Montgomery County officials are looking into whether a bond can be issued to pay for greenhouse gas reduction projects as part of a larger strategy to fight global warming.

Although local governments regularly float bonds to pay for large long-term projects, it’s not clear if cutting global climate change fits into a pre-existing category.

“The county can only do what the Legislature said it can do in writing. … We just can’t willy-nilly do whatever we want,” Montgomery County Commissioners’ Chairman Tom Ellis said at Thursday’s meeting.

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In 2003, Dianne Brimmage refinanced the mortgage on her home in Alton, Ill., to consolidate her car and medical bills. Now, struggling with a much higher interest rate and in foreclosure, she wants to modify the terms of the loan.

Lenders have often agreed to such steps in the past because it was in everyone’s interest to avoid foreclosure costs and possibly greater losses. But that was back when local banks held the loans and the bankers knew the homeowners, as well as the value of the properties.

Ms. Brimmage got her loan through a mortgage broker, just the first link in a financial merry-go-round. The mortgage itself was pooled with others and sold to investors ”” insurance companies, mutual funds and pension funds. A different company processes her loan payments. Yet another company represents the investors as the trustee.

She has gotten nowhere with any of the parties, despite her lawyer’s belief that fraud was involved in the mortgage. Like many other Americans, Ms. Brimmage is a homeowner stuck in foreclosure limbo, at risk of losing the home she has lived in since 1998.

Read it all.

For the record, you can now access all three of the talks by Southern Cone Primate Greg Venables at last week’s Network Council meetings. They are available both as videos, and MP3 audio files.

Here’s the link for all 3 Bible Studies.

Stand Firm has posted the first two of five clips of a video interview Sarah Hey conducted with Kendall back in April. This elf has watched them both. Sarah’s got some great questions and it’s a wonderful way to learn more about our favorite canon theologian and blog convener!

Here are the first two links. We’ll of course bump this up when the other videos in the series are posted. Each video is about 13-15 minutes.

Video: Kendall Harmon on Leadership, Part 1
Video: Kendall Harmon on Leadership, Part 2

Update: Parts 3 and 4 are now posted:

Part 3
Part 4

A task force charged with proposing revisions to the ecclesiastical Title IV disciplinary process met July 23-24 at Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral in Kansas City to discuss how it will approach modifications to the current disciplinary process, which does not include jurisdiction over members of the laity.

The 73rd General Convention, which met in Denver in 2000, authorized creation of a previous task force, which conducted surveys and developed a “theology of discipline” for the first three years and then proposed a draft which included among its provisions one making the laity liable for a number of offenses within the court’s jurisdiction.

Read it all.

Read it all.

A good picture.

SILVER BAY * Mary Ann Harmon, 71, of Silver Bay, passed away Thursday, March 8, 2007, at her residence.

Born in Washington, D.C., June 15, 1935, she was the daughter of the late William S. French Jr. and Margaret Lillian (Ritter) French.

Mrs. Harmon was a graduate of Duke University, where she was President of her class.

She was a dedicated teacher for many years in Charlotte, N. C. and Annapolis, Md.

She has summered in Silver Bay since 1959, before becoming a permanent resident in 1995.

She was president of the League of Women Voters of her local chapter in New Jersey, and a member of a special group of University Leaders.

She was a devoted mother, with a strong vision of the importance of serving the community.

Survivors include her husband of 46 years, Francis Stuart Harmon; two sons, Kendall S. Harmon of South Carolina and Randall H. Harmon of Washington Grove, Md.; and one brother, William S. French III of McLean, Va. She is also survived by three grandchildren, Abigail Harmon, Nathaniel Harmon and Selimah Harmon.

A memorial service will take place on Aug. 5, 2007, at 3 p.m. at the Silver Bay Association Chapel. The Rev. Bruce Tamlyn will officiate.

Arrangements are under the direction of Wilcox & Regan Funeral Home of Ticonderoga.

We are off to worship this morning. The internment of Mom’s ashes is at 1 p.m. The memorial service, which is a New Orleans style jazz band service, begins at 3. Then there is a reception after that, and then tonight Dad is having some more immediate family and friends back to the House–KSH.

The pioneering and much-respected bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Edmonton will formally announce her resignation from the post this weekend after 10 years on the job.

Bishop Victoria Matthews, Canada’s first female Anglican bishop, had planned to inform the diocese of her departure via a pastoral letter to be read at services this Sunday. A copy of the letter, however, was leaked on the Internet.

“Some will wonder if I have health concerns, and others will ask if I am angry at the Anglican Church. The answer to both questions is no,” Matthews said in the letter, published in part by The Anglican Journal.

Read it all.

Read it all.

Songs by late reggae legends Bob Marley and Peter Tosh ”” both devout Rastafarians ”” will be included in a new collection of Anglican church hymnals in Jamaica.

Marley’s “One Love” and Tosh’s “Psalm 27” will be the first reggae tunes to appear in songbooks alongside traditional worship music on the island that gave birth to reggae, said church leaders preparing a new collection of hymns.

Read it all/a>.

The Very Rev. Mark Lawrence was re-elected as bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina August 4 at a special electing convention held at St. James Church on St. James Island, South Carolina. Lawrence was the only candidate in the election since no petitions to add other names to the slate were received by the July 11 deadline.

A majority of bishops exercising jurisdiction and diocesan Standing Committees must now consent to Lawrence’s ordination as bishop within 120 days of receiving notice of the election.

Lawrence, 56, rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Bakersfield, California, in the Diocese of San Joaquin, was first elected September 16, 2006 to be South Carolina’s 14th bishop.

On March 15, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori declared that election “null and void,” saying that a number of the consent responses did not adhere to canonical requirements since Lawrence’s election did not receive the consent of the majority of diocesan standing committees.

Read it all.

Episcopalians in the United States should spare a thought for Anglican Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria, who has objected to the ordination of a gay bishop by the American Episcopal Church in 2004. The American church acted, it says, to bear more faithful witness to the ministry of Jesus Christ, but the move has strained the church.

Some U.S. parishes have sought to align themselves with the Nigerian bishop’s diocese or with other churches in the Anglican Communion, rather than with the American hierarchy. The Communion, which is made up of churches with historic connections with the Church of England (whose archbishop of Canterbury is the Communion’s spiritual leader), has issued an ultimatum to the American church, telling it to cease from further actions that exacerbate divisions in the church, or face expulsion.

While some American Episcopalians may feel put upon, a look at the situation of the Nigerian archbishop’s flock, and the country’s Christian community generally, shows that they have problems, too.

Read it all.

From here:

The American Anglican Council’s (AAC) recent online petition received over 4,000 signatures in its first week and is still gaining support. The TEC Legal Transparency Petition calls for The Episcopal Church (TEC) to state how much money it has spent since 2004 on litigation against individuals and parishes and to make public the source of the money for said litigation. Within hours of its posting the petition reached the 1,000 signature mark. If you want to sign the petition and haven’t had the chance, you can still go to our home page and sign. You will not be solicited or e-mailed if you sign. The petition will be used to shed light on a controversial issue that seems to have eluded the headlines and the nightly news stories.”>The American Anglican Council’s (AAC) recent online petition received over 4,000 signatures in its first week and is still gaining support. The TEC Legal Transparency Petition calls for The Episcopal Church (TEC) to state how much money it has spent since 2004 on litigation against individuals and parishes and to make public the source of the money for said litigation. Within hours of its posting the petition reached the 1,000 signature mark. If you want to sign the petition and haven’t had the chance, you can still go to our home page and sign. You will not be solicited or e-mailed if you sign. The petition will be used to shed light on a controversial issue that seems to have eluded the headlines and the nightly news stories.

Today is the South Carolina Episcopal election, with only Mark Lawrence on the ballot.

I will not be there.

My mother’s memorial service is tomorrow and the whole family is travelling today to be with my Dad, my brother, and the family for this important event. After that next week I am on vacation. Blogging will therefore go down. Thanks very much for your prayers and your support–KSH.

Update: We are going here which is where Dad lives (just off campus) and where I grew up going every summer.

After a yearlong national search, St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church in Dallas has called the Rev. Robert S. Dannals as rector, the priest in charge of the parish.

He has been rector of Christ Episcopal Church in Greenville, S.C., for the last 10 years.

“Dr. Dannals has a passion for evangelism and teaching, an impressive record of visionary leadership, and a proven ability to lead large, complex organizations,” David Martin, senior warden at St. Michael and All Angels, said in a written statement.

Dr. Dannals, 51, is a graduate of Florida State University and Virginia Theological Seminary.

Read it all.

The rancor erupted shortly before 11 p.m. as Rep. Michael R. McNulty (D-N.Y.) gaveled close the vote on a standard procedural measure with the outcome still in doubt.

Details remain fuzzy, but numerous Republicans argued afterward that they had secured a 215-213 win on their motion to bar undocumented immigrants from receiving any federal funds apportioned in the agricultural spending bill for employment or rental assistance. Democrats, however, argued the measure was deadlocked at 214-214 and failed, members and aides on both sides of the aisle said afterward.

One GOP aide saw McNulty gavel the vote to a close after receiving a signal from his leaders ”” but before reading the official tally. And votes continued to shift even after he closed the roll call ”” a strange development in itself.

Whatever the final tally, acrimony quickly exploded between lawmakers on either side of the aisle as Democratic leaders tried to plot a solution, while parliamentarians on either side argued over protocol.

Read it all.

Hospitals cannot even hydrate patients, let alone put bandages on them. The army is restless. Businessmen who refuse to cut prices in half are being arrested.

National Geographic reported 90% of all ranched animals slaughtered, and 60% of all rare wildlife gone. Each month, thousands of Zimbabweans flee to neighboring South Africa.

It’s tempting to think this can’t go on. Yet it does, just as Fidel Castro’s regime does. A tight little party elite keeps itself fed, clothed and loyal to the Mugabe regime, wallowing in luxury. Their only imperative: Stay in power. Three forces help them do that.

One, Mugabe’s control of his country’s strategic resources.

As hellish as operating conditions are in Zimbabwe, Mugabe has gotten his hands on the only resources of critical value to global industries that always have willing buyers.

Read it all.

The world is a dangerous place to live ”” not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.

–Albert Einstein

Update (Friday evening):

1. As to the problem of text disappearing to the left after a blockquote when viewing the “recent comments” page using Internet Explorer, I think this problem is now solved. Please report any continuing problems you find, if any, being sure to note what web browser you are using.

2. I thought I had solved the right overflow problem (i.e. when there’s a very long link in the comment, which messes up the right margin). But my “fix” to hide the overflow, just created new problems. I’ve gone back to the original settings, which means if there is a long link, it will still cause the comment text to overlap the right menu bar.

The EASIEST “fix” is for commenters to avoid posting long links. If you’ve got a long link, please either use Tinyurl.com or learn how to format your link so that instead of pasting a long url www.abcdefghijkl…. etc., it will instead point to the link like: alphabet

Hi all.
We’ve not bombarded you all with too much admin stuff of late after a month or more of lots of admin messages when the new blog was launched in late May.

A few housekeeping details.

1. First the request: In general, if you’re contacting us with a story idea or a technical question or problem, PLEASE e-mail us rather than using the “Private Message” feature to contact us. Our address, as always: T19elves@yahoo.com

We welcome private messages on other topics, but e-mail works best if/when we want to forward something to Kendall or our other elf helpers. Thanks.

2. A question: It’s been awhile since we’ve raised the question of any bugs that need fixing or any features you’d like to see. Or opened the floor for questions and problems. What’s on your mind? How can we help? A few folks have been e-mailing us about unwanted e-mail from T19/Stand Firm. We can help with that. We are also always available to help tackle registration / login problems. Let us know in the comments or by e-mail how we can help.

3. Finally: we hope within a week to make some progress again on adding more links, Anglican and non-Anglican to the sidebar. Kendall’s travels which left us in charge fro two weeks in July, and our own overwhelming workload of late have meant that any blog formatting changes or adding features or links had to be put on hold. But we’d like to get back to that as soon as we can. We’ve saved all the links readers have already sent in as suggestions. But we always welcome other suggestions!

Feel free to use this as an open thread to give us your gripes, your questions, your suggestions…. Especially for newer readers / members who may not have had a chance to weigh in on these questions in May, we’d love to hear from you.

Doctors are becoming more assertive in refusing to treat patients for religious reasons, expanding the list of services they won’t provide beyond abortion to include artificial insemination, use of fetal tissues and even prescribing Viagra.

The shift is prompting a new round of debate in courts and state legislatures over the balance between protecting the constitutional right to religious freedom and laws prohibiting discrimination.

More than half the states in the past two years have debated expanding legal protections for health care providers, including pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions for the “morning after” pill. Two states have passed them.

“We’ve wound up with statutes that are incredibly broad,” says Alta Charo, a University of Wisconsin law professor who studies bioethics. She says the use of fetal tissue in the development of chicken pox and measles vaccines also has become an issue.

Read it all..

Read the whole thing.

About 80 people attended the events at St. Paul’s Church, Chestertown; Trinity Cathedral, Easton; and St. Alban’s, Salisbury. The format was essentially the same on all three evenings. After the bishop’s introduction, participants gathered in small groups and spent some time responding to three questions. The responses then were shared with the whole group. All of the responses are being saved in a file which Bishop Shand will review before responding to the House of Bishops’ request for feedback.

“I can’t believe how far we’ve come in the past three years,” said one seminarian who was part of the diocese’s task force on the Windsor Report. “Everyone was respectful, no one was pointing fingers. We were really listening to one another.”

A priest commented, “In the 17 years I’ve been in this diocese, this is the best gathering I’ve been a part of. There was a sense of the sacred. I’m very grateful for the bishop’s leadership.”

Read it all..

Read it all.

Kevin Kallsen of Anglican TV is making progress getting the audio and videos from this week’s Network Council meetings online. You can find those he’s posted and those still yet to come here: http://www.anglicantv.org/blog/index.cfm/ACN-Meeting-2007

Here are a few of the highlights and links:

ACN Council Meeting 2007 Moderator’s Address
Bishop Duncan’s Monday Morning address to the gathering

ACN Council Meeting 2007 PB Venables Bible Study (#1)
++Venables’ first teaching to the gathering, Monday afternoon (Abraham, Genesis 12)

ACN 2007 Final Press Conference
Tuesday afternoon’s final press conference. Participants: +Duncan, +Ackerman, +Iker, +Sutton, Thompson+ (Dean of Western Convocation), ++Venables

There’s more there, and more still to be posted so check it out.
And if these are a blessing to you, leave a tip for Kevin and Anglican TV if you’re able!

Dr. Turner’s letter, to which Noll is responding, is here: http://new.kendallharmon.net/wp-content/uploads/index.php/t19/article/4810

The one criticism you make of my Open Letter that I find particularly painful relates to my call to “take the risk of breaking communion with false and lukewarm colleagues in TEC.” I do not retract it, but I shall try a clarify it. “False and lukewarm” refers to two groups, not one. There are those who have lapsed into heresy (which I think is identifiable whether or not it is declared so by a Church council). There are others who “tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophet.” Many of us have been quite willing over the years to work within a church that included worldly leaders and comfortable pewsitters. We even tolerated the Pikes and Spongs, thinking we had the historic tradition and formularies on our side. This is no longer the case. Jesus uttered a paradoxical pair of statements when he said: “He who is not with me is against me” (Matthew 12:30) and “whoever is not against us is for us” (Mark 9:40). The time is coming and now is, I think, when the Spirit will dictate that only one of these courses is faithful. Hence it will be necessary to break communion with ”“ not to judge the eternal destiny of ”“ those who hold a true gospel while remaining in the Episcopal Church.

The exercise of prudence ”“ a virtue which I know from your writings you value highly ”“ always involves making a judgement call. I am making such a judgement call in my Open Letter. It appears you are doing likewise when you state that after September 30, if TEC retains its status unreformed by the Primates and the Archbishop of Canterbury, then the Anglican Communion will have “morphed into another creature altogether.”

So you yourself seem prepared to set a make-or-break date for the completion of the Windsor process and the sealing of the fate of the Anglican Communion. I agree. I do not think there is anything in my Open Letter that conflicts with that timetable. I am quite content to wait until September 30 to see what happens. That date is less than two months from now, and I don’t see what further division can happen in that time anyway. What I do think we need to do is to consider the outcome that the September deadline will come and go and no decision will be made at the Communion level.

That nothing will be done seems likely from two realities: the adamantine stubbornness of the Episcopal Church hierarchy and the apparent unwillingness of the Archbishop of Canterbury to take the necessary steps to discipline it. The House of Bishops, I am sure you will agree, will not change course, even as it effuses about its desire to remain in the Communion. You may be more hopeful than I about the Archbishop of Canterbury’s taking final action after TEC has been given its full measure of indulgence. I see little evidence of willingness from his actions and statements since the February Primates’ Meeting ”“ especially if the recent statement of Archbishop of York reflects the view at the top.

We shall know soon enough. There is nothing in my Open Letter that preempts the Windsor Report as qualified by the Primates’ Communiqué from Tanzania. There is nothing that precludes the Anglican Communion Network and Common Cause partners working within the formal structures of the Anglican Communion if the Episcopal Church walks apart; indeed, it is my hope and prayer that they may be recognized and enabled to do so.

Read it alll.

Missionaries in Asia have long faced violence. A hundred years ago, American and European Christians streamed into the region to convert the Chinese and Koreans. During the Boxer Rebellion (1899-1901) in China, foreign missionaries were targeted and in many cases killed.

But they kept coming because Asia houses some of the world’s largest non-Christian populations. Today, Christians in Asia number 350 million, up from about 20 million in 1900, according to statistics from the Center for the Study of Global Christianity. And as Christianity flourishes, more and more believers–often Asian–begin to heed Jesus’ instruction to his disciples to spread their faith across the world.

The presence of South Korean Christian aid workers is one of the most visible examples of the trend toward “majority world” missionaries–those hailing from continents other than Europe and North America. South Korea, for example, sent only 93 missionaries abroad in 1979, but by 2000 there were over 8,000 and this number doubled by 2006.

Read it all..

THERE IS a commanding invitation which echoes throughout the Bible. It’s a message given at various times to patriarchs and prophets, to nations and to shepherds, and to fledgling congregations in the Church’s earliest days. “Fear not, do not be afraid.”

My brothers and sisters this is a message that we need to hear, because it seems to me that we have become afraid. And what are we afraid of? Of causing offence by being ourselves? Afraid of the future? Afraid of looking foolish? Afraid of taking risks?

Read it all.

Remember when greed was good? It was waaaaay back in the ’80s, when a movie called “Wall Street” came up with the brash anthem for a decade: “Greed is good!”

It was a shocking notion at first, this brazen embrace of avarice. And yet the evidence was all around us. “Dynasty” dames dripped diamonds and pearls. Captains of corporate America – Donald Trump with his jets and helicopters, Ted Turner and his hyperactive empire – became the new American heroes.

Where once we may have felt reluctance and even shame at talking about how much money we made and how much stuff we could buy, America was now getting cozy with greed.

But in some ways, those were the good old days – when greed was a remarkable thing. For as we ride a wave of unprecedented economic expansion, with a red hot (if unpredictable) stock market and unemployment at a three-decade low of 4.1%, greed has gone from good to just a part of the landscape in American life. Accepted, hardly noticed. Unremarkable.

Some local teens get a few hundred dollars a month in spending money (in addition to allowance). Many top athletes not only get multimillion dollar salaries, they don’t want to give autographs unless they get paid for that, too.

This year, Americans are expected to spend a record $376 billion on dining out, says the National Restaurant Association. That’s more than $1 billion a day spent on “food prepared away from home,” and exceeds the gross national product of countries such as Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Austria.

Read it all .