Weblogs: June 2006 Archives

The hotel's internet connection turns out to be more complex than the airport. There is a fee for the rooms, and only some parts of the lobby have free wireless.

It is only Sunday night, GA begins Wednesday. I am here for the UUMA exec meetings, but LREDA is here, the District Execs are here, the Ministry Couple's have meetings tomorrow, and half a dozen other groups that I haven't identified as yet. The pre GA is a good time meeting people and have some serious conversations. It doesn't seem so busy.

The Exec has been able to handle some details about the upcoming worship services and meetings that would be more difficult to handle once the meetings start. We have some difficult conversations on our agenda, I don't know if we will finish them before October.

None of your trusted networks is available. Would you like to log into open network TPA?

I click yes. The airport has free wireless. What has changed since I first travelled to a GA. A whole lot of things, but maybe the idea of a wireless computer laptop and a free wireless airport lobby is the most striking.

Later this week I might be impressed with how many more UUs go to GA than they did when I first went to GA. But then when I was young there seemed to be a lot of people at GA as well, as GA gets bigger, my ability to handle big GA grows as well. Sitting here waiting for boarding I am impressed with wireless airports.

This will be the first GA since 1996 that I have travelled alone. Marjorie is home, being taken care of my her nephew. His mother, Marjorie's sister arrives tonight. She will have someone with her 24/7 until I get back. A few days ago that seemed to be a necessity, but now Marjorie can get out of her bed and chair by herself. She still has to carry some medical equipment with her as she strolls about the house. But what a difference a week makes. She came home Monday night, and she had difficulty with movement. I am confident that it will all go well. Confident but I will call home to check with her and check with her care keepers. Looking at my schedule I think I will be busy, busy, busy. I don't worry unless i am alone and at rest. So I will keep moving.

This idea of blogging "GA" might work. I was skeptical. When would I ever find the time? But then it occurred to me, just write. Let the wireless internet connection thing take care of the postings.

I just learned that John Andrew Ross, Minister of Music Emeritus at the First Parish in Brookline, died  "after a very long illness. He was the spiritual and cultural heir of Elma Lewis and the man behind Boston's Black Nativity."  The Rev. Martha Niebanck, co-minister at the First Parish writes that she will conduct the memorial service which will be "mostly music with a drum fanfare as a prelude." (It will be at First Parish, July 23rd at 3 pm)

I met John more than twenty years ago at the Elma Lewis Center, and we drove together to a Unitarian Universalist Musician's Network meeting back about 1992.  I remember hearing his music many a Sunday morning on the Boston University radio station.  He was a Boston institution, and the city will never be the same without John.

I suppose I could get the Globe on line, but I rely on epistles from my friends, and the occasional Boston blogger, but sometimes I miss the people of Boston.  Not the ice on the streets in March, the people.

Here is John Andrew Ross as told by the Globe.

Monday evening I drove Marjorie home from the hospital. She had been at Tampa General for 13 days recovering from abdominal surgery. We went in May 31 expecting one hour laser surgery and then I was going to drive her home in the early evening. She was still in surgery at midnight.

So the recovery has been and will be more protracted than expected. It is good to have her home, but she is not able to function alone. I drove to the hospital everyday, plus took over a memorial service, arranged back up preaching and ferried relatives and best friends from the airport to hospital. I fielded lots of phone calls. I have been just as busy since she came home, but without the driving.

The congregations Marjorie and I serve have been wonderful, as have our colleagues. Her recovery to health may take months, so moving plans may be put on hold.

We have decided that I will go to St. Louis and that she will stay home with her sister and a friend flying in to stay with her while I am gone. She had many projects at GA, some of which I will do for her, and some which just will need to fall by the wayside.

It is not a bad thing, but I do find it all puzzling and time that I don't have is flying.  I might have to put this off till July.

I have just spent the afternoon trying Word Press.  I am not technologically adept,  it will take some time.  I notice that the Visual QuickStart has a guide to Word Press  almost ready, I will need it. 

I want to use my own domain name, and I would like to a web site to carry my resource material.  And some of the Templates are stunning,  I just don't have a clue about how to use them yet.  Also exporting from Typepad into Word Press is proving to be a challenge.

Hurricane season is ten days old.  The first tropical storm of that season is blowing by Tampa.  It is early for a storm,  people are nervous for what this season might bring. 

This is our the beginning of our fifth season.  Two of the past four have brought severe and destructive hurricanes,  I have replaced my porch twice. 

But Tampa worries about the "big one" a direct hit with storm surge coming right into the neighborhoods. 

I am taking over a memorial service for Marjorie who is in the hospital,  day twelve.  Her surgery was before the hurricane season began!  It has been a busy time.

Marjorie and I are effectively vegetarian, we eat fish on occasion. Marjorie hasn't had beef or pork in thirty years. She doesn't do caffein. We don't moralize about it, it just part of our religious and ethical life style.

The hospital tray I just sent back included beef broth, jello, and iced tea. It also had some reconstituted grape juice with corn syrup sweetner. I sent it back.

I feed her Miso soup, and fruit juices brought from home. I think I will smuggle in an apple.

Vegetables and fruits are easier to digest.

Yesterday, she forgot that jello had bone tarrow in it, and it made her sick.

Our diet is not about moral witnessing, it is about how we live our life.

Last Wednesday, May 31, Marjorie Bowens-Wheatley had surgery at Tampa General Hospital to have her gallbladder removed. The surgery turned out to be longer and more complex than she or the doctors expected. Her recovery and healing process will therefore by more protracted and difficult than anticipated.

At this point, Marjorie is feeling better: sitting up, and walking the halls after major abdominal surgery. She expects to be going home by next week and will continue her recovery process from there.

Marjorie and Clyde are asking that those who wish to contact her do so by email
or write to her at 1103 Standing Reed Place, Wesley Chapel, Florida 33543.

Please know that while Marjorie may not be able to respond to all of the correspondence in a timely manner, during her convalescence, she deeply appreciates your caring and support during this difficult period.

Philocrites makes some important comments about "conservative liberals" and that got me thinking.

One of the principles of liberalism is the removal of economic restrictions.  For liberals of the left that means restrictions imposed by corporate power, and by economic inequality.  Freedom is enabling everyone to realize their full potential, and therefore we overcome discrimination through scholarships, laws establishing equal treatment and affirmative action program.  Empowerment is organizing counter-vailing power to the oligarchy of wealth with unions and cooperatives.  We need a government committed to equity.

For the conservative removing economic restrictions means removing government regulation.  Programs constructed to aid the poor are seen as fostering "dependency."  Affirmative action is seen as stigmatizing those who benefit as not worthy.

While Dobson may be a theocrat,  I doubt if his base embraces the dictatorship of church leaders.  They accept rather the populist heresy, that is that "the people's will" should be reflected in government policy without regard to the pluralist nature of "the people."  The discussion that unfolded in the Federalist Papers that was formative in creating the U.S. Constitution needs to be revisited by liberals of the left.  Only small homogenous communities are monocultures and have a singular community interest.  The larger the community the more complex the "interests."  Governance is creating structures, policies and procedures for that multitude of conflicting interests to work together as a community.  Populism motivates a minority to think of itself as if it were the majority, as if it's prejudices were "the viewpoint of people."  It uses liberal rhetoric about democracy being the will of the people, but abandons the liberal commitment to due process.  Due process is needed to create a community from many voices.  This is expressed in the slogan of the United States: e pluribus unum (out of many, one.)

In the United States the assumed majority of populism is white, Christian, property owning, English speaking and living in patriarchial families.  Demographically that is a fiction, we are a pluralistic nation with white, Christian, propertied, English speaking male dominated hetersexuals being a minority.

The "un-liberal" right is a revolt based on a liberal heresy that the left has never challenged.  "We the people" should have read "we the peoples."

The last weeks have been the busy, as I get ready to move into an interim ministry in the Fall. 

But in the midst of the planned chaos of getting ready for the move a catastrophe.  On  Wednesday the world in which I live and move and have my being was turned upside down, and now it is a little cracked from the experience.  I am sustained by prayer, my own and many others. 

I will be back - less disoriented - there are so many things I want to write about.  But I must attend to first things first.