Friendship at a Distance

Young Caucasus Women is a weblog project which aims to:

1. highlight the similarities and learn about the differences between young women in Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia
2. promote citizen journalism in developing countries as an alternative to mainstream media.
3. promote weblogs as a method of democratic expression.
4. expose young women to journalism and technology.

Join us!

The Least of These: Fair Taxes and the Moral Duty of Christians

"Susan Pace Hamill is a law professor who went to seminary and decided to apply Judeo-Christian ethics to tax policy. Her conclusions caused a political conversion in her state's conservative Republican governor Bob Riley, who proposed far-reaching tax reforms in the state that would relieve tax burdens for the working poor while increasing the tax share of its wealthiest citizens and business interests."

Am I My Brother's Keeper?

God's Politics
Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It
Jim Wallis, 2005

Author Jim Wallis, of Sojourners and Call to Renewal, describes:

I've done literally hundreds of town meetings around the country, and when I get to the subject of poverty, the blaming begins. In the room are usually civic and religious leaders - mayors and city-council members, business executives, educational and law-enforcement officials, pastors and lay church leaders. I often ask who is responsible for the poor children who are falling through the cracks in their community. Immediately, one side says it's the Democrats whose programs have failed, and the other quickly counters that it's the Republicans whose policies have abandoned the poor.

It's very interesting. I ask them who is responsible, and they instead tell me who is to blame. When that's pointed out and I suggest there is more than enough blame for child poverty to go around, I ask who the leaders are in their community. "We are," they finally say. "Then who is responsible?" I ask again. That's when they look at each other and admit that they should be the ones responsible. And that's when we begin to talk about a strategy that might actually work to reduce child poverty, address real community issues like drugs and youth violence, and create safe and stable communities of opportunity and hope.

Shostakovitch 100: Austin Celebrates

Jeanne Claire van Ryzin, Austin American-Statesman:
With 2006 marking the 100th anniversary of [Dmitri Shostakovich's] birth, Austin arts organizations have put together the first citywide, yearlong festival celebrating the work of a single artist...

Credit Richard Buckley, Austin Lyric Opera's artistic director, for planting the Shostakovich seed. He's mulled over the idea of a festival almost from the moment he arrived in Austin two years ago... The Shostakovich spirit caught on. Now, nearly every major classical music group in the city is in on the festival, dubbed "Shostakovich 100." ... Even the Cedar Park High School marching band is getting in on the fun. They'll be stepping to several movements from Shostakovich's Symphony No. 10 at all their football games next fall...

The manner in which Buckley and others put together the "Shostakovich 100" festival is nothing less than a do-it-yourself miracle. With no administrative apparatus, along with voluntary and open participation, the festival required no additional fundraising on anyone's part. The Web site comes pro bono. And as arts groups add Shostakovich-related events to their schedules, they, too, can claim participation in the festival.


I like the concept. It's so simple! It becomes real just by thinking the idea. Each group does what they were going to do anyways, only with Shostakovich, and voila - the sum is more than the parts. But...

... I'm stumped for where to start for myself, as an audience member. Arts organizations are churning out intro material, but it is dancing about architecture - words about Shostakovich, but not Shostakovich.

Every other bit of music I know, any form that says anything about an artist or a culture bigger than itself, took me forever to absorb. Lots of repetition. Lots and lots. (At some point, aren't you supposed to get faster at learning?)

So, starting tonight, Symphony No 1 two-a-days.


The bigger picture, of course, is how (or if) to apply this approach to community "issues" - education, health, etc. Does it only work with art, either because that is just a "nice to have" that no one needs to dig their heels in about, or because it's not a "hard" issue? Is the approach deceptively participatory, because even though a range of groups are involving themselves, they represent only a small part of the whole community?

And what if we really should be dancing about architercture (or about urban planning, or affordable housing)? Does wordiness drive people and groups out of the deliberative process? Does linearity pass right by good but mishapen solutions?

My Georgian Anecdote

(for the Young Caucasus Women)

I was volunteering with the english-as-a-second-language program at Lanier High School. Basically my job consisted of spending one class period with a pair of students to trick them into communicating in English. (It can be mortifying just to be a teenager: trying to figure out what is going on with your own self, understand that in context with the rest of the world and everyone in it, and figure out how to respond. Imagine adding to that all of a sudden you can't even control the language. So most of these teens' english was much much better than they believed it was. If they were actually interested in the conversation they could forget to worry about all the things that might be wrong.)

I had mentioned one day that most people who live in Austin aren't from here. (Literally. Half the people who are here now weren't here ten years ago.) A Ukrainian student, who tended to be sort of withdrawn, asked where I was from. Without thinking too much, I said "Georgia". All of a sudden his face lights up, he leans forward, blurts out, "My mother is from Georgia!" and launches into an animated monologue about all the things that were different for her in Ukraine.

Now yall from the Caucasus already see how this story ends. But, at the time, I was sitting there trying to keep listening actively to what he was saying, while trying to figure out what the heck went wrong. He was very sure we had communicated, and I was pretty sure we hadn't. Eventually he got to the part about how his parents met, which involved his father's service in the Soviet army, and I finally caught on. It was a little bit of a downer when I had to explain that I didn't actually come from the same place as his mother. But I think he did take away the idea that bobbles in communication aren't necessarily because of your vocabulary. And that grown-ups are as likely to be the source of confusion as teenagers.

(In case you were wondering, the former British colony of Georgia was named for King George II of England. I believe the former Soviet republic is known as Georgia from the Persian for "mountains"?)
(Vaguely to scale)

Most commonly looked-up words, 2005

From the Meriam-Webster online dictionary

1. refugee
2. contempt
3. filibuster
4. insipid
5. tsunami
6. pandemic
7. conclave
8. levee
9. inept

I have to admit, I'm charmed that people use the dictionary. Or maybe relieved - I look words up all the time, but I was thinking that I had an excessive interest in word origins. I'm especially charmed that these are all clearly words which were used frequently last year, in the repetitious flow of 24-hour news and information. Yet people were actually paying enough attention to say to themselves, "I hear that word all the time, but you know, I'm not exactly sure what it means. I think I'll look it up in the dictionary."

Yay, human race! Yay, quest for knowledge!