Find your state here. Luckily, the Good Wife and I use electricity almost exclusively. Thanks to the Columbia River, only four states have less expensive electricity.
Most and Least Energy-Expensive States
2
Monthly Archives: July 2023
When The Big Church Eats The Little Church
In the business world, “mergers and acquisitions” is a common phenomenon. Larger, better financed businesses regularly purchase and subsume more vulnerable ones. Now, according to this article, we’re entering a church “M&A” era where larger, younger churches are taking over much smaller, older ones.
The crux of the issue is that “The average Christian congregation in the U.S. is in precipitous decline, with just 65 members, about a third of whom are age 65 or older, according to a 2020 pre-pandemic survey.” Our local Lutheran congregation has approximately 150 members, about two-thirds of whom are age 65 or older.
Given the declining number of people attending church, should we assume collective spiritual longing has ebbed? Have we, for whatever reasons, become more materialistic, more secular, more Western European and Scandinavian?
The aforementioned National Public Radio article makes me think not. It suggests that young adults still find existential questions just as compelling as previous generations. It’s just that they want more vibrant spiritual experiences.
Here’s the conundrum. The 65+ crowd is holding tight to church traditions that are familiar and comforting to them. Like old hymns, and in the case of many Lutheran churches, Norwegian jokes. Traditions that unwittingly create distance between those on the “inside” of the tradition and those left “outside” them. Thus, leaving the older, smaller churches less diverse with respect to age, ethnicity, class, and life experience more generally. Which makes them even less welcoming to younger seekers.
I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that we’re in the process of having far fewer, albeit larger churches. Why should churches be any different than big box stores or airlines or mega-tech companies or any other sector of our economy where we’ve seen constant consolidation to the point where dated anti-trust laws are proving inept.
The challenge for the new, larger churches will be creating somewhat diverse, close-knit communities within their larger congregations. Communities within their community where people make friends, are known, and genuinely connect with a small group of people that are somewhat different than them.
Notes on The Gambia
When it comes to travel writing, Matt Lakeman is the man.
Among the better sentences, “Much of Jammeh’s government, reign, and conduct are pretty normal for a terrible African dictator, but at least his billowy white robe and trademark scepter is quite striking.”
And this tutorial took me back to my travels in East, West, and Southern Africa.
“As a poor country gets more tourism, the locals adapt. Many become more welcoming and friendly towards tourists since they represent an opportunity for personal and national enrichment. But other locals become more adept at exploiting tourists, whether through fraud, deception, or guilt.
One form of the latter treatment is to yell at random passerbys, usually to get attention to make some sort of sale or offer a service. This is by no means a unique element of West African travel. Any tourist who has been to Egypt, Morocco, India, Thailand, etc. knows exactly what I’m talking about.
The amateur tourist makes the mistake of defaulting to polite sensibilities and grants attention to the bystander who shouted “Hello, sir!”, “Excuse me, sir!”, “Nice to meet you, sir!” “Where are you from, sir?”, or whatever, and is soon sucked into a time-wasting and generally annoying sales pitch or preamble to a sales pitch. The experienced tourist keeps looking forward, not granting an iota of attention, in order to signal that they will not be suckered in and parted with cash.”
I also learned a new word, “sexpat”.
The Decline of Friendship
‘The Heat Was Hot And The Ground Was Dry’
In The Atlantic today, a journalist asks “When will the Southwest become unlivable?” Yesterday, I perused temperatures in the heat dome over the southernmost part of the (dis)United States. Phoenix, Arizona stood out. The LOW yesterday was 92 degrees Fahrenheit (33 degrees Celsius) at 6a.m. The expected high Saturday is 117 Fahrenheit (47 degrees Celsisus).
Note to the author, the Southwest is already unlivable, at least in July.
Dunking on RFK Jr.
Liz Wolfe puts RFK Jr. on a poster. Only problem, few conspiracy fans of Kennedy will spend ten minutes watching a detailed, smart rebuttal of his deranged theses.
Enough Money To Pay Twice—Revisiting the Private School Myth
I bought a new bike. This will cause some, like DanDantheRetiredTranspoMan, to go apoplectic. Let me beat him to the punch.
“Another bike?! What was wrong with the one you just bought?! How many do you need? You’re a sad(sick) guy.”
If someone buys a new bike every 20 years, then yes, it may seem like I just bought Blanca. In actuality it was January 2020, so this is season four with her. I confess, that is a short upgrade cycle especially since nothing is wrong with Blanca. She’s still exceptional. The purchase is really some cycling friends’ fault for getting me thinking about a slightly lighter version of her. The whole idea is getting into a better rhythm on long climbs. What’s more important in life than that?
And as to number of bikes, I will be selling Blanca, keeping the quiver to a grand total of two or a fraction of the number most cycling enthusiasts have in their garages.*
You may be thinking maybe I should just train harder, lift more weights, cut back on the Costco Tuxedo cake, but all that requires more discipline and work than wiring Eric in Portland some scratch.
I met Eric at Starbucks in Woodland, WA. Recently, when he got his dream job at Specialized, as the head of their design team, he immediately put in an order for one of their nicest/lightest bikes. Shortly afterwards, he got whacked, which meant he could no longer afford the nice, light bike still in the box. Then he had to find a needle in a haystack. More specifically, someone 6’2″ with some spare change. I turned out to be his needle.
Eric revealed that a part of the problem of being laid off is they have their children in private schools. “How old are they?” I asked. “12 and 15.” When you send your kids to private schools, you’re paying twice—property taxes which fund the neighborhood schools you drive past, and of course, the private school’s tuition. That requires something Eric’s family is currently lacking, a lot of disposable income.
I thought about sending him this post,”The Private School Myth“, from way back in the day, but obviously I don’t know him well enough.
Because I didn’t need to purchase his bike, he may have taken a loss on it even factoring in his work discount. If somehow he finds that post, accepts my premise, and decides with his wife to send his kids to public schools, they’d be on their way to bouncing back. Here’s hoping.
*I really do need a hardtail mountain bike.
The Bear
On Hulu. So, so good. Best thing I’ve seen since Shtisel. The story of a dysfunctional family and a Chicago eatery peaks in a cameo-filled season 2 episode 6, which at an hour, is twice the normal length of episodes. Jamie Lee Curtis, among others, will win an award for that episode.
Each character’s story pulls at the heartstrings. A truly touching love story is evolving on top. Television at its best.
Liberals Are Being Crybabies
I’m a liberal so I can say that. Or maybe my extreme privilege disqualifies me from pontificating in that manner. Here goes anyways.
Among other recent devastating losses for liberals, the Supreme Court undid Roe, race cannot be factored into college admission decision-making anymore, Biden lost the loan forgiveness fight (for now), and businesses can discriminate against LGBTQ people.
Liberal discontent with the Supreme Court’s recent decisions and disillusionment with the conservative majority makes perfect sense especially given all their right wing nutter billionaire friends. And of course, the 2016 McConnell-Garland bullshit still lingers.
But come on. We’re still a democracy, meaning executive, legislative, and judicial power constantly shifts. The only constant is change, well as much change as two parties can muster. Sometimes majorities vote Republicans into office.* Fairly and squarely. Sometimes Republican Presidents pick conservative Supreme Court justices. Sometimes enough to create conservative majorities on the Court. Sometimes liberals lose.
What to do? Or more specifically, how to deal with it?
For example, what’s the left to do with a Court that says a web designer can refuse to make wedding websites for gay couples?** There are several problems with this decision, the most obvious being that it’s the first time the Court has made it okay to discriminate against a protected group. The primary concern is of course for LGBTQ Americans, but the less obvious concern is for the possible rollback of protections for other groups based upon race, national origin, or religion. The Court has cracked open the public discrimination door that was famously shut in 1955.
The lashing out is understandable, but what does it accomplish in the medium-long term? How do LGBTQ people and their millions of allies win the “hearts and minds” battle for equal dignity so that any business that discriminates against them has no chance to survive in our free market economy. I’m not gay, but if you won’t do business with LGBTQ people, I won’t do business with you. Times one hundred million. Or two hundred million. Or three.
It’s just like all the businesses over the last 30 years who got religion about the environment. The vast majority of corporations didn’t do it out of the goodness of the heart, they only went green because it was in their self interest. Consumers and shareholders demanded it.
Could a web design business exploit a niche as the “go to” place for soon-to-be married, anti-gay straight people looking to create gay-free wedding websites. Theoretically yes, but most people in the (dis)United States of America would join with me in not doing business with any entity that denied LGTBQ people equal dignity. How do we turn “most” into the vast majority?
By pivoting from complaining incessantly about a huge step backward in the arc of the moral universe bending towards justice and collectively acting in ways that make explicitly discriminatory businesses completely unviable. By voting, everyday, with our rainbow colored pocketbooks.
*cue the anti-Electoral College activists
**adding to the frustration, the case is based on a made-up hypothetical
Pressing Pause 