Moses is Departing Egypt: A Facebook Haggadah

Since I'm on the subject of Facebook, here's a very funny page. But it's a Fake Facebook page, so don't try to click the link to see who God's friends are. It won't work.

Below is a screenshot of the beginning.




Here's the link to the whole thing.

Facebook as the new Scanners

My grandfather had a scanner.








My dad has a scanner.













I have a scanner.















My uncle and brother are technogeeks, so they graduated to ham radios and shortwave and I don't understand a word they say so they don't get to be in my blog today.

If this is new to you, let me explain that a scanner is a radio device one can set to certain frequencies to listen to police, fire, ambulance (and for the truly compulsive, the two-way radio broadcasts between the base and, say, the Heating Oil delivery truck, or the local college security officers.). Scanners are the explanation of how local tv news sometimes get so quickly to the scene of the accident. It provides, not long narratives of reality, but little bits of information that provide a mental image of reality, a little fuzzy in the manner of television when it went out magically over the air the way television is supposed to be transmitted. Yet it is still a little specific at the same time...like when that fuzzy tv had great audio.

A scanner is how my dad kept up with the local situation for weeks while there was no electricity after the ice storm of 1998 in the Northern Adirondacks (and Vt, and Quebec). Battery back up, very hard core.

My grandfather's scanner usually brought out opinions from my grandmother,
"I told you there was no good letting kids play in that park down there," or
"He was probably drunk," or "As fat as that, it's no wonder she had a heart attack."

I have used mine in times of electrical outage, or when I hear lots of sirens, or, sometimes, if there's nothing on tv and I wonder what's going on in my town[s].
I get to find out that the electricity is out because someone crashed into the pole at the end of the road, so I know it won't be long. I can tell if any neighbors already called in a noise complaint...

My partner pointed out the other day that I haven't turned it on since I joined Facebook.

Is Facebook the new Scanner? Have all my bits of technology and hobbies been replaced?

Married Gay People Who Are Sorry

I haven't had time in months to post any original thoughts on this blog, (I'm unclear if I've even had any original thoughts) but who needs original thoughts when there's Portia Di Rossi and Jimmy Kimmel?

Wizards of Winter and Barbra

Two very cool videos of a house with Christmas lights sync'd to music. First the Trans-Siberian Orchestra's Wizards in Winter, then Barbra Streisand's Jingle Bells.

Child safety redux - Who is in charge of looking out for dangers?

Thinking Out Loud.
I came across this fabulous set of PSA's. They are fun and simple. Click the video tests, in order, below. Make sure your children aren't in the room, b/c unexpected words may fly out of your mouth.


Now that you've got the hang of it, watch this one.



Page down ...

These are from http://www.dothetest.co.uk/


I was all proud of myself when I saw the bear in the second video. After the first video, I was looking for a bear, and I found it, then noticed it change. I was not a little dismissive of the video, given, ::eyes roll:: how easy it was.

Normally, I'm the queen of continuity errors. In the middle of a film, if someone's cigarette grows a quarter inch when the angle changes, or if the coffee handle turns left instead of right, I have a good grumble, out loud. If continuity errors continue, I often add a dramatic Tony Soprano arm wave to the grumble. And whomever is in the living room with me is resentful of my interruption of their experience. They'd not noticed continuity errors, and so it was I, not the film's inattention to detail, that interrupted their experience.

I'm embarrassed to say in this case, I stopped at the bear, even though I knew the gist of the exercise. I stopped looking. I stopped seeing. I watched, but didn't see.

So I find myself pondering this in relation to our congregations and the safety of children (and elders, and other vulnerable people.)

It's so easy to miss something you're not looking for.

Is this why DRE's and church staff are more aware of the number of people in the building who are not congregants, in fact, the number who live on the edge of sanity, sobriety, and the law? (This is likely most true of those of us in downtown congregations).

Is this why, given people's natural (and I would say appropriate) desire for congregations to be places of safety and sanctuary, that they resist efforts to increase security in ways that require them to be inconvenienced or, frankly, to have to notice that bad things happen even in church?

So is this part of an explanation of why we seem to be the only people who notice when matches are left out on the edges of things, or when a door is unlocked because it's inconvenient to have to continually walk to open it during committee meetings? Because we are looking?

And if members are not looking, even when there are policies that say they ought, then of course members are going to be uncomfortable or even resentful of us when we point out risks. It is not the fact of a unlocked door, or the matches, or the suddenly covered security-window-in-the-door that interrupted their sense of sanctuary. It was the staff, the DRE, or the identified safety wonk on the RE Committee who interrupted their sense of sanctuary.

I wonder if this is a partial explanation for why congregations sometimes seem to expect us to write and implement policies, to monitor and ensure safety, but push comes to shove, not really bother membership about their behavior when that behavior impacts safety.

And if it is, what's the solution?

As Harriet the Spy said so frequently, Hmm, think about this.