Assuming my three readers actually care about what I think, I’d urge you to pay attention because this is the closest I will ever get to a political manifesto.  To that end, I should inform you that my usual no re-edits policy [1] won’t apply here, because I’d like to return to this post from time to to time and keep working on it.  The key thing I want to stress is that paleo-romanticism needn’t be a backwards facing practice, always lamenting how good things used to be.[2]  Rather, I am asking that we not be too sated with, not that status quo itself, but how we’ve arrived to it.  I am asking that we not surrender ourselves to a fatalistic “this is just how things are.”  The past can be a strong and, in some cases, corrective element.  For me, paleo-romanticism is a call to “radically reimagine”[3] our present condition and where that condition seems to be taking us.

To show that paleo-romanticism is a tool for constructing a sensible future, I offer the following seven suggestions, each pulled from the past and yet very much “new” as common sense policies that persons of all stripes may agree to.  Simple suggestions that can make the world quantifiable better.

1. Let People Work When They Want, In The Location That They Want (aka ROWE).  This has a huge amount of benefits.  For starters, people can tailor their work/life balance for themselves.  If they want to volunteer at their house of worship, or their children’s school they are free to do so.  Parents being around more would be a big boost to families and small businesses and Farmer’s Markets would be able to compete with chains and box stores.  Stress levels would decline, leading to less injuries, illness and violent crimes.  Because large amounts of people would cease commuting there would be less cars on the road, less congestion and less pollution.
2. Organize High School Like College. Along the lines of previous item, let students have options about how many classes they take a semester and when the classes are held (evening, if so desired).  If an over achiever wants to go in the summer and take a huge amount of courses and graduate in two or three years, let them.  If someone want to take more than four years and work part time through high school let them.  Finally, make high school like college in that most of the work is done outside of class.  This would breed familiarity with sources, something that is sorely lacking at all levels or society.
3. Make Your Own Energy. With Solar power and wind turbines.  Beyond just the environmental benefits (we won’t need to use Mountaintop Removal techniques anymore), self-generated power can reduce dependence on large corporations, making people more self-reliant and able to save more of their money.  The credit schemes behind financing the deployment of these technologies will have to be changed too.  Presently, saving is incurred after the initial investment has been made, that needs shifted to the frontend.  Finally, installing other energy efficient technologies will decrease the overall needed efficiency of the solar panels and wind turbines we need.
4. Make Public Transportation an Option for Families. (also, plan walkable communities) The more family members that need to take the bus, the less public transportation can compete with car ownership.  Retooling these systems for “family plans” would strengthen their appeal.  Also, just having an easy to understand transportation system is important too.
5. Local Foodsheds. Beyond the ability of people in ROWE to visit local grocers and such more easily, building a food distribution and subsidy system that favors keeping food local provides healthier, fresher and tastier foods at a competitive price.  A big part of the reason that factory farms are so cheap, in spite of all the processing and warehousing and carting them hundreds of miles, are so much cheaper is that the subsidy legislation is built to favor them.
6. Start Censoring The Hell Out of Stuff (When it comes to Children). Now that V-Chips are required in televisions, and Windows ships with built in web filtering functions, the world–or at least media–should be safe for anyone under 15 or so, right?  Wrong.  These technologies are presently available, but nobody and I mean nobody bothers to use them.  This, of course, does not prevent parents for complaining after their children have seen something inappropriate.  Its time to start out with these items turned on as tightly as possible and forcing owners to set them to the levels that they want right away.
7. Make it Illegal for Governments to Spend More Money Than They Bring In

[1] Except for, as usual, grammar and clarity.
[2] Like hipsters and cartoon shows, when they were kids
[3] But not like remakes on TV

Jeez dotCommonweal, give it at least 24 hours.  Yeesh!

p.s.  And if they want to voluntarily convert, then so freaking what?  Shouldn’t the Church make it easy for them?  Don’t you usually decry the lack of options and such in Catholicism?

p.p.s.  “hostile takeover?”  Come on!

Dime sized drops
red out from my wrist falls
making less of things

There once was a maid from Fairhaven
and all the boys said she a taxodermy maven
But no one really knew
how skills had grew
she practiced on her 11 children

You know in the movie Kingpin when the Amish bowling guy is all like “we do everything 50% harder than you English?”  That’s sort of how I feel about my first Youth Group meeting.  I keep getting good feedback from kids and parents alike, and yet I don’t feel fulfilled.  I don’t feel like I’ve done things 50% harder than “the English” (in this case, other Youth Ministers in the diocese).  Five years ago, more like seven actually, I would have just given up if that had been the case, or had done things very half-assed as a result.  I think I’m coming to this career at the right time because since then I’ve developed something that resembles an actual work ethic.

Specifically, the biggest problem we had was I underestimated the attendance at the first meeting.  Twenty seven people showed up and I had projected about twelve.  The space was crowed and way too small.  I also didn’t have enough refreshments.  I view both of these things, obviously, as solvable problems.  Some of the problems I had aren’t “solvable” but won’t happen again.  For example, I instructed everyone to turn off their cellphones.  Most of the kids didn’t bother, but also I turned off mine and that’s how I keep track of the time.  So I thought I had less time than I did so I cut a lot of the material I had prepared.  More generally though, I thought the lesson portion was too vague to be helpful or interesting to any of them.  I also had trouble maintaining the attention of such a large group.

Anyways, I’m hoping to have a better showing in the future.

A few months ago I wrote an HTML frontend for the Catholic Worker Blogs Yahoo! Pipe that I wrote.  Since then I have hosted it in my public dropbox repository.  In the last week or so, though, I have been considering taking it down.  Here is my rationale:

1. I don’t even read it.
2. Its hosted on Dropbox, which is a cloud storage solution and not a proper web host.
3. It was an attempt to learn Yahoo! Pipes while I was unemployed and now I’ve learned it so…
4. I have no way of putting it in the hands of people who might actually benefit from it.
5. I have no way of telling how many people use it (see #2)

I’ve never been a huge fan of the whole “mashup” thing (girl talk included).  Its not that the idea in and of itself is bad, but most of the way the really good mashupers(?) take what could be a really good idea and don’t even try.  A mashup is distinguished from a remix in that there is no dominant song.  That mashups aren’t remixes are probably their biggest weakness, because mashups only really work if you can either turn your brain off enough to not care that the song has no coherence[1], in which case why get jazzed up about it being a mashup?, or if you are one of those persons who gets off on recognizes references to things[2].  But I think part of why mashups are so popular is that they are the musical/cultural expression of a feedback society.

Have you ever wondered why so much of new television shows seem so uninspired?  Its not because they imitate the few popular shows out there[3], but because in many new shows actually appeared in foreign countries first.  Shows like Ugly Betty, The Office and most reality tv shows spring to mind.  There’s no originality anymore, its all derivative.

In Artificial Intelligence and economics feedback has a destructive force.  Once somebody or something becomes aware that it is an indicator its behavior changes in such a way that makes it no longer useful as an indicator.  I’ve started to wonder is there is similar phenomenon at play in culture.  Once something becomes recognized as popular it eventually co-oopts itself until it is devoid of content.  Hence mashups and Family Guy[4].

[1] Because you are stone drunk
[2] Like if you think Family Guy is funny
[3] I’m still  waiting for a bunch of Mad Men ripoffs
[4] Or Robot Chicken.  That show was funny for exactly three episodes and then you realize that its just the same joke over and over again.

Update: No luck.

On Sunday I will have my first Youth Group meeting.  My stomach is already twisted in knots.  I’m trying to put together an outline and from that I guess I’ll assemble a small lesson, but I admit that I’ve never put together a lesson plan before.  So I don’t really know what to do.  I’m probably going to just start typing at some point and hope that something awesome comes together.  Until then I’m sitting at my computer and typing for 30 seconds or so and then “remembering” something that I’ve been putting off for a long time and hurrying off to do something about it.  Speaking of which, I’ve been meaning to rescan my television’s channels to see if I can finally get the local CW affiliate, but from upstairs where the reception is better.

Heeelllllloooooo Everybody Loves Raymond Reruns.

• If anybody  wants a good honest shakedown on the Pittsburgh “recovery” I highly recommend the ten part series on Pittsblog.  It doesn’t buy into the sensationalism around the G20 event without suggesting that no progress has been made either.
• I, for one, will not be attending any of the protests.  I was unable to locate a protest group with which I could support with my presence and have also not been unaffected by the rumors claiming that law-enforcement officials have the de facto power to arrest whomever they want for whatever reason they want.  Also, my wife worries about all kind of stuff already, the last thing she needs is to worry about me too.
• I haven’t done a miscellany post in a while.  I wasn’t sure that I would ever do one again, but then I realized that sometimes I feel  like writing but have nothing to write.  I also have THREE whole readers and its incumbent upon me to feed them as much drivel as possible.
• I started up my CCD program at The Parish last Sunday.  We were in desperate need of a seventh grade catechist and got one at the last minute.  It was definitely a learning experience for me, and I quickly discovered that my efforts to get the building in order (we are located in the parish’s school, which closed down last year and there was shit left everywhere for me to deal with) were largely poo-pooed on because I didn’t have teaching supplies ready.  Things like chalk, lined paper, markers, etc.  While I do not regret my decision to prioritize organizing the facility, as DRE I take full responsibility for everything that happens under my purview.  I definitely found myself saying that a lot last Sunday.
• In addition to this I’m also in the process of planning my first Youth Group meeting which is only about nine days off.  I wanted to do something vague about the Church and community or some other thing.  I’m still putting ideas together.
• One of the problems of not having a job for those two months (and then starting up a much lower paying, part time job) is that money has been tight.  This has been further exacerbated by two factors (1) I started the pay cycle part way through the Diocese pay schedule and (2) we aren’t’ very good at budgeting (actually its following our budget that we are bad at).  We are getting better at the latter and I think that this next month will be the tipping point (vacation notwithstanding).  Also, because of #1, I have yet to receive my first full paycheck (I will at midnight tonight).  So hopefully the extra couple of hundred dollars will finally put us back on the good side of responsible saving.
• I wanted to take a moment to thank Vox Nova for instituting a mature and responsible commenting policy.  I stopped reading Vox Nova around April simply because what I found in the comboxes was of such low quality.  With that said, I’ve never really been much of a commenter and I find that my comments usually go ignored.  This isn’t just a Vox Nova thing, it seems to be prevalent on the internet (for me at least).  I suspect its a similar phenomenon to graduate school where professors would usually just give me a blank stare, even though I thought my questions were freaking awesome.
• Derek and Jeff were in town a few weekends ago.  They were only in town for about twenty four hours, about eight of which were spent sleeping.  Just the same I got to take them to the Strip, Mexican War Streets, the South-side (and Primanti Brothers) and Mt. Washington.  I also, thanks to the caliber of the company, exposed to the some enlightening conservation concerning land use, legalizing recreational drugs and a host of other issues.  Hopefully, I will be able to actually remember the outcomes of these conversations.  I think one was about land-banking vs. municipal foreclosure or something.  If I recall I was way out of league, but wondered if landbanking prevented a neighborhoods denizens from having a preferential option in property development.  But what do I know…
• I’ve been bit by the photobug a little bit again.  I have two rolls of film from when I was unemployed and I need to get those developed before I take anymore, but I’m trying to just do one a month.  The three rolls were less of me taking pictures of anything in particular and more me trying new stuff with my camera.  For example, I would hold the camera at chest level with the widest angle possible as to seem inconspicuous, or trying different exposure or flash settings.  These experiments mostly failed.
• I think I’ve said so in earlier posts, but I’m mostly sure that I’ve lost touch with my ability to take photos.  There are external factors at play here, to be sure.  The color palettes in Pittsburgh are boring compared to Dayton, its overcast almost all the time here and the vistas are largely boring.  When there is something cool photograph, I seem to be at work or its something like the G20.  Still, theoretically, it should be possible for me to compose good shots that just overcast.

The Parish’s picnic was yesterday.  And let me tell you, I was impressed.  The food was delic, and I realized that I finally knew enough people to spend most of the event catching up with them.  I wish that some members of the parish who only show up to mass and leave and aren’t involved in anything else would have decided (just this once) to come to the picnic and see the food and the smiles on people’s faces.  Yes the parish is old, yes we are having trouble bringing in younger members (or getting them to stay in the first place), but we are very  much alive too!

I spent part of my time playing bocce with some old Italian guys.  At least one of them still had an accent.  It was some of the most fun I’ve ever had in my whole life.  Its really second only to my wedding, whale watching and playing higher quality videogames (of which there are very few).  I’m thinking that come next Spring I’m going to buy a 100mm bocce set, which sells for about $30, so that I can play it when I want.

As if my hypocrisy and my unfounded belief in a “pure” natural order weren’t bad enough.  I’m also quite guilty of holding that the past was somehow a “simpler” time, a feature that is indulged by cultural events here in the area that explore “Pittsburgh BC” (Before Carnegie, like Doo Dah Days).  Usually, when somebody goes on about “simpler” times it is because they have adequately dehumanized the people who came before them into something between an imbecile to naive and facile to understand evil or into supermen who got along much better even though they lacked the technological and educational advantages we possess today.  I think retrojecting back to “simpler” days is a direct result of the huge lack historical and social imagination people lack today.  The tendency to accept the current condition as “just the way thing are” in spite of strong evidence that there were some advantages to past epochs perhaps leads us to think that the past is best left where it is (i.e. behind us).

I find elements of this shortage of imagination within some of the strands of paleo-romanticism I find so compelling, like Wendell Berry’s uninspired and poorly informed assault on owning a computer (granted it was written in the ’80’s, but still).  Berry can’t re-imagine technology even as he insists that we re-imagine the food system.  But, as problematic as many of my beliefs may be I suspect that with some exploration the kernels of truth that lies inside many of them.

Agrianism: To say I want to return to a more “agraian” lifestyle is probably the biggest romantic “leap” that I take.  And yet, would strengthening local foodsheds and setting back corporate farming have an adverse effect on the land, or on us for that matter?  It would certainly give consumers more choice, and provide a decent alternative to those of us concerned about a host of environmental, food and agriculture issues.  Also, an increase in family operated farms would serve my two big political items.  It would slow down life a bit (by affording an increased amount of people the ability to set their own schedule), and creating a multipoled, complex space, society.  Along these lines you will hear me thinking about the Amish (also, because the Amish have maintained a medieval from of government and evolved it into something workable today.  Its essentially the medieval manor without the lord) a lot.

Anarchism: How does anarchism fit into paleo-romanticism?  Well, to see the benefit of the past you need to overcome the coercive monopoly of modern nation states.  This includes person such as Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, and to a less degree John Milbank, William Cavanaugh and Stanely Hauerwas (although none are actually anarchists).  Many of these ideas thinkers are “big Church” types.  Meaning they don’t have hang ups about having a strong, outspoken, Church.  So the anarchism I am drawing on is asking us to phase out the state and phase in other forms of governance centered around our identity as Christians.

The Middle Ages: Before they are subsumed into the Renaissance the Middle Ages shows us what a really decentralized, multipolar, society it capable of doing.  It shows us what localism can accomplish (cathedrals, castles, villas).  And it provides another example of a “slow life” I have recently been thinking about the arguments in Life Inc.  The author’s thesis is that chartered monopolies and centralized currancies essentially ended the middle ages.  He also notes that first we got capitalism, then we got the plagues.

Certain Strand of Nihilism: Nietzsche and Foucault specifically.  By examine events as destructive and constructive power regimes we have a useful way of understanding the history of ideas.

I hope these give you some idea of where I’m coming from.  Hopefully, I’ll be trying to write a constructive piece on how these strands can come together to make something new next.