Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in psongster's LiveJournal:

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Thursday, September 17th, 2009
9:53 pm	I'd like to find a B&B that has a really good restaurant either in it or very nearby, with access to good hiking and kayaking in the area. I'm particularly interested in the Berkshires, but really any place that is within a three-four hour drive of Boston is worth considering. Any suggestions? Hmm ... different people have different ideas of what makes a really good restaurant, so maybe I should try to describe mine. Randy and I enjoy creative cookery, with lots of flavors and flavor combinations created by a chef who enjoys playing with food. Not too high on the meat, fat, and salt. Za and Evoo make us very happy. (Comment on this)
Monday, June 1st, 2009
5:16 pm	Dr. George Tiller A few years ago a friend of mine considered going to Kansas to get a late-term abortion from Dr. George Tiller. A standard ultrasound followed by genetic testing had shown there was a rare chromosomal problem with her much-wanted baby. Another round of genetic testing was needed to determine just how bad the problem was, but both of the most likely scenarios were very bad indeed – not a life that my friend wanted to inflict on anyone. The final test took some time, and the results wouldn’t be back until just after the 24 week deadline for an abortion in Massachusetts. So the question was: assume that one of the two most likely scenarios was true and end the pregnancy, or try to beat the odds and risk giving birth to a child who would have birth defects that were truly severe, incurable but not fatal, and in one case excruciating for an entire lifetime? Then my friend’s mother realized that, if we waited for the final test, my friend could go to Dr. Tiller if needed. That would be hard and expensive, of course, but it allowed my friend and her husband to wait until the final test results were in before making a decision. They beat the odds. Their daughter is healthy both physically and cognitively. I don’t know what they would have decided if going to Dr. Tiller wasn’t an option. But I suspect that because of him there is a happy little girl now. And for that he was murdered yesterday. In his church, while handing out the order of service. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, April 5th, 2009
3:08 pm	First Parish called a new minister today. Her name is Marta, and I couldn’t be more pleased. For the last eight days she has been visiting us. She preached both Sundays, and the days in between were filled with group meetings large and small. I had some interaction with her every day except Thursday, and I have had many many conversations with other members of the congregation -- about Marta, about First Parish, about what we want in First Parish and in our lives. It has been a very intense week. I am extremely impressed with Marta -- more than I can find words for. She is extraordinarily articulate, an excellent listener, an excellent preacher, and full of laughter. She clearly loves people, both individually and in groups. She is able to explain very clearly and cleanly why she does what she does, and why she doesn’t do what she doesn’t do. She is comfortable with silence, and when she wants to she will take the time to frame her response before speaking -- but she is very direct and very honest and willing to say things that she thinks the person she is speaking to doesn’t want to hear. She describes herself as “intense and playful,” and it is a wonderful combination. There was a time for people to speak during the congregational meeting, before the vote to call her, and both our music director and our director of religious education stood up to talk about why they want to work with her. I too am looking forward to working with her, enormously. I have already learned a lot from her, and it is clear there is much more I will learn. I can tell already that she will be both my church’s minister and my minister, and she will be both my colleague and someone I can look up to and rely upon and learn from. This is an extraordinary feeling. It has been a long hard fourteen months since Carlton left and Butch died. This week a new phase of my life began. Marta doesn’t arrive until the middle of August, and she doesn’t start preaching until September. Many times in recent months I have wondered how I am going to wait that long for replenishment. This week, however, brought replenishment. People are talking with each other more openly and more deeply than they have for years. I have learned things from Marta that will shift how I think, feel, and behave, and I believe other people feel similarly. There will be many changes beginning between now and September. I am very much looking forward to Marta’s arrival, certainly, but I am also curious about what will happen between now and then. I am very delighted, very grateful, and very relieved. (10 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 6th, 2009
5:20 pm	There has been a meme around of people asking their LJ readers to suggest something they should do in 2009 – something big or small, serious or frivolous, challenging or fun. I’m feeling like I’m at something of a turning point, with more space opening up in my life. I’m not leaving First Parish, but I’m pulling back on my investment there – not just saying I need to do so (as I’ve said repeatedly for months), but actually doing so. And so I ask you, gentle reader, (if there are any readers) … what should I do in 2009? For context, perhaps, my current aspirations for the next few months include … … teaching a course on the Qur’an starting in January … teaching a course on gardening starting in February … teaching a course on meditation starting in March … returning to the book on the history of Americans’ attitudes towards taxes that I abandoned three years ago and seeing whether I can now, with a markedly different perspective, and in a different stage of history, find a good way to finish it and get it published. (A new introduction was written yesterday and today.) … doing plenty of home cooking What else should I do in 2009? Comments are screened. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 31st, 2008
10:27 am	Twenty years Twenty years ago today I started to feel like I was coming down with something. I had planned to go to First Night with a couple friends, but I decided it was more prudent to stay home and rest. They were worried about me, but I told them not to be: it’s just a virus, I told them. For the next three months I had constant fevers that peaked at 104, an intensely sore throat, all-over body aches and overwhelming fatigue, and sometimes an irregular heartbeat. About once a week I dragged myself to some doctor. Don’t worry, they told me: it’s just a virus. ( Read more... ) (13 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, November 30th, 2008
9:26 am	"The Visitor" I watched a good movie last night. In the first part an economics professor with a rather empty life discovers that a young immigrant couple has been living in his Manhattan apartment. This is not a happy discovery for any party, of course, but suspicion turns to kindness and then connection. The story takes a turn when the young man is arrested and put into a detention center. The movie has plenty to say about US immigration policies, but its heart is music and what happens when you open your life to people who are different from you. And it has what I consider a wonderfully rich sense of humor. “The Visitor” was shown at the Sundance festival this year, and I’d recommend it for people who like movies that are both heart-warming and thought-provoking, that explore the tangled comedy of human relations but don’t shy away from the hard stuff. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, September 8th, 2008
11:58 am	The Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church Yesterday First Parish had a benefit concert for the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, the church where a gunman opened fire during a children’s musical service in July. It was a wonderful concert, with many gorgeous and moving pieces of music. But the most moving part was the words spoken near the end by John Buhrens, who was ordained at TVUUC and served as its minister in the 1970s. TVUUC was founded in 1948 in a rented hall. The congregation put a note on the door: “All Are Welcome.” An African-American man came to them and asked, “Does that include me?” They said yes, absolutely, and they were the first integrated religious community in the Knoxville area. For the next few decades they were at the forefront of the local civil rights movement, starting with integrating the lunch counter at the nearby hospital. For several years they ran an integrated day camp. Each week they moved the children from one rural farm to another, so that the KKK would not again find out where the day camp was and set fire to the farm’s buildings or shoot out its windows. In the 1970s, when Buhrens was the minister there, the church hosted the first MCC congregation in the area. The Metropolitan Community Church is an evangelical church with a membership primarily of gay men and lesbians. The TVUUC did not share the MCC’s theology, but it did share its message of welcome and outreach. At the end of the MCC’s first service at the TVUUC, one Sunday afternoon, someone shot out all of the windows at the front of the church, facing the street. The TVUUC continued to host the young MCC congregation. “So what has changed now?” Buhrens asked. Back then, he said, he kept the shootings quiet and certainly did not expect any sympathy from the community. Now, however, the Presbyterian church next door immediately welcomed the TVUUC congregation, and congregations all around town – the Catholics, the Jews, the conservative evangelicals – brought food and other donations. More than three thousand people attended the re-sanctification service for the sanctuary, the beginning of which was conducted in the Presbyterian church next door. Over the years the TVUUC has spun off three other UU congregations in eastern Tennessee. Since the shootings attendance at services has increased so much that they are thinking about starting and supporting a fourth daughter congregation. There are times when I’m very proud to be part of this tradition. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, July 28th, 2008
9:47 am	Someone opened fire during a Unitarian Universalist service yesterday in Tennessee, killing two people and wounding seven others, some critically. I don’t think I know any of the people involved, but I’d be surprised if I weren’t one social link from at least some of them. The FBI is treating it as a hate crime. The article in today’s Boston Globe, which I encountered as I sat down to breakfast, suggested that the shooting was motivated by hatred for the progressive causes the UU church has supported, such as desegregation (!!!) and the rights of women and gays. The on-line article implies the shooter was anti-Christian (having been raised Christian) and that might have been more of the issue … ironic, if so … It was a youth service – a bunch of kids were leading it. That’s all the Globe said on the front page. I immediately turned to the inside article, feeling sympathy for those kids and that congregation. And then I discovered they were UUs. It’s unnerving, nauseating, to realize that “my people” were shot and killed because of who they are. (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, April 8th, 2008
12:26 pm	the anxious time There’s still a lot to do for the Peter Mayer concert this Saturday, but at this point I have limited ability to change anything that might affect turn-out … I just have to wait and see how it goes. Good news … Pete will be performing live on WUMB at 6:00 p.m. on Thursday. Hopefully some people will hear him and decide to come to the concert. Bad news … I’ve had no energy for going around and putting up posters. But then, I’m not sure how often people come just because of a poster. Last year I spent eight or so hours putting up posters, and a couple volunteers also put in hours. Then my cynical voice wondered whether we’d get more than four additional audience members from all that effort. This year my cynical voice has won. But my accusatory voice feels like I haven’t done justice by the concert because I haven’t put up posters. A friend who was there last year, and bought tickets for this year, reminded me of something I’d lost track of in all the practicalities of the concert and the distractions of grief and so many other demands on my time, attention, and emotions. Peter Mayer is amazing in concert. His CDs are good, but there’s more of a difference between recording and concert for him than for many people. So making a concert possible really is a gift. I’d known that, long ago, when I signed up to do this. But I’d forgotten. The reminder was very much appreciated. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, April 6th, 2008
8:34 am	Take: one 24-foot moving truck. Add: one truck-packing tsar who personally lifts almost everything that goes into the truck and almost everything that comes out of the truck. Result: sore muscles. Healthy sore. But sore. (Comment on this)
Saturday, March 29th, 2008
1:25 pm	Peter Mayer concert two weeks from today I thought I had posted about this before, but looking back I seem to be incorrect. Apparently I’ve been distracted … I’m hosting a Peter Mayer concert on April 12, two weeks from today. My faithful readers may remember that I hosted a Peter Mayer concert a year ago. I first heard him two years ago, loved his music, and wanted to share it with friends. Hence the 2007 concert. Two hundred people showed up and it was a wonderful evening. Hence the concert in two weeks. People’s musical tastes vary, I know. But if you might enjoy a singer-songwriter with an earth/water-centered spirituality, a quirky sense of humor, and an ability to make a guitar do things I’ve never heard anyone else make a guitar do, please consider coming to this concert. Pete’s most well-known song, I think, is “Blue Boat Home,” which is in the Unitarian Universalist secondary hymnal. It is also the song that Carlton chose for the end of his last service at First Parish. (Pete is a UU, from Minnesota, with a background in theology – I learned after his last concert that he once was in training to be a Jesuit monk. He’s an interesting guy.) The practical details are … ( Read more... ) (Comment on this)
Thursday, March 27th, 2008
9:30 pm	Two years ago Randy and I visited the Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. For those who don’t know its story … it was the personal estate of Robert E. Lee, acquired through his marriage. It was occupied by Union troops during the Civil War, and after Lee’s surrender it was one of the very few Confederate estates confiscated by the Union. Lee was allowed to live – indeed, he remained politically active – but his land was used to bury and commemorate the Union dead. In the 1880s the Supreme Court restored the estate to Lee’s son, ruling that it had been unlawfully confiscated, but it was already full of graves and Congress purchased it a year later. Since then it has been used as a military cemetery. For those who haven’t been there … its location is spectacular. The great house, built of startlingly pink stone and fronted by massive classical columns, is situated on a bluff overlooking Washington, D.C. From that vantage point you can see the entire city – roads, bridges, buildings, rivers, miniscule vehicles creeping along. I found it breath-taking to imagine someone standing there, with that literally bird’s eye view, and planning to capture and destroy the city’s government. I had expected to respond to the militarism of the place, and to the sadness of so many violent deaths. Indeed I was impressed by the ranks and ranks of white tombstones, tombstones as far as the eye can see. But all of that was somehow quiet, peaceful, resigned. What captured my imagination was the people who lived there before the Civil War, particularly the enslaved men, women, and children who cultivated the land and tended the great house. ( Read more... ) (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, March 21st, 2008
1:03 pm	Last night the full moon was bright and beautiful, with the wind-blown clouds moving quickly across the sky. It reminded me so much of the last full moon I saw, equally gorgeous in a different way. The night of the eclipse. The night Butch died. What a hard month it has been. I keep finding myself singing a line from Chris Williamson’s song “Waterfall” … “Wake me from this dream, that I have dreamed so many times.” I still keep feeling like this must somehow be a dream, that someday I will awaken and things will be as they should be, Butch will be there in his office and I can go talk with him. And then I remember, time and again, that he is dead. Which I know, of course, but somehow can’t quite absorb. ( Read more... ) (9 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, March 19th, 2008
10:37 am	I just finished listening to Barack Obama’s speech, “A More Perfect Union.” I’m not usually one for the multimedia world, but I’m so glad I heard this. If you haven’t listened to it yet, I think it’s worth the time. Obama said things that need to be said, need to be heard. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWe7wTVbLUU As a historian, I particularly appreciated the part where he said that we do not need to recount here the history of discrimination in America, but then he deftly went on to talk about the legacy of that history – how it is alive now, how it matters now, how it is more than slavery, how it is still a living presence. As a human being, I particularly appreciated his honesty about anger and resentment. (Comment on this)
Thursday, January 24th, 2008
11:59 am	So far so good. They did a CT scan on Randy's father, and nothing showed up. The subjective symptoms (tingling, slurring of speech) may be easing. So the doctors are planning to keep him in the hospital overnight, but if nothing changes this may simply count as his second TIA. (19 Comments |Comment on this)
11:12 am	We learned this morning that Randy’s father is having a stroke. It may be relatively minor – he was able to call us himself, after getting himself to the ER. But at the time he hadn’t seen a doctor yet, and we haven’t heard an update since then. So the next few days look … uncertain … If anyone local has a cellphone that they don’t use very much and they would be willing to lend us, that might be helpful. We have decided we should get one ourselves, but after our miserable experiences with our last cellphone (purchased during a medical emergency of Randy’s mother) we know we want to do more research this time, and we haven’t managed to motivate ourselves to do the research. If Randy goes driving down to New York, it could be useful to send a cellphone with him. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, January 19th, 2008
2:14 pm	Any afternoon that starts with, "First, finely chop seven cups of onions" ... you hope the day is going to get better from there ... (9 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, January 16th, 2008
10:29 pm	This just came across my town's email list. I thought it was funny enough to share ... When I was a kid we had a part-Manx cat who hunted dirty socks. The stinkier, the better. Cola's favorites were socks worn while horseback riding. He'd stalk the socks, sidling up to them, and if needs be - fishing them out of the laundry basket. After batting them around a while, he'd give them a good "ritual kill," then drag them around the house in a perfect miniature imitation of a lion carrying off a gazelle. Cola especially delighted in presenting his prey to my mother, bringing it to her and purring and preening in triumph. On more than one occasion she was sitting in the dining room while we hosted company at dinner, and had him leap up onto the table to lay his dead sock thing across her plate, regardless of whether or not the plate was being used at the time. Poor startled Cola never quite figured out why the guests usually screamed. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 1st, 2008
5:21 pm	2007 I haven’t been doing much LJ posting in recent months. I read almost every day, and occasionally comment, but I’ve gotten out of the habit of posting. My life has felt too full and complex to distill into a post, and often the important things are too personal, for myself and others, to post on the web, even friends-locked. But I want to share with folks a brief version of 2007. This year has been the best year of the last twenty, the best year since I graduated from college, the best year of my adulthood. I can explain that internally – I changed a lot in 2006, and those changes really began to bear fruit in 2007. And I can explain it externally – I joined the First Parish Unitarian Universalist Church of Arlington last January. ( Read more... ) (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, December 7th, 2007
5:00 pm	Does anyone know of a good place to pick up pine cones? I'm going to be decorating First Parish's sanctuary for a pair of solstice services. There are some white pines on the grounds that need to be pruned, and I've been holding off on them for months for this purpose. But it would be nice to intersperse some pine cones, and we don't have a lot of those. Any suggestions nearish Arlington would be quite welcome ... (1 Comment |Comment on this)