What am I supposed to do with all this, exactly?

Seriously Southern Baptist
There was some fuzzy point when I was about a little over halfway through college, after a lot of education and exploration, when I realized that I wasn't going to be a Southern Baptist music minister. Actually, that's what I went to college to do, and why I went to the college I went to.

With just that statement in front of you, you might think that I had some crisis of faith. I didn't. My regular readers might think that because I had stopped condemning myself because of my sexual orientation, I didn't want to be in a denomination that did this so systematically and forcefully. If you think that, you'd be kinda right . . . because I knew staying in the closet (which I define as lying about your sexuality when asked a direct question about it) wasn't an option. While through my childhood I'd never been happy or comfortable about my differences from other people, I had no desire for conformity solely for being accepted or more popular.

I do not know of any *Southern* Baptist churches that have openly gay ministers of any kind. Even those with female deacons or pastors were often "disfellowshipped". So, my career path crashed into the ground like a hastily-folded paper airplane.

Of course, I had been in the Southern Baptist denomination for about 4 years up to that point, all the while attending First Southern, which was on the corner of 33rd Avenue and Camelback, right next to the Grand Canyon University campus. I was very involved with the music program there, as I had been in the church I grew up in- singing in the youth choir while still in High School, playing Euphonium in the orchestra, singing in the adult choir, acting in a couple of church musicals, volunteering to sort music before Wednesday rehearsals, and even swinging a few bells. (I was never really good with handbells.) I'd become increasingly active in some of the local denominational things, like attending the statewide convention, and was considering doing practicums and internships at some of the more musically-traditional churches in the area.

I'd laid a lot of groundwork and built much of my training on this model - of the church musician as minister.

What does vocation mean exactly?
So, as I began my explorations through several mainline Protestant churches on my way to my eventual home in the Episcopal Church, I continued to find myself dismayed that hardly any of these denominations had this kind of view of the music ministry as a vocation.

My observation has been that people who are recognized as having a vocation are the ones who are in spiritual leadership of one sort of another in the churches, and musicians are seen as secular professionals who are brought in to do a specific task. At minimum, they are asked to practice their art and craft in a way that is religiously edifying, whether or not they themselves are religious. More rarely is a higher view of this type of work, where the music leaders themselves are people of Christian faith who are fulfilling a religious purpose, but not necessarily as ministers who are called-out by either a designated group of the faithful or seen as being called directly by God in some way.

Coming from this rich evangelical and Southern Baptist experience, this has been the one characteristic of sacramental church practice that has most frustrated me. Part of this is tied in to what I've sometimes seen in my own denomination as clergy somehow are seen as bearers of the kernel of religious truth that is, at best, inadequately accessible to the person in the pew. They are the magisterium - the trustees and guardians of a sacred, and mysterious (or is it secret?) truth.

Don't think I'm dissing this view - there's a lot to be said for it on numerous levels, and, although I've cast it in a negative light in the above paragraph, I buy into a lot of it for a whole host of reasons which I don't want to go into in this essay.

Yet, somehow, there must be some type of qualification to this - because the trouble comes when those who hold the keys to the kingdom of heaven fail to acknowledge the mediation of God's power through other instruments - most often in the sacramental and everyday functions of the laity. One could even cynically argue that what is created by this system is a self-perpetuating class of individuals whose goal is to promote their own caste, perhaps creating useful byproducts in the process that may happen to edify others on the outside.

While I feel there is a lot of just plain sinful clericalism out there, especially in liturgical and sacramental churches, I don't believe this cynical view is accurate.

What are we - what am I - left with?

My own questions
During my senior year of college, I began some very informal discussions with various Episcopal clergy about becoming a priest. At around that time, I was told that there was a "glut" of clergy, and your best hope for finding a job if you were entering seminary was to try to get a job as a Lutheran pastor, since they were having a shortage.

I was also told that while it was certainly possible for gays to be ordained, you pretty much had to be a stellar and overwhelmingly ( by this I think they meant overqualified) candidate to be considered, whereas straight people could simply have the desire, be competently mediocre, not have any type of noticeable psychological issues, be well-liked and would pretty much make it through the process and be on their own for seminary funding. (By the way, these comments came from a straight male priest.)

Some observed that those tending to make it through the process were trendy liberal white people. Others said that I was simply too young to be asking the questions, and should wait 10 years until I was about 30 to consider it.

The messages here were discouraging, but not personally so, since they didn't really have to do with me. As I've had people I consider friends and close acquaintances move through the process to be ordained either as priests or deacons, I've observed some of the qualities they have.

All of these are unquestionably committed to God and undeniably qualified and competent for the work they're doing. Whether or not God has actually called them, I can't say, and I'm not sure anyone else could either.

We have one call
In fact, I think we have it very wrong. When I sat on a discernment committee recently for a friend who was considering the priesthood, I told him frankly that my opinion was this: we only receive one call as Christians, and that's the call to follow Jesus. There isn't another call we have. As a consequence of this call, we may be led to into a profession where we devote all of our work life to walking Jesus' path, to the best of our understanding and ability, and serving the Body of Christ through those actions.

That means, then, that I don't presently think that people are called by God to be deacons, priests, or bishops. I think the Church calls people to be deacons, priests, or bishops.

Semantics of the ordination vows aside, this view really leads me to think that all of us are called by God, and any of us can be led to follow God's call in a particular path in God's service. Even in the midst of this, I am mindful of the Roman Catholic teaching that if we are going to be serious Christians, we must aspire to be saints - just as much as Peter, Paul, Barnabas, Luther, and Bonhoeffer.


My personal frustrations
While one friend suggested that I would benefit from some formal discernment work, I hadn't really gotten to any point where I felt it necessary to discuss any of this in a formal way whatsoever, especially in the group setting of some type of committee. It's been my observation that the Episcopal church tends to have this black and white distinction of ministry. (Crudely, those with collars are ministers, and those without probably aren't supposed to be, unless they're walking around in habits or something. If you are serious about it, you should be wearing a collar, or trying to.)

So, my observation has been that folks in a discernment committee are really trained to ask questions about whether or not you're called to be a priest or a deacon, not really to help you figure out what you are supposed to do with yourself in the context of ministry, although I realize there's a big push to ideally have ongoing church-level committees do this. To me, they'd then either push you toward being a priest or away from being a priest, but not necessarily be able to help you move along any other axis.

It was about a year and a half ago - around January of 2007, that I decided to throw in the towel on any of the ordained ministry stuff. I was very frustrated at all of the politics of the church on all levels, and did not at all see myself as able to make any type of commitment necessary for ordained ministry.

Gradual rediscovery of forgotten passion
In this past year and a half, my focus has shifted considerably in the music direction. I'd carved out time to play with community bands, looking for scattered one-time singing gigs, did a couple of auditions, did some intensive graduate-school research, and decided to step out and sing at another large church in the Phoenix area for a while. I've also started to play with the instrumental group associated with the Phoenix Metropolitan Men's Chorus. (It's called the Phoenix Metropolitan Philharmonic Ensemble. But we only have an odd collection of about 10 - 12 players, so I think "gay band" is a good nickname. I'll have more to write about this later.)

What I have been taking away from all of it was this, and it really hit home to me this week with the conclusion of our Gay Band performances, was another example of how I was able to be a musician again. I've noticed that every time recently that I'm able to engage with music in a very serious way - whether it's singing for a performance, teaching a class, playing piano for a Taizé service, or playing the Euphonium - I am truly energized by being able to be a musician in a significant way.

If there's anything that's speaking to my heart, it's this same feeling I've had about music. There is an intensity there that I have to pursue. I sometimes forget about it or ignore it out of necessity if I get too busy and too stressed with other immediately pressing concerns.

I know I can't ever let it go.


A Maze of Contradictions and Conflicts
The trouble is, I can't let go of the other side of the coin either. I don't want to be a "casual Christian", as the CCM song goes. I know when I hear the Roman teaching about sainthood that those words are for me. In my mind, serving God must be about doing the work that God has commanded us to do, and the way we hear and receive that is through the Church in all of its levels.

The trouble is that I just want there to be an easy to discern path that says if you're both A and B (with a little C thrown in), walk through door Y.

Instead, what I find is that I don't seem to be able to walk down one path easily at all, being the mysterious conglomeration of oddities that I seem to be. In politics, I do not fit in with either Republicans or Democrats, conservatives or liberals, since in very twisted ways I'm as much one as the other. Most all of my gay friends have given up on organized religion and/or God, and often wonder how I can be so irrational as to believe in as much as I do. In church, my impression is that my denomination doesn't really know what to do with laypeople who are serious about their faith. And let's not even touch what the Church has to say to gay people besides "Most of us don't think you're living in sin, but beyond that, we can't really give you any moral direction or support in faithfully living out your life. Sorry!"

What am I supposed to do with all this, exactly?

How does Phoenix stack up?

I saw this post on Valleywag talking about a mapping system Startup Warrior has put together.

Take just a minute and compare the number of startups we have here in the Phoenix metro area with those in other metro areas that are far, far smaller in population. Also, note that Phoenix itself has very, very few. Again, don't believe the hype coming out of city hall - ours is not a forward thinking city - and we need to do a lot more than just installing light rail if we want to move forward.

And, if that's not bad enough, the top story on AZCentral's local site is how the commuter bus system is now bursting at the seams because of the high gas prices. Be sure to read some of the comments at the end of the story, especially from "Rick" who writes:

Not surprising considering our extremely inadequate approach to mass transit on top of our urban sprawl. We're always reacting to something when it becomes a big problem instead of planning ahead. You can argue that its because of the gas prices, but I'd disagree and say that many people dont use mass transit because our system isnt available or even worth trying to use. Look at the 4 US cities larger and smaller than Phoenix and compare, they have subways, light rail, many more bus routes. Compared to them our system doesnt even exist.

Heres a chart showing we rank 13th based on passenger miles and unlinked trips (meaning a person is counted each time they enter instead of once for the whole trip). Were the 5th largest city in the US yet dont even register in the top 10.

RANK URBANIZED AREA UNLINKED TRIPS PASSENGER MILES
=====================================================

1. New York-Newark, NY-NJ-CT 3,383,886.2 18,966,321.2
2. Los Angeles-Long Beach 606,842.5 2,790,328.1
3. Chicago, IL-IN 582,785.7 3,751,324.8
4. Philadelphia, PA-NJ-DE-MD 350,517.6 1,589,177.9
5. Miami, FL 151,222.1 756,782.9
6. Dallas-Fort Worth 85,764.4 436,105.1
7. Boston, MA-NH-RI 396,087.1 1,888,774.3
8. Washington, DC-VA-MD 442,936.2 2,266,691.6
9. Detroit, MI 45,393.2 242,781.5
10. Houston, TX 95,881.6 565,113.0
11. Atlanta, GA 147,582.3 802,673.6
12. San Francisco-Oakland, CA 415,112.8 2,233,441.3
13. Phoenix-Mesa, AZ 55,334.2 224,274.4

Some other commentators talk about how subsidized these bus rides actually are. To a point, they're right. Check out some of the very well-researched report by John Seemens at the Goldwater institute.

While I agree a lot with Seemen's analysis, here's the trouble with saying that we're subsidizing mass transit so heavily that the a $1.25 ride actually costs $5:

• First, nobody is yet going to pay even $5 one way to wait for a horribly long time in the sun, then ride a bus with chancy air conditioning and lack of adequate seating or storage areas that in traffic goes much slower than a bicycle, often taking at least 3 to 4 times as long as a car trip.
• Governments at all levels - and our society in general - has subsidized us owning automobiles for a long time. Think about what we pay for constructing roads, repairing roads, and policing the freeways.
  

Take just a moment to think about how much we, through government, actually pay for the privledge of owning a vehicle - and the hidden costs involved Building cities around the automobile, like we have in Phoenix, also is a drain on our economy as people spend largely unproductive time behind the wheels of their vehicles. Traffic deaths kill tens of thousands of people each year. We have to consume vast quantities of oil, which requires a foreign policy of interference in world affairs - which is both dangerous and expensive. We have air pollution that certainly may cause a lot of cancer and breathing problems, requiring medical treatment - much of which is government-provided. We have to pay heavy environmental prices for driving - that will eventually require trillions of dollars in resources to even slightly ameliorate.

The only way to tackle these kinds of problems is not through chipping away piecemeal at government programs or imposing bulky and inefficient socialist systems that leave everyone in misery. We have been conditioned towards incrementalism and lulled by the false dichotomy of either Republican tax cuts and "deregulation" versus Democrat gimmicks that might even make some feel good at the expense of a sicker society.

All of us need to be advocates for the wholesale overhaul of society. And this is why I don't support some of these hardline conservative Republicans who might give us tax cuts here and there or Democrats who will let gays get married and at least talk about ending the drug war. These aren't even really steps in the right direction, because they only serve to further screw up an already screwed up system.

Unfortunately, as I've said before on here, the road to heaven first winds through hell, and we won't get the free society we all yearn for - whether we know it or not - until the current one collapses under its own weight.

This isn't something I want to happen. It is simply something that will happen. It's the only thing that will wake us up.

Softening the blow of the apocolypse

Back in about 2005 and 2006, I was living in an uptown Phoenix hi-rise, and I happened to hear about a weekly freedom-community breakfast that was held each Saturday nearly across the street from me.

The person who chaired the meeting, Ernest Hancock, was somebody I remembered as having run for some high political office as a Libertarian when I was young. I remember watching him on debates on our PBS affiliate here. Later, I remember when he came to speak to our high school government class (which, by the way, was nothing but a big joke, as each of my non-honors HS academic classes were, but there was no more challenging alternative offered). It's also worth noting that the Libertarians were the ones who best responded to requests from teachers to send out representatives to talk to us.

When I told this story to some others, some state Libertarian Party leaders thought that this was the moment of my conversion and embracing of most of my libertarian ideas.

It wasn't, though, because I grew up in a very libertarian-leaning Republican household, so I was exposed to these ideas from a young age, even if they weren't very organized.

While I'm not active in Libertarian politics now (my work for the church was - and is - far more important to me than being a politician), my closer association with these folks was extremely beneficial on a number of levels, not the least of which was being exposed to how real libertarian activism works and how the ideals of libertarian thought were put into practice.

Most all attending the meetings were staunch Second Amendment supporters and active gun owners. Many, if not most, of those I met were hardcore Republicans and social conservatives who had a lot of overlapping ideas with pure libertarian thinking.

Of course, I've heard a lot of crazy things out of people in the freedom community: nutbars who I'm sure are mellowed out on pot, jaw-droppingly racist people that probably dress up in white sheets on the weekend, pie-in-the-sky theorists who are raising money to crash a space vehicle full of CFC-filled aerosol cans on Mars, New Age crystal-rubbers who are ready to jump on a spaceship in 2012 . . . you get my drift.

Some of the most interesting characters I heard about were people who floated way below the radar, perhaps not even carrying a driver's license or identification, having an ambiguous street address, and living totally off-grid in what I assume are well-armed compounds in the desert.

These hardcore members of the freedom community were the examples many said we needed to follow, because bad times - horrible times - were on the horizon.

I wouldn't have been inclined to believe them, except for the one thing that sticks in my mind from those days over 2 years ago. A couple of those I associated with most closely were insistent in their predictions about how the dollar was going to "take a dump", and how much we needed to be ready for it.

Of course I know now that what they predicted has come true, as anyone who hasn't jumped on the spaceship yet will know.

The scarier thing? The same folks who were talking about this loss in dollar value are now talking about the Second Great Depression that's coming and what kind of effect that will have on us. Recent mainstream news reports about the Royal Bank of Scotland seem to support this idea.

If they're right, it's going to be dire - the question is just how dire how many of our social and economic freedoms will be taken away by the government as it pretends to solve the problem (which will solve itself if given enough time).

Some of my close friends have already begun to make plans about how they will respond. Some of them have talked to me about buying guns and learning how to shoot with them to get ready for the rioting, pillaging, violent mayhem, and martial law that will be coming. Others are actively making plans to leave the country within the next 12 to 16 months, mailing their keys to the bank and relying on a likely favorable immigration status to get their feet in the door.

This talk of chaos is almost assuredly alarmist and overblown. Yet massacres, panic, and violence are not out of the question.

What will be our response? Are we making plans to flee? Are we gathering our guns about us and building our underground family fortress in the desert? Are we stocking up on cheap vodka? Are we donning our camouflage outfits and practicing paramilitary maneuvers in Kingman? Are we learning to enjoy the taste of crickets, rabbits, cacti, and rattlesnake? Will we give up and take our chances with the rest of the throngs of humanity and hope we beat the odds? Will we stockpile food in our suburban homes and hope the bank doesn't foreclose? Shall we buy an old RV and pretend we're on vacation until the gas runs out? Will we be resolved to stay in the city, and convince ourselves that instead of starving, we will die a noble death as we "challenge the cult of the omnipotent state"?

I don't know what I would do. (I know some of what I wouldn't do based on my convictions.) While it may be too late for myself and many others, we'd be doing ourselves a disservice if we did not at least now consider the answers to these questions.

Do the trick before you get a treat

Here's an interesting take on the whole California gay marriage thing . . .

Leah Garchik in the San Francisco Chronicle ran a short blurb last Friday about Mayor Gavin Newsom's latest eyebrow-raiser:

Mayor Gavin Newsom has written to instrumental and vocal ensembles that are supported by Grants for the Arts, asking small groups - from one to six performers - to play two-hour sets of "music appropriate for the occasion" at City Hall during peak wedding times next week.

This sounds like a lovely concept, but perhaps the wording of the call for volunteers is a bit heavy-handed: "With City funding comes civic responsibility. ... We expect that Grants for the Arts organizations will make every effort to cooperate with these requests."

While it's unmistakable that Gavin Newsom is a socialist, given our current screwed-up political environment, I can't help but commend him for a lot of work that he's done in San Francisco, and he's a great friend to the gay community by helping to push through gay marriage. (Which, even some gay people, including myself, don't advocate in terms of public policy.)

But this article points to another great truth regarding the overall failure of a socialist system to yield good results . . .

Here's how it works: if you take government money, you become the government's bitch.

The article I referenced above goes on to talk about how some of these musicians were grumbling about the mayors words regarding "civic responsibility", mentioning that the mix of politics and art is "unseemly".

First - these musicians need to quit their whining. Anytime you take money, it comes with strings. In almost no instance will somebody hand you money and not tell you how to spend it - in one way or another. And even in those cases where the instructions for the use of the funds are not made explicit (which does happen with some academic type of prizes, of course) , there is almost always an expectation of better things from the recipient of the funds.

If you're gonna take the city money, you better start dancing when they pull you're marionette strings.

And, pardon me if this whole thing about the mix of politics and art is unseemly. How many times in the history of music have politics and music been intertwined in one way or another? It's always about politics - from the musicians who were supported by the royalty or other noble landed gentry to the many nationalist composers of the Romantic period who were at times either supporting government ideals or writing reactionary, protest works against them.

So, musicians cannot criticize their patrons on one hand when our musical ancestors have intentionally mixed themselves with politics to stay employed.

Unless you're taking after Charles Ives and can write your symphonies when riding the subway to your insurance day job, you better get yourself entangled with an organization if you want to be able to both fiddle and eat.

While we all want to selfishly live in the best place for ourselves (and I'd be the first in line to move to San Francisco), all of us would do well to again remember the ideal, instead of cheering on triumphs of progressiveness within our current irreparably broken system.

Instead, we must imagine and promote a world where the government does not tax us - waste half of our money in the process of deciding how to spend it - and then only funds things that most taxpayers feel are worthless.

Not just the geodesic dome . . .

I came across a great article in New Yorker magazine on the work and thought of Buckminster Fuller. As I read, it brought to mind some of Stewart Brand's comments about Fuller in his book _How Buildings Learn_ , which I highly recommend to anyone with an interest in either architecture or systems analysis/theory.

Here's a quick excerpt:

All the Dymaxion projects generated a great deal of hype, and that was clearly Fuller’s desire. All of them also flopped. The first prototype of the Dymaxion Vehicle had been on the road for just three months when it crashed, near the entrance to the Chicago World’s Fair; the driver was killed, and one of the passengers—a British aviation expert—was seriously injured. Eventually, it was revealed that another car was responsible for the accident, but only two more Dymaxion Vehicles were produced before production was halted, in 1934. Only thirteen models of the Dymaxion Bathroom—a single unit that came with a built-in tub, toilet, and sink—were constructed before the manufacturer pulled the plug on that project, in 1936. The Dymaxion Deployment Unit, which Fuller imagined being used as a mobile shelter, failed because after the United States entered the Second World War he could no longer obtain any steel. In 1945, Fuller attempted to mass-produce the Dymaxion House, entering into a joint effort with Beech Aircraft, which was based in Wichita. Two examples of the house were built before that project, too, collapsed. (The only surviving prototype, known as the Wichita House, looks like a cross between an onion dome and a flying saucer; it is now on display at the Henry Ford Museum, in Dearborn, Michigan.)

Following this string of disappointments, Fuller might have decided that his “experiment” had run its course. Instead, he kept right on going. Turning his attention to mathematics, he concluded that the Cartesian coördinate system had got things all wrong and invented his own system, which he called Synergetic Geometry. Synergetic Geometry was based on sixty-degree (rather than ninety-degree) angles, took the tetrahedron to be the basic building block of the universe, and avoided the use of pi, a number that Fuller found deeply distasteful. By 1948, Fuller’s geometric investigations had led him to the idea of the geodesic dome—essentially, a series of struts that could support a covering skin. That summer, he was invited to teach at Black Mountain College, in North Carolina, where some of the other instructors included Josef Albers, Willem and Elaine de Kooning, John Cage, and Merce Cunningham. (“I remember thinking it’s Bucky Fuller and his magic show,” Cunningham would later recall of Fuller’s arrival.) Toward the end of his stay, Fuller and a team of students assembled a trial dome out of Venetian-blind slats. Immediately upon being completed, the dome sagged and fell in on itself. (Some of the observers referred to it as a “flopahedron.”) Fuller insisted that this outcome had been intentional—he was, he said, trying to determine the critical point at which the dome would collapse—but no one seems to have believed this. The following year, Anne Fuller sold thirty thousand dollars’ worth of I.B.M. stock to finance Bucky’s continuing research, and in 1950 he succeeded in erecting a dome fifty feet in diameter.

It's definitely worth reading the whole article.

The most important thing I took away from this was that obviously Fuller was much more of a theorist than a practical architect. Perhaps one could think of him as something like a social philosopher who practiced architecture. While that idea is interesting itself, it led me to explore the other idea about how one could develop a system of thought and then practice it through a surprising, or tangentially-related field.

I'm still trying to think about different research areas if I decide to do some type of graduate study, and I'm sure some of you may remember the several references I've made to the intersection of urban planning, architecture, theology, and music.

It seems to me that at least one way to begin to think in an interdisciplinary way is to study the thought of people like Buckminister Fuller - who, though not a practically successful architect, certainly had a lot of fervent ideology that is certainly worth exploring.

Drinks at a hotel bar

Most of you friends know that I enjoy wandering around downtown and soaking in its urban energy.

That's what I ended up doing last night since I wanted to get out of the house after a few hours of much-needed rest. So after being disappointed again at the pathetic level of activity at about 9PM on the streets of America's 5th largest city, I wandered into a hotel bar/restaurant and sat down in an empty chair.

Let me stop ya for a sec so you know right here that if I go out to any kind of nightlife activity, it's almost always to a gay bar - so that's the scene I'm familiar with.

So, there are several hotels around here, and I like going into their bars. Not necessarily for a (really expensive) drink, but just because some are quite swanky, and I'm an elegance whore like that.

One person I know who travels extensively for work told me that she had quite the experience in hotel bars - mostly with men surreptitiously pulling rings off their right hand fingers as they're sliding into the seats next to her. I have to say that the curiously sinister part of me wants to watch a lot of these interactions . . . maybe like watching monkeys in the zoo.

Last night was certainly an opportune time to experience some of these things. I sat down at the bar, ordered some food and some soda, and began to absent-mindedly watch soccer (what's the point of that sport anyway?) on the TVs in there.

Gradually, I became aware of the cast of characters surrounding me. To my immediate right was an older gentleman with white hair and neatly trimmed beard wearing a nondistinctive baseball cap. I didn't really notice him much, until I realized he was drinking Budwiser after Budwiser. He was already sitting down when I had arrived with a half-empty bottle in front of him, and he drank at least 4 more bottles while I was there. He didn't say much, but when I looked into his glazed and teary eyes, I couldn't help but feel sad for him - whatever his circumstances were.

On my near right were a couple from somewhere in a colder climate, who had flown down here to see some type of sporting event, having gotten Southwest airlines tickets. They were mostly talking about fare prices on airlines and commenting on how amazed they were at the fact that Phoenix was a "ghost town" of a city.

On the far left of the bar sat a friendly Native American fellow with another woman, who I assumed was his girlfriend. Later, after he became more and more inebriated as she sat mostly sober, I found out that she was his mother. (After telling this to a friend of mine today, he said, at least it's good that he's not drinking alone.)

After the chatty out of town couple left, a young girl come in and sat next to me. She was one of those fascinating characters that you watch on newer, trendy movies. Full of personality, a sarcastic wit, and keen observation, all wrapped up in a slightly granola, liberal bohemian package. When she sat down, I could tell that she'd already enjoyed quite a bit of the juice before she arrived, and proceeded to order Wild Turkey bourbon - straight.

The friendly drunk fellow with his mother was surprised that she was drinking something like this, and I wondered about it too, especially since, with wide-eyed innocence, she told me she was from Iowa, but had lived here for a little over a year.

As she became increasingly inebriated, she told me a lot of juicy details - most of which came after I moved into the seat next to her to hear here better as I said that "my boat doesn't float in your direction . . . if you know what I mean." (She was very interested in whether I liked the brown-haired one or the blond one in Dukes of Hazzard, so I think she got it, but I don't remember that show well enough to tell for sure . . . I think I said something about not liking yokels.)

She'd been a teacher and a nurse in other cities, but gave this up for a wild and free life of moving around from city to city with few possessions, and moving from one low-level job to another. So, she said she lived in an apartment complex just up the street from the bar. She didn't know it when she moved in, but found out later - because of the women outside leaning into car windows - that the apartments were basically flop-houses for prostitutes. (I then remembered that I'd seen several scantily-clad women walking around in front of there, showing men into their places.) She worked somewhere in the mental health industry, and was familiar with the Magellan psychosis intake center just a few blocks from where I work.

Aside from some of her self-deprecating mumblings, the most fascinating part of the whole encounter was watching some of the interactions between her and the green-eyed, black haired, tall, dark, and handsomely hot bartender.

Keep in mind that I don't even understand the subtleties of gay flirting, let alone what happens with straight people.

It was late, and they were getting ready to close up the bar, I became very concerned about her - since she just looked like a complete lush at that point. I told her that I would walk her home, but she said that she was going to "stumble over to Seamus McCaffrey's" (an Irish pub several blocks away) or "jump on somebody's Harley".

My eyebrows must've gone up, because I said to her (with all of my wondrously suave and thoroughly honed skills with women), "Oh, so you're going to trick it."

I wasn't sure that means the same thing in straight culture as it does in gay culture, but I asked two of my brunch friends this morning about whether or not she would have gotten it. The answer was something about that being a prostitute's terms for her johns.

She didn't seem to react at all to the question, so I'm not sure what that means.

No matter - I have a good spin on it: I came *this* close to taking a hooker home!

Do we know - I mean *really* know - what's coming?

Tonight I came across a fairly technical interview, originally from Cluster magazine by way of the Doors of Perception blog that focuses on the interlinked ideas of economics, urban design (and management of that design), architecture, and how all of these will respond to the spiking energy costs.

Here are a couple of highlights:

All cities are part of a larger ecology of resource extraction, energy use, environmental impact, waste flows, and social networks. The rules that govern how this larger ecology works - or not - are political rules shaped by an era in which we could burn cheap fossil fuel while ignoring the ecological consequences. That era is now over, and its eco-cidal politics (and economic development) have become obstacles to our survival. The only meaningful task of design, now, is to help people transform the ways they obtain food, energy, materials, and water - in cities, or outside them. This kind of design is of course “political” in that it opposes the demands of industrial society for limitless resources in a world whose carrying capacity is finite. But ecodesign - and hence, eco politics - is about new ways of inhabiting places; it is not about new ways of organising representative government.

and

Cluster: Many cities invest in the quality of their architecture to show the world an attractive, dynamic face. The big names and big projects are given the task of conveying the centrality and ability of cities to attract high-class players. But the dynamic image of a city does not always correspond to its ability to make room for the creative energies of its inhabitants.

JT. Show me a city with a “dynamic image” and I will show you an unsustainable city. “Dynamic” usually means high entropy buildings, financial speculation on a massive scale, and a low degree of social participation. From now on, the most interesting cities will be those whose citizens are able to invest their energy and creativity on “re-inhabitation” within the unique ecosystems of their place. This approach will often involve adaptive or more intense uses of existing infrastructure rather than the construction of signature buildings - and sometimes this approach will mean building nothing, nothing at all. To live sustainably we need to place more value on the here and now: a lot of destruction is caused when design is obsessed with the there, and the next - and the “dynamic”.

Read the whole article here.

Ironically, two of my friends were just having this conversation about what truly bad shape Phoenix is going to be in if the economy continues to worsen. While lately I've heard some commentators say that economic figures lately are looking better, I'm hearing others say that the continued rise in fuel costs will plainly bring about a recession, and more mainstream writers are continuing to talk about a depression, although it seems like this talk has lessened a great deal over the past 4 to 6 weeks.

Regardless, I'm hearing about more people here in Phoenix being out of work and also hearing about layoffs in companies, especially those that seem to rely on disposable income.

Is the future of Greater Phoenix a bizarre form of picture-perfectly identical suburban homes on the fringes of town gradually deteriorating into abandonment and desperation? Our whole economy of Phoenix is built around being able to drive long distances, to get to the mall, to get to the store, etc.

Some acquaintances of mine continue to trumpet the light rail, having this view that people will just "take the light rail" everywhere. That may work for those living in the central corridor, but it's far, far from the panacea that these people think that it will be. Molly in Maryvale and Paul in Peoria will not be able to just hop on some form of mass transit and get to their work in, say, east Phoenix.

We may very well see SUVs abandoned to the repo man as people simply cannot afford to drive them. Or worse- we'll see formerly middle-class people living out of the SUVs. Can you imagine huge parking lots full of SUVs in our modern version of Hoovervilles?

Yes, this is worst-case here . . . but imagine what a post-economic apocolypse Phoenix would look like? A lot of us living in central cities are going to be very hungry - we don't know how to grow our own food, and there's nowhere for us to do it. If buses are still running to get working people to their jobs, they will be filled to overflowing. Among the lucky few who come together, households will have to be combined into something resembling mini communes.

Of course, we could go on and on with these kinds of speculations - but the important thing to remember is that the economy will adjust after a long period of settling down into a wholly new life and things will get better. They won't be the "better" that we think of today, since so much of our wealth and prosperity over these past 80 years has depended on cheap and easy access to energy.

But as those who are my age get firmly into our middle age years, we may have an amazing world we live in that is far cleaner, far healthier, far more sustainable, and far less wasteful and far more innovative than we do now.

The question is how much suffering (and even bloodshed) will there be before this happens?

I hate to tell all y'all, but it's going to hit all of us powerfully, which means that the poor family we hear about living in the shelter, or the low-hanging-fruit friend we hear about who's never been able to hold down a decent job are what we all could very well experience not long from now.

Because we do reap what we sow, and it's gonna get personal.

Facebook, Twitter, and Blogging - the right data in the right place

I spent 5 days in Flagstaff last week, and had a very enjoyable time. I did some blogging about it, but for whatever reason, blogger doesn't seem to work really well on my Mac laptop, and I'm not sure why. I'm still trying to learn its quirks and differences from Windows.

Blog problems aside, you think I might have sent out E-mails to folks, but I'm not interested in using up a lot of bandwidth, and I don't think people read E-mail much anyway anymore, between spam and mostly unwanted newsletters. I've been blogging here for a long time, as many of my online friends have, and I appreciate them for it, because it's an easier way to keep up with what they're doing and saves me space in my Inbox for other items.

Some have commented to me in other places about my writing on here being "verbose". That's true. I don't post shorter news items or commentary simply because I have no desire to be a journalist with an agenda. (I just have an agenda.)

While you might not see those shorter things here, instead of E-mailing out jokes, news stories, or other similar things, for now, I've decided to try using Twitter as a substitute for that. It's not pushing what I think is important into your inbox - you can decide to read it if you want.

The whole "what are you doing" concept of Twitter is simply irritating by itself. If you're going to tell me about what you're having for dinner or what time your plane landed, do it somewhere else. If I'm relatively bored, I may choose to do it on Facebook which is full of all kinds of self-indulgent silliness and time-wasting fun anyway.

And, sorry, but I'm not going to get those updates on my cellphone. That has a ridiculous impact on productivity if you're willing to allow yourself to be interrupted by text messages of what all of your various friends and acquaintances are doing each minute. I love you, but I'll catch up with your tweets later, thanks.

One has to be aware of the transience of these types of communication media and the importance of the data that's being stored in the respective places - both because of privacy and because of the value of the data itself. Of course, Facebook and Twitter (and Blogger, I'm sure) will go out of style, but I'm paying attention to what types of information I'm putting in there. Facebook material is either fluff or standard profile stuff which I can mostly rattle off anyway in an instant on any social site. Twitter updates are probably only interesting for about 2 weeks, at the very most, so if they vanish, it's no great loss. I do care about what I write here, and I can export that and back it up locally if I need to.

Let me know what you all think of this use for Twitter, or if any of you know of some better way to do this (that is getting social traction so it's not completely unfamiliar to people).

Music, Drugs, and Government in Mexico

In one of the most complicated and convoluted stories I've read in a long time, The Telegraph reports on musicians killed in Mexico's growing drug war.

I was about to write a post reacting to some of this, but the further I read in the article, the more I realized I couldn't really say anything about it to make sense of it.

When you first start reading it, you may quickly think that these musicians are speaking out against the drug traffickers in Mexico, which the article says has now become the top country in the world for drug trafficking.  

(Incidentally, some of my libertarian acquaintances who are local leaders and activists in the Arizona LP have talked about the small-scale invasions that happen regularly on the border, with these drug-money armed militias fighting with both Mexican police and our own federal agents, turning our border literally into a battlefield.)

But as you read further in the article, these musicians are said to be singing "drug ballads" as part of a whole "narco culture", referring to these particular songs as narco corridos.  Further, it goes on to reference women attending funerals of the victims of drug violence who will one minute be mourning the loss and the next minute will show off their opium plants growing in plain sight.

We may not acknowledge it from our safe places on the north side of the border, but this is a violent country with a highly complex culture most of us who are middle-class white people just don't even begin to understand.

(A side note: the article spends a few paragraphs toward the end talking about how these "corridos" were vehicles for the distribution of information, as these songs about drug killings would be passed around by word of mouth when modern methods of news distribution were not available.  Now musicians are paid to write songs about drug leaders in order to increase the kingpens' street cred.  An interesting study on music as propaganda, no doubt.)