Thursday, June 27, 2002

It's startling to me how many people disagree with this new ruling on the Pledge of Allegience. I thought it was pretty obvious that the whole "under God" deal was problematic for anyone who is an atheist, polytheist, or just doesn't see any reason why you can't deal with religion in a place of worship and leave it out of various public proceedings. But I guess lately there have been a lot of things which seem obvious to me but are not obvious to large amounts of people in this country.

The thing is, I've never had any problem with the Pledge on a personal level, even though I've gone through various levels of atheism, agnosticism, paganism, and whatever else on my way to this Unitarian thing that I'm calling myself now. I guess it's because for me a lot of the things I think about religion boil down to how to reconcile whatever the heck I believe with my culture and my heritage. I don't really much care when Jesus was born. That doesn't mean I'm not going to celebrate Christmas. It's a family thing, and (unfortunately) the reality is that it's a vastly cultural thing as well. So I guess I've grown used to singing certain Christmas carols that aren't remotely relevant to what I believe and things like that, just to preserve the cultural aspect of their meaning. By that logic "under God" in the Pledge is just another cultural thing, and I've sort of used that reasoning to adjust to its presence, to come to terms with the benedictions at various ceremonies, and things like that. But that's me.

The fact is that other people don't feel comfortable conforming to those sorts of things, and don't have the need to reconcile one thing with another the way I do. And it brings forth the question: Should I feel like I have to do this? I guess there are things that I look at and choose to preserve because they matter to me (Christmas carols) and then there are things that I accept because they're there but not because I get anything out of them (under God). And I use the same logic for the two things because it's easier. Because even if I chose to throw it away it would still be there.

Well, now it's thrown away, and we'll just have to see if it stays gone, or if they'll just keep on giving us things to reconcile our own worldviews with, because, well, this is a Christian country.

Amanda Hope -- 3:56 PM (linkme)

I miss playing in a concert band, I realized last night. There's something inspiring about being in a room full of people playing instruments, about being in a sea of clarinets, about being able to focus on my tone quality for once instead of simply trying to make myself heard over the brass. There's something exciting about looking at old favorites like Holst's first suite and Irish Tune from County Derry and Shenandoah as well as new pieces like Allen Feinstein's band arrangement of "Casey at the Bat" and Vaughan Williams' "Sea Songs". And there's something about the atmosphere at Summerband ... it's friendly without being overbearing. I can introduce myself to strangers and talk to people if I like, but there's the knowledge that I'll go home on the commuter rail and not see these people from week to week, and after the concert not for another year if ever. We come together for a few hours each week over the summer, then we go back to our lives. I don't feel tangled up in it or pressured or trapped the way I sometimes do in social situations. It's a wonderful experience, a way to get away in the middle of the week, have a quiet dinner alone in Cambridge and then play some good music. It's one of the few things, oddly enough, that makes me want to stay in the Boston area, at least for the summers.

Amanda Hope -- 3:17 PM (linkme)

It's so hot that I really want to eat something straight out of the freezer for lunch. But if you put a frozen veggie burger on a frozen roll with frozen cheese, you unfortunately don't get anything that it's possible to bite into.

So I had some coconut sorbet instead. That's a quality lunch, right?

Amanda Hope -- 3:00 PM (linkme)

Wednesday, June 26, 2002

Today in commercials:

There's an ad for Ira Motor Group that I hear all the time which has a woman in it who sounds a lot like the smaller Moonanite. With a little more spastic-type rage the resemblance would be uncanny.

There are a couple different Mazda commercials where a kid whispers something at the end, and an adult responds with "What he said!" or "That too." I can never figure out what the kid is saying though. If the point of the commercial was to drive me mad with curiosity, they have succeeded.

I still haven't gotten tired of hearing the Trident commercial with the demons talking to each other about giving people Trident in exchange for their souls. "Who knew a clean mouth was so important to those mortals? Muahahahaha!!!!!"

Yeah, this is what happens when you do nothing but make signs and listen to the radio all day. Hey, at least I'm not describing screen printing in excessive detail. :-p

Amanda Hope -- 12:07 PM (linkme)

Monday, June 24, 2002

Having the window seat is a wonderful thing, although it tends to keep me so distracted that I never get as much reading done on the flight as I intend to. Usually, though, window seat or not, there's not much of a view during takeoff. But on Friday my window was facing directly out on the Boston skyline, at just the right angle so the Pru and the Hancock tower appeared to be right next to each other. And the skies were so clear that I could see the coastline clearly below me all the way to DC.

On the way back my view wasn't as good during takeoff, and the sky was too hazy for me to be able to see the land very well. But as we went down the runway I could see the plane's shadow running alongside us and watched it lift off as I felt the plane leave the ground. It was strangely exhilerating. The sun set out my window while we were in the sky, too bright to look at for most of the trip, but when the sun hid behind a cloud for a minute I could see the skyscape of flat, translucent clouds with fluffy cumulus rising out of them, and shades of the sun's orange woven through it all. The sun set completely during our descent, so it seemed almost as if the realm of the sun existed above the realm of the reddish nearly-full moon, and if we went up again we would find the sun still shining while night went on below.

There's always a bit of a letdown at the end of a vacation or trip of some sort. Disney, Ohio, Minnesota ... if you try to draw them out as long as you can, the letdown hurts when you're suddenly plunked back into your reality, life as usual. I've learned to use the travel as the transition period, though, spending airplane time adjusting from looking back at a pleasant trip to looking forward at where I'm arriving, choosing music that reminds me of where I'm going, not where I'm leaving. So as I looked at the sunset I turned my thoughts away from the Smithsonian museums, the charming little hotel I stayed at, the Metro, the Thai restaurant near the Woodley Park stop, the FDR memorial, and everything else going through my mind, and started thinking about home and commuter rail and the T. And as I sat there and calculated whether I had time to detour to Cambridge for a little CD shopping, I could almost taste the muggy night air in Boston.

Time moves only forwards.

Amanda Hope -- 7:20 AM (linkme)