God on YouTube

The Washington, DC Catholic church has started advertising on YouTube, trying to "reach people where they are" and convince them to come back to church.

Advertising and religion seem like strange bedfellows to me, but I can understand why the Catholic Church might see it as a necessity. According to a recent article I read, about 10 percent of American adults describe themselves as ex-Catholics. The article also claimed that if Ex-Catholicism were its own religion, it would be one of the nation's largest religious groups.

Apparently, ex-Catholics have become a target market for growing (Protestant) churches, and there's a small industry developing around people seeking the right church. I recently came across a site for "secret shoppers" where undercover agents rate churches on their message, service, friendliness toward newcomers, and a variety of other aspects. I don't recall reading anything about the quality of the coffee afterward, but I wouldn't be surprised!

Exploring the Neighborhood

I love working from home. Now that it's spring and starting to feel like it, I can throw the windows open and enjoy the fresh air. I can make the interminable and innumerable conference calls pleasant by either making the kitchen counters spotless or by standing on my deck with the cordless phone and catching some rays.

There's a downside - it's much harder to make the separation between work and the rest of life when you don't have that commuting boundary. But that same blending of work and everything else occasionally works in the other direction too.

Tuesdays are usually a little rough: an 11PM meeting Monday night and then a 7AM meeting Tuesday morning. By lunch this Tuesday, I needed a break, so I laced up the walking shoes and headed out with my iPod and camera.

Walking around on foot and in the daytime, I get a very different view of my neighborhood than I do whizzing past in my car. The man with a stroller in the nearby gardens. The woman grading papers on a park bench. The women volunteering their time to plant and protect seedlings. The couple having coffee. And my favorite, the guy promoting his new pizza restaurant by tossing pizza crust in the parking lot.

As I wander, I imagine these people's lives. What would it be like to have important things to do out and about in the world (instead of in an office) during daylight hours? What would it be like to have nothing particularly important to do during daylight hours? What would it be like to live in the cute little house surrounded by parklands, with big windows upstairs and a little red grill tucked onto the patio in the back?

I may not be able to answer most of those questions, but my pizza dinner that night was amazing.

Be a New Orleanian

Sometimes I feel very sheltered in my professional 9-to-5 (or -8!) world. I spend most of my day talking to people in my industry, many of them white Americans, and because I like them, I often socialize with them in the evenings.

This little world feels constricting at times, which is probably why I so frequently grab my passport and head abroad. I thrive on the differences between "there" and "here." (Aside: My recently-conceived definition of an "ugly American" is someone who leaves home and wants everything to be the same somewhere else. What a waste of time, money, and passport ink!)

I was recently reminded that you don't need a passport to find something new. In New Orleans, I was humbled and inspired by our hostess. She spoke easily of her friend the crack-addicted, call-girl-frequenting oil rig worker-cum-bouncer who lived with them for a while and took their dog on daily jaunts throughout the French Quarter. She told us about her bridesmaid, a woman who couldn't finish high school because of drugs and family issues but now owns a successful bar just off Bourbon Street. Our hostess had us in stitches reflecting on how she saw herself in an Ann Taylor-wearing, brunette transvestite with a similar name. She has the gift of acknowledging people's differences without sounding mean-spirited or judgmental.

This openness and easy acceptance of people and their foibles, regardless of profession, race, age, or education, seemed to be typical of the people we met in New Orleans. They say love is blind, but maybe what's really true is that it has its eyes wide open and accepts all traits in a person, not just the positive ones.

Although the stickers and T-shirts were created for a different purpose, I'm inspired to be more accepting, less judgmental, and just plain kinder when I see the motto, "Be a New Orleanian...wherever you are."

Rest

Every morning I swear I'm going to get more sleep, and yet here I am at 1 AM.

I have even more incentive to go to bed than normal. The bed I've been talking about about for 3 years arrived this afternoon. (I always seem to mull over large purchases for a year or more before surprising everyone who's bored by the topic and actually doing it.) I've added fresh sheets, not quite as warm as flannel but as soft... Soon I'll crawl in and pull the sheets up to my chin and drift off into blessed sleep.

In the meantime, I'm keyed up over things that can't or won't be addressed tonight. I need to let it go for a few hours.

P.S. Yes, I do realize that I've already dropped my picture-a-day effort.

St. Patrick's Day Parade, Part II

St. Patrick's Day last week was anticlimactic, since we'd already celebrated the holiday several times by Tuesday. We celebrated for the second time on Saturday (the 14th), the day the Irish Channel parade petered out around our friends' house.

We woke early(-ish) and trekked off to a stranger's house for breakfast burritos. We sat in a darkened, candle-lit living room under a chandelier hung with green garters and white lace panties with shamrocks and tried to make ourselves heard over the snuffling of the host's dog (how do they sleep at night?). The bits and pieces I could hear were odd: "prison rodeo," "inmates compete," "poker chip glued to a bull's forehead," "surely the infirmary is preferable," ...

All the while, the rain came down. On the way home, I stripped off my shoes and rolled my pants. My attention was split between watching for stones on the sidewalk and observing the beginnings of the day's festivities, and I narrowly avoided stepping on a crawfish that had escaped a local barbeque and was making a run for the storm gutter.

The rain tapered off, and far off, the parade started. By the time it looped around to our vantage point, the paraders were drunk, tired, wet, and running out of tchotkes, but we still made out ok. I got enough beads that my neck felt the strain. Green garters, a beer in a green plastic bottle, a felt hat shaped like a beer mug, a stuffed frog, plastic cups,a bag, several cabbages (green and purple), and my favorite, a hot pickle in a plastic pouch.

They do know how to celebrate in New Orleans!

Lost Things

This weekend I lost a St. Patrick's Day earring and a comfortable illusion. Tonight, however, I'm reminded that there are much worse things to lose. Your life, like the soldiers I wrote about earlier. Or your son, as in The Changeling.

If you haven't seen it, The Changeling is the story of a mother whose kidnapped son is returned by the police many months later. The mother insists from the start that the boy is not her son, but the police, under intense media pressure, insist that they've solved the case. I haven't seen the rest and wouldn't want to spoil the ending, but the premise is heartbreaking.

Not as heartbreaking, however, as the story I heard recently on "This American Life" on NPR. Bobby Dunbar was another small boy who disappeared (in 1912) and was later "found" in the company of a drifter. Media reports of his reunion with the Dunbars varied. The article quotes were well-chosen for effect - the ones where the parents immediately recognized the child read like puff pieces, whereas the serious, news-like articles represented the parents' hesitation.

Tragically, another woman, Julia Anderson, stepped forward to claim the child. An unwed mother with several children by several fathers and without strong moral standing in the community, she lost her court case, and the boy was raised by the Dunbars. Imagine the agony of knowing where your kidnapped son is and not being able to take him home.

The tragedy is still echoing almost a century later. A Dunbar descendant found the old articles and began doing her own research. Against her family's wishes, she conducted DNA tests on her father and his putative cousin that proved Bobby Dunbar wasn't a Dunbar (and probably was Julia Anderson's son). Much of her family has disowned her.

Comparatively, I can't complain.

The Beltway Denuded

The original title for this post was "The Rape of the Beltway," but that seemed too strong. Not by much, though.

One of the things I've always loved about my area is how green it is. I've spent a fair amount of time looking out the window while flying into major airports, and my home airport is one of the "greenest." Instead of houses or strip malls or cloverleafs (a punny nod to St. Patrick's Day week), I'd see thousands of trees.

Now there's a massive road construction project under way to widen the roads and build toll lanes. This project involves massive clear-cutting. I cry for the trees and the environment, and I keep feeling lost in the changed landscape. Supposedly this will benefit us all in the long run, but at what cost?