Culture

Get Out The Truth About Glenn Beck

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I just received this from the people at Color of Change (above: photo from their website):
Glenn Beck was just on the cover of TIME magazine. Instead of telling the truth about Beck–that he repeatedly race-baits, lies and distorts the truth–TIME raises the question of whether Beck represents a legitimate voice in American politics. It’s absurd, and it’s not just TIME. In article after article, reporters seem afraid to call out what Beck is actually doing, and they often neglect to mention the very real backlash against Beck, including the fact that more than 62 companies have stopped advertising on his show. You can help.

Culture

Experiential Learning

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Beautiful writing here from Kim Chernin, from a piece in our archives before my time, that I just happened to read. I very long ago wrote a doctoral thesis about experiential religion, if that isn’t a contradiction in forms (I guess it was) and have been delighted by Chernin’s wrestling with experience and ideas each time I have picked up something by her: her novel The Flame Bearers especially, which is a brilliant evocation of experiential religion, but also her memoir on the women in her family, and one of her books on eating disorders. This passage makes me think of my son, 21 next week, who plays guitar in a rock band which performs some of his own compositions though he doesn’t read music, but who is finally now taking a music theory class at college: from my way of thinking, that is the right way round to do it much more often than we imagine it is. Obviously, I loved books, but weren’t there other kinds of learning I also cherished? …

Culture

Unlimited Abundance: The Art of Lanell Dike

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“Answers are limiting.” — Lanell Dike
Years into a successful career as a fundraiser, Lanell Dike informed the people in her life that she was leaving her job to live on her savings and create art. Having no formal training as an artist, Lanell sought advice from experts on how to make a living in her new career. “I was meeting with an art consultant, and I took a class about how to sell your art,” she says. “Neither of those experiences resonated with how I wanted to live my life.”

Gender and Sexuality

Gender as the Focal Point of Cross-Cultural Dialogue

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Louise Cankar, an assistant professor of sociology at Marquette University, recently published a book in which she argues that, while anti-Muslim suspicion existed prior to 9/11, 9/11 created an environment in which hostility toward Muslims could thrive and their political and social exclusion could be legitimated by both the government and nativist Americans. While Cankar’s discussion in her book, Homeland Insecurity: The Arab American and Muslim American Experience After 9/11, is, as a whole, thoroughly fascinating, if not depressing, her research regarding gendered dehumanization stands out as especially troubling – though also suggestive of where we may find solutions. Cankar’s dissection of the gendered patterns of dehumanization identify gender as a critical area for cross-cultural dialogue. She lays out three patterns in particular of gender dehumanization. Women In Hijab As Symbols of Anti-Americanism
As is perhaps inevitable, after 9/11 Muslim women who don hijab (the headscarf worn by some Muslim women) became central to the construction of Arabs and Muslims as the ominous “Other” – that is, as belonging to a culture in which women are oppressed and incapable of exercising choice, and men are violent and misogynist.

Christianity

Religion for radicals: an interview with Terry Eagleton

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At The Immanent Frame, Nathan Schneider interviews Terry Eagleton, author of Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate, on the inextricability of religion and politics, and the possibility of constructing an iteration of Christianity relevant to contemporary radicals and humanists.

Culture

Town Hall Blues

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“I don’t want this country to become another socialized country like Russia.” These were the words of a woman in a Pennsylvania town hall meeting with Senator Arlen Specter. What is important to this woman? What is behind her concern? What are the dreams and aspirations from which this statement arises?

Culture

Living Landscapes, a Win-Win for Conservation and for People (Sister Talk 4)

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As I told you in my first post in this “Sister Talk” series, my sister Amy Vedder — with her husband Bill Weber — first realized the importance of the human connection in conservation efforts while working in Rwanda in the 1970s. Since then they’ve always tried to create win-win situations for the animals and the people affected by their projects. After many years this strategy resulted in a conservation program called “Living Landscapes.” The projects under the umbrella of this program have all involved large-scale conservation efforts that extend beyond the borders of parks and reserves. Their breadth has been necessary in order to meet the needs of both the wildlife species as well as the people in nearby areas.

Culture

Darkness and Light: The Drawings of Helena Tiainen

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“I am not sure I would call my work revolutionary. I think I would call it transformational. I do believe that if openly perceived it can unlock new ways of seeing and being to the viewer.” — Helena Tiainen
In Finland, in the long winter months in the part of the country that lies above the Arctic Circle, the sun does not rise at all for weeks on end. It is during this time of extreme darkness each November that Finland’s capital city of Helsinki is transformed by the festival of Valon Voimat, “Forces of Light.”

Culture

American Judaism and Political Ideology

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Norman Podhoretz’s new book Why Are Jews Liberals? (and Leon Wieseltier’s erudite take-down thereof), has sparked a lot of discussion on both left and right. Both pieces deserve a mention at Tikkun Daily. Podhoretz, pulling no punches, argues that American Jews have substituted the “Torah of Judaism” for the “Torah of Liberalism.” Such faith in the power of the state is surely a perverted form of idol-worship, no?

Culture

"Nature-Deficit Disorder" (Part 2 of Sister Talk)

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I’ve been reading a lot lately about “nature-deficit disorder.” I guess this is a result of Richard Louv’s recent book Last Child in the Woods, where he coined this term to describe the human costs of alienation from nature. According to Louv, the proliferation of structured activities (homework and sports), fear of “stranger danger,” and video games keep children from playing outside in nature. Lots of these same young people can tell you all about the destruction of the Amazon rainforests and which species are endangered, but they don’t know much of anything about the bugs and birds in their own backyard. I agree with Louv when he says that children need time to bond with nature on their own terms, time to play without any necessary goal beyond following their curiosity.