Sherry Chandler

The Midwesterner’s Morning Drive Journal asks:

This morning, the sorrow of the dove. How much sweetness would be enough of it? Is the mourning dove’s call like the light of those stars which still shine for us but have long since been burned out? Does the dove’s sorrow come to us from a million years ago? How should we respond?

while Dave Bonta of Via Negativa contemplates the balance of wind power and trees:

Science is beginning to confirm what many of us have long suspected: that older forests are better at sequestering carbon than younger ones, contrary to what some foresters would have us believe. My father has been wondering lately whether our own few hundred acres of forest are enough to offset the carbon we produce as a family. If you know my dad, you won’t be surprised to hear he’s got it all more or less figured out.

We are coming under intense pressure here in the Appalachians to clear every ridgetop forest for wind turbines, but I suspect that we can make the biggest difference simply by leaving the forests the hell alone.

This question causes me to contemplate whether our shabby farm may have more usefulness than supplying cover for wildlife in an area that is mostly groomed and cleared.

Dave’s trees are in the mountains at the eastern edge of western Pennsylvania. Rebecca at Pocahontas County Fare, who lives on Droop Mountain in West Virginia, has Sympathy for the Urban Trees:

Earth Day spawned a host of articles on “environmental issues.” I’m still sifting through my RSS feed results from that day, which is how I came upon The Greening of America–Ambitious Tree-Planting Programs Are Sprouting Up Nationwide by William Booth, Washington Post, Friday, April 25, 2008. It’s not easy making those small changes

Speaking of small change, is a $30 tax rebate something to sneer at? Lambert, manager of the Mighty Corrente Building, outlines a survival strategy that lets us live for a month on the money:

I’ve done that math, because after the dot com bubble burst, that was the situation I was faced with, and I was lucky, because my situation only lasted for months. Except I can top gqmartinez: My survival formula was dollar store spaghetti sauce. You can get two days out of a jar, and even with spaghetti, I could still get change back from my thirty! That was before things got really bad, and I went to the cans of generic pork and beans, 4 for a dollar.

Susie at Suburban Guerilla provides us with a well-balanced $30-grocery list by shopping bargains from her local store circulars:

While some “progressive” bloggers make fun of the $30 people might get from a gas tax holiday, Lambert reminds us that it’s food money to people on the edge.

I know; I’ve been there. It wasn’t that long ago that I lived on $12,000 a year, and made grocery money by carting things onto the sidewalk and holding impromptu yard sales. Thirty dollars is real money when you’re hanging by a thread.

Go check out Susie’s shopping list. It’s impressive.

My own rebate would be closer to $40, according to this gas-tax calculator at Jabberwocky. It’s a handy gadget, link provided by commenter jeqal at Corrente, but I find the page propagandistic. Clinton’s tax holiday would charge the gas companies a windfall profits tax to offset the holiday, so no bridges would collapse from lack of infrastructure support. And you could feed your soul with several poetry books or magazines for $40. I am not joking. Charlie Hughes at Wind Publications probably would not sneer at a $40 purchase from his catalogue. Nor would Finishing Line Press or FootHills Publishing.

Or you could make a $40 contribution to the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. Poetry editor Helen Losse provides a link to this article about how local black pastors in Winston-Salem view the Jeremiah Wright controversy:

“My concern is, how does mainstream America understand the African American church?” said the Rev. Sir Walter Mack, the pastor of Union Baptist Church. “The truth of the matter is this is the first time many of them have ever heard of liberation theology. They’re going to attach the message to the messenger.”

Helen is voting for Hillary today in North Carolina. Let us send good karma in that direction. And for all voters in NC and Indiana today. They’re keeping out democracy alive.

Meanwhile Avedon provides a link to this article by Sara Robinson at Campaign for America’s Future, Jeremiah Wright: What (Else) Is Going On

Starting in the Reagan years — and with considerable practical and moral support from the GOP, which Posner documents — the prosperity gospel swept through the country’s Pentecostal churches, both black and white. To give you some idea of how incestuously this movement is bedded down in GOP politics, consider the fact that John McCain claims Rod Parsley and John Hagee — two of the nation’s biggest purveyors of the prosperity gospel — as his “spiritual advisors.” (A lot of us wondered why he chose these two, who are regarded as nutcases even by many Evangelicals; but reading Posner, the political ends being served become obvious.)

Needless to say: not everybody welcomed this new gospel with open arms. Millions of devout Evangelicals who’ve read their Bibles and noted Jesus’ contempt for greed, as well as those who hew to older and more rigorous theologies like the Social Gospel and King-style liberation theology, find the whole thing beyond offensive and verging on blasphemy. From the beginning, some of the country’s leading ministers, both black and white, have taken public exception to the idea of reducing God to the status of a personal ATM machine — and have pushed back hard against a movement that they feel is a not only an IRS-sanctioned form of fraud, but also a heresy against 2,000 years of Christian teaching.

And here’s where Jeremiah Wright comes into the story. According to Posner, Wright has been a visible and articulate critic of the GOP’s new pet theology over the years — one of a noisy clutch of ministers who’ve made no bones about the mischief inherent in this new theology. He’s also a respected and insightful proponent of black liberation theology, holding King’s torch high in the face of unscrupulous preachers who think they’re helping poor people by cajoling them to vote away their safety net and toss their government checks in the offering plate.

Watch at YouTube.

From his reading at the University of California. The video is about one hour long.