We are living longer than ever, but being indigenous, single or divorced or living outside a city increases your chance of an early death.
The latest life tables from the Bureau of Statistics show an Australian girl born today can expect to live until 84, and even longer if she survives her relatively dangerous first year. An indigenous Australian girl can expect 10 years less. A boy born today can expect 79 years; an indigenous boy 11 years less.
Emily Dickinson is all over Tucson, Ariz. Reading, lectures, classroom lessons ”” it’s all part of the Big Read Project, a National Endowment for the Arts project devoted to “inspiring people across the country to pick up a good book.” In Tucson, people aren’t just picking up Dickinson’s poetry books ”” they’re celebrating her in reading, dance and even desserts.
“You don’t want to put somebody up on a pedestal and pay homage … that’s not very interesting,” says Lisa Bowden with a laugh. Bowden is a publisher and poet, and the organizer of Big Read Tucson.
One of her ideas was to hold open recording sessions for anyone to read Dickinson’s poetry and letters. Restaurants and coffee houses then play those recordings to stimulate conversation and creativity.
When the tech firm Yipit moved last month from General Assembly, a communal office campus on 20th Street and Broadway, to its own loft space on 18th Street and Fifth Avenue, its 14 employees simply grabbed their coffee cups and MacBook Airs and did the job on foot.
Arriving at their new home, they milled about, admiring the water-cooler, and the breath mints in the bathroom, and then got down to work, requiring no more than a power source and a pass code for the Wi-Fi. By the time the two guys from Moishe’s Moving Company arrived with a half-dozen boxes of office sundries, Yipit was back in business. There had already been a staff meeting, conducted while a handyman knelt in the rec room setting up a Ping-Pong table. All told, the move took about 10 minutes.
With a recent $6 million Series-B (or second round) financing deal, and plans to double its workforce in a year, Yipit sits in the mid-to-low range of New York’s thriving tech spectrum, below the behemoths, like AOL and Twitter, and the happily mid-sized, like Foursquare and Gilt Groupe, but above the sort of start-ups that had been their neighbors at General Assembly’s shared tables.
The defendant in the case, identified as Jose Pimentel, 27, had bought bomb-making materials and “began to build them,” said one person briefed on the case, who added that the Police Department had had the man under surveillance for about a year.
“The Police Department basically had an informant with this guy,” said a second law enforcement official familiar with the investigation. “The guy is sort of giving to the informant all of these material on bomb building and talking about building a bomb and supporting the mujahedeen by targeting ”” he’s kind of all over the place; sometimes it’s targeting servicemen and women returning from Afghanistan, sometimes it’s the police, sometimes its build it and test it, but it’s all over the place.”
[The] Rev. [Rankin] Wilbourne and his staff created an umbrella agency called Hope for LA in 2008. Since then it has partnered with 18 other programs around Los Angeles, some with religious affiliations and some without. Through Hope for LA, Pacific Crossroads members can choose volunteer opportunities that best suit their interests and strengths. One such ministry is Boxes of Love.
“We got the idea from Here’s Life Inner City, a ministry of Campus Crusade,” says the director of Hope for LA, David Kleinknecht, about the origins of Boxes of Love. “And as the economy went south and they had to cut back in L.A., we took on the coordination of mobilizing well-resourced churches to fill boxes and delivering them with the help of inner-city churches.” No coincidence: The founder of Here’s Life Inner City was Mr. Kleinknecht’s father, who also piloted the Boxes of Love program in New York City in the early 1980s (where it still functions under the name “Box of Love”)….
And so in a city more often associated with Calvin Klein, John Calvin’s teachings provide a basis for hope. In his commentary on II Corinthians 8, the 16th-century Swiss theologian connected Christians’ assurance of salvation with their freedom to give to the poor….
The Prime Minister said on TuesÂday that people should “not be able to erect tents all over the place”, as the Occupy protest outside St Paul’s Cathedral continued into its fourth week. There are now an estimated 2000 Occupy protests around the world, including several in the UK.
During an appearance before the House of Commons liaison comÂmitÂtee, David Cameron said that protest “is certainly a right that people have. But I have got this rather quaint view ”” you shouldn’t be able to erect tents all over the place.
“I think protesting is something you, on the whole, should do on two feet, rather than lying down ”” in some cases in a fairly comatose state.”
British bankers have admitted that they are paid too much, a report into moral standards in the City of London will reveal tomorrow.
A survey of 500 workers in City financial institutions, carried out for the Christian think-tank St Paul’s Institute, found that “a substantial number” believed they were overpaid compared with other professions ”“ particularly frontline workers including teachers and, most of all, nurses.
The results will fuel continuing bitterness towards the industry over its culpability for the financial crisis and its apparent failure to rein in huge salaries and bonuses . Last night The Sunday Times reported the publicly owned Royal Bank of Scotland is planning to pay its investment bankers about £500m in bonuses.
Most straight single women who find themselves at a fertility clinic are not thrilled to be there. Many arrive feeling they wasted prime reproductive years in long relationships and are “pretty upset,” says Sherry Dale, a counsellor at LifeQuest Centre for Reproductive Medicine in Toronto. “What woman has ever said, ”˜I can’t wait until I’m 40 so I can get some donor sperm?’ ”
Nevertheless, Dale and other counsellors who give advice on donor insemination (DI) say business is booming among single women aged 35 to 42. Most fertility clinics mandate at least one visit with a DI counsellor, but, Dale explains, they’re not gatekeepers. “They are not meeting me to get the go-ahead, or so I can see if they’re sane or nice people. I’m meeting them so they can know what’s ahead, not medically but emotionally.”
On average, about 20 single women attend Jan Silverman’s monthly meetings at Women’s College Hospital in Toronto; others see her one-on-one. “The sentence I hear most is, ”˜I just didn’t think this would be my life.’ Some have said to themselves, ”˜I’ll do this if I haven’t met a man by 35.’ Then they turn 38, and then 42. That’s a pattern I see over and over.”
While their ages, backgrounds and styles were different, [Maria] Calef and [Daniel] Wilkes delivered the same message to passers-by Wednesday morning.
Calef hoisted a yellow poster board that read, “Which corporation decides legislation?”
Wilkes held a white sign that said, “People’s needs over corporate greed.”
The two are part of the Occupy Columbia movement, an evolving group who have settled in at the State House, creating a protest culture of sharing and open dialogue.
Bishop Richard [Chartres], for his part, made clear that he was not about to issue detailed policy prescriptions for the world of finance: “The church doesn’t and shouldn’t claim ordination gives you a tremendously privileged insight into how to solve the euro-zone problems.” Asked whether that implied a difference between himself and his boss, Bishop Richard replied teasingly that he would study the Financial Times article with great respect, given its author’s credentials as a prominent European intellectual. As a proof of the two men’s continuing personal closeness, he cited their common interest in Russian Orthodox theology and culture””a topic on which the number of potential conversation partners is limited.
But despite the chaotic image it presented this week, the Church of England looks more likely to trundle on eccentrically than to break into establishment and anti-capitalist camps. Buildings like St Paul’s are part of the reason. No matter how compelling the demands of the poor and angry, which faction would ever agree to abandon the cathedrals?
Writing in the Church Times today, Canon Fraser says that the “very difficult” situation at St Paul’s is “a historic opportunity for the Church to reset its relationship with the marketplace. . . For too long the Church has been obsessed with its own internal workings and with silly arguments about sex. Now is the time for a new debate and a new emphasis.”
The director of the Christian Socialist Movement, Andy FlanÂnagan, said on Tuesday: “We don’t have to sign up to the protesters’ complete agenda to engage with what they are talking about. Church and politicians need to get back into this debate about morality in markets.”
On a Sunday morning two years ago, Paula Celani and about 80 members of her Catholic lay group gathered in a hall they had rented from the city. They watched an inspirational video, they prayed, they celebrated mass and they capped it off with a potluck lunch. “We had a beautiful day,” Ms. Celani recalls.
But now that beautiful day has generated a nasty court battle after she was hit with a $144 ticket from the city, which alleged her event was illegal because it involved religious worship.
This week her lawyer advised Montreal municipal court that he will challenge the fine on constitutional grounds.
…local protests, in order to be effective, must have a specific local object; in this case, they are presented with one that could indeed make an immense global difference.
the Occupy movement… is remarkably a spontaneous populist expression, not clearly linked to any established political tendencies….
[In a general sense]…its implicit rejection of the alliance of financial and bureaucratic oligarchies aligns it naturally with the new “post-liberal” politics….
Yet it is only if they adopt some such more specific goal that the protestors will be equal to the symbolic resonance of the local hornet’s nest where they find themselves encamped.
And curiously, it is the same lamentable failure to be alert to symbolic resonance which has characterised the official Anglican response so far – though, in this respect, it limps behind the vast majority of Anglican clergy and laity.
Shaken by criticism of its handling of anticapitalist protesters on its doorstep, St. Paul’s Cathedral said it is suspending legal action to have the Occupy London camp evicted.
Reversing course after appearing to side against the protesters, St. Paul’s said it decided to drop legal measures after late-night talks with the Bishop of London, Richard Chartres, who loosely oversees the cathedral.
The move prompted the City of London to “press pause” on its own, separate legal action to evict the campers, though it suggested it may go to court if negotiations don’t lead to the campers moving. “We’re hoping to use a pause””probably of days not weeks””to work out a measured solution,” the City said on Tuesday.
St Paul’s appeared today to try to wash its hands of responsibility for the enforcement action to evict the economic protesters camped outside the cathedral.
A spokesman for St Paul’s said that the cathedral was not taking joint action with the Corporation of London, which is expected to serve notices on the protesters today.
“The Chapter have not yet sought an injunction, nor are they serving notices on the protesters today,” the spokesman said.
Read it all (requires subscription).
A crisis of leadership enveloped the Church of England yesterday, after the resignation of the Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral over his handling of the protest camp on its doorstep.
The Archbishop of Canterbury was facing criticism for his failure to intervene earlier in the protracted decision-making process over whether to evict demonstrators or to engage with them.
But as the Church struggled to contain the fallout from the Occupy protest, some genuine campaigners left the camp in disgust over its descent into what one described as a place for bawdy hedonism, drink and drugs.
Interested readers may note that this was the top story on the front page of he ipad edition of the Times for me this morning. Read it all –KSH(requires subscription).
The archbishops’ silence ”“ and that of the wider church ”“ on the crisis at the cathedral is extraordinary, then, given their past remarks. But the truth is they gain nothing from commenting on it.
Siding with protesters would undermine the bishop of London and the dean of St Paul’s, who are already under fire for their actions, and represent an extrajudicial intervention not often seen in the Church of England. To ally themselves with their beleaguered colleagues would make them hypocrites. Those who have aired their views are retired ”“ like Lord Carey ”“ or relatively unknown outside Anglican circles.
However infuriating their reticence, the clerics who bashed the bankers during the global financial meltdown are unlikely to put themselves forward to debate the merits or otherwise of Occupy London, a subject made toxic by the prospect of eviction, but it is inconceivable that they do not have opinions on the events at St Paul’s.
The inevitable resignation of the Canon Chancellor of St Paul’s, Giles Fraser, via the predictable medium of Twitter, is a sad day for one of our great national churches. But the departure of this able man, and now the planned reopening of the cathedral, should at least bring to an end the hand-wringing and posturing of the past two weeks. My paramount concern throughout has been that the reputation of Christianity is being damaged by the episode, and, more widely, that the possibility of fruitful and peaceful protest has been brought into disrepute.
The Blitz only closed St Paul’s for four days. By contrast, the Occupy London Stock Exchange protesters, camped outside Wren’s masterpiece, managed to put it out of business for a week. It has been a debacle that should prompt urgent public debate both within the Church of England, and throughout society at large.
St Paul’s Cathedral has closed to visitors for the first time since World War II because of protesters camping on its doorstep, its dean has said.
The decision was taken with a “heavy heart” for health and safety reasons, said the Right Reverend Graeme Knowles.
Anti-capitalist demonstrators from Occupy London Stock Exchange have been in St Paul’s Churchyard since Saturday.
Members of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh are in a race where the winners are people who otherwise would be hungry.
Twenty-two of the 31 parishes in the diocese, assigned to one of two teams, have been competing in the diocese’s Race Against Hunger. The teams earn points as they host food drives, educate the public about hunger and food sources, cook at soup kitchens and repack food at the Greater Pittsburgh Food Bank in Duquesne. The points are symbolic, serving only to spur volunteers on in a friendly competition.
“It’s outreach. We’re reaching out beyond the walls of our own church, our own parish, so we are taking care of people within the Western Pennsylvania diocesan area,” said Judy Rosensteel of North Versailles, a member of All Souls Episcopal Church.
The first decade of the century for the church in the capital has been one of strong growth in membership and giving, reports the Diocese of London.
A new report out this week, Another Capital Idea, said giving to churches had risen in real terms by 50 per cent over the past decade despite slightly tailing off in the recession.
As well as an increase in the overall income from giving, the number of “tax efficient planned givers” – people who register their donations for tax purposes – rose from 21,000 in 2000 to 26,300 in 2009.
Police said on Friday they eavesdropped on thieves speaking Russian, Mandarin and Arabic to make the biggest identity theft bust of its kind in U.S. history against a $13 million crime ring specializing mainly in selling Apple electronics overseas.
Authorities said “Operation Swiper” indicted 111 people from five criminal enterprises in Queens, New York, the nation’s most ethnically diverse county, where 138 languages are spoken and more than half the population is foreign born.
Speaking at the SA Parliamentary Christian Fellowship Leaders of Christian Churches Dinner at Parliament House on Wednesday night, the Archbishop encouraged our political leaders to dream of a truly human city.
“Adelaide was founded on a bold experiment, a vision for a different sort of human city,” Archbishop [Jeffrey] Driver said. “So many people came here to a new colony because they had been captured by a dream; the dream of a different place where old inequalities and exclusions could be put aside and a new city of human opportunity could be crafted from dream to reality.”
The debate over church use of city public-school space has been chugging through the courts since the mid-1990s. The Supreme Court has heard several high-profile cases on schools and religious life in recent years, but justices haven’t yet ruled on whether worship services should be allowed on school property.
That could make the Bronx church’s case a strong candidate for the docket, said Emily Gold Waldman, an associate professor of law at Pace Law School.
“The Supreme Court has decided a number of cases leading up to this issue,” Ms. Waldman said. “There’s still the open question of ‘what about pure religious worship?’ That’s what makes it different.”
Nearly a third of the nation’s cities are laying off workers this year. More than half have canceled or delayed infrastructure projects. And two out of five have raised their fees.
The catalog of service cuts and fee increases comes as America’s cities are bracing for what they expect will be their fifth straight year of declining revenues, according to a survey of city finance officers to be released on Tuesday by the National League of Cities.
One of the main culprits is the property tax, which many cities and local governments rely on heavily. Property tax collections, which are usually quite resilient, are projected to fall by 3.7 percent this year ”” their second year in a row of declines ”” as tax assessments belatedly catch up with the lower property values left behind by the battered real estate market. Sales tax collections are projected to be slightly higher this year, but income tax collections are projected to be slightly lower, as unemployment and lower wages take their toll in many places.
EF – Live The Language – Vancouver from Gustav Johansson on Vimeo.
Watch it all–I lived there for two years in graduate school, and our oldest daughter Abigail has just moved there for the same reason–KSH.
A ban on saying prayers in the street, a practice by French Muslims unable to find space in mosques, has come into effect in the capital, Paris.
Interior Minister Claude Gueant has offered believers the use of a disused fire brigade barracks instead.
The phenomenon of street prayers, which see Muslims spreading mats on footpaths, became a political issue after far right protests.
…what I propose at our Mass this Sunday morning, on this tenth anniversary of that day, is that as a matter of fact the side of light actually triumphed, as temptations to despair, fearful panic, revenge, and dread gave way to such things as rescue, recovery, rebuilding, outreach, and resilience. The side of the angels, not of the demons, conquered. Good Friday became Easter Sunday. And once again God has the last word.
Perhaps what gives us most consolation would be our young people, our children. Last night, Cardinal Egan, Monsignor Ritchie, and I were in this Cathedral for the commemoration of the New York Fire Department. It was standing room only. There we heard two young people, Ashley and Patrick, recall with immense gratitude and pride their fathers, firefighters who perished that day. There I quoted Commissioner Cassano, who told us that he is amazed at the number of children of those firefighters who perished that dreadful day who now want to be firefighters and rescue workers. And there I met Anthony Palumbo, whose father Frank was a firefighter who died that day, and who is now preparing for the priesthood. This morning I am honored to welcome our servers at Mass, Conor, Aidan, Kieran, and Declan, whose father, Vincent Halloran, was a firefighter who perished that day. Your Eminence, I understand that you celebrated his funeral here at Saint Patrick’s. They are here with their mother, Marie, and we honor them and their beloved father, Vincent. What consolation you give us. They are living examples that God alone has the last word.