The Best Damn Blog About Nail Polish You Never Read

by Ben Carter

A lot of people have been excited for Waterlily – many compared it to Chanel’s famous Jade, since it has a slight shimmer. I don’t have Jade, but comparisons seem to show that although the two are fairly close, Waterlily is a more yellow, leafy light green than Jade’s cooler mint tones. Waterlily is a pretty and wearable green – the yellow tones make it soft and it’s not too stark. The formula is nice and only took me two coats for opacity.

I have a friend who is really into fingernail polish. Whenever we meet her and her husband for dinner, she[1] is wearing a new coat. It’s not something she talks about unless we comment on how great it looks; it always looks great.

During a lull in the conversation at a recent dinner, our friend announced, “So, I have a blog.” Turns out, by “have a blog” she meant she has a well-trafficked blog devoted exclusively to nail polish. She has been reviewing high-end and offbeat polishes for years at her blog, Lacquer Wear.

Maybe you need to know her to appreciate the shock of the news, but know that she is not the stereotypical blogger. And, I guess, that is one of the points of this: in 2011, there is no stereotypical blogger. When I began blogging in 2003, the world of blogging was dominated by guys like me: nerdy dudes in their early 20s.

Now, anyone can have a blog. This is amazing.

The other thing that’s not stereotypical about my friend as a blogger is that bloggers, almost by definition, are self-promoters. (How many people do you know that have started a blog, announced it to the world and then wrote one–maybe two–more posts past the initial promotional post?) It is inconceivable to me that someone would blog for years without telling her friend–me–about it. I am trying not to take it personally.

But, I want to get back to the “anyone can have a blog” thing.

I have another friend who is on the Paleo diet. His blog, Eatin’ Thangs, is nothing but pictures of stuff he’s eaten.

A third friend cares deeply about the role of the church in a broken (and getting broker) world. He writes about this and current events at his blog, at his church’s blog, and at a community blog he administers called [D]mergent.

A fourth friend writes about music under the name Kenny Bloggins. I read his site, The Decibel Tolls, to find new music, yes, but primarily to be blown away by his writing. Kenny Bloggins can pwn a sentence.[2]

Strictly speaking, I don’t really care about fingernail polish, but Lacquer Wear is in my RSS reader, NetNewsWire, and when a new post shows up, I read it. It is written with an enthusiasts’ enthusiasm and a maven’s perception. My friend carefully photographs each of the swatches in different lights that reflect that polish’s versatility (or consistency). She describes the polish’s application and feel. If a polish disappoints, she says so.

As far as I know, she is not paid for her work, nor does she ever expect to be paid. It is amateur hour on the internet and we couldn’t be luckier. Enough has already been said about the fact that we all own a printing press now, about the fact that people are doing work for free that journalists used to be paid for, about the fact that bloggers are carving out micro-niches of expertise.[3] We do not need to replow that terrain.

Instead, I just want to marvel for a moment about how awesome all of this is. I have a friend. Who blogs. About nail polish.

Awesome.

In 2011, a blog can be anything you want it to be: a journal, a collection of nail polish reviews, a photo diary of the warm things that filled your belly as the earth spun through dark and empty space. You can write essays that change the way people think about church, about their responsibilities to each other. You can rant about your favorite (or least favorite) sports team. You can have a travelogue.

Seriously: anything.

I say this for two reasons:

1) You have no excuses not to produce. 2) The world needs your story.

When I read my friend’s nail polish blog, I’m not just reading a review of Dior’s most recent line of fall polishes. I’m reminded that there is someone else out there who cares enough to write it down, who has the courage to write it down, memorialize it. It, whatever “it” is, matters. In this case, the “it” is nail polish and it matters enough to my friend to take pleasure in the creating and then send her words off in the world without much concern as to how they will fare. Ultimately, the piece’s fate doesn’t matter. She’s already done the important work, the hard work: sitting down and writing with the conviction that what she had to say matters.

So, I’ll continue to read a blog about nail polish. Because it’s well-written with obvious affection for the subject.

And because it’s not really about nail polish.

  1. “She” prefers to remain anonymous.  ↩

  2. Since writing this post over Christmas break and publishing it at the end of January, Kenny Bloggins has announced he is going to stop blogging at The Decibel Tolls. BUT, he is starting a more general-purpose blog called Distonal. It is going to be dope. I’m really excited to see what he does with the new space.  ↩

  3. Indeed, having a blog about nail polish seems recklessly unfocused in 2011. She should really have a blog about green nail polish or nail polishes imported from the Czech Republic.  ↩

"You have to be as light as you can be"

by Ben Carter

Bill Murray:

There’s got to be a lightness in your way. There has to be a lightness; you have to be as light as you can be and not get weighed down and stuck in your emotion, stuck in your body, stuck in your head. You just want to always be trying to elevate somehow.

Gatewood Spoke To Me

by Ben Carter

In law school, I had a radio show at WRFL, UK’s student-run radio station. Gatewood was a guest[1] on the show twice: in January of 2005 and in March of 2006. The audio from the 2006 interview is at the bottom of this post and the 2005 episode (which has really bad sound quality), is in a separate post.

In all of the remembrances and statements regarding Gatewood, one word keeps surfacing: “colorful”. That’s how the Kentucky Democratic Party described Gatewood in a tweet last week. 

This pisses me off. 

“Colorful” is a pretty obvious way of dismissing Gatewood as a loon when, in fact, he thought harder about government and its role–both positive and negative–in people’s lives than 100% of the people who now hold elected office in Kentucky. But, his actions were more important than his thinking. Gatewood acted upon his convictions and that’s what people loved about him. That, and the fact that he was easily and always the funniest person in the room.

Americans love authentic and Gatewood was 100% authentic. You know who doesn’t like authentic? Power. Gatewood’s authenticity scared powerful people. This is why they try to dismiss him and his legacy with chickenshit words like “colorful”.

At a time in Kentucky politics when both parties are owned by Big Money, Gatewood stood alone against the Petrochemical Pharmaceutical Military Industrial Transnational Corporate Fascist Elite SOBs.[2]

There is no question that Gatewood was charming enough and friendly enough and smart enough and well-credentialed enough to hold any public office he wanted in Kentucky–if he would have just gotten in line with the powerful. 

But, if he had done that, he wouldn’t have been Gatewood. 

At the end and throughout, Gatewood wasn’t colorful–he was himself. Despite the lure of power, despite the press of marketers and salesmen, despite the fact that people would try to remember him and dismiss him as “colorful”–he was himself.

People and parties who will describe an authentic, earnest, integral person as “colorful” clearly have no idea how hard it is to become and be and remain yourself. For those of us who do, the memory of Gatewood Galbraith will remind us that it is, indeed, still possible to live a real life in America in the 21st century. You can disagree with everything Gatewood said and stood for and still see him as “the last free man in America,” a truly courageous man, someone worth respecting and emulating. 

Gatewood deserves to rest in peace. The rest of us, however, have work to do. 

  1. That Gatewood would appear on a 7 a.m. college radio show tells you just about all you need to know about his passion and generosity.  ↩

  2. A term that only Gatewood could have coined and that only Gatewood could deploy credibly. He uses it a few minutes into the 2006 Interview. By the way, the other interviewer is my buddy, Alex DeGrand. He’s the one asking the good questions.  ↩

Foreign Workers, Domestic Help

by Ben Carter

At night in Palau, Japanese businessmen sing karaoke. They go to bars where Filipina and Chinese women and girls serve them drinks. The businessmen laugh; they are rich. The girls laugh; they are paid to laugh. A skirted girl sits on a man’s lap, he rubs his hand on her thigh. Later, he will pay the owner of the bar and take the girl back to his hotel room.

Nancy learned English by listening to a “English for Businessmen” cassette. I never asked Nancy whether this is true, but it has to be.

“Nancy, can you hem these pants? The cuff is dragging.”

“It is really no problem!” This is Nancy’s enthusiastic mantra. Nancy has rehearsed it in front of mirrors. Nancy’s smile is simultaneously practiced and genuine.

I met Nancy near the end of our year in Palau. We had heard that the tailors from the Philippines on the island did amazing work and were incredibly affordable.

“Go see Nancy,” we kept hearing.

So, one day after work Erin and I drove over to Dress X-Press after getting another recommendation for Nancy from one of the Supreme Court justices Erin worked for. Two things were immediately obvious when we entered the shop:

1) Nancy was a man.

2) Nancy really, really loved his job.

He set about showing us rolls of fabric, examining the shirts and dresses we had brought as templates for future shirts and dresses.

“Do you think you can copy this pattern?”

“It’s really no problem!”

The shop was not Nancy’s. By law, nothing in Palau is ever owned by anyone other than a Palauan. That includes businesses and land. So, Nancy worked for a Palauan who actually owned the shop. I never asked how much Nancy got paid, whether he got a commission. I never asked him how long he had been in Palau, whether his employer had ever exploited the enormous power advantage she enjoyed in the relationship: Nancy depended on the Palauan employer to renew his work visa and his ability to stay in Palau. How incurious.

A lot of work gets done in Palau by foreign workers. The men working on the gym’s roof as I drove home from work–the ones that were there on my way to work ten hours earlier–are Filipino. The women doing the laundry by hand are Filipina. The guys on the roadside digging drainage canals, pouring the concrete that would line those canals are Bangladeshi, Chinese, and Filipino. Of the 20,000 people in Palau, about 6,000 are foreign workers. While we lived there, we were two among that number, though admittedly practicing law is not the typical work of foreign workers in Palau. Cutting hair, fixing cars, construction, food service, housekeeping–these are what foreign workers are for.

We paid Lori, a Filipina who used to be a nurse in South Africa, $20 bucks to come over once a week and do laundry and clean the house. She spent the entire day there. Palauans chastised us: this was an exorbitant amount of money to pay a DH, “domestic help”. We paid Nur similarly to occasionally “sweep” the yard. Sweeping the yard meant mowing the grass by hand with a machete. Our yard was not small.

Palauans are smart. They have figured out that the amount of money that people in Palau are willing to pay for a service is greater than the amount they would need to pay a foreign worker to do the work. The difference is theirs.

This is not to say that Palauans themselves are not hard workers, but rather to say that you won’t see a Palauan doing work they can pay someone less to do for them. That’s not laziness, that’s economics. Rich people don’t mow their own lawns, hang their Christmas lights–they hire that job out. And the fact is that Palauans are relatively rich[1] compared with their Filipino and Bangladeshi neighbors.

That the market supports this labor arrangement doesn’t mean I’m comfortable with it; like many Palauans, I have mixed feelings about the country’s easy reliance on foreign workers. Yes, foreign workers have an opportunity to earn more money than they would in their home country. The opportunity to work for a few bucks is better than the opportunity to work for almost nothing. (And, who knows, you might find a side job with a young American couple who will pay you in a day more money that you could have made in a month in Bangladesh or the Philippines.)

Yet, there is something deeply unseemly about a system in which Palauans are allowed to prosper on the labor of others simply by being Palauan. Palauans have the exclusive right to own businesses and secure work visas for employees. Often, it doesn’t seem like Palauans have done enough work to justify the cut they take.

It’s not just their tightfisted grip on the means of production. I understand and laud Palauans’ prevailing impulse to retain tight, local control over the economy. Doing otherwise would undoubtedly rearrange the existing power structures in Palau. This rearrangement would be swift and likely irreversible, so I appreciate the caution with which Palauans proceed.

So, while a hyper-nationalistic position creates the potential for Palauans to profit beyond their contribution, that alone does not trouble me. Rather, like the treatment of undocumented workers in America, the problem is one of humans failing to treat people like they were human beings. The system of foreign workers in Palau looks a lot like indentured servitude and is tinged with racism. The foreign worker’s dependence on the employer for renewing the worker’s visa distorts the normal employer/employee relationship by giving the employer a shocking amount of power over the destiny of the employee’s life.

As one of two Public Defenders in Palau, I got a chance to see the institutionalized racism of police officers up close. I was in charge of the misdemeanor charges. Lots of citations for driving with a brakelight out or failing to use a turn signal came across my desk. Very few were for Palauan drivers. Driving While Filipino is a real thing in Palau. After practicing for almost a year, I was confronted with a citation I’d never seen before: riding a bicycle without a headlight. The time of the citation was a 5:35 p.m. It wasn’t even dark. My client was Bangladeshi.

I looked at the statute and, sure enough, each bicycle is required by law to be outfitted with a lamp for nighttime illumination. I took the citation and my client downstairs for the Wednesday afternoon traffic docket and summoned my deepest indignation: “You Honor,” I told Justice Lourdes Materne, “I don’t have a light on my bike. I’ve been on island for almost a year and I don’t know anyone who has a light on their bike. This ticket is absurd.” She agreed. Judge Materne saw right through the technical violation and recognized the ugly truth behind the ticket. She apologized to my client for having to miss an afternoon of work.

It’s just pure harassment. Officers cite foreign workers because they can, because they need to. You’ve got to remind them who’s boss.

One afternoon, Nur visited me at the office. Nur has skin the color of coffee beans, a strong, square jaw, perfectly straight, perfectly white teeth. He has a luminous presence. He belongs in magazines–he is the most handsome landscaper I’ll ever employ. He knocked on my open door and bowed slightly while smiling deferentially. He did not want to disturb me.

“I have a problem,” he said.

He had ben arrested the day before while riding a bicycle down Main Road that he had recently purchased from some neighborhood kids for $25. The bike was stolen and he was charged with the felony of receiving stolen property worth more than $300.

I saw the bike. It was a piece of shit worth $25, not $300. So, there was that fact issue. Then, under the statute, the state would have to prove that Nur knew the bike was stolen. The prosecutor was adamant–she would not dismiss the charge. We could either 1) accept an offer to amend the charge to a misdemeanor spend two weekends in jail or 2) go to trial on the felony. This case was made for a trial. We had two great issues to tell the judge about. (When I was in Palau, there were no jury trials. This part of the Constitution has since been amended.)

Instead, we accepted the offer and Nur spent two days in jail. Here’s why: if we had gone to trial and lost–a remote yet possible outcome–Nur’s punishment would have included a longer jail sentence, but also deportation following his time in jail. This was an unacceptable risk. Nur had a hard life in Palau, but no life in Bangladesh. So, Nur took the deal and served his bullshit time. Nur was not the only foreign worker who took deals that my Palauan clients would never have accepted; deportation was not part of the potential punishments for my Palauan clients and the prosecutors knew it.

The economic freeloading does not disturb me.[2] The racism, the paranoia, the exploitation, the meanness–the detritus of lopsided economic power–does. Differences in economic power are inevitable. But, the ugly side of the power differential is not. That it so often exists is deeply saddening. Differences in economic power do not automatically instill in a person or populace a sense of moral superiority to those less powerful, yet the transference occurs more often than not. The human psyche, apparently, cannot acknowledge disparate economic power and accept that this power is derived from a strictly-enforced system of laws that seeks to preserve the powerfuls’ power.

Rather, humans–especially the powerful–must also tell ourselves stories about us and about them that justify the status quo for reasons beyond (or instead) of the simple and obvious fact that the powerful are powerful because the powerful wrote the laws from which they derive their power. Perhaps this truth is too bareknuckled. Perhaps part of the job of the stories about Filipinos‘ deceitfulness or Mexicans’ laziness is to wrap the bareknuckled truth in something softer. Something on which we can lay our heads at night, something in which to swaddle our babies, something with which to line our coffins.

These stories are not true. These stories insulate the rich and divide the poor by ethnicities, geographies, nations. They prevent us from seeing each other for what we are: delicate, vulnerable, full of love and fear, here only now.

I’m on a plane. I’m going back to Palau. I hope desperately that I see Nur riding a bicycle down Main Road. I hope to see my friend, Nancy, while I’m there. I hope he is still there. These people are people. I so often forget that. I tell myself stories to help myself forget that. I’ve heard them my whole life.

Growing up has meant learning different stories, real stories, about real people. Learning new stories is hard, but not impossible. My hope for us rests in our ability to learn and tell new stories. We can learn new stories, stitch together new patterns.

It’s really no problem.

 

  1. Palau enjoys a longstanding relationship with the United States that makes Palau relatively prosperous. The first Compact of Free Association involved an agreement to provide $300,000,000 in U.S. foreign aid to the Palauan government in exchange for an agreement that the U.S. could park its nuclear submarines in Palau’s waters, if necessary. It’s more involved than that, but for purposes of this essay, it’s enough to know that this country of 15,000 has received $300,000,000 over the last 15 years.

     ↩

  2. This is an overstatement. It does disturb me, but it is not the most disturbing aspect of what foreign worker’s confront in Palau. If it disturbs you, that’s cool. I get it.

     ↩

Why I Gave the Max to a Republican Campaigning for President

by Ben Carter

 

Yesterday, I did what I never thought I would do: donate the maximum to a Republican campaigning for President of the United States.

Buddy Roemer, former Governor and Congressman from Louisiana, gets it: money is rotting our political economy. He accepts no PAC money and will not accept individual donations larger than $100. He is, as far as I can tell, the only candidate that understands that before we can make any fair laws for the people of this country, we have to have representatives that were elected by the people, not curated by Big Money.

As a bonus, Buddy (@buddyroemer) owns a small bank (assets just under $1B) and understands the barrier the ongoing, unjust, and inequitable burden the foreclosure crisis places on our economic recovery. He talks about it a lot.

Buddy spoke with Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) on Chris’s show, Up with Chris Hayes, yesterday. If you want to know what I’m talking about, watch this segment where Buddy and Chris talk about the foreclosure crisis.[1] Buddy’s piece begins at 4:30.

Politicians, in general, are not concerned about the influence of Big Money, so long as they can get a taste. To me, that’s just about the only issue out there. If I can’t trust the process that elected my representatives, I don’t trust the laws they make. So, let's talk about that first. Buddy’s voice is a necessary voice; it reminds us that things don’t have to be this way. Things can’t continue to be this way.

What Buddy is doing is important and not easy. It would be easier to rail against special interests while simultaneously accepting PAC money and large donations from individuals. It certainly would help his campaign’s bottom line. I admire a politician who does uneasy things. We are in an uneasy place.

I will donate[2] to encourage a politician to continue doing those uneasy things.

Even if he or she is a Republican. It’s that important.

  1. As an aside, Chris’s intro to this segment on the foreclosure crisis contained the best summary of the causes and connections of the crisis I have seen. Money quote: "They're vultures, essentially. And homes are their caracsses."  ↩

  2. If you would like to donate, you can do so at Buddy’s website.  ↩

Process is Power

by Ben Carter

 

I am going to write a series of essays about process.

For those of you still reading, thank you.

Process is so important. Process is power. So, in the coming weeks, expect this table of contents to be filled in with hyperlinks to essays.

  • Campaign finance
  • Redistricting
  • Election Day logistics
  • Restoration of voting rights
  • Fusion Voting

But, for now, I want to get a few things said about process.

If following politics is watching the sausage being made, then paying attention to process issues is animal husbandry. What are you feeding this pig? Where does it live? How much exercise does it get? Hell, is what you’re growing even a pig? The answers to these questions will dramatically impact both the quality and quantity of sausage you get to eventually make.

The conventional wisdom is that “process issues” are not the kind of issues on which people cast their vote.[1] No one, the thinking goes, says, “Well, she supports publicly-funded elections, so I’m voting for her.” That may be .02% of the electorate.

That’s got to change.

As a country, we’ve got to spend much more time and energy thinking about process, talking about process, organizing around process, and agitating for process change. This is hard for a few reasons.

1) People in power don’t want us to talk about process. They got power using the processes as they exist today. To the extent they want to change the process, they want to change it to consolidate their own power; but, generally, public dialogue about process will challenge the status quo, which the powerful are bent on preserving and deepening.

2) Process is geeky. Process nerds are the political world’s sabermetrics nuts, John Siracusas, and dungeon masters. Talking about process can get wonky fast. People who love process love it because it quickly engages very deep questions about power and human nature. They love it because parts of it can be quantified in legislative districts, voter turnout; it can be charted, graphed, mapped. Normal people have a lot of practice ignoring nerds, and process nerds are no exception.

The powerful don’t want us talking about process and the normal want to ignore us. We cannot allow this to stop us. Process issues are too important.

How we elect our government is intimately related to the pervasive cynicism towards our government. Look at Congress’s approval ratings: a deep skepticism grips the American public; they no longer trust that Congress represents them. This is a crisis not just of politics but of process.

Our politics can be broken, but our process cannot be. We must have processes that Americans trust. The seeds of revolution sprout from broken processes, not broken politics. Look at the Declaration of Independence. The colonists list of grievances were entirely process issues. Here are just the first four:

  • He [King George III] has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

  • He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

  • He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

  • He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

Don’t tell Thomas Jefferson that process is boring, that people don’t vote on process issues. The Founding Fathers risked their necks, literally, for process. Washington crossed the Delaware for process. Farmers lost feet in Valley Forge for process. People died for process.

How do we structure elections? How do we fund them? How do we draw the maps for districts? Who will we disenfranchise? The answer to these questions provide us the representatives who will answer every other question our country faces. How we elect people determines who we elect.

If you care about China, the environment, education, infrastructure, war, energy, taxes, unemployment, crime, human rights, animal rights, plant rights, extraterrestrial defense preparation. If you care about anything that local, state, or federal government touches, you damn well better care about process.

First.

  1. Or, the kind of essays people spend their leisure time reading.  ↩

A Few Words for Ryan Kemp-Pappan

by Ben Carter

 

Ryan and Fairness Campaign's Chris Hartman 

Here’s where this essay is going: I’m going to praise Rev. Ryan Kemp-Pappan and thank him for his time and leadership at Douglass Boulevard Christian Church and in Louisville, Kentucky. But, it’s going to take me a while to get there. Hang tight.

I have been writing and thinking a lot recently about my generation: the war being waged on it by the Boomers, the “quality of life” challenges it faces, it’s problems with student debt. One reader responded to my “Eat the Young” essay with a link to an article by Bruce Levine providing a survey of all the ways in which young people are kept complacent and submissive despite the massive injustices being perpetrated against it. In it, Bruce describes a broken educational system that places students deeply into debt, the psychopathologizing of resistence, and the normalization of surveillance.

All true.

But the element that scared me the most was the last one: fundamentalist religion and fundamentalist consumerism.

Wait, what? Consumerism? I mean, I get the fundamentalist religion, but what does my lust for a Mercedes have to do with my failure to fight?

The author, Bruce Levine, explains:

Fundamentalist consumerism pacifies young Americans in a variety of ways. Fundamentalist consumerism destroys self-reliance, creating people who feel completely dependent on others and who are thus more likely to turn over decision-making power to authorities, the precise mind-set that the ruling elite loves to see. A fundamentalist consumer culture legitimizes advertising, propaganda, and all kinds of manipulations, including lies; and when a society gives legitimacy to lies and manipulativeness, it destroys the capacity of people to trust one another and form democratic movements. Fundamentalist consumerism also promotes self-absorption, which makes it difficult for the solidarity necessary for democratic movements.

We have all grown up in this. We have all grown up being told that it is all about us: our needs are legitimate and our wants are our needs. I see this so clearly in my own life. As I recently said, “It’s not that I’m self-centered; it’s just that I’m always, always, always going to consider myself first”. I find myself standing in the Gap, holding up a button-down, asking myself, “Is this shirt me?” I came of age knowing, fundamentally, that the kind of car I drive defines me, at least partly. We fetishize style, believing desperately that “the clothes make the man”.

If only it were that simple.

My generation simultaneously believes the premise of advertising–you are right, always–and distrusts everyone because everyone is a salesperson. Surrounded by salespeople, my generation has become cool cynics. We are not going to fall for it, whatever “it” is.

This cool cynicism is why collective action, despite the widespread availability of the best tools we’ve ever had to coordinate collective action, is so difficult. We distrust. We have heard it all before.

And so we are individuals. Our answer to our role as a businessperson’s commodities, and advertiser’s “eyeballs”, and grifter’s marks is to retreat from each other. We are weary of the spin, the promises, the glitter, and shiny things. We retreat from each other because, chances are, we are probably just going to try to sell us something.

Personal relationships themselves have been commoditized with assholes instructing young people to “cultivate your personal brand”. When people have a brand, they’re not people: they’re cattle. But yet, there’s no shortage of career services offices and social networking gurus to instruct people how to build their personal brand.

I don’t want you to sell me on you. I don’t want you to be the product I’m consuming. I don’t want to consume you.[^network] Incidentally, I don’t want to “network” with you, either. I am not a computer. Nor, as far as I know, are you. We are not going to “network”. At best, I would like to get to know you. Understand who you are and what you’re about. Computers don’t have fears, ambitions, values. Let’s share that, not data.

These things matter. The words we use matter. If you begin to think of yourself as a product with a brand, you begin to think of others as consumable goods, as expendable as last year’s iPhone. You become a zombie: walking around, eating brains, moving on; trying not to have your brains eaten if you can help it. If you begin to think of yourself as a computer, “networking” with other computers, again, people become products not people. That’s when the atrocities happen.

We must fight against this. We must. Our generation’s call is to reclaim our humanity from marketers who sell us their brands and marketers who want us to cultivate ours.

That’s where Ryan Kemp-Pappan comes in.

Ryan is a minister at my church. Or was, until today. He’s leaving for OKC with his wife who is taking a job as a Presbyterian minister down there. When Erin and I came to Louisville three years ago, Ryan–straight out of seminary–had just begun his ministry at Douglass Boulevard.

Ryan’s ministry at Douglass has consisted of a quiet call to be vulnerable to one another. To be human with one another. He insists (in his humble, jovial, SoCal way) that Christianity requires that we reject a view of ourselves as products, as computers. We have guts. Hearts. Sinew. We get cut, burnt, broken. All of us. He encourages us to recognize our own wounds and the wounds we (individually and communally) have inflicted on each other.

This is not easy. In fact, it’s damn hard. It’s why Ryan has to work so hard, and will continue to have to work so hard. His ministry is contrary to our society’s overriding theses: “Everything is okay. And, if it’s not okay, I’ve got a cream for that.” His ministry is counter-productive, or more accurately, counter-product. His ministry calls us to do exactly what we don’t want to do: be human. It is so much easier to be consumers, zombies, computers.

For some people, Ryan’s call to examine our own wounds is the hard part. I find it much easier to reflect on the wounds I inflict on others than acknowledge my own brokenness. For others, recognizing personal wounds is much easier than recognizing communal wounds. Either way, Ryan is going to challenge you. Ryan practices what he preaches, both openly acknowledging when he feels scared, threatened, or vulnerable and actively working to mend the wounds of others.

Ryan struggles with his weight and, while at Douglass, was diagnosed with diabetes. He worries about money. About having a family. He will tell you about these things. He will tell you about these things not to complain, but to invite you to share your fears with him. To lighten your load by sharing it with someone else.

Because that’s what humans do. That’s the only way we survive: by sharing, by working together.

The beasts around us are faster than us. Their teeth are sharper. Their night vision is keener.

The only shot we’ve got is to huddle together, build a fire, and keep watch. Since coming to Kentucky, Ryan has worked day-and-night to build relationships with the LGBTQ community and advocate for their equal treatment. He recognizes the deep wounds organized religion has inflicted (and continues to inflict) upon the LGBTQ community and has consistently sought ways to begin mending those wounds. He’s hosted films and panels, he sat on the board of the Fairness Campaign, he’s marched in marches, and he committed to perform only the religious (rather than also the civil) aspect of marriage until he could also perform the civil aspect for gay and lesbian couples.

I will miss Ryan. His presence and ministry forced me into a deeper, more honest assessment of my brokenness and of my role in breaking other people. Humans are more fragile and more precious than I had previously realized.

What we are is naked.

I’ve been thinking about Steve Jobs recently. I love the Commencement Speech he gave to Stanford graduates in 2005:

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure–these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Death reminds us that we are always, persistently, inevitably naked.

Ryan reminds us that that’s okay.

There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Ryan helps me feel it beat inside my chest, helps me see it beat inside yours.

We’ll make it.

Together.

Thanks, Ryan.

Prostalgia and the Hardest Month

by Ben Carter

 

When I was in college, I invented a word–prostalgia–to describe a feeling for which I’m not sure there is another English equivalent.[1] A portmanteau, prostalgia combines “present” and “nostalgia” to capture the emotion of being nostalgic for an experience that is happening at this very moment. The emotion is cousins with gratitude and joy, distantly related to awe. The distinguishing feature, though, is an awareness–in the moment–of the moment’s fleetingness.

A melancholic knowledge pervades the prostalgic moment. It is infused with an understanding that this moment–this beautiful, delicate, precious, painful, loving, poignant moment–will fade, will pass like all other moments into oblivion. Prostalgia, unlike ecstasy, is rooted in time. Time dominates the motion. In ecstasy, a man loses his connection with time. In prostagia, a man’s connection with time borders on oppressive.

If prostalgia had a month, it would be October.

October requires us to live in beauty while surrounding us with reminders of that beauty’s haste.[2]

The geese.

The leaves.

The chill.

The impossibly clear air–possible only because things are about to die. October’s natural beauty is enhanced because, more than any other month, it reminds us that this beauty that surrounds us will not last. The sugar maple’s greenredyellowbrown explosion will falter and fall.[3] This awareness that this beauty will not last gives October an emotional potency that other months lack completely. Try appreciating June.

October fills my heart.

 

 

And breaks it.

October rips my guts out and strews them–yellow, red, and green–among the crisp leaves. They will be eaten at night by a stray cat.

 

 

This is as it should be.

 

I need October. I need to remember that the geese will fly north, the sap will return to the roots.

Prostalgia is important. Necessary.

I am so good at avoiding unpleasant emotions. What I spent years doing with booze, I now do with Apple products, the NFL, perpetual busyness. There's no escaping October. It rips me from distraction with its beauty. It drenches me with beauty. I am drowning in October. It insists upon being appreciated, honored, revered. October gives me religion. 

It’s not that prostalgia is an unpleasant emotion: it fills me with gratitude, an overwhelming sense that life must be cherished. My breath is precious. Prostagia is not unpleasant, but it is hard. It reminds me that my breath will one day merge with the wind. October requires religion. 

God, October hurts.

 

It hurts, God.

  1. Obviously, if there is a non-English equivalent for this emotion, I would love to hear about it from a reader. I’m sure German has a word for this. Paging Howie Cockrill…  ↩

  2. My friend Jesse has proposed an October playlist. Allow me to expand on that list with songs that are brutally beautiful, filled with prostalgia.  ↩

    "Get out the Map" by the Indigo Girls

    "Halloween" by Matt Pond PA 

    "Farmer Chords" and "I Will Follow You into the Dark" by Death Cab for Cutie

    "Our Town" by Iris DeMent

    "Turning Over" and "Albuquerque Lullaby" by Dan Bern 

    Anything by Iron and Wine

  3. I have written elsewhere that the sycamore is my favorite tree. The sugar maple in fall is just a spectacular runner-up. I will not argue with a sugar maple lover. The air will turn colder, too cold. The sun that warms our sweater now is losing power.  ↩