The difference between 'urban' and 'suburban': a helpful illustration.

Matt Labash has a great review of Hollywood's new Christian satire, Saved! Short version: save your ten dollars for Mean Girls instead. Worth a read. My only complaint is that a writer of his caliber wasted so much type on this obvious fluff.

Summer must be here, because I'm getting RSS pings from both Jim Hart and Wayne Olson again. School's out for summer...

The Real Live Preacher finally unmasked himself yesterday. Numerous people were aware of his identity, and he seemed to get bored with maintaining the ruse. I knew, and so did plenty of other people. I read RLP because he can write, and he's a natural storyteller. Theologically he's far too soft and hazy for my liking, as well as being three strides to the political Left of me. But I don't read him for theology. There's plenty of theology blogging out there already.

The amazing thing is not that RLP is a great storyteller, or was anonymous and now is not. The amazing thing is that so many webloggers knew, and we all kept his secret. Nobody felt called to aggrandize themselves by blogging his identity just to get pagerank by piggybacking on his notoriety.

When I first started reading his stories, I didn't care who he was. Lots of bloggers are anonymous, and even though I agree that anonymity can detract from the political or news blogs, where putting your real name up in pixels is pretty important for credibility's sake, the RLP content worked well as an anonyblog. So I made a game out of trying to figure out what his denominational affiliation was. I originally thought he was a mainliner, what with his gauzy justification of homosexuality. I knew he couldn't possibly be a Catholic or an Episcopalian; not only because he said he wasn't, but because he liked The Book of Common Prayer too much for that. He had the liturgical air of those newly converted to the wonders of the Lectionary (besides, only an outsider to the tradition would nap in an Episcopal pew; a courageous thing to do these days). Eventually I pegged him as a Nazarene. My backup option was United Methodist. I was wrong on both counts.

So how did I find him out? It wasn't hard because, as he admits, he wasn't very careful. He even put pictures of his family up there, after all.

First, there's the matter of geography, as well as the "two degrees of separation" factor. He notified everybody of his location, and even his headgear. Mike and Kristen Stewart blogged that they had encountered RLP in Austin playing Frisbee golf. They didn't reveal his identity either, and he said he was only visiting Austin. Where else would a cultured guy like RLP live, in Texas? Houston? Nope. Dallas/Ft. Worth metroplex? Unlikely, for this was a Salon blog. Maybe...San Antonio! My Dad was stationed in San Antonio when he was flying out of Lackland Air Force Base, before he married my Mom. I can't remember, but something he said tipped me off.

Then there was the matter of my email correspondence with The Preacher last year. He used a Hotmail account. He was tech-savvy enough to know that Hotmail is a service that leaves a trail, but he used it anyway. That confirmed things.

The final clue that sealed it was the Erspamer art. That, with the location and some Google magic were all that were necessary to vitiate his nom de plume.

One thing I should mention. You know how you get a mental image of a person just from the way they write? Well, my image was totally off. I expected a hipper-than-thou RLP, with perhaps a ponytail or an earring and in the midst of a generalised midlife crisis. A guy that maybe liked spending his non-writing moments tightening the bolts on his Harley-Davidson. No way. Even though I knew, when I saw this photograph I was still a bit surprised at how conservative he looked. Almost like an accountant. Definitely not like my mental image of a "Jimmy Carter Baptist."

Thanks for the stories, Rev. Atkinson.

Mark Pilgrim has a tutorial on how to make an Atom linkblog. He even claims it's not controversial.

Doc Searls says that this ridiculous ad could be the first sign that Google has flipped from Not Evil to just plain Evil. I think it will be a slower trajectory than that, but still.

HUSSITE GRRL

We were invited to Brian and Stacey's place on Sunday afternoon for shishkabobs and beer. Valerie brought homemade bread. We took turns holding the baby. After the delicious meal, we took Brian to his adult-league soccer (ahem, football) match, and while he was scoring a goal I snagged his Canon PowerShot to take some photos of Amy. There's even one of my ugly mug; that's probably why she's goofin'. Eh, you're SO not taking my picture right now? Thanks, Brian!

Aaron has a new home page and updated content over at Tulipedia.org, which is a Wiki for a student-hosted TULIP seminar at Wright State University.

Wednesday evening my old friend Bill Oosterman and I went to an Ascension Eve Choral Evensong at Emmanuel Church, Chester Parish, Chestertown MD. Chestertown is a quaint, sleepy Colonial-era port town on the bank of the Chester River, about an hour from Annapolis. There's a lot of very nice 18th-century architecture in town, brick sidewalks, and cobblestone. My great-grandparents are buried in a churchyard somewhere in town; I just don't know which one. My Dad can't remember where the graves are, but he knows they are in an early Methodist graveyard. Since there's more than one UMC in town (four of them, in fact), it looks like I'll need to spend a future visit scouring them all. The only thing I have to go on is a name: "Brown Chapel." But his childhood memory of the funeral is not good, and there is no UMC still called Brown. I would have liked to put flowers on the grave, but I'll have to do some homework and exploration before that's possible. Why so many chapels? Being that close to the Mason-Dixon line, the Methodists split over allegiance to the Union or the Confederacy. So I have my work cut out for me.

That's right. I know, I know. I darkened the door of an Episcopal church. I agreed to go with Bill because I knew this was an Evensong service and there would be no sermon for me to walk out on, so I was safe. The history of the church is notable. At the time of the Revolution Chester Parish was part of the Diocese of London. It's believed that there was an Anglican chapel on the site as early as 1706. The current brick structure dates to 1767. In 1780, a convention was held here by the loyalist Anglican remnant where the name "Protestant Episcopal Church" was first proposed and adopted (the PEC in America was not chartered until 1789). All the original white glass windows are long gone, replaced by Victorian stained glass. There is an unusual stained glass triptych over the altar, the centerpiece of which depicts not Jesus the Lamb of God, but Moses holding the Ten Commandments. But there are lots of original colonial fixtures, monuments, and furnishings worth inspection. Seriously, the music was nice. The twelve-voice choir sang a beautiful Introit, Magnificat, a couple of nicely-set hymns, and intoned Apostle's Creed. I felt a little embarrassed before entering because Bill picked me up right after work and I was fresh from a land survey, wearing a reasonably clean t-shirt, jeans, and boots. I wanted to at least put a shirt with a collar on out of respect, but I forgot about it when entering the nave and counting five (5) other people in attendance, including Bill and the Lector. We were by far the youngest souls there; inexcusable for a parish that old. I was the only person without grey hair.

I know why, too. Not only is this the famously nutty Episcopal Church, but the people were about as friendly as a basket of snakes. We sang, we prayed, we intoned the Creed. I shut out the distraction of how conspicuous we were in the nearly empty nave. Afterward, not a single white-haired person approached us or welcomed us. Bill perfunctorily went forward to thank the organist. But that was our only contact. We quickly left and walked down to the pier where we admired the architecture and small-town charm on the way back to the car. It's little wonder the ECUSA is a museum piece now: beautiful music and buildings on the outside, whited sepulchres on the inside. Typical.

I'm kind of intrigued by the Bruderhof Communities, and there are two Bruderhofs (1, 2) in nearby Pennsylvania. I'm familiar with their principles of communal living, work, and non-violence, and classify them broadly in the Anabaptist wing of the Reformation even though their origins are post-World War I. There are a lot of good things to be said about the Bruderhof, and I really dislike picking out the one thing that disturbs me, but this section from the Bruderhof education page provoked some cognitive dissonance:

On the surface, the Bruderhof school system looks fairly traditional: our children attend our own nurseries and schools till 8th or 9th grade, and continue at the nearest public high school.

Regrettably, I spent 4 years at "the nearest public high school." But if you're a member of the Bruderhof and are already that counter-cultural, why wouldn't you just go the whole way and provide grade 10-12 high school? I seriously doubt that for Bruderhof children, making the transition to public ('state' if you're reading this from the UK) high school won't precipitate a serious and detrimental shock. Any thoughts? Has anybody reading this ever visited and worked at a Bruderhof?

I think it would be a mistake to assume that Bruderhof life could be considered Luddism. Their web presence seems to suggest a comfort, if not familiarity, with technology. Oh, and they do XML, too. The feed is a daily devotional.

unBlog: "This much is certain: I'm not 'blogging' things anymore. I'm writing about them."

VAN LEAR ROSE. If you like alt-country, get this CD. If you like The White Stripes, get this CD. If you like Johnny Cash, get this CD. If you think rock music isn't the exclusive preserve of the young anymore, get this CD. If hard-earned wisdom impresses you, get this CD. If you like the same music I do, get this CD.

I listened to this over and over again last night. I'm completely hooked, and I can't wait to listen to it again when I get home tonight. Remember what Rick Rubin did for Johnny Cash's career? This is like that, but different. Get this CD.