It was a month where variety was the name of the game...here's a look at what I read this September!
4 Articles I Like This Month
"The Governor, Unmasked" by Christopher Hooks, Texas Monthly. 12 minutes.
An analysis of Greg Abbott's lawyerly leadership style, a change of pace for a state used to more convivial, backslapping governors, and how it has affected the state during the pandemic.
"The New Reconstruction" by Adam Serwer, The Atlantic. 33 minutes.
In the midst of a national awakening regarding race, some have compared our current moment to 1968. In this essay, Adam Serwer argues that it bears more resemblance to 1868, a brief moment in time when America actively sought to right the racial wrongs of its past, only to bow to the demands of expedience and white supremacy. Perhaps this time will be different.
"America Is Trapped in a Pandemic Spiral" by Ed Yong, The Atlantic. 21 minutes.
Nobody is doing better pandemic journalism than The Atlantic's Ed Yong, who hear explains 9 scientific, sociological, and political reasons why the United States has failed to effectively combat COVID-19 and why, unfortunately, there is no sign things will improve any time soon. Not a fun article, but certainly an informative one.
"How Luka Doncic Saved My Life" by Collin Cable, Fansided. 13 minutes.
Sometimes sports are bigger than just games. In this moving account, the author tells about how, in the midst of a period of drug withdrawal and grief, watching Luke Doncic helped him get through each day.
Churches are in the communication business—so it’s kind of remarkable how bad we tend to be at it! Some churches overload their members with information, drowning them in a sea of dates and times and activities. Others go the opposite direction and rely almost exclusively on word of mouth to get important information out there. And (especially pre-pandemic) few small-to-mid-sized churches were putting much thought into their social media presence.
Rethink Communication is a breezy, helpful primer on fixing churches' communication problems, developing a plan for getting information out there effectively, and offering advice on how to implement such a plan. Written by a creative arts pastor, the book does a good job of poking holes in common church communication issues (10 minutes of announcements at the end of the service) and showing the way to a more streamlined, efficient, and effective plan.
And plan is the key word, because Bowdle's overarching point is that communication isn't something churches can or should do on the fly, but something which should be as organized as other areas of the church. Indeed, the most helpful parts of the entire book for me were 1) a chart showing his church's communication plan for major programs and initiatives and 2) a sample social media calendar. Bowdle's argument that communication shouldn't be made up as you go along was a compelling and convicting one for me.
If the book has a weakness, it's that it was pretty clearly written by a megachurch staff member with other megachurch staff members in mind. While many of the things discussed in the book would apply to a church of any size, some of the corporate language and attitude may be a turn-off for pastors of smaller churches. Nevertheless, pastors wanting to communicate better will find something to appreciate in Rethink Communication.
ALWAYS ON: PRACTICING FAITH IN A NEW MEDIA LANDSCAPE by Angela Williams Gorrell
Anyone who's been on social media for a while will tell you that social media platforms are places of both remarkable opportunity and remarkable depravity, places where people can both come together and tear one another apart. But for better and for worse, social media is here to stay, and Always On is Angela Gorrell's take on how believers can bear witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ in and through such platforms.
Gorrell's most insightful point is that, as I have described it above, social media (or "new media," which also encompasses things like eBay, YouTube, etc.) is not a tool, but a world, an ecosystem with its own rules, language, and ways of being. Churches and pastors that want to simply use social media as an online bulletin board are doing themselves and their members a disservice, she says, because they are vastly underestimating how invested people are in their online lives. Churches should not regard new media so as a way to share the gospel so much as a mission field in and of itself.
In Gorrell's tellling, the world of social media is fundamentally the same as the "real" world: it is broken, yet God can be found there. As such, it is the responsibility of believers to find ways to redeem the broken parts of social media and shine a light in the darkness. In her telling, the best way to do this is by creating what spiritual directors call a "rule of life" (an intentional plan for practicing spiritual disciplines) specifically for social media.
While heavier on theology than application, Always On is a good conversation starter for believers concerned about social media (which, given the pandemic, should be everyone!) I recommend pairing it with Netflix's The Social Dilemma and seeing what ideas the Spirit gives for how we can carry out the gospel in and through new media.
THE RAP YEAR BOOK by Shea Serrano
One of the big debates every year in sports is who should win the Most Valuable Player award. While sometimes the answer is obvious, more often the question becomes a chance to appreciate several players side-by-side, compare and contrast their strengths and weaknesses, and finally crown a winner. The existence of the award is the opportunity to tell the sport's story and the story of it's greatest athletes.
Hip-hop doesn't have an MVP award, so Shea Serrano wrote The Rap Year Book to retroactively do the work such an award would have, declaring the best rap song for every year from 1979-2014. Each chapter, which includes illustrations by Arturo Torres, serves partly as a biography of the artist, partly as an analysis of the song, and partly as an opportunity for Serrano to chase rabbits (which is always fun.) By the end, you've been given an amateur history course in what has become the most popular genre of music in America.
Having first been exposed to Serrano at the dearly departed Grantland.com, this was my second of his books (following the excellent Basketball (and Other Things)). While this one isn't quite as polished as Basketball and the humor is more hit-and-miss, it's still a rollicking ride through the history of rap music, and was a ton of fun to read. It also produced quite a shopping list for me the next time iTunes runs a sale on classic hip-hop albums.
If you like music writing, this isn't your traditional Rolling Stone article...it's way more fun than that. If you like hip-hop but don't know much about its history, this is an easy place to start. And if you don't care about rap music at all, then you're in the same place I was roughly 3 years ago...but you're missing out. The Rap Year Book may be just what it takes to change your mind.
WALDEN AND OTHER WRITINGS by Henry David Thoreau
Often considered the quintessential "back-to-nature" book, Walden is Henry David Thoreau's account of a year spent in the solitude of the New England woods, living primarily off the land. By immersing himself in nature and removing himself from society, Thoreau's philosophy of self-reliance and independence is shaped.
Walden is renowned for Thoreau's detailed descriptions of nature, from Walden Pond to its animal inhabitants. Unfortunately, I found it to be a chore to read. Maybe it was just my frame of mind, but I found the loooong paragraphs describing water and grass to be interminable, less a feat of descriptive imagery than a slog. I appreciated some of Thoreau's more philosophical points, but having to wade through the nature writing to get to them was not a trade-off I enjoyed.
More enjoyable were the essays in the back of the book, especially Civil Disobedience and A Plea for Captain John Brown. In both of these essays, Thoreau makes the argument that morality is more important than law, and that people have the duty to disobey unjust laws no matter what the consequences. Thoreau's thoughts here would go on to positively influence movement leaders like Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., and his philosophy holds up remarkably well given the antebellum time period in which they were written.
Having also read Thoreau's poetry previously, I can now say with confidence that I respect him as a thinker, but his writing isn't my cup of tea. If you want to know what he's all about, start with Civil Disobedience and work from there.
ESSENTIAL X-MEN VOL. 3-4 by Chris Claremont, Dave Cockrum, Paul Smith, John Romita, Jr., et al.
In the 1980s, no comic was bigger than Uncanny X-Men. Propelled by soap operatic melodrama, cool costumes and powers, and Chris Claremont's world-building, mutants carved out their own corner of the Marvel Universe, one that readers swarmed to in droves. Essential X-Men Vol. 3-4 lays the foundation for that popularity, building upon stories like The Dark Phoenix Saga and Days of Future Past even as it moves boldly into the future.
The highlight of this period is the graphic novel God Loves, Man Kills, printed in its entirety in vol. 4. The story tells of a televangelist who uses his platform to advocate for the elimination of all mutants .While X-Men titles had flirted with social commentary dating back to the 1960s, this is the story that most clearly establishes the mutants-as-oppressed-minorities metaphor that has come to define the book. And, while dated in some respects, the story holds up pretty well.
These books also see the introduction of Rogue, the power-stealing mutant who makes her debut as a member of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants only to eventually switch sides and join the X-Men; the Morlocks, a society of mutant outcasts living underground; and Madelynn Pryor, a mysterious Jean Grey lookalike whom Cyclops impulsively marries (with consequences in future issues.) Other story developments include Storm's metamorphosis from pure fish out of water to battle-hardened killer, Magneto's shift from villain to antihero, and the maturation of Kitty Pryde from novice to full-fledged X-Man.
These stories are not as definitive as the ones told by Claremont and John Byrne in Essential X-Men Vol. 2, but they're still plenty of fun, and more imaginative than much of what was coming out in the same time period. For X-Men fans wanting to see the expansion of the mutant world before that mythology became so convoluted and overwhelming, these are key issues.
No comments:
Post a Comment