Are we known as critics, consumers, copiers, condemners of culture?

Creating Culture

Our best response to the world is to make something of it.

Andy Crouch

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posted 9/08/2008 09:23AM

 5 of 5 

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I wonder what we Christians are known for in the world outside our churches. Are we known as critics, consumers, copiers, condemners of culture? I'm afraid so. Why aren't we known as cultivators—people who tend and nourish what is best in human culture, who do the hard and painstaking work to preserve the best of what people before us have done? Why aren't we known as creators—people who dare to think and do something that has never been thought or done before, something that makes the world more welcoming and thrilling and beautiful?

The simple truth is that in the mainstream of culture, cultivation and creativity are the postures that confer legitimacy for the other gestures. People who consider themselves stewards of culture, guardians of what is best in a neighborhood, an institution, or a field of cultural practice gain the respect of their peers. Even more so, those who go beyond being mere custodians to creating new cultural goods are the ones who have the world's attention. Indeed, those who have cultivated and created are precisely the ones who have the legitimacy to condemn—whose denunciations, rare and carefully chosen, carry outsize weight. Cultivators and creators are the ones who are invited to critique and whose critiques are often the most telling and fruitful.

[LINK: Creating Culture ]

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Possibly the most insulting and degrading remark ever made

UPDATED Walmart Statements Regarding Supreme Court Ruling in Dukes Case

“Clearly today’s ruling in the Dukes case has important legal implications but just as important, it pulls the rug out from under the accusations made against Walmart over the last 10 years. Every female associate and every customer can feel even better about the company as a result of today’s decision.

"Walmart has a long history of providing advancement opportunities for our female associates and over the years we have made tremendous strides in developing women throughout the organization. In fact, we have created specific training and mentoring programs to help prepare women for opportunities at all levels in our company. As a result of our efforts, Walmart is often recognized as a great place for women to work.”

--Gisel Ruiz, Executive Vice President, People, Walmart U.S.

"Every female associate and every customer can feel even better about the company as a result of today’s decision."

This is by far the most insulting and degrading remark ever made by a corporate mouth-piece.  It is further laughable that this person sites "Executive Vice President, People" as their title - as if People were just anther department like Kitchen&Bath or Outdoors.  

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Three Simple Rules in Life

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Have you ever been to Electric Lady Land? Well, the pump don't work 'cause the vandals stole the handle.

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My Mother Was No White Dove

My Mother Was No White Dove

by Reginald Shepherd 

no dove at all, coo-rooing through the dusk
and foraging for small seeds
My mother was the clouded-over night
a moon swims through, the dark against which stars
switch themselves on, so many already dead
by now (stars switch themselves off
and are my mother, she was never
so celestial, so clearly seen)

My mother was the murderous flight of crows
stilled, black plumage gleaming
among black branches, taken
for nocturnal leaves, the difference
between two darks:

a cacophony of needs
in the bare tree silhouette,
a flight of feathers, scattering
black. She was the night
streetlights oppose (perch
for the crows, their purchase on sight),
obscure bruise across the sky
making up names for rain

My mother always falling
was never snow, no kind
of bird, pigeon or crow

[ LINK: Reginald Shepherd ]

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Permanence (Thanks xkcd)

http://xkcd.com/910/

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Equal Pay Act

"This act represents many years of effort… to call attention to the unconscionable practice of paying female employees less wages than male employees for the same job. This measure adds to our laws another structure basic to democracy. It will add protection at the working place to the women, the same rights at the working place in a sense that they have enjoyed at the polling place."

- President John F. Kennedy, remarks upon signing the Equal Pay Act of 1963

On this day in 1963, President John F. Kennedy signed into law the Equal Pay Act, a law intended to end gender-based pay discrimination. At the time, women were earning, on average, only 59 cents for every dollar earned, on average, by men. Companies were posting the same jobs on men's and women's help wanted pages -- with different salaries. Discrimination was rampant and overt; it was still legal to pay unfairly. The Equal Pay Act was intended to be a key first step toward changing the way America did business, for the better.

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Human Poverty Index (from 2008)

Ranking	Country	HPI-2	Probability at birth of not surviving to age 60 (%)	People lacking functional literacy skills (%)	Long-term unemployment (%)	Population below 50% of median income (%)
1	Sweden	6.3	6.7	7.5	1.1	6.5
2	Norway	6.8	7.9	7.9	0.5	6.4
3	Netherlands	8.1	8.3	10.5	1.8	7.3
4	Finland	8.1	9.4	10.4	1.8	5.4
5	Denmark	8.2	10.3	9.6	0.8	5.6
6	Germany	10.3	8.6	14.4	5.8	8.4
7	Switzerland	10.7	7.2	15.9	1.5	7.6
8	Canada	10.9	8.1	14.6	0.5	11.4
9	Luxembourg	11.1	9.2	-	1.2	6.0
10	Austria	11.1	8.8	-	1.3	7.7
11	France	11.2	8.9

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Big Hairy BLUE Tarantula (For real, dude!)

Cobalt Blue (Haplopelma lividium)

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Ages by xkcd

[ LINK: Ages ]

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Fat Cats want more fat kittens

The Washington Post reports that House Republicans have decided to slash away at public health measures designed to combat obesity, especially those aimed at children. On Tuesday, a House appropriations committee decided to do away with the first new upgrade of federal nutritional standards for public school meals in 15 years. Making the meals lower in fat and sugar and adding in more fruits and veggies, they concluded, simply cost too much.

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ai weiwei exhibit

ai weiwei
profile of duchamp, sunflower seeds, 1983
from new york photographs, 1983-1993
c-print, 20 x 28,5 cm
© ai weiwei

[ LINK: ai weiwei: interlacing at fotomuseum winterthur ]

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Grand Rapids Michigan is not dying. Here is why.

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Lady loves to live By Bridget Bell

Lady loves to live
By Bridget Bell, Sep 21, 2009

where other people lived, acquires pillowcases
where other faces drooled, slurps broth off thrift store spoons
formerly cradled in the dark caverns of strangers’ mouths.
She wears embroidered dresses with yellowed armpits,
and her repeatedly broken shoe laces are held together by fraying knots.
A line cook she met said I’m going to call you Nomad
when she told him her name was Lady.
It’s fitting. Lady doesn’t have a home.
She roams from city to city, always renting
apartments with eggshell walls, which she paints
yellow rain coat,
ice cube silver, mudslide.
Despite what’s written in the lease, she never returns
the walls to their original white.
She imagines new tenants slicing celery, slicing jicama,
or black olives dumped from a tin can
while surrounded by the same colors that surrounded her
when she did her slicing.

Bridget Bell is an Ohio-born writer living in NYC, and she holds her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. Her work has been published in the New Ohio Review, The Chaffey Review, Folio and SUB-LIT, among other publications. She works as a bartender in Manhattan’s financial district, and also as an assistant editor at FourWay Books.

[ LINK: decomP Magazine ]

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New Toy Soldiers (WARNING: Graphic depictions of reality)

[ LINK: dorothy: casualties of war ]

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Ai Weiwei Glasses

[ LINK: LikeCool::Ai Weiwei Glasses ]

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R.I.P. James Arness

James Arness, Marshal on ‘Gunsmoke,’ Dies at 88

CBS

James Arness portrayed Marshal Matt Dillon on "Gunsmoke" for 20 years after the series debuted in 1955.

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C A P I T A L I S M

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The revolution will be...

http://youngmanhattanite.tumblr.com/post/5954020957/you-will-not-be-able-to-stay-home-sisters-and

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Only in America...

Only in America...

can a pizza get to your house faster than an ambulance.

are there handicap parking places
in front of a skating rink.

do drugstores make the sick walk all the way to the
back of the store to get their prescriptions while
healthy people can buy cigarettes at the front.

do people order double cheeseburgers,
large fries, and a diet coke.

do banks leave both doors open and
then chain the pens to the counters.

do we leave cars worth thousands of dollars in the
driveway and put our useless junk in the garage.

do we use answering machines to screen calls and
then have call waiting so we won't miss a call
from someone we didn't want to talk to in the
first place.

do we buy hot dogs in packages of
ten and buns in packages of eight.

do we use the word 'politics' to describe the process so
well: 'Poli' in Latin meaning 'many' and 'tics' meaning
'bloodsucking creatures'.

do they have drive-up ATM machines with Braille lettering.

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R.I.P. Gil Scott-Heron

[R]apper Chuck D. discusses the role Scott-Heron played in the birth of rap: "You can go into the beat poets and [Allen] Ginsberg and [Bob] Dylan, but Gil Scott-Heron is the manifestation of the modern world. He and the Last Poets set the stage for everyone else. In what way necessary? Well, if you try and make pancakes and you ain't got the water, the milk or the eggs, you're trying to do something you can't. In combining music with the word, from the voice on down, you follow the template he laid out. His rapping is rhythmic. Some of it's songs. It's punchy, and all those qualities are still used today."

[ LINK: Gil Scott-Heron dies; influential poet/musician helped inspire rap ]

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The cat is the Hat

Photo: Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty

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Tea Party Freshmen Hog Defense Pork

After Promising To End Earmarks, Tea Party Freshmen Hog Defense Pork

Tea Party freshmen who were swept into office largely based on their pledge to end congressional pork are apparently hogging the trough. Capitol Hill Blue reports that members of the Tea Party Caucus filled the latest defense appropriations bill with millions of dollars of earmarks for projects in their home districts:

While talking the big plan to be fiscally responsible the Republican freshmen havepacked a huge $553 billion spending bill with millions of pet defense projects for their home districts.[...]

[ LINK: ThinkProgress ]

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Convert Schools Into Prisons To Get More Funding

Outraged By Cuts, Superintendent Asks Gov. Snyder To Convert Schools Into Prisons To Get More Funding

The conservative governors who were elected across the country last November have championedhuge cuts to public education spending while resisting efforts to raise revenues from the wealthiest among us. In Michigan, Gov. Rick Snyder (R) proposed cutting millions of dollars from the public education budget, and this week the GOP-controlled state senate passed a “contentious K-12 budget that cuts $470 per student from school districts.”

Outraged by these cuts, Nathan Bootz, the superintendent of Ithaca Public Schools, wrote a letter to the editor in a local paper proposing an idea that could come out of a Jonathan Swift novel: if Snyder intends on draining funding from public schools, maybe Bootz should convert the schools in his district into prisons to get funding.

Noting that Michigan spends “between $30,000 and $40,000″ on each prisoner but can barely provide $7,000 per public school student, Bootz says that maybe we need to start treating “our students like they are prisoners, with equal funding“:

MORE...

[ LINK: ThinkProgress ]

Note BOLD emphasis is mine.

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National Tequila Party Movement

"We can blame Obama and Republicans and Democrats all we want, but the only way that the Latino community is going to get respect is if we become consistent primary-election voters, as well as general-election voters."

- Belinda "DeeDee" Blase, a spokeswoman for the National Tequila Party Movement, a group aiming to raise Latino voter participation. (Source: Christian Science Monitor)

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Why the Rich Love...

Out-of-work Americans de­ser­ve more than un­employ­ment checks - they de­ser­ve di­vidends. The rich would never have re­covered with­out them.

[ LINK: Why The Rich Love... ]

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Memorial Day

Memorial day is almost upon us. Spare a thought for all those who serve and have served.

 

"A veteran is a person who at one point in his or her life wrote a check to the Govt for, up to and including, one life. They did it willingly knowing that what we have needs to be protected. For all those who "stood their watch on the wall'. "Well done!  You stand relieved" For all those who still stand on the wall, "CHARLIE MIKE". For all those who had their "checks cashed". We will remember

 

William J. Evanow, MSGT USAF (Ret)

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Willie Nelson... about politics.

"I still say that the people have the power to change things and they will if they vote," Nelson replied. "The Teapot Party started as a joke but it could still be a way for people to speak out about important things. I am not a criminal. The millions of pot smokers in this country are not criminals. We don't like being treated as such and I for one will stand up for what I believe in and will vote for anyone I choose. You should do the same. We are not ever going to agree on everything and everybody. The best advice I ever got was from my ex father-in-law. He said take my advice and do what you want to. End of story."

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South

South
by Jack Gilbert 

In the small towns along the river
nothing happens day after long day.
Summer weeks stalled forever,
and long marriages always the same.
Lives with only emergencies, births,
and fishing for excitement. Then a ship
comes out of the mist. Or comes around
the bend carefully one morning
in the rain, past the pines and shrubs.
Arrives on a hot fragrant night,
grandly, all lit up. Gone two days
later, leaving fury in its wake.

For Susan Crosby Lawrence Anderson

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He thinks Palin is...

SUNDAY, MAY 22, 2011

Quote of the Day

"He thinks Palin is an idiot. He thinks she’s stupid. He helped boost her up. People like Sarah Palin haven’t elevated the conservative movement."

-- Anonymous person close to Roger Ailes on the Fox News chairman, who reportedly believes that the GOP he so loves is in serious danger of losing the 2012 election and that he personally doesn't seem to be able to stop the downward slide

[ LINK: Deus Ex Malcontent ]

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American Health Care

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Why the rich don't want poor people to eat well.

Does Lack of Income Take Away the Brain’s Horses?

By daniel.lende

Posted: May 13, 2011

And I don’t mean the pretty horses people ride, but the hippocampus (orsea horse) circuits in your brain, which are crucial to memory. New research in PLoS One, Association between Income and the Hippocampus, demonstrates a link between lower socioeconomic status and lower hippocampal grey matter density.

 

Does Lack of Income Take Away the Brain’s Horses?

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Leadership

The art of leadership Go to the people. Learn from them. Live with them. Start with what they know. Build with what they have. The best of leaders - when the job is done, when the task is accomplished - the people will say, we have done it ourselves.    Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because they want to do it.   Lao Tzu - Dwight D. Einsenhower

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Things that make you say, "Hmmmmmm"

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Culture is...

Culture is a kind of language. And as with any language, once we become fluent in our culture, we stop thinking about it.

Doug Pagitt

EmergentVillage

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There were elites before Obama

These days Americans get constant lectures about the need to reduce the budget deficit. That focus in itself represents distorted priorities, since our immediate concern should be job creation. But suppose we restrict ourselves to talking about the deficit, and ask: What happened to the budget surplus the federal government had in 2000?

The answer is, three main things. First, there were the Bush tax cuts, which added roughly $2 trillion to the national debt over the last decade. Second, there were the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which added an additional $1.1 trillion or so. And third was the Great Recession, which led both to a collapse in revenue and to a sharp rise in spending on unemployment insurance and other safety-net programs.

So who was responsible for these budget busters? It wasn’t the man in the street.

President George W. Bush cut taxes in the service of his party’s ideology, not in response to a groundswell of popular demand — and the bulk of the cuts went to a small, affluent minority.

Similarly, Mr. Bush chose to invade Iraq because that was something he and his advisers wanted to do, not because Americans were clamoring for war against a regime that had nothing to do with 9/11. In fact, it took a highly deceptive sales campaign to get Americans to support the invasion, and even so, voters were never as solidly behind the war as America’s political and pundit elite.

Finally, the Great Recession was brought on by a runaway financial sector, empowered by reckless deregulation. And who was responsible for that deregulation? Powerful people in Washington with close ties to the financial industry, that’s who. Let me give a particular shout-out to Alan Greenspan, who played a crucial role both in financial deregulation and in the passage of the Bush tax cuts — and who is now, of course, among those hectoring us about the deficit.

LINK: 

The Unwisdom of Elites

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: May 8, 2011

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I just want to be...

http://xkcd.com/896/

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