Kottke No Longer “Pro”

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Oh, What a Year, says Jason Kottke, ending his “micropatronage experiment” a year after he got $39,900 from his enthusiastic audience. Here’s what I thought of it at the time, and I’m pretty glad now I didn’t contribute. I’d been hoping for two things out of the Pro Plan, which would have had me dropping a significant donation in the pot post facto: a revival of 0sil8, and a general spam cleanup. Neither thing happened.

Feedback on Metafilter is largely cynical about the whole affair. Felix Salmon talks about promises. And Bitter Pill looks at what might have been.

I think I can sympathize a bit with JKottke, though: as someone in the process of launching a semi-independent venture myself, I know what it’s like to watch the days slide idly away while plans stay unchecked on the to-do list, till, before you know it, a year has passed. A clear separation between “work” and “play” actually helps me maintain productivity in both fields, which is why I don’t think I’ll ever make brownpau.com a “Pro” source of income — never mind the unfeasability of this weblog actually being considered a genuinely marketable web publishing venture.

Hmmm. On the other hand, there is lots of room for a nice big red Chitika leaderboard at the top of the front page…

Window Cleaners

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(Window Cleaners, uploaded by brownpau.)

Two men washing the windows of the NAR Building near the Capitol. For a few minutes their movements were almost perfectly synchronized.

FBCDC+204

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Quite a lovely day yesterday: sunny and breezy, the first sign of the warming trend portending the coming of spring. It was also the 204th anniversary of my church, First Baptist DC, so the choir sang special music at service (Fauré’s Cantique de Jean Racine) with a guest harpist. Post-service, we had a sumptuous potluck lunch, followed by sandwich-making for the homeless. (I also found out for the first time that Gordon was engaged — I’d been away the Sunday it was announced, apparently — so a big congrats and good luck to him and his fiancé.)

I spent the afternoon with a few of of the young adults: David, Rebecca, and Lydia from church, watching Memoirs of a Geisha in Georgetown. (Excellent movie, and the Oscar for cinematography is well-deserved, but I won’t post a review until I’ve read the book and watched the movie one more time.)

Ash

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It was Ash Wednesday this week, and I’ve had ash on the mind — and not on the forehead.

Coming from a predominantly Roman Catholic country whose minority of Evangelical Protestants tend to actively shun the trappings of Catholic ritual, it came as a surprise on my arrival here to discover Baptist churches which not only have Ash Wednesday services, but actually practice imposition of ashes on foreheads — my current church included. (My surprise was not unique, though: as Real Live Preacher points out, it’s the “quirky” Baptist churches that do the gimmicky Lenten stuff.)

I did attend last year’s Ash Wednesday service at First Baptist DC, a beautiful and somber time of reflection on sin and mortality, but this year a conversation with a coworker about the growing number of Protestant churches adopting this ritual, plus some points raised by Blog Corner Preacher, got me to thinking.

“And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others.”

BCPreacher’s take is that the ashes are a sign from the Old Covenant, not necessarily an indicator of pride or hypocrisy, but one unnecessary to those saved in Christ. Now, “unnecessary” doesn’t mean forbidden, and symbol-on-forehead doesn’t mean disfiguring faces to be seen by others. As holyoffice reminds us, the ashen cross is a memento mori, a reminder of death (“ashes to ashes”) and a sign to ourselves to mourn for our fallenness — and to some, sadly, still a status symbol to show the world how mournfully reflective they are.

So get the ashes if you wish, if you feel that they are a powerful sign to you of death and sin, but the moment they become an emblem to show off to the world rather than a reminder to yourself, wipe them off. Wash your face.

I shall go to Ash Wednesday service next year, I think. I shall stand with my brothers and sisters in Christ, and we shall remind each other of each other’s depravity and mortality in that ashen communion, that we are dust and we will return to dust, and we will receive the imposition of ashes, with gratitude for the sacrifice of Christ and hope for the rising promised by Easter. But at the end of the service, I think I will wipe the ash cross off and go back out into the world with a clean forehead. My pride may kick in, otherwise.

B/W Pandora

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(Pandora B/W Closeup, uploaded by brownpau.)

Until recently, “black and white photography” for me meant importing color photos into Photoshop and desaturating. Now it means putting my camera in B/W Effect Mode with auto shutter speed and exposure.

Google Goodie Bag

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This is a followup to the Google Pages incident. Justin, the project manager, said he’d send a goodie bag, and so he sent me a goodie bag! It arrived yesterday. There’s three Google T-shirts, a “Google Pack” (that is, a small bag with “pack.google.com” on the strap), a Google notebook, and a bunch of little magnetic flashing body lights with the Google logo on them.

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Thanks, Google! Now hire me!