All posts tagged Massachusetts

Overheard in Beverly

January 11, 2009

Woman on a Pond Street porch, to a 60-something man in a baseball cap: “Where are you going?”

“New Jersey.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope.”

“What for?”

“Pick up a pickup truck.”

“Oh my God.”

La presse!

May 16, 2008

The lamentable lack of official gayness at Gordon College was covered by the Hamilton Chronicle this week, and I hear a Boston Globe story may be coming…

Ain’t easy being queer at Gordon College

May 11, 2008

Wrote a little post at Mind on Fire about a dustup at Gordon College over a LGBT support group that was voted down last week by student government.

The first thing that struck me was the way the article, glossing as a newspaper must over the hard theological issues, can only treat it as an emotional issue, tut-tutting the Student Association for not being more compassionate. The solution, one would suppose, would be for them to let their hearts grow a few sizes and hold a revote, and all would be well.

But it’s not that easy, because it’s not just about homophobia in the emotional sense, like it would be at most schools. It’s also about a millennia-old intellectual system that denigrates queerness (at least in most versions). And someone who give serious assent to that system with their head cannot accept queerness even if their heart wants to. (more…)

The holy or the broken hallelujah?

April 12, 2008

So David Bazan of Pedro the Lion fame played a show at Gordon College Thursday night, with Damien Jurado opening.

It was kind of perfect — a singer who has blurred the line between Christian and secular music, playing at one of the the more freethinking Christian colleges, for an audience of students and alumni who end up broadly agnostic at higher rates than you might expect. One of them asked during the Q&A, “Are you indifferent to or ambivalent about religion?” He said no, but made some non-propositional insinuations. And mentioned he was reading Bart Ehrman.

You could almost hear the faith (of a certain kind) being lost during the finale, a cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” –

(video from a previous show.)

His new CD has a song apparently about the breakup of Pedro the Lion and his new solo career, which at first seemed a little self-indulgent… but I quite like it now. (starts at 1:05)

Obama at the Middle East

February 8, 2008

So he won Boston — about 70 percent in my neighborhood — and lost most of the rest of the state except the islands and the upper Valley area (aka Southern Vermont). Oh well.

I feel pretty good about the rest of Super Tuesday, and next few primaries, with the exception of Maine, which to be honest is a fairly xenophobic state.

I may organize an informal phone banking party later this month — anyone in Boston/Cambridge who’s interested, let me know…