Since we have a lot of interesting friends with unique perspectives, we decided to invite them over for the first ever Birmingham chapter meeting of Dialogical Film Club. For our first film, we chose Demand, a documentary highlighting the role that men play in perpetuating the sex trade. The movie is intense, but the group tackled it head on with candid insight. Discussion was great, ranging from pornography to strip clubs and from sex education to discussing sex with kids. I loved the varied perspectives in the room - we had voices from the fields of medicine, public health, counseling, law, education, graphic design, engineering and the non-profit sector. The first edition of DFC was all in all a success. In maintaining our democratic nature, we are always open for suggestions for future films. I hope you will join us for the next one.
28 February 2011
Dialogical Film Club
When Rachel was in Seattle, one of her classmates named K.J. Swanson decided that talking about movies while you watch them is better than watching them alone. Thus came to be the Dialogical Film Club. DFC would watch thought provoking movies together, establishing the rule that at any point during the film, any member could call for a pause. Rachel had a great time at DFC, watching pop-culture wonders (Twilight) and thoughtful indie films.
25 February 2011
Friday Pick of the Week
Regular posting is not my specialty. You may note this by the sporadic dates assigned to the posts. But I am laboring to do better, and one of my prompts will be the Friday Pick of the Week. I love music, and so I will work to share what I am listening to with an embedded song.
This week's pick is a gifted artist who is making her initial strides into the music scene. Holly Grigsby pulls off the folksy mantra well, both on stage and in life. Rachel had the pleasure of living with Holly in Seattle, and her beautiful voice accompanied the bridal party down the aisle at our wedding this past summer. My personal favorite of her offerings is "Faded Flower."
This week's pick is a gifted artist who is making her initial strides into the music scene. Holly Grigsby pulls off the folksy mantra well, both on stage and in life. Rachel had the pleasure of living with Holly in Seattle, and her beautiful voice accompanied the bridal party down the aisle at our wedding this past summer. My personal favorite of her offerings is "Faded Flower."
24 February 2011
Growing community
This past semester, a class assignment required that I present a local organization working to improve community health. Fortuitously, I arbitrarily selected West End Community Gardens. The gardens are located in Birmingham's West End, which has the largest concentration of urban poverty in Alabama. The gardens were started in 2008 as an outreach of Community Church Without Walls, a local house-church congregation also located in West End. I had the pleasure of spending a morning with Ama Shambulia, a master gardener and slow-foods chef who runs the gardens. I loved her vision for the garden: "Rekindling the memory of growing food and where food comes from."
West End Community Gardens aims to grow food and grow community, and they approach their mission through numerous avenues. Individual planters can rent 4x8 foot plots, and volunteers work in common areas dedicated to growing food to sell at the biweekly summer curb market and to local restaurants. Gardening classes are offered, and they are occasionally paired with cooking classes emphasizing healthy eating habits. Ama was most excited about the internship program for area teens, offering them training in horticulture skills that she hopes will transition into career opportunities for the interns.
The fruits of the gardens are spreading to the community. Local elementary schools have partnered with Ama to start school gardens, and juvenile offenders from Judge Brian Huff's Family Court regularly volunteer. Ama notes how near neighbors have begun cleaning up their yards and taking ownership of the gardens. Improvements in the neighborhood follow the theory of collective efficacy advocated by Robert Sampson and colleagues in their 1997 Science article. If we are to hope to life to wilted communities, it must come with words and with actions.
The visit was motivating; perhaps this season I will move from killing cilantro and tomatoes on my balcony to killing them in a plot at West End.
West End Community Gardens aims to grow food and grow community, and they approach their mission through numerous avenues. Individual planters can rent 4x8 foot plots, and volunteers work in common areas dedicated to growing food to sell at the biweekly summer curb market and to local restaurants. Gardening classes are offered, and they are occasionally paired with cooking classes emphasizing healthy eating habits. Ama was most excited about the internship program for area teens, offering them training in horticulture skills that she hopes will transition into career opportunities for the interns.
The fruits of the gardens are spreading to the community. Local elementary schools have partnered with Ama to start school gardens, and juvenile offenders from Judge Brian Huff's Family Court regularly volunteer. Ama notes how near neighbors have begun cleaning up their yards and taking ownership of the gardens. Improvements in the neighborhood follow the theory of collective efficacy advocated by Robert Sampson and colleagues in their 1997 Science article. If we are to hope to life to wilted communities, it must come with words and with actions.
The visit was motivating; perhaps this season I will move from killing cilantro and tomatoes on my balcony to killing them in a plot at West End.
16 February 2011
The Changing Race of American Cities
NPR's Morning Edition is airing a week-long series on the changing demographics in US cities. One of the driving forces of these changes is gentrification, as this segment on Washington, D.C. highlights.
While the days of "white flight" into the suburbs are ostensibly coming to an end, the inverse is now happening in equally damaging ways. Generation Y is filtering back into the urban neighborhoods abandoned by their parents and grandparents in the face of forced segregation in the 1960s and 70s. Drawn by numerous factors, including the charming convenience of the city and the opportunity to participate in restoration, gentrifiers are allowing "market forces" to force low-income residents out of areas with rising property values and taxes. The gentrifiers don't mind. Just as the generations before them, they manipulate noble virtues to create homogeneous communities, typically with just enough diversity to satiate their politically correct consciences.
As a resident of downtown Birmingham, how can I abstain from the harm gentrification brings? How can I participate in Christ-like community development without reshaping my neighborhood according to my white, middle class values? How can those interested in improving schools and cleaning up neighborhoods (like the East Lake group from the Church at Brook Hills) do so without evicting those residents they theoretically want to help?
While the days of "white flight" into the suburbs are ostensibly coming to an end, the inverse is now happening in equally damaging ways. Generation Y is filtering back into the urban neighborhoods abandoned by their parents and grandparents in the face of forced segregation in the 1960s and 70s. Drawn by numerous factors, including the charming convenience of the city and the opportunity to participate in restoration, gentrifiers are allowing "market forces" to force low-income residents out of areas with rising property values and taxes. The gentrifiers don't mind. Just as the generations before them, they manipulate noble virtues to create homogeneous communities, typically with just enough diversity to satiate their politically correct consciences.
As a resident of downtown Birmingham, how can I abstain from the harm gentrification brings? How can I participate in Christ-like community development without reshaping my neighborhood according to my white, middle class values? How can those interested in improving schools and cleaning up neighborhoods (like the East Lake group from the Church at Brook Hills) do so without evicting those residents they theoretically want to help?
14 February 2011
Romancing the State
Credit to Thomas Pearson for this link to the 2005 reason.com article My Privatized Valentine, a column highlighting the story of the original St. Valentine. I am not a libertarian, but I am regularly intrigued by posts on Thomas's wall. While Wikipedia does not validate the column's story (almost certainly negating its truth), the post nevertheless raises the issue of the state's involvement in marriage.
I haven't ever understood why the state has any role in "legalizing" marriage. I understand the need for a government to gather such information for means of understanding (and taxing) its population, but I don't get why that government has the right to tell me whom I can or cannot marry. Marriage is a social contract. We marry before a congregation of friends and family that we may be held accountable and that our marriage may be recognized in its communal context. However, unless the government plans on participating in that accountability and protection, they will do well to stay out of the civil union business.
I haven't ever understood why the state has any role in "legalizing" marriage. I understand the need for a government to gather such information for means of understanding (and taxing) its population, but I don't get why that government has the right to tell me whom I can or cannot marry. Marriage is a social contract. We marry before a congregation of friends and family that we may be held accountable and that our marriage may be recognized in its communal context. However, unless the government plans on participating in that accountability and protection, they will do well to stay out of the civil union business.
10 February 2011
This is a Public Service Announcement...
We recently returned from New Zealand, celebrating the wedding of our dear friends Georgie and Mark. With a common language (save for their funny accents) and Anglo background, I found it much easier to feel at home in NZ than in other countries I have visited. But despite my initial level of comfort, I slowly came to realize some significant cultural differences.
I noted a young gentleman in the Brisbane airport with a Southern Cross tattooed on the back of his arm. As I thought about it, I realized that his US-equivalent tattoo is a bald eagle with the American flag flowing from her wings. Immediately the tattoo became less cool.
Government is another conspicuous difference between the US and NZ. The Kiwi government is unapologetically socialist. One area where this was made manifest was at the cigarette counter in the grocery stores. First, I noticed the prices: packs cost anywhere between $12-17 (NZ), which translates roughly to $8-12 US. Additionally, the country was due for a 10% increase in prices effective the first of the year. The second thing I noticed was a photo located at the top of the pack: a gangrenous foot. In the States we have a black box, US Surgeon General's warning. In New Zealand, they have a gangrenous foot, or a bleeding brain, or a cancerous lung. The back of the packs are completely covered with an expanded version of the same packet, one even including a dead baby. You can view the 14 different graphics here.
So why do our governments take such different approaches regarding smoking warnings? One reason is the different models of governments employed. Even under the control of Democratic congress and presidents, the US is one of the most free-market, limited-intervention governments in the world (despite what one Glenn Beck might tell you). The Kiwis? Not so much.
I noted a young gentleman in the Brisbane airport with a Southern Cross tattooed on the back of his arm. As I thought about it, I realized that his US-equivalent tattoo is a bald eagle with the American flag flowing from her wings. Immediately the tattoo became less cool.
Government is another conspicuous difference between the US and NZ. The Kiwi government is unapologetically socialist. One area where this was made manifest was at the cigarette counter in the grocery stores. First, I noticed the prices: packs cost anywhere between $12-17 (NZ), which translates roughly to $8-12 US. Additionally, the country was due for a 10% increase in prices effective the first of the year. The second thing I noticed was a photo located at the top of the pack: a gangrenous foot. In the States we have a black box, US Surgeon General's warning. In New Zealand, they have a gangrenous foot, or a bleeding brain, or a cancerous lung. The back of the packs are completely covered with an expanded version of the same packet, one even including a dead baby. You can view the 14 different graphics here.
So why do our governments take such different approaches regarding smoking warnings? One reason is the different models of governments employed. Even under the control of Democratic congress and presidents, the US is one of the most free-market, limited-intervention governments in the world (despite what one Glenn Beck might tell you). The Kiwis? Not so much.
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