One of my favorite bits of trivia about the first moon walk is anything but trivial. As Eric Metaxas shares on his blog today, Buzz Aldrin observed the Lord's Supper on the moon. John Piper put it well in an early morning Tweet today: "40 years ago today the moon was added to all things. ('You have put all things under his feet,' Psalm 8:6.)"

christianity, convergence, heroes, horizons of the possible, space

Christy:

[Aldrin] and Armstrong had only been on the lunar surface for a few minutes when Aldrin made the following public statement:

“This is the LM pilot. I’d like to take this opportunity to ask every person listening in, whoever and wherever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his or her own way.”

He then ended radio communication and there, on the silent surface of the moon, 250,000 miles from home, he read a verse from the Gospel of John, and he took communion.  Here is his own account of what happened:

“In the radio blackout, I opened the little plastic packages which contained the bread and the wine. I poured the wine into the chalice our church had given me. In the one-sixth gravity of the moon, the wine slowly curled and gracefully came up the side of the cup. Then I read the Scripture, ‘I am the vine, you are the branches. Whosoever abides in me will bring forth much fruit.  Apart from me you can do nothing.’  I had intended to read my communion passage back to earth, but at the last minute [they] had requested that I not do this. NASA was already embroiled in a legal battle with Madelyn Murray O’Hare, the celebrated opponent of religion, over the Apollo 8 crew reading from Genesis while orbiting the moon at Christmas.  I agreed reluctantly. . . . I ate the tiny Host and swallowed the wine. I gave thanks for the intelligence and spirit that had brought two young pilots to the Sea of Tranquility. It was interesting for me to think: the very first liquid ever poured on the moon, and the very first food eaten there, were the communion elements.”

Is technology a moral obligation?

agriculture, gardens and cities, horizons of the possible, kevin kelly, technology and change

Nate:

I know the Amish, and Wendell Berry and Eric Brende, and the minimites well enough to know that they believe we don’t need exploding technology to expand ourselves, at least in the proper directions. They are, after all, minimalists. They see most of the promises of freedoms from increased technology as illusionary. In their eyes, technology generates fake choices, meaningless options, or real choices that are really entrapments.  This is an argument worth exploring because there is some truth in it. The technium is an autonomous system that tends to favor choices by humans that expand its own reach, which can feel like a type of entrapment. And many choices we make don’t matter.

But the evidence that the technium expands real choices is voluminous. Throughout history there is a one-way march from the farm to the bustling choices of the city. That steady migration is going on today at a shocking rate; More than two million people per day decide they prefer the options that modern technology life offers, so they flee the constrained choices in a picturesque and comforting village somewhere. They can’t all be bewitched. It would be a powerful spell to fool 50% of the people living on this planet.

Those million urban migrants per day have enrolled into the technium for the same reason you have (and you have if you are reading this): to increase your choices. To increase your chances of unleashing your full potential. Perhaps someday someone will invent a tool that is made just for your special combination of hidden talents. Or perhaps you will make your own tool. Most importantly, and unlike the Amish and minimites, you may invent a tool which will help unleash the fullest of someone else. Our call is not only to discover our fullest selves in the technium, but to expand the possibilities for others. We have a moral obligation to increase the amount of technology in the world in order to increase the number of possibilities for the most people. Greater technology will selfishly unleash us, but it will also unselfishly unleash others, our children and all to come.

The economy may be tanking, but here's one industry that is really "taking off": an airline for pets. Being a devoted pet-owner, I can appreciate this service. But with tickets averaging $250 a pop, plus delivery and overnight boarding costs, I have to wonder: when people from impoverished nations (and impoverished people in our own nation) read about something like this, what conclusions might they draw about our culture?

animals, family, pets, transport, travel, trends

Christy:

Dan Wiesel and his wife, Alysa Binder, remember the guilt they felt after their Jack Russell terrier Zoe had to fly cross country in the cargo area of a plane when they moved from the San Francisco Bay area to Florida. “When she came out she just wasn’t herself,” Binder said. “We thought there had to be a better way.” The couple’s answer is Pet Airways, a new airline just for cats and dogs that the couple founded. The airline had its inaugural flights Tuesday from several airports, including BWI Marshall Airport.

There are no human passengers aboard Pet Airways flights, just animals, which are called “pawsengers…”

The airline is sold out for its first two months, Binder said. Pet Airways serves Baltimore, New York, Chicago, Denver and Los Angeles, but Binder said the company hopes to expand to 25 cities in a couple of years. Ticket prices average $250, Binder said. Other airlines charge $75 to $275 for pets, with prices varying depending on where the pets ride. In May, Southwest began allowing people to bring small pets on board for $75.

One airline expert said there is a niche for people who want to take their pets on vacation and other travels. But it is unclear if this airline is the answer.

It may be complicated for passengers to plan their flights with their pet’s flights, said Robert Mann, president of airline consulting firm R.W. Mann & Co. Inc.

“It’s an interesting concept,” Mann said. “There is a need for it. The key question is if this particular concept really meets that need. Time will tell, as it usually does.”

In 2005, I traveled to Kashgar, China, to teach an American Culture course for students from Kashgar Teachers' College. Each morning, before class, the Uyghur students gave us hour-long Uyghur culture lessons. If I have learned anything about the Uyghurs, it is that they are very proud of their culture, especially their traditional music and dance. Even with the recent conflicts that have errupted there, bringing unprecedented global awareness of the Uyghurs, there is still not much to be found on the Web about their vibrant culture. However, I just discovered this web site out of the U.K. that is the most comprehensive site I can find on Uyghur music, including images of their traditional costumes and instruments, as well as a plethora of excellent recordings (including The Twelve Muqam, a piece of music that takes twenty-four hours to perform!). The thing my students asked of me before I came back to the States was that I tell America about Uyghur culture, so it is my pleasure to honor their request. Oh, and one more thing: the Uyghurs love America. They would want me to tell you that, too.

asia, music, musicology, performing arts, uyghurs

Christy:

Uyghur music embraces several distinct regional styles, product of the geography and complex history of the region, whose oasis kingdoms, separated by mountains and deserts, have been subject through the course of history to rule by many different outside forces. The musical traditions of the southern oasis towns of Khotan and Kashgar are more closely allied to the classical Central Asian traditions of Bukhara and Samarkand, while the music of the easternmost oasis town of Qumul has closer links to the music of Northwest China. Each of the region’s oasis towns have to this day maintained their own distinctive sound and repertoire, but they are linked by a common language and overarching culture, maintained by constant communication through trade and movement of peoples. Musically there is much to link these local traditions, in terms of instruments, genres, styles and contexts. The most prestigious and well-known genre of Uyghur music are the large-scale suites of sung, instrumental and dance music known as muqam. In addition to the muqam the Uyghurs maintain popular traditions of sung epic tales (dastan) and other forms of narrative song (qoshaq, leper, eytshish and maddhi name), suites of dance music (senem,) instrumental music, musical genres linked to the rituals of the Sufis, and a large repertoire of folk songs which commonly dwell on the suffering of life on earth and the torments of frustrated love. . . .

One of the paradoxes of Parkinson's disease is that it seems to build up in its sufferers both an extraordinary need to act, and a simultaneous blocking of action. Medications, like the L-DOPA made famous in Oliver Sacks' 1969 account Awakenings, can get many such patients 'unstuck' (though it's more harrowingly complex than just that). But sometimes the unblocking can be brought on by seemingly far subtler treatments: by music, by the visual cues of another person's normal gestures.

brain, disease, gestures and postures, medicine, music, presence, walking

Nate:

One patient, who was so eloquent on the subject of music, had a great difficulty in walking alone, but was always able to walk perfectly if someone walked with her. Her own comments on this are of very great interest: ‘When you walk with me,’ she said, ‘I feel in myself your own power of walking. I partake of the power and freedom you have. I share your walking powers, your perceptions, your feelings, your existence. Without even knowing it, you make me a great gift.’ This patient felt this experience as very similar to, if not identical with, her experiences with music: ‘I partake of other people, as I partake of music…’

I go back and forth as to whether Wilderness is the best way to describe the freedoms granted to kids by conscientious parents in the American cultural mainstream just a decade or two ago. Wilderness, the wild place where one finds one's self literally be-wildered, has many affinities with the adventures, explorations, and dangers of a more free-range childhood. But it was not a wilderness in the sense that when you were out there, you were truly alone, and could not depend on anyone to hear and come if you called for help. (A scenerio ironically more likely these days when all the local kids are being shuttled to their activities in cars).

adventure, childhood, danger, horizons of the possible, risk, safety, wilderness

Nate:

The endangerment of children—that persistent theme of our lives, arts, and literature over the past twenty years—resonates so strongly because, as parents, as members of preceding generations, we look at the poisoned legacy of modern industrial society and its ills, at the world of strife and radioactivity, climatological disaster, overpopulation, and commodification, and feel guilty. As the national feeling of guilt over the extermination of the Indians led to the creation of a kind of cult of the Indian, so our children have become cult objects to us, too precious to be risked. At the same time they have become fetishes, the objects of an unhealthy and diseased fixation. And once something is fetishized, capitalism steps in and finds a way to sell it.

What is the impact of the closing down of the Wilderness on the development of children’s imaginations? This is what I worry about the most. I grew up with a freedom, a liberty that now seems breathtaking and almost impossible. Recently, my younger daughter, after the usual struggle and exhilaration, learned to ride her bicycle. Her joy at her achievement was rapidly followed by a creeping sense of puzzlement and disappointment as it became clear to both of us that there was nowhere for her to ride it—nowhere that I was willing to let her go.

Recently someone observed to me that 19th-century Christians energetically created hospitals and universities, among many other institutions, and asked what social need we should be addressing today. My answer was the care of elders, which will be one of the great challenges of our time. Hence I was struck by this moving, compelling story about a better way to age and die.

aging, community, death

Andy:

Sister Bernadine Frieda, 91, spry and sharp, spends her days visiting the infirm with Sister Marie Kellner, 77, both of them onetime science teachers. Sister Marie, who left the classroom because of multiple sclerosis, reminds an astounded sister with Alzheimer’s that she was once a high school principal (“I was?!”) and sings “Peace Is Like a River” to the dying.

“We don’t let anyone go alone on the last journey,” Sister Marie said.

Seven priests moved here in old age, paying their own way, as does Father Shannon, who presides over funerals that are more about the celebratory “alleluia” than the glum “De Profundis.” But he has been with the sisters since he entered the priesthood, first as a professor at Nazareth College, founded by the order, and now as their chaplain. He shares with them the security of knowing he will not die among strangers who have nothing in common but age and infirmity.

“This is what our culture, our society, is starved for, to be rich in relationships,” Sister Mary Lou said. “This is what everyone should have.”