White Flour: The Video

Five years ago, the city of Knoxville, Tennessee was the site of a most unusual demonstration. A group of white supremacists marched through the city, but (sadly) that wasn't what was unusual. The unusual part was the form of counter-protest staged in response.
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Money's Gotta Circulate!

For years and years, Scrooge McDuck—Donald Duck's uncle and well-established as "the richest duck in the world"—was strictly a comic book character. First introduced at the end of 1947, Scrooge didn't appear in animated form for twenty years (excepting a brief cameo in a crowd of characters as part of the opening of The Mickey Mouse Club in the '50s), until he was used in a 1967 educational short called Scrooge McDuck and Money. It took another 16 years after that for McDuck to to be used again, in 1983's Mickey's Christmas Carol. Finally, in 1987, McDuck showed up in Sport Goofy in Soccermania a few months before the beginning of DuckTales, after which McDuck was finally firmly established as a cartoon character, in addition to being a comic book icon.
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An Advent Reflection

For those of you who follow the Christian calendar, you'll already know that yesterday was the first Sunday of Advent. In keeping with what has become a tradition at my church for several years now, we released an Advent Devotional booklet for our members, with a different reflection written by members of our community for each day from now until Christmas. Upon volunteering to write such a reflection for this year's booklet, I was asked to work with Isaiah 49:1-7. The following was edited slightly^* and included in the book for December 10th, but I'm going to go ahead and post it here today to kick off the season.
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Bumper Stickers, Divisiveness, and Dialogue

I'm often both fascinated and discouraged by the bumper stickers that I read when I'm traveling. Bumper stickers are fascinating because they have the advantage of communicating a message to the world in a concise manner. They can be discouraging because that conciseness often means that a message comes off either more blunt, or perhaps even less clear, than might be helpful.
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Is Our Relationship with God "Real"?

Yesterday, on the Fourth of July holiday, David LaMotte posted an entry titled "Interdependence Day" in which he reflected on the 8th anniversary of his engagement to his wife (I seem to have forgotten that he got engaged shortly before my own wife and I got married, but I digress).  Although the whole thing is worth reading, I want to highlight the following insight:

Chewing on the reality of our relationship makes me think of a great story that my friend Hugh Hollowell tells.  Hugh is a big Johnny Cash fan, and claims to know all the words to all of his songs. He loves Johnny Cash. And he also loves his wife. “But,” he explains, “Johnny and me never have a bad day.” That’s because the relationship with Johnny Cash is an imagined one.  He has a relationship with the idea of Johnny Cash, not with Johnny. Real relationships are harder than that, and also much, much richer.

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'Til All Are One - Joining the Rally to Restore Unity

It's become something of a joke either to say, or to accuse someone else of saying, "can't we all just get along?"  And perhaps "getting along" does carry a sense of just white-washing differences and being "nice" in a way that is neither authentic nor especially helpful.  Even so, I know that there is widespread agreement that we, as human beings (to say nothing of we who call ourselves "Christian"), need to learn how to express our disagreements in ways that are less destructive, and more constructive.

It is in this vein that author Rachel Held Evans announced last week that the first week of May would be a multi-blog "Rally to Restore Unity" (yes, it's an obvious parody of the "Rally to Restore Sanity" that Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert organized late last year).
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International Women's Day 2011 - Change the World

I've been trying to make it a point to recognize International Women's Day every year for half a decade now (I seem to have missed 2008).  Apparently this year is the "centenary" of the observance, and as this recent commentary (noting that we seem to care far more about Charlie Sheen's outlandish comments and drug problems than we do about his history of violence against women) indicates, there is still quite a bit of work to do.
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Fighting Racism with Laughter

Another quickie. In light of recent events, I want to share this poem, called White Flour, written by David LaMotte about a creative alternative to fighting racism (based on a true story, by the way). Here's just a small part. It's written in a Dr. Seuss-like rhyming meter, but the child-like tone belies a very serious message.

"White power!” screamed the marchers, and they raised their fisted hands
The clowns leaned in and listened like they couldn’t understand
Then one held up his finger and helped all the others see
The point of all this yelling, and they joined right in with glee
“White flour!” they all shouted and they felt inside their clothes
They pulled out bags and tore them and huge clouds of powder rose
They poured it on each other and they threw it in the air
It got all over baggy clothes and multi-colored hair
All but just a few of them were joining in the jokes
You could almost see the marchers turning red beneath white cloaks
They wanted to look scary, they wanted to look tough
One rushed right at the clowns in rage, and was hauled away in cuffs

I really recommend reading the whole thing. This is a message that needs to get out.

UPDATE: And it is getting out! A book is set to be released on May 26th, 2012!

Blog Action Day 2008: PEG (Proyecto para las Escuelas Guatemaltecas)

About a week and a half ago, I went to what will probably be the final live David LaMotte concert I will ever see. As I announced last year, LaMotte is retiring from full-time singing/songwriting to devote his life to peacemaking work. He has received a fellowship from Rotary International to study in Australia and get his master's degree, and so he, his wife Deanna, and soon-to-be-born son will be moving there in just a few months to live for at least the next two years.

(Before I continue, I have to confess that, despite my efforts and intentions, the fact that David was out here in Southern California ultimately had nothing to do with me at all. I just lucked out in that a "house concert" group in Agoura Hills had managed to arrange for him to come to the area. The concert was literally in someone's living room, with only some 40-or-so people in attendance. Still, I knew I couldn't miss this last opportunity.)

Part of the reason LaMotte won the fellowship to study in Australia is due to something that happened during David and Deanna's honeymoon in Guatemala, where they had planned to study Spanish in an immersion program. While visiting a local school there, David had a conversation with the principal, who took him on a "grand tour" of the meager surroundings. David was shown the well from which students and teachers drew water, and the bathrooms in another part of the campus. The principal commented that it was a dream of his to someday be able to connect plumbing from the well to the bathroom, so that it would have running water. As the conversation continued, it became clear that the cost to set this up would be just $125. As David told us during the concert. "$125? I'm a songwriter, and I can do that!" But for this school, where the only part of running the school paid for by the government was the teachers' salaries, such a sum had to be raised from within the community. This meant that if the school wanted to provide food, add on to (or repair!) their building (a working kitchen was another deeply felt need), or even buy textbooks, that money had to raised by the school itself. For this reason, many Guatemalan schools have no textbooks at all. While $125 may have been the kind of sum that a songwriter could just write a check for and be done with it, it quickly became apparent that the needs outweighed what LaMotte could actually contribute to responsibly.

So, after the LaMottes returned from their honeymoon, David had a few concerts, and he told his audiences about what he discovered in Guatemala. They contributed pocket change, and before long, the school David had been at was able to provide running water, a working kitchen, and basic textbooks. Some of that story can be found here. The generosity of those first few post-honeymoon concerts grew into a non-profit specifically for helping Guatemalan schools: Proyecto para las Escuelas Guatemaltecas (or PEG, for short).

As David told us during that concert, "This idea that the problems are too big... That we can't make a difference? I don't buy that!" We can make a difference. Project by project, bit by bit, to be sure. But the lives of hundreds of Guatemalan children have been greatly improved just because one person decided to do what he could about a situation he became aware of. He and his wife were just going there to learn some Spanish. They had no idea that they'd be starting a non-profit. Sometimes life just works like that.

So, anyway, I took advantage of my last opportunity to talk with David by buying a box set of his CDs (most of which I had already, but some only on audio cassette) and getting his autograph one last time. I'll miss hearing new songs of his, but I can hardly complain. Eighteen years is quite the career, and his new calling is most definitely a worthy one. I wish him well. You can donate to PEG at their web site, and follow the new endeavors of David LaMotte via his blog: "World Changing 101."

Notes from Montreat Epilogue 1: David LaMotte Concert

I stayed in Montreat for an extra day to see David LaMotte in concert. It's easily the only time I've only ever seen him in a dress shirt and jacket. The reason he wore such "nice" clothes on this occasion was that this concert was tied to a Patron's Dinner for supporters of the Mountain Retreat Association (although the concert itself was free to anyone able to attend). Before the concert began, they also introduced a short fund-raising video which included clips from the conferences I was attending for the previous couple of weeks (among others). That video is now available online. Check it out on Facebook! That the video was shown as planned is a testimony to the hard work of Montreat's Summer Staff, who had to deal with an unexpected technical problem. The light bulb in the video projector which hangs some 15 feet off of the ground had burnt out, and they didn't have the time before people would start arriving to get a ladder tall enough to change it properly, then test the projector out with the new bulb. So they wrangled a portable projector and scrambled to get the sound and video all working together in the last 40 minutes or so before the concert began. No one who arrived with the bulk of the crowd (and therefore didn't see all this scrambling in progress) would have even known that there was a problem!

David LaMotte's roughly hour-long concert included songs from across the spectrum of David's 18 years (so he tells us) of singing and touring. It's the first time I've ever heard a few of his songs live (even some songs that I know he'd written before the last time I saw him live about 9 years ago). One such song, "S.S. Bathtub" is a song from his children's album, recorded in 1998. It was especially cool when he interrupted himself while discussing a different song to talk to a small child in the front row (who requested "S.S. Bathtub") and, when learning that the boy would be three the next day, got everybody to sing "Happy Birthday to You."

Another noteworthy moment of the concert is when David sang his cover of Sting's "Walking in Your Footsteps." He did the same basic technique I described Jeffrey Harper using in my last post: looping various background sounds and stretches of music, and then layering them one on top of the other. I'm only sorry that I didn't keep track of how many layers David ultimately used. It seems like he must have had at least 10 going on at once!

Perhaps the most special bit for me was getting to speak with David briefly after the concert. There was a bit of a line, but after waiting 9 years, I wasn't in any hurry if he wasn't. He recognized my name, and even commented about how I was usually on the "other coast" and how we had just missed each other a number of times over the past few years. That made my day! Definitely worth staying an extra day in Montreat for!

Bad News

I have used this blog to promote the talents of North Carolina-based singer/songwriter David LaMotte in the past (NOTE: that's four separate links, although only the first three are from my own blog), and have followed his career for well over a decade by now. Sadly, it seems that LaMotte's time as a career artist is nearing an end, as he begins to devote himself full-time to peacemaking work overseas. He has indicated that he will be doing a "Farewell Tour" for about the next year or so.

So, I'd like to use this blog entry as an opportunity to call out to my friends, especially here in Southern California, to help find a suitable locale for LaMotte to come to this area during his farewell tour. If you need to find out more about what LaMotte's music is like, here are some YouTube videos featuring him. Also, if you know me personally and are in the area (and if you still have equipment that can play audiocassettes), I've got lots of free cassettes of LaMotte's that I got as a promotion some time back, and I'd be more than happy to give you one (or more!). If you know a venue, you can either let me know about it by sending me an e-mail (link in the upper right), or you can feel free to discuss the matter with the venue owner/manager directly (in fact, this would be especially helpful). Booking information may be found at his web site. Thanks in advance for your efforts!

And, if it makes a difference at all, today's my 33rd birthday, so you have to be nice to me!

P.S. I'll be out of town attending a friend's wedding this weekend, so there won't be any updates to the blog until next Wednesday.

New David LaMotte CD to be released

It's been a while since I've properly plugged singer/songwriter David LaMotte. His new CD, "Changes," is set to be officially released on September 12th, but copies are already available. I've already bought mine, and fans of LaMotte should not be disappointed.

You can listen to sample tracks, read more about the CD, and even order a copy from CD Baby (the site also provides links to other David LaMotte CDs, as well). If you're okay with waiting, the album will eventually be made available on iTunes, as well. They already have some of his older albums up now.

And just as a reminder, or if you'd just rather have something for free, my new podcast, The Reflectionary, is also available on iTunes, as well as via its own site, with a new episode set to be posted this weekend.

A Whirlwind Tour

Last week was more than a bit nutty, between the usual "Finals Week" rush of incoming papers, making plans to attend my cousin's wedding in Placerville, and my wife's attempt to finish grading a group of 80 5-page papers in preparation for the next set of papers that arrived just in time for us to leave! And all this while I was suffering from a fairly intense sinus cold, from which I have still not entirely recovered!

I'm glad to say that the wedding went fairly well, and we had a good visit with my extended family. The service, while undeniably traditional in its theological assumptions, did not raise any serious "red flags." I especially enjoyed getting to meet and hold my youngest cousin for the first time. I'm the oldest child, not only of my family, but of my entire generation. (Both of my parents being the oldest child in their respective families.) My brother and sister are fairly close in age to me, my brother being the youngest, but only 2 and a half years younger than I am. The oldest of my cousins is a full 7 years younger than I am. My uncle remarried about a decade ago, and has started a "second family," his children from his first marriage both in their early twenties now. My uncle's youngest child, a daughter, was born this past December, and so when my family all gathered for my other cousin's wedding, many of us were introduced to her for the first time. There's been something of a tradition in my family for the past couple of decades or so of having a picture taken of the oldest and youngest of my grandparents' grandchildren together. As the oldest of my generation, I'm always the one to remain "the oldest," but the "youngest" has changed some half-dozen times over the years since we started doing this. I'm happy to say that my grandparents are caught up again, at least for the time being.

Holding my baby cousin also gave me an opportunity to sing one of my favorite David LaMotte songs, "New Lullaby," to an actual baby for the first time. I had a lot of fun.

On the way back home from Placerville, we swung by Berkeley to check out the location of one of the universities my wife is considering applying for PhD studies at, and on the way, we stopped by Walnut Creek so I could show her where I spent my time back in second grade. She commented that this leaves Montreat as an important place in my formation that she still hasn't seen. All in good time....

We finally got back yesterday, a bit tired, and with my neck a bit stiff from holding it in a "driving position" for such long periods of time, but glad to have made the trip. It's been too long since I've been up to Placerville, and it was good to see everyone there. Maybe next time I can visit with a bit more time to spend....

Arrgh!

As I think through what to write on the blog today, I find that there are a great many things I'd like to complain about, and little in the way of positive outlook to offer. Some of these are pet peeves (Mr. President, for the billionth time, it's pronounced "NOO-klee-ahr", not "NOOK-yoo-lar." It's pronounced like it's spelled....), and others are more serious (my wife's end-of-quarter workload is rather overwhelming, and there seems little I can do to help. To make matters worse, she's being rather "dumped on" by both her employers and the small group that she is assigned to for one of these end-of-quarter assignments.). However, I would rather not have my blog become nothing more than a complain-fest....

So, in an attempt to provide myself with some perspective, I'm simply going to conclude by quoting the chorus of one of David LaMotte's songs (written after some inspiration from Robert Frost's "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening")

From "Dark and Deep"
by David LaMotte

If I could die just for a moment
Let these worries work themselves out
If it would all go on without me
Tell me what's all this worry about
A promise is not like a moment
A moment's not something you keep
I've made too many promises lately
And the woods are lovely, dark and deep

Support your (not-so) local independent musician

It occurs to me that I've gone almost an entire month without mentioning folk artist David LaMotte! How could I have been so negligent? For those of you who aren't familiar with David (which I'm sure is most of you), he is an independent folk artist based out in Western North Carolina (near where I went to college) who has been playing professionally for about 15 years now. You can check him out at http://www.davidlamotte.com, where you can also find ordering info and a few songs available for free download.

One of the songs I often recommend to David LaMotte newbies is "Peter." It one of few songs in his repertoire that is explicitly influenced by his Christian upbringing. I'm one of those people who often makes fun of "Christian art" as being cookie-cutter or somehow empty, something that we should never be when putting our Christian faith on public display. I truly believe that many would-be believers are driven away from Christ by the way that Christians talk and act when proclaiming themselves as "Christian." David LaMotte takes another route. He very seldom talks about his faith. He's certainly too liberal for many Christians. But he does what he's called to do (write and play music), does it very well, and lets his faith be a part of that in a very organic way.

"Peter" is a wonderful example of a non-standard message that is entirely within the bounds of what Scripture says to us. If it's a "Christian" song, it's a song meant to make "Christians" rethink their faith, as opposed to make us feel good about ourselves. There's too much "preaching to the choir" already. I invite you to listen to it, and make whatever comments you wish here.