Holidays

Hey, I wanted to say it was great being home for the holidays and that I really enjoyed having a bit of time off. As a parting gift, I wanted to share a song on iTunes that I found I really enjoy and that I think you might like as well.

It's called "Numb," by Ben Lee. Look it up. Download it. If you don't like it, I'll give you the dollar back.

Last Calls...

So, Irene left for Florida last night and my roommate Steve went back to England on Wednesday, which has left me all alone in Boston with nothing to do but find the perfect Christmas present for each and everyone of you (unless I already got you something ... which reminds me: Don't open packages sent to 28 Greenvale to my attention!)

Deconstructing Narcissus

I've always been a big proponent of the morals and lessons that can be drawn from our society's myths and legends. It's one reason that, despite my uncertain relationship with the church, I've always been an advocate of Sunday School. That and general cultural literacy.

One non-Christian story that really struck me growing up was the tale of Narcissus. So in love with his own image that he couldn't pull himself away from a remarkably calm pond to eat or drink. If that doesn't promise an unfortunate and ironic end to the self-involved, it's hard to see what could.

But then, does it really? What if we exchanged Narcissus staring at his own image in a pond with something else? Whatever strikes you as equivalent. For example: What if he and his dearly beloved starved to death staring at each other across a table full of food? Are the two comparable? Obviously there's a moral to my hypothetical story, but it doesn't involve narcissism. Maybe it's closer to "don't let fanciful longings and emotional attachment separate you completely from the necessities of life?" Or something like that?

So, my question is, does the death of Narcissus really tell us all that much about narcissism? Or is it more some odd, psychological problem that afflicts those who lounge around small bodies of water? If so, does it matter if Narcissus' death wasn't or wouldn't be unique to someone who was narcissistic?

Big thoughts about the world, right? Love, and I'll see you soon.

Thanks!

Thanks for the glasses (and thanks, from Irene, for the warm, warm socks and tasty, tasty coffee). We've made out quite well from Thanksgiving, so I can only imagine how we'll walk away from Christmas.

Though I've learned that it's hard putting a place together. There are a lot of moving parts.

I do take comfort from the success of my peers, however. As a matter of fact, happily settled Mike Dickensheet has a 30th birthday party this weekend, and there's a notable list of invitees. From the neighborhood, the event is being hosted by his wife, Bridget Geiman, and Sarah Brumfitt is attending. Max will be there and Jesse Larson's brother Tim (Jesse having returned to Holland). Matt Lackowski was invited (the tall boy who was the VP's son). Dave Webster will be there with his wife, as will Ryan Surber. The gang's all here.

Well, not all there of course. Irene and I will be in Boston--although not without our social events to attend. Patrick, from my soccer team, is hosting his holiday party this weekend.

Still, Mike's 30th would have been fun. I do take comfort from the fact the Westminster kids are still hanging out together, though. No 30th birthday party. No graduation ceremony for Chris Gavin. It's difficult to be far removed.

Chicago Photos

I finally put up the photos from the Chicago trip. There are a couple of unrelated running ones of Irene and I at the end. Pay them no mind. Here's my favorite:



What a cutie.

Also, note the addition down and right of the Shelfari Bookshelf. Remember when I had you sign up for that? I'm only adding books as I finish them, so you can be on top of what I'm reading. Cool.

More later. Oh, and tough news about that Illini loss, huh Dad?

The End of the Thanksgiving

I wanted to take a minute to let you each know that Irene and I both had a great time over Thanksgiving. I know that occasionally we took a bit longer to get ready than might have been strictly desirable, but otherwise I'm hoping we did our part too.

So, on Sunday, we went to Trinity Church on the South Side (400 W. 95th Street). Deep in the South Side. The church is UCC, which is the denomination Irene belongs to. Not that that alone would have made the 100+ street trip worthwhile. The church is also the home of a certain Democratic Presidential candidate. The increased publicity caused by that fact put some pressure on the church and its Pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. Nothing's sacred.

The service was unlike any other I've been to--starting with the fact that it was two and a half hours along. Ouch.

Given that it started at 11am and it took an hour to get back from on the El, by the time we made it to Pizzeria Uno's, there wasn't any wait at all. Well, that's not exactly true. You have to wait an hour for the pizza to cook... Good thing we let that bird fly when we did.

The airport was a nightmare. There was no getting on an earlier flight. There was only getting on our regular flight, desperately attempting to not flip out and attack some obnoxious Starbucks' barista. Holiday travel. Thank the Lord the pizza was worth it.

The Holiday Season

I was going to post some pictures of my new place, of which I'm quite proud, but I've temporarily misplaced the cable that connects my camera to my computer. A lot of work has gone into putting 277 Highland Ave., #2 into shape. Work by not only myself, Irene and my roommate Steve, but also my friend Kevin (who put up our dartboard--he's just a handy guy). And did I mention Irene? She not only did she secure several pieces of our furniture, including our coffee table and my bedroom desk, but she also went through the trouble of painting several pieces of it. A very nice "beer barrel brown."


I'll have pictures up soon. In the meantime, lacking my camera cable I got to thinking about things I need, and what others might need. You know, for Christmas. Dad put the kibosh on the Beer of the Month club so the field is wide open. Feel free to leave suggestions in the comment section (I might clue Amy in to this little project, too, so she can chime in).

As for me, both you and Irene have done a good job supplying me with dishes. The next logical steps are pots and glasses. After getting those pictures from Uncle George, though, I realized that I don't think I've ever seen the entirety of your wedding pictures. I'd like to. Maybe you two could make an album of copies of them for me? How's that for a fun little project?

Oh, and I was also looking over things to do in Chicago, and it looks like the Museum of Contemporary Art has some good stuff going on (again). And we still need to get some proper deep dish pizza. Irene and I'll need to restock carbs after running the Naperville Turkey Trot.

Gobble, gobble.

Latest Contretemps

Since it's come up, I thought I'd bring your attention to the latest Facebook victim: Kevin Colvin. The word on the street is that he told his employers at the Anglo Irish Bank he needed to take a Friday off for "family reasons," but then took off to Worcester, Massachusetts for a Halloween party. When his boss found pictures of him at the party on Facebook, well, things went South quickly.

Makes you wonder why anyone has a Facebook profile these days.

The Book of Love

Irene and I have been catching lots of shows lately. The latest was at the Toad, which coincidentally, is attached to a bar named Christopher's. We had the great luck to see Rose Polenzani, a very talented Americana/Indie/Folk musician singing with another very talented young female musician, Rose Cousins. I found a video of them doing a song called "Book of Love," by the Magnetic Fields. Irene and I are going to see them on Valentine's Day.

My favorite lines are:

"The book of love is long and boring
And written very long ago
It's full of flowers and heart-shaped boxes
And things we're all too young to know"

Best of all, Irene managed to convince them to play at North Prospect this Sunday.

Enjoy.

The Four Corners of Internet Exchange

I also wanted to riff off of a comment that Irene made earlier regarding the internet, and the comments that people make thereon (See what I did there? Who worries about transitions in blogging except the children of English Professors?). Prepare yourself.

One great personal internet disappointment has been the way in which political dialogue has evolved (or devolved, according to your p.o.v.) on this new platform. The potential always seemed fantastic. If the republic requires a marketplace of ideas and a free exchange of thought, it is difficult to imagine a better medium: Communication is immediate and it spreads to the very ends of the earth itself.

Unfortunately, it takes very little examination to determine that what is most striking about internet political dialogue is anonymity, and what's most prized isn't profundity--it's vitriol.

That said, the internet does do several things exceptionally well. For example, I'm sure Dan Rather will tell you that it provides an instant army of fact checkers who can focus national media attention on an incorrect or misleading story. It's also proved to be a powerful means of raising funds and disseminating information.

But it is my hunch than in the more important arena of political debate, it acts as little more than an echo chamber. It is easy enough to find people who share your views and the arguments that support whatever those views may be. A constant system of support creates small cause for self-reflection, and so smaller cause for questioning. Ironically, instead of broadening an individual's exposure to widely disparate beliefs it has allows for a re-entrenchment of beliefs previously held, and instead of novel attempts to engage with opposing views we have legions of internet users parroting both the arguments and attempted humor of the same political internet sites. Worst of all, all of these factors come together to create a seemingly endless reservoir of indignation and repulsion. To be emotionally engaged in any meaningful sense requires committing oneself to exhaustion.


And I would leave it there, if it weren't for an experience recounted to me by one Ms. A.I. Jenkins. In a confidential communique, she informed me that having encountered the standard dross regarding Hillary Clinton, instead of posting openly in the forum chastising the offending party (somewhat offending, anyway. Didn't you hear? A.I.'s all for Obama.) she emailed him confidentially and a relatively productive discussion ensued. It's the first ever online, I'm told.

So, what to make of it? Perhaps earnestness is all that's ever been required, and online or offline it's just that it's always been in short supply. Perhaps our group mentality is so strong that it doesn't actually require groups in any physically recognizable sense. Maybe group mentality only requires people thousands of miles away who think, like we do, that Hillary is two-faced, Obama is naive, and Edwards is a closet radical. Perhaps I just expected too much.

Anyway, these are the things I think about. Thanks for indulging me.

CYHSY

Last nite Irene and I went to see a band called "Clap Your Hands Say Yeah" ("Clap Your Hands") at the Middle East in Cambridge. Clap Your Hand's claim to fame is that they started out almost entirely as an internet phenomenon. No major record label, no shows outside New York, no nothing, really. But they put their eponymous album online and word spread. Before they knew it they were getting hundreds of thousands of orders.

They recently put out another album, "Some Loud Thunder." Following the breakthrough success of their initial album, their second feels a bit like an attempt to establish themselves as artists, and conversely to establish that they aren't one of modern musics many one time wonders. In any event, Irene and I saw them touring in support of "Some Loud Thunder." They don't tour often and this was their first stop, so it was particularly good to see them.

They played a good number of songs from the first album (the one most people are familiar with) and I was struck by the variations from the recorded tracks. I suppose when you become intimately familiar with the recording of a song it's easy to view it as Definitive (with a purposefully capital D). Like a painting. An artist can talk about what they meant, and what they were feeling, but in the end it stands bare for all the world to see. You can't expect an artist to repaint a piece over and over again.

But maybe live shows are more like theater. The Director and Producer can work together to ensure multiple versions of their work. Of course, Directors and Producers rely on Players (that shifty bunch) whose allegiance is often more to their own glory then anything else.

Alone among them, a small band of four or five musicians can authoritatively recreate and reinterpret their work night after night after night. Once the LP is cut the issue is set, to a certain extent, but unlike an author who must set their work free out into the world and afterwards can only harp after it, the musician can reproduce a song in its entirety and gently point out to us what we may have misinterpreted, and what time and circumstance may have wrongly exaggerated. It's a beautiful gift. Check out the recorded version:

Flickr

How could I forget about Flickr? Flickr is where all the cool kids post their photos.
If you want to see the photos of Irene and I in the U.K. again, there you go.

Open Thread

"Open Thread" is another blogging term. Basically, the blogger will pose a question and the commentators will try to answer it, and pose questions to each other and the author. On the more heated political topics this gives people a chance to vent and fool around. On our more docile weblog it gives us a good chance to up the interactivity.

So what do you think of the idea of this blog? Useful? Fun? Anything you'd like to hear more of? Less? Let me know.

North Prospect Church

North Prospect is the church that Irene is currently doing what amounts to a work-study program at. She worked there several years ago, so this is her second time. It is an "open and affirming" UCC Congregation. You may have seen the UCC adverts around town: "Don't put a period where God has put a comma." Most interestingly (for at least one of you) North Prospect puts all of its sermons online--including those of the lovely Miss Anna Irene Jenkins. They also have a very involved "Elderspirit" program, which is geared towards there senior congregants, of which there are many. In fact, part of Irene's work at the church is to increase attendance, particularly among the young.

She's already got an easy one--I've gone with her every week for more than a month. When's the last time that happened?

Playoffs!

Not those playoffs. My recreational, 7 v. 7, coed soccer team's playoffs! Our team number is 1, and our team name was originally Kevin & Co. after our nominal coach, but we were later switched to Het Legioen by a Dutch teammate when Kevin objected. This same group of guys and gals have been playing together for almost three years.

True, we ended this particular season an underwhelming 1-4-1, but our last two games were the tie and the win, so we're on an upswing! We finished 2nd to last so we're playing the second best team. We play at 7pm tomorrow. If we lose they may boot us out of the A-League. Wish us luck.

I'm also excited about the Boston Celtic Music Festival, which is just around the corner. If you go to the events myspace page, most of the performers are listed as friends. If you click on their profiles you can hear a bit of what they sound like.

Also on myspace, though not particularly Celtic, is one of Irene's friends from Divinity School: Noe Venable. Go ahead and listen to "Prayer for Beauty" and try not to be impressed. I dare you.

One More Resource

Sorry for laying one on you last post. Sometimes the ideas percolate too long and then explode when they see the light of day. As my Judge used to say when someone would make a dubious legal argument, "Well, at least he's thinking big thoughts about the world!"

Another internet resource I've found valuable is yelp.com. Yelp is basically a user review site. What that means is that it allows people with an account to write reviews of restaurtants, bars, theaters, and basically anything else, and then share them on the site. As more and more people review a place it becomes a more accurate barometer of what it's actually like. For example, I recently wrote a review of my local pub, Magoun's (I'm Christopher B).

It's a nice little place. Irene and I took her parents there the last time they came down. Next time you come up we can check it out!

Internet Resources and so on...

In response to your question about resources, there is obviously a wide variety. It's become accepted, for instance, when trying to gauge how much press a particular political story has gotten to run a search on Lexis-Nexis and simply report the results. Similarly, sometimes people simply throw a search term into google and calculate popularity based on how many pages pop-up.

Of course, google has its own uses for research: you can search google specifically for blogs, for books, patents, or scholarly articles. Or if you insist on using an unaffiliated search mechanism you can use google to find it. Handy.

For less formal, popular cultures searches I've found three sites to be invaluable: The Internet Movie Database, which contains the names of movies and the actors who played in them (with other miscellaneous facts), Amazon (the site has been so successful in expanding its inventory it can now be used reliably for finding book titles, authors and the like), and the much maligned Wikipedia for nearly anything else.

I hope this information will be of some use in your immediate search. If not, perhaps we can all sit back and marvel at the sheer volume of information now available on the internet.

And just a (dense and possibly incomprehensible) note about the newly disgraced Ms. Dudley-Eshbach. I've often wondered if severely punishing people who accidentally reveal bigoted views wasn't, from a long term perspective at least, counterproductive if our end goal is the obliteration of racism in all its forms. In my experience in the Eastern Shore and elsewhere, the kind of racism here on display--not tending toward overt action so much as cultural condescension--remains more widespread than people like to believe. Part of the reason for its survival is that it is inconspicuous. It doesn't manifest itself in racial epithets or off-color remarks in front of strangers. People who hold these views have already learned the lessons of Dudley-Eschbach, Mel Gibson and Michael Richards well enough to keep their views about the intelligence (and worth) of Latinos and African-Americans close to their chests. And far from relieving them of these views, I would imagine the harsh treatment doled out for what they view as innocuous offenses only hardens them and drives their backwards views deeper and deeper inside.

It's possible we gain more as a society by pillorying the wrongdoers as an example to the majority about proper conduct than we do by worrying about the few wayward souls.

Still, I wonder what would happen if Ms. Dudley-Eshbach said that posting the objectionable photos wasn't a mistake--or at least not a mistake in the sense that it was accidental and not representative of her personal views. If she said it was a mistake in the way she viewed people, and that she was wrong, and that she was sorry. And then people forgave her.

This all assumes the photos in question are actually representative of Ms. Dudley-Eshbach's views, of course. If they are an isolated example, perhaps the photos should make us question her character less than her character (as established by being the President of a University) should make us view the photos as an aberration. But you get what I'm saying.

Change of Plans

I didn't run to the Mysic Lakes--it seemed like more of a Fresh Pond day. The great thing about Fresh Pond is that people walk and run there with their dogs. Sure you might trip over one, but they run around in little herds together and, well, it's kind of cute.

The Magic of the Internet

I found a great article on Denver that was on boston.com for all the Red Sox fans traveling to the Mile High City. It had listings of all the art museums, breweries, and general goings-on that one could wish for, and made Denver sound like a pretty great city.

Unfortunately, then I unfound it, and haven't been able to find it since. Even us younger kids can find the internet quite challenging at times. But you two have been to Denver, right? What did you think?

Alright, I'm off for my run. I think you should be able to see the route at mapmyrun. Let me know if the link works. It's a beautiful day in Boston and the only thing on tv is Halloween: Resurrection, so it's probably time to go despite my having a bit of a hangover from watching last nights game. Speaking of, I'll have to think about where to watch the Series clincher tonight...

Monday Routine

So, to orient you, my Monday schedule has me working until 8:30pm or so, going to the gym for an hour (going to the gym during prime time lets me catch shows I like (e.g. Heroes) while I'm on the treadmill). Then I call a cab for a trip home (free if you stay after 8pm) and usually arrive around 10:30pm.

It's been a around 2 years of so like this, so, predictably, now I'm cruising the internet looking at available positions. One position, at monster.com, caught my eye: Research Analyst at McKinsey & Co. They're in the murky business of consulting. But, they hire top flight talent and supply a good deal of travel, having 90 offices in 50 countries. Actually it's not that much different then a law firm--except for them not practicing law of course. I suppose that's a bit of a hitch.

The First Post.

The First Post is primarily about seeing if I like the way the design looks, and lets me ruminate on whether this is actually going to be a good idea or not. Perfunctory, really.