In Praise of Podcasts

I spend a fair amount of time on buses. Since I moved to my new place, I live mere blocks from a campus bus stop. I get a short walk, and then a free ride to school – something more and more valuable with the price of gas these days. The ride takes a while, maybe 20 minutes, since I often ride the entire route, south campus to north. This doesn’t seem long enough to try to read – plus the movement and crowds make this challenging. Instead I listen to my ipod, and have quite a satisfying podcast routine. I love podcasts. They help me keep up with and understand important news, they keep me entertained engaged, sometimes moved. They keep me company. Here are the ones I look forward to every week:

Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me: the NPR News Quiz

This show is hilarious, while still being high brow. Everything you could ask for from NPR. They often have fascinating guests, and they don’t take themselves too seriously. The Stephen Colbert episode was particularly good.

Slate Political Gabfest

When I listen to this podcast, I feel like it’s the same thing as sitting in a room with some smart journalist/commentators and catching up on the week’s news. They include just the right amount of goofing off with each other that I really feel like I’m in the in group. Except I never get to participate. But it’s still another way to make sure I caught everything important in the week’s news, and understand what’s important about it.

This American Life

This one is a bit dangerous for bus riding, because if I’m caught in the right mood, I can be moved to laughter or near tears. And the other bus riders probably think I’m some kind of crazy, but I don’t even care, because that’s how good it is. This show introduced me to Sarah Vowell, for which I am eternally grateful. I desperately want like to write like she does – funny, smart, self-deprecating. Anyway, the whole show is good and beautiful and fascinating. I love it.

I encourage my readers to spice up their travels with a little bit of these Podcasts. They are a nice way to structure my week – in bus rides, walks and listens.

GodTube: what's the deal?

Jamie sent me this recent LA times article about GodTube. It's interesting for a lot of reasons, but it brings to light some issues that have come up in my religion and media class recently, besides the questions I wrote about on this blog back in March.

The article says, "As far as what the site considers appropriate, Wyatt has said 'if we wouldn't want an 8-year-old girl to see it, then we won't allow it.'" This is a question that has come up in my class recently: why does something have to be appropriate for children to be labelled "Christian". Do all Christians need to avoid the ugliness, complexity and seriousness we would keep from our little girls (note, it's a little GIRL that is our ideal audience as well). Are Christians and Children the same thing, from a media standpoint? I should hope not. I know that Jesus asks us to have faith like a child, but Paul also said when I became an adult I put childish ways behind me.

Another interesting segment from the article:

What can you get on your laptop that you can't get from the pew? The answer, according to [Professor Heidi] Campbell, is more sustained and satisfying personal interaction. That includes matters like in-depth theological discussion, prayer support, opportunities for confession and the like.

Is this really the case? Do people get more sustained, personal, human interaction online than in their local churches? If this is the case, church members need to seriously rethink the ways their church functions. As I argued in another class when we were reading Robert Putnam, I'm all in favor of human relationships through technology and across distances, but when you get sick, or have a family member die, nobody from the internet is going to show up on your doorstep with casserole.

It seems, in this case, that christian branding on the internet is working the same as in other media. I wonder if the editorial rules and ideological community will lead to more bickering than more open communities on the internet, or lead to an online site that is perceived as "safe" and even a good locale for evangelism...

camoflage

ok, I'm totally in love with the idea of a skirt that turns into a vending-machine disguise. I want one, so I can pretend to be a cartoon character, ninja, or international spy. Japanese designers are so great.

Reformed Worship article online

I've written before about the short article I published in Reformed Worship recently. Now it is available in full text on their website. It's based on a post from this blog that is several months old, so it might sound familiar.

Sorry for the lack of posts here, been distracted by the quotes blog craziness and grad school.

thoughts on media and circulation

Some of you have probably heard me talk ad nauseum about my recent publicity surrounding my quotation marks blog. The whole business of that blog’s growing popularity and it’s coverage in other media has led me to think some things about circulation, new media, and how content does and doesn’t cross to a new medium. I decided to use my (less popular) blog to think through some of these issues. Sorry so rambly.

So the first thing that is interesting about my blog experience is the nature of circulation – the way website visits spike when popular blogs or websites link to it, for example. Interestingly, when Yahoo picks linked to my blog as the pick of the day my spike in visits was only average – about the same as any blog with a large readership. However, promotion in a more mainstream internet source (that is, yahoo picks gets more mainstream attention than I Blame the Patriarchy, to give one example of a website that led to a similar spike) gets the attention of a different audience. I do not believe that it is coincidental that my promotion by Yahoo was followed a few days later by contact from an Associated Press reporter.

At this point, it is interesting to discuss the way media translate. While I don’t view my website as peevology, others certainly have included it as such. The AP article, and other subsequent coverage, tended to emphasize the tone as “annoyed” even “blasting”. Many of my interviews focused on what was annoying about certain uses of language. What seemed to be lost in translation between my approach and the reception of these members of the media was my sense of playfulness. It’s my suspicion that a playful snark is the primary mode for many writers in the internet medium. Traditional journalism employs that tone less often, perhaps because of the broader audience who might misunderstand. It’s also true that by seeing this perception mediated over and over and over, it became more salient to me, and my rejection of it became more important to me.

Another distinction between old and new media came through in the types of emails I received on friday when the story was mostly on web sources and saturday when it hit print. My saturday emails seemed far less aware of the conventions of the internet. On Saturday I got far more emails that didn't seem to require a response, and were not incredibly interesting (I got some interesting ones too) several of which were paranoid that I would repost their message with their email address (for the record, I never post other people's email addresses on the internet). I was left to wonder what made them go to the trouble to email me at all. Internet people, on the other hand, were more likely to be hostile. For example, on Friday someone emailed me whose entire text was "much ado about nothing" and someone else started an entire blog to talk about how I annoyed him called "people with to much time on there hands" (I'm not even kidding, with that spelling). I assign all this to jealousy.

Being the subject of this kind of coverage also leads me to think seriously about the ways individuals are mediated in one-dimensional ways. For obvious reasons, nobody cares about the parts of my life that are unrelated to quotation marks; that is to say, most of it. This is obviously also the case with other people in the news media. I find my name invoked in comparison (positive comparison, fortunately for me) to other people named only for single events in their lives.

Not that any of this is really news, but it strikes one differently when it happens on an individual level, when you know what is being selected and what isn’t.

Nothing like a video game crusade...

I followed links to this article in the Nation which reports that a pentagon-approved group is giving soldiers care packages which include the Left Behind video game. Daily Kos and Gameology explain some of the reasons that this is objectionable.

I think as responsible peace-loving Christians, it is important to speak out about how troubling this is. Even fictional stories that portray a violent Christian Crusade against those of other faiths are offensive and dangerous. Giving those materials to American soldiers in a nation populated by muslims invites comparison to other religiously motivated slaughters across history, and it is not flattering for the US or for Christians. I believe all elements of the Left Behind universe are damaging to the civil-religious psyche because of the disturbing masculinist, rambo'd up version of Christianity that they portray. What ever happened to "blessed are the meek?"

(for a more carefully thought out viewpoint about the potential cultural impact of Left Behind, see my friend Kristy Maddux's dissertation.)

Tribute to Madeleine L'Engle

When I was a kid I read a lot. I moved from The Babysitter's Club to other children's paperbacks, including the kind published by Christian publishing houses. Even at a young age, those christian young adult books bothered me, they felt contrived and generally badly written. I had always had an ambition to be a writer - in fact, I can't remember a time when I wasn't working on a writing project. I used to use my parent's Apple II computer to write stories on my own personal floppy disc. I had an unarticulated fear that writers who were Christian were not very good, and since I was Christian, I also would be obligated to write this kind of fiction. When I began to read L'Engle's novels and found out she was a Christian, I was relieved. I also had a new ambition: to become a writer of her caliber.
As I grew older, I moved away from wanting to write fiction, but the beauty and conviction of writers like L'Engle still inspire me. I was encouraged when I was reading her obituary today that her most beloved books were written in her 40s and 50s. While my primary ambition is no longer to write in her genre, if I can someday inspire a little girl the way L'Engle inspired me, I will be very pleased with my life indeed.

Desert Island Discs: Details

I’m discovering as I write these Desert Island picks that all my favorite albums are really inextricably connected to parts of my life. They become sentimental to me because I love them so much that I listen to them a lot, and eventually my love for them comes not only from their objective awesomeness, but because they remind me of other parts of my life. A great example of this phenomenon is Frou Frou’s Details.

My last year in college, this album easily got the most play in the WAffice – it held the top “most played spots” on our itunes except for a few other songs that got obsessively replayed. I think other WA groups also discovered the tendency of that shared office culture toward obsessive song repeating. Hearing those opening sounds of “Let Go” brings me back to those days of hanging out and working and “working” and making heretical jokes with some people who mean a lot to me, even though we are no longer so close. That was a great year.

The reason we went so crazy for Details, though, is because it’s just a great album. These past few years I’ve moved from my love for confessional mid-tempo folk toward music that doesn’t sound like anything else I know. Frou Frou is definitely that – Imogen Heap’s unique voice combined with electronic accompaniment is distinctive, and really the Postal Service is the only other artist I know of that combines interesting lyrics and melodies with this kind of electronic sounds. Additionally, Heap tends to use unexpected intervals in her melodies – have you ever tried to sing along with her? I have. It’s hard. The lyrics are somehow both strange and mundane (example: if love is surrender/then whose war is it anyway?/do just what I tell you/and no one will get hurt), and this ads to the sense of newness. Even though I basically have the entire album memorized it still sounds new and different to me. I love that.

previous picks:
Why Should the Fire Die
Achtung Baby
Ohio

Other Players:
Dad
Jim
Matt

leaving the CRC

About a month ago, I officially joined Athens First United Methodist Church - the church I've been attending and leading worship in for about 2 years now. While being a sign of my commitment to my local church community, it was also the bureaucratic and official point at which I left the Christian Reformed Church - the denomination of my membership since my baptism 24 years ago. My perspective on Christianity is rather ecumenical, so this is not really a change in theology so much as a change in location. There's a lot of methodists here, and the church where I made a home is methodist. Also, I like the methodist's social justice focus.
I was recently directed to this article in The Banner (for those outside CRC heritage, the denominational magazine of the Christian Reformed church). It asks some interesting questions, but in my opinion, answers them weakly. I want to take a few small issues with the article:

1. The article talks about how often when young adults get married and have kids they come back to the "family-oriented" church. Let me make something clear. Family-oriented alienates single twenty-somethings. I'm fairly happy with my life. I have a fulfilling career and social life. I don't think I will get married for at least four more years. And I don't need "family-oriented" making me feel like my current life moment is unacceptable. If a church focuses a lot on parenting, marriage, and kids, is it really a surprise that single people in their twenties don't think it's for them?

2. The article mentions divisions and infighting. Sure, that's part of it, but from my perspective it's foot-dragging. I believe the church should be ahead of society on justice issues like women in leadership and gay rights. Instead I find that even this year, when great strides were taken, synod allows classes to still hold women back from participating in denominational governance. On gay rights issues, the CRC is frustratingly ambiguous.

3. I find the very idea that young people joining churches in other denominations is a "problem" a bit offensive. The CRC has been a part of an insular dutch community for generations, and young people find that ethnic identity less important, and a spirit of eccumenicism appealing. So what?

Desert Island Discs: Why Should the Fire Die

Ok, it’s been a while since I posted a desert island disc. I moved, school started. I’ve been busy. But I’ve picked another album to write about: Why Should the Fire Die by Nickelcreek. It’s no big surprise that I’m a nickelcreek fan. I really love anything with a good fiddle player and come to think of it I don’t recall anybody ever disliking this band. They’re often praised for their musicianship, songwriting and showmanship. I’ve seen them live and they are engaging, high-energy performers, each a bluegrass virtuoso in their own instrument. All their music also features elegant vocal harmonies and arrangements.

Many fans of the band were disappointed with their third album, Why Should the Fire Die, because it is less straight-ahead bluegrass. It has a bit of a sharper edge to it, and blends into other genres. I, on the other hand, love genre-blending, and found this album innovative and engaging. I have had it on my ipod nano since I purchased the gadget in December, and I’m still not sick of it. Pretty much everything else in my collection has gotten cycled in and out of my “ipod favs” playlist, but I just can’t get enough of this album.

Really each song on this album has had a moment of being my favorite, I think they are all strong for different reasons. I particularly love the haunting melody of the title track, and I often find myself singing “Doubting Thomas” to myself. I love the sarcastic edge that some of these songs have, like “When in Rome,” “Someone More Like You” and “Anthony.” But like I said, in my opinion, this album has no losers.

previous picks:
Achtung Baby
Ohio

Other Players:
Dad
Jim
Matt