When the family budget started feeling the recession’s pinch last year, Angela Allyn and her photographer husband, Matt Dinnerstein, pulled their three kids out of Chicago-area private schools and enrolled them in Evanston, Ill., public schools.

It has been a challenging transition: Maya, 16, now a high school sophomore, “doesn’t like crowds ”” and her high school is as big as a small college,” her mother says. Though Maya is learning a lot in the “amazing” science program, she’s also hoping to leave the crowds behind by doubling up on coursework, graduating by the end of junior year “and then going and doing interesting things,” Allyn says. Her younger children face their own challenges, from bullying to sheer boredom.

The transition also has been an education for Maya’s parents, who say they had “no choice” in the struggling economy but to switch to public schools.

They’re saving about $20,000 a year in tuition, but like many former private-school families, they’re coming face-to-face with larger class sizes and the public school bureaucracy as they push to get services for their children.

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When I was 21 I spent a long holiday hitch-hiking to Nepal. While I was there, I received a letter from a fellow undergraduate who had given up his teenage ambition to become an architect, for the sake of the Gospel. He hadn’t intended to get married ”” he thought that he could be more dedicated as a single man ”” but he wrote that if he did, he’d want a wife who was prepared “to give up her career as I have mine”.

And yes, since you ask, it did put me off. I fancied him rotten, but I was passionately committed to my future as an actor. A few weeks later he persuaded me to change my mind, and the following summer, just before we married, he put himself forward for ordination in the Church of England.

There was never any doubt, in his mind or mine, that this was a sacrifice ”” if a joyful, willing one. When I asked my husband, years ago, if he thought that I ought to consider ordination too and he said, certainly not, one in the family was quite enough, I couldn’t have been more relieved.

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Has there ever been a more pressing time to discuss the ethics of business and investment?

The Dean of Liverpool Cathedral, the Very Rev Justin Welby, thinks this is exactly the right time to debate the issue.

Liverpool Cathedral will be the UK northern host of an online worldwide conference on this topic from Wall Street, New York.

It will join with Canterbury Cathedral and St Paul’s Cathedral, London, for the live video webcast streamed from New York.

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Seven Coptic Christians, including two priests, were sentenced to prison for allegedly being involved in a brawl in connection with a dispute over the purchase of a property by the Coptic Orthodox Bishopric of Delga and Deir Mawas, 270 KM from Cairo.

According to the Assyrian International News Agency the Misdemeanor Court in Mallawi upheld a verdict passed by the First Instance Court in April, 2007. The Rev Maximos Talat and Rev Bolah Nassif – priest of St George’s Church were sentence to one week in prison and fined 200 Egyptian Pounds, “based on claims made by the ‘aggressors’ and without any legal basis,” according to the their lawyer, Amgad Lamei.

In 2007 an adjacent property was legally acquired by the Bishopric from the Selim family. The dispute ensued after another neighbour, the Shaker family, said they have “right of first refusal” as they are cousins of the Selims, and subsequently occupied the property. The Bishopric obtained an eviction order from the Attorney General.

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Having nearly run out of money, St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church early last year approached developer Randy Salvatore to step in and “bet” on the church by agreeing to a development deal that would provide the parish with a stream of monthly rental payments, according to Tuesday testimony from Salvatore.

But facing a demolition delay, Salvatore indicated that he might back out.

“Every month, I have to make a decision whether I’m going to write a check or not write a check,” Salvatore said. “To be frank, I’m at the tipping point.”

The hearing is in its fifth day of testimony in state Superior Court. A lawsuit filed in November by a preservationist group, Save Old Stamford, is preventing the church from demolishing a 136-year-old rectory on the 1.3-acre site where Salvatore wants to build a residential complex.

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Manufacturing expanded in the United States in December, the fifth straight month of gains, amplifying hopes that a job market hobbled by double-digit unemployment might finally be adding paychecks. New jobless claims slipped markedly last week. Some economists think data to be released on Friday will show the economy gained jobs in December, the first monthly net increase in two years.

“We’re really coming back,” said Allen Sinai, chief global economist at the research firm Decision Economics. “The expansion is picking up the pace….”

But many economists remain worried that momentum could soon weaken, with the economy sliding back into glum times.

Indeed, the only area in which economists can reliably declare expansion is in the supply of competing narratives about the economy ”” perhaps to be expected in any transition between downturn and the inevitable turn for better.

“That is always the nature of the boomlet after recession,” Mr. Sinai said. “People think it’s going to fade away.”

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A bishop is among the 150 clergy and ministers who have sought protection with the trade union Unite from what it describes as a culture of bullying in the established Church.

Most of those who have sought help are in the Church of England but Roman Catholic priests, rabbis and imams have also joined Unite, according to Rachael Maskell, national officer for the union’s faith workers’ branch.

The union, which has set up a special helpline for priests intimidated by their bishops or congregations, is reviewing its clergy caseload as part of its campaign for full employment rights for clergy.

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And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine upon it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb.

–Revelation 21:22-23

A body is found along a lonely stretch of the Parks Highway at four in the morning. A man discovers his wife at home, who had just committed suicide. A woman, holding a gun threateningly, is shot dead by Alaska State Troopers.

Who do you call when tragedy strikes? In each of these cases, along with the Alaska State Troopers, Father Bill Fournier responded in his new volunteer capacity as a chaplain serving with the troopers.

“We get called mostly for incidents which involve death,” said Father Fournier, “and our role is two-fold. We minister to the troopers themselves, and we support the troopers in ministering to the people who have been affected.”

In addition to his chaplain duties, the priest with a sense of humor and an infectious laugh is also pastor of the 800-family Sacred Heart Church in Wasilla and the chancellor of the Archdiocese of Anchorage.

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There will soon be something new to watch on the living room TV: your relatives and friends in different parts of the world.

On Tuesday, Panasonic and LG Electronics, two of the top television makers, are to announce that they are integrating the free online calling service Skype into their Internet-connected high-definition televisions.

People who buy these TVs, along with an extra Web camera and microphone accessory designed for the living room, can conduct free, live video chats and phone calls from the couch.

I just love Skype–this looks cool. Check it out.

ESPN and Discovery Communications announced plans Tuesday to launch the industry’s first 3D television networks.

The sports programmer will introduce a 3D network this summer, while Discovery is joining forces with Sony and Imax for a 3D network to launch in 2011.

The announcements represent a potentially game-changing addition to the TV landscape, which only recently fully embraced another technological shift to high-definition programming.

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From here:

I have had my own disappointments and outright disagreements with Canterbury’s chosen course of action at various points over the last few years, and I have shared this with him personally. Where some have urged a “bolder” response to TEC, within the limits of his ecclesial and moral authority, I have urged the same thing. But I categorically reject the charges made here that he has set about to undermine agreements made among the Primates, as at Dar es Salaam, or to manipulate and ignore legal processes such as those in place at the ACC last May.

In the first instance, RW was personally a key player (not the only one) at getting the Dar agreement nominally accepted, through face to face persuasion on the floor, as it were. That has been stated by several GS primates present at the time. But the agreement was also made possible by the compromise work of primates who were not personally disposed to aspects of its content, e.g. Australia. The Dar agreement, in other words, was intrinsically fragile, based as it was on temporary dynamics and uncertain internal commitments. The sense of Lambeth, it soon became apparent, was that its prosecution was thereby vulnerable from the start, and at the first sign of withdrawal of strong support outside of the meeting, Lambeth decided that pressing the agreement concretely would be counterproductive to the agreements actual aims. These “signs” included TEC and AMiA both immediately rejecting key provisions, and their allies quickly standing behind them.

I believe that RW gave up too quickly, choosing instead (as he has consistently done) to rebuild alternative consensus for change through other groups (e.g. the Windsor Continuation Group). This is fair game to debate and criticize, it seems to me. But the notion that RW was the skunk in the patch here is, to put it bluntly, a matter of sinners throwing stones. The Primates Meeting had already proved to be, in certain respects, a place where bishops behaved badly, and the fact that it was judged to be a weak reed should surprise no one. I don’t believe it needed to be left at this place, but again, that is matter for debate.

As for the ACC, we all know that the running of this meeting was a procedural disaster that has set back the ACC’s credibility enormously, fanning the flames of suspicion by all and sundry. No one can mitigate that loss of trust or the justifications in general for that loss. But there is a long way between such generally well-founded worries about the ACC’s ability to do its job fairly and well, and condemning this or that individual with deliberate and malicious intent. “Manipulation” there was, I would think, although any precise assessment of blame is not possible to come by. And Canterbury’s role in this demonstrates confusion””albeit deeply regrettable confusion””rather than strategic subversion. Furthermore, the outcome with respect to the Covenant strikes me as a sign of recognition of this fact: amazingly expeditious revision, and starkly restrained in its focus. People don’t seem to admit mistakes much anymore in public; but the manner of this outcome adds up to an admission of sorts. That is my read of the matter, and I don’t think it is particularly pollyannish. Not, that is, in the face of the anti-Stalinists and anti-Czarists faced off against each other.

I remain convinced that those leaders””bishops, clergy, and laity””who can order their service to the church for the long haul, steadily and solidly faithful, ordered, engaged in commonly established processes of ecclesial life, honest and charitable, and perseverant in their commitments within and for the sake of the people shared (not just locally), will prevail. That is a promise of the Lord, it seems, to “those who endure to the end”. People like Abps. Chew and Mouneer Anis presently, or Gomez recently; and others. And, for all my concerns about this and that, Rowan Williams too has demonstrated a perserverence that is bound to his faith in Christ Jesus as Lord, and not to self-interest. From that certainly I can be strengthened. So should others be, whether or not they can affirm his decisions in this or that particular matter.

Increasing percentages of the population around us don’t know who we are or why we exist. We need to find new ways of telling the old, old story ”“ ways that are congruent with the joys and challenges of the people and societies around us.

This kind of recontextualizing of the gospel is (and has been) necessary in every age, since the first apostles. The Samaritan woman went home from her water break with Jesus to tell her friends and neighbors about the person she had just encountered (John 4). She didn’t hang around the well waiting for them to show up. She didn’t write a tract and post it next to the bucket. She didn’t even produce a drama to tell the story. She went and found her friends and told her own story.

There is an urgent need for Episcopalians to learn and try new ways of evangelism. Most of them begin by telling our own stories or providing opportunities for others to tell theirs. One of my favorite images of the latter comes from Nelle Morton, which she calls “hearing others into speech” (The Journey is Home, Beacon, 1985). An intrinsic part of our task is to provide opportunities where others can feel safe enough to begin to share their questions and fears and stories about God. Increasingly that’s being done by going out into the community, rather than waiting for people to come to church.

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Almighty God, who hast manifested thy Son Jesus Christ to be a light to mankind: Grant that we thy people, being nourished by thy word and sacraments, may be strengthened to show forth to all men the unsearchable riches of Christ, so that he may be known, adored and obeyed, to the ends of the earth; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end.

O God, who by the shining of a star didst guide the wise men to behold thy Son, our Lord: Show us thy heavenly light, and give us grace to follow until we find him, and, finding him, rejoice. And grant that as they presented gold, frankincense, and myrrh, we now may bring him the offering of a loving heart, an adoring spirit, and an obedient will; for his honour, and for thy glory, O God most high.

President Obama said Tuesday that the United States government had sufficient information to uncover the terror plot to bring down an airplane on Christmas Day, but intelligence officials “failed to connect those dots” that would have prevented the young Nigerian man from boarding the plane in Amsterdam.

“This was not a failure to collect intelligence, it was a failure to integrate and understand the intelligence that we already had,” Mr. Obama said after a two-hour meeting with his national security team at the White House. He added, “We have to do better, we will do better and we have to do it quickly. American lives are on the line.”

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At a Google press event held Tuesday afternoon at the company’s Mountain View, Calif. headquarters, Google vice president Mario Queiroz billed the new Nexus One as a “superphone” and an “exemplar of what’s possible” on mobile phones running Android. He didn’t precisely define the term superphone, other than to suggest it has greater capabilities than today’s existing smartphones.

Queiroz spoke along with several other panelists including mobile guru Andy Rubin, HTC CEO Peter Chou, and even competitor Motorola Co-CEO Sanjay Jha. All of them took pains to deflect concerns that Google has shifted course with its Android OS, or that Google could muddy the waters for its current wireless industry partners by selling its own branded device.

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The views of the Primates were sought at the Primates’ Meeting in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, in 2007.

The change (in effect a change to the Constitution) required approval in principle from a majority of the provinces, and the Standing Committee just before ACC 14 in Jamaica in 2009 noted that the requisite number of approvals had been received. The change to the status of the Primates’ Standing Committee with respect to the ACC and its Standing Committee came into effect when approvals had been received. The company itself is now in the process of registration with the Charity Commissioners.

Read it all. Please note that it is unclear when Nick Kniseley quotes “the Secretary General’s response,” what, exactly, Nick is quoting from (that is, is it a personal letter or email to Nick, someone else, a group of people, or what exactly–KSH?.

I started out this process uncertain; I ended up convinced. America the society is in fine shape! America the polity most certainly is not. Over the past half century, both parties have helped cause this predicament””Democrats by unintentionally giving governmental efforts a bad name in the 1960s and ’70s, Republicans by deliberately doing so from the Reagan era onward. At the moment, Republicans are objectively the more nihilistic, equating public anger with the sentiment that “their” America has been taken away and defining both political and substantive success as stopping the administration’s plans. As a partisan tactic, this could make sense; for the country, it’s one more sign of dysfunction, and of the near-impossibility of addressing problems that require truly public efforts to solve. Part of the mind-set of pre-Communist China was the rage and frustration of a great people let down by feckless rulers. Whatever is wrong with today’s Communist leadership, it is widely seen as pulling the country nearer to its full potential rather than pushing it away. America is not going to have a Communist revolution nor endure “100 Years of Humiliation,” as Imperial China did. But we could use more anger about the fact that the gap between our potential and our reality is opening up, not closing….

For tomorrow, we really have only two choices. Doing more, or doing less. Trying to work with our flawed governmental system despite its uncorrectable flaws, or trying to contain the damage that system does to the rest of our society. Muddling through, or starving the beast.

Readers may have guessed that I am not going for the second option: giving up on public efforts and cauterizing our gangrenous government so that the rest of society can survive. But the reason might be unexpected. I have seen enough of the world outside America to be sure that eventually a collapsing public life brings the private sector down with it. If we want to maintain the virtues of private America, we must at least try on the public front too. Rio, Manila, and Mexico City during their respective crime booms; Shanghai in the 1920s and Moscow in the 1990s; Jakarta through the decades; the imagined Los Angeles of Blade Runner ””these are all venues in which commerce and opportunity abounded. But the lack of corresponding public virtues””rule of law, expectation of physical safety, infrastructure that people can enjoy or depend on without owning it themselves””made those societies more hellish than they needed to be. When outsiders marvel at today’s China, it is for the combination of private and public advances the country has made. It has private factories and public roads; private office buildings and public schools. Of course this is not some exotic Communist combination. The conjunction of private and public abundance typified America throughout its 20th-century rise. We had the big factories and the broad sidewalks, the stately mansions and the public parks. The private economy was stronger because of the public bulwarks provided by Social Security and Medicare. California is giving the first taste of how the public-private divorce will look””and its historian, Kevin Starr, says the private economy will soon suffer if the government is not repaired. “Through the country’s history, government has had to function correctly for the private sector to flourish,” he said. “John Quincy Adams built the lighthouses and the highways. That’s not ”˜socialist’ but ”˜Whiggish.’ Now we need ports and highways and an educated populace.” In a nearly $1 trillion stimulus package, it should have been possible to build all those things, in a contemporary, environmentally aware counterpart to the interstate-highway plan. But it didn’t happen; we’ve spent the money, incurred the debt, and done very little to repair what most needs fixing.

Our government is old and broken and dysfunctional, and may even be beyond repair. But Starr is right. Our only sane choice is to muddle through. As human beings, we ultimately become old and broken and dysfunctional””but in the meantime it makes a difference if we try….

Gear up and read the whole seven page essay.

Even Americans who are lucky enough to have work in this economy are becoming more unhappy with their jobs, according to a new survey that found only 45 percent of Americans are satisfied with their work.

That was the lowest level ever recorded by the Conference Board research group in more than 22 years of studying the issue. In 2008, 49 percent of those surveyed reported satisfaction with their jobs.

The drop in workers’ happiness can be partly blamed on the worst recession since the 1930s, which made it difficult for some people to find challenging and suitable jobs. But worker dissatisfaction has been on the rise for more than two decades.

“It says something troubling about work in America. It is not about the business cycle or one grumpy generation,” says Linda Barrington, managing director of human capital at the Conference Board, who helped write the report, which was released Tuesday.

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The US public pension system faces a higher-than-expected shortfall of more than $2,000bn that will increase pressure on many states’ strained finances and crimp economic growth, according to the chairman of New Jersey’s pension fund.

The estimate by Orin Kramer will fuel investors’ concerns over the deteriorating financial health of US states after the recession. “State and local governments are correctly perceived to be in serious difficulty,” Mr Kramer told the Financial Times.

“If you factor in the reality of these unfunded promises, their deficits will rise exponentially.”

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