten up in her leadership position, and looking for a new beginning. This is certainly something I can understand. It may even have been the reason she chose to call me. Why did I use that word, call? Because she did call me. She called me to be her assistant, and I said yes. That is why I am here.

I just want to go on record as saying in my prayers and out loud to anyone who will listen that I am confused, but still trusting in the love of God. I continue to find good people and interesting things to do, worthwhile things to care about. I continue to fascinated by books, and libraries, and communities of learning like churches and universities. I continue to want to be with people who "love God with their minds," and their neighbors as themselves, whatever faith they may profess.

I think we live in kairos time. What that means to me is, we live in a time when our choices really matter. Of course, maybe all time is kairos time. But somehow I don't think so. I think there are moments when good choices can save the life of the world, and when not making them can lead to losses that make life unsustainable.

Ram Lopez, my minister in San Antonio, said in his sermon this morning that God keeps God's word. As I sat listening, I thought: "I on the other hand, have become a keeper of words." There is a difference, and there is a relationship. The difference fascinates me, while the relationship sustains me where I am.

I have posted below a few good links about keeping words, and keeping one's word, just to let you know I am able to think on both sides of the street.

Recommended Review: Google and the Myth of Universal Knowledge

In the slim volume 'Google and the Myth of Universal Knowledge', Jean-Noel Jeanneney - himself the president of the Bibliotheque nationale de France - frames a cogent, if oftentimes overtly and overly political, argument that entrusting the literary treasures of the world to an American for- profit corporation has a number of pitfalls and could be considered a dereliction of duty by the world's libraries charged with the preservation of books...

This ought to get some conversation going!

Recommended Link: The Economist explains why books are still useful to people

... Now that books are being digitised, how will people read?...

Certainly, some types of fiction—novels as well as novellas—are also likely to migrate online and to cease being books. Many fantasy fans, for example, have already put aside books and logged on to “virtual worlds” such as “World of Warcraft”, in which muscular heroes and heroines get together to slay dragons and such like. Science fiction may go the same way, and is arguably already being created by “residents” of online worlds such as Second Life.

Most stories, however, will never find a better medium than the paper-bound novel. That is because readers immersed in a storyline want above all not to be interrupted, and all online media teem with distractions (even a hyperlink is an interruption). People do not read fiction in order to accomplish a specific task in a limited amount of time, as they read reference and schoolbooks. Random-access dictionaries and cookbooks may be useful; random-access novels less so.

What about short stories and poems? Being short, they fit the new media, so some may do well online and need not be bound in paper. Commuters could receive their daily haiku or sonnet on their mobile phones while taking the bus to work. They might also use the new media to enjoy poetry in a more traditional way. “Storytelling started as oral history,” says Adam Smith, the boss of Google's book project, so a partial reversion to that form, through podcasting, would be natural.

But even anthologies of short stories and poems, like longer novels, are unlikely to disappear. People want to be guided by others. They also want media suitable for unhurried reading in beds and bathtubs and on beaches. Above all, they want paper books for what digitisation is revealing them to be. Books are not primarily artefacts, nor necessarily vehicles for ideas. Rather, as Mr Godin puts it, they are “souvenirs of the way we felt” when we read something. That is something that people are likely to go on buying.

Recommended link: Lawrence Lessig explains why he is refocusing his work

In one of the handful of opportunities I had to watch Gore deliver his global warming Keynote, I recognized a link in the problem that he was describing and the work that I have been doing during this past decade. After talking about the basic inability of our political system to reckon the truth about global warming, Gore observed that this was really just part of a much bigger problem. That the real problem here was (what I will call a "corruption" of) the political process. That our government can't understand basic facts when strong interests have an interest in its misunderstanding...

...I don't mean corruption in the simple sense of bribery. I mean "corruption" in the sense that the system is so queered by the influence of money that it can't even get an issue as simple and clear as term extension right. Politicians are starved for the resources concentrated interests can provide. In the US, listening to money is the only way to secure reelection. And so an economy of influence bends public policy away from sense, always to dollars...

My space in DSpace

This is a link t0 the catalog record for the full text of my M.A. thesis, Jesus' Parables, Language, and the Common World. Jesus was a storyteller.

Pastor Amy tells a story

I have Pastor Amy's blog as a tab on my google homepage. This post reminds me of something that happened at Central Congregational Church in Houston in 1993.

Lesson Plan

I would love to plan a class using the Little Mermaid as the launching device for a discussion. I know it would be good, even for grownups.