newSpin 110120
January 20, 2011
The newSpin newsletter, Jan. 20, 2011
By Bill Lewellis
Published Mondays and Thursdays
Diocese of Bethlehem
• Episcopalians and Moravians will celebrate full communion relationship on Thursday, February 10, at 6:00 p.m. at Central Moravian Church in Bethlehem. Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori will preside, joined by the heads of the Provincial Elders’ Conference of the Northern and Southern Provinces of the Moravian Church in America. More here.
• Organ Conert at Trinity Easton ... January 28. More here.
• Northampton County Emergency Alerting System ... [Trinity Easton newsletter] Northampton County has established a new Emergency Alerting System operated by the county's Emergency Management Services. This system will allow residents to receive severe weather alerts, transportation delays, Amber Alerts and other public safety information on their email, text messages to cell phones, smart phones and pages. Get more information and tsign up here.
• Calendar of Events ... Download the current calendar, updated Jan. 4, here. Updated on Jan. 18 for next month, here.
• Episcopal News Weekly bulletin inserts ... Bulletin inserts for Jan. 23, Epiphany3: Q&A about the Episcopal Church. For Jan. 30, Epiphany4: Presentation of Jesus at the Temple, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. Here.
• Pray for our young men and women who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, and for their families ... Here.
Spinning
• AARP volunteers will provide free tax form assistance to low- and middle-income taxpayers, Feb. 1 to April 16. (Filing deadline this year is midnight April 18.) More info here where you will also find sites in Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton. For a site near you, call 888-AARPNOW.
• The Khan Academy, created by former hidge-fund trader Sal Khan and praised by Bill Gates as an "unbelievable" resource he uses with his kids, is a non-for-profit with a mission of providing a world-class education to anyone, anywhere. It includes more than 1,800 YouTube tutorials on math, science, finance, history, test prep, lectures and interviews and more. It's a great tutorial for students. Perhaps also a tool for seventy-somethings to build better brains. Caveat: If you click on it, you may become addicted to learning. Here's a PBS NewsHour video on it.
• Remembering King ... As we pause to honor Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s legacy of pushing our nation to live up to its highest ideals, it's easy to sanitize his radical call for economic justice and ignore his prophetic words about war. More here.
• Don't miss Colman McCarthy's column on Seargent Shriver, below, under Opinion/Commentary and my own spin at "NCR to the left and to the right," under the Roman Catholic Church.
• Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is expected to be released from a hospital tomorrow, just less than two weeks after she suffered a gunshot wound to her head. She will be moved from the University Medical Center to Houston’s TIRR Memorial Hermann Rehabilitation hospital, which specializes in helping people recover from brain injuries. More here.
• Only Christians are his brothers and sisters says new Alabama Governor immediately after his inauguration speech. Here and here. Two days later, he gave an "if anyone was offended" apology.
• Have you been verbed?
• The last Christian man ... "When I come here I feel pain. I don't think it will ever be back again like it was, when we had a beautiful garden." Romel Hawal, the last Christian man in Habbaniya Cece, Iraq, on the empty church, Mary Queen of Peace, that he continues to look after.
• Comments made in 1955 ... Did you hear the post office is thinking about charging 7 cents just to mail a letter. ... If they raise the minimum wage to $1.00, nobody will be able to hire outside help at the store ... When I first started driving, who would have thought gas would someday cost 25 cents a gallon. Guess we’d be better off leaving the car in the garage. [To be continued. H/T Jane Teter who forwarded these. Rumor has it that these are actually Jane's quotes. Who said that? That's just not true.]
Sudan/Kajo Keji
• Overwhelming vote for Southern Sudan secession ... Southern Sudanese election officials posted early results on Sunday indicating that perhaps more than 95 percent of voters in this regional capital of Juba voted to secede from Sudan. More at the NYTimes. And this, from Bishop Anthony Poggo: "The provisional Referendum results for Kajo-Keji County were announced today. The summary showed that 198 people voted for Unity while 45,892 voters voted for Secession. This represented 98.7 % of all the votes that were casted. There were 102 invalid votes and 85 unmarked votes. Out of 46,454 registered voters, 46,277 voters participated in the plebiscite. This represented 99.6% voter turn-out."
R20 – Risk to Opportunities for Congregations
• Renewal Assembly, Feb. 19, 9:00 to 1:00 ... Registration is now available for the Renewal Assembly, “The Call to Prayer and Discernment.” The Assembly will be held in six locations: Christ Church Towanda, Trinity Carbondale,Trinity West Pittston, Trinity Pottsville, St. Anne’s Trexlertown and the Cathedral Church of the Nativity Bethlehem. Lunch will be provided. Registrants will be assigned to the most appropriate site. More here.
The Episcopal Church/Anglican Communion
• Anglican Communion weekly news service ... Here.
• Haiti one year later: Is recovery possible? ... [Anglican Journal] Read it here.
• Episcopal Public Policy Network urges opposition to health-care reform repeal ... [ENS] Here.
The Roman Catholic Church
• Vatican warned Irish Bishops not to report abuse ... [NPR] A newly revealed 1997 letter from the Vatican warns Ireland's Catholic bishops not to report all suspected child-abuse cases to police because that would violate the church's canon laws. The letter, obtained by Irish broadcasters RTE and provided Tuesday to The Associated Press, documents the Vatican's rejection at that time of an Irish church initiative to begin helping police identify pedophile priests. More here. Find an analysis by John Allen of the National Catholic Reporter here. And a NYTimes editorial here.
• NCR to the left and to the right? [Bill Lewellis] An interesting situation seems to be developing. The National Catholic Reporter began as a newspaper in 1964 and is now a print and web news source. It self-describes as "one of the few, if not the only truly independent, journalistic outlet for Catholics and others who struggle with the complex moral and societal issues of the day." The National Catholic Register, founded in 1927, self-describes as "America's most complete Catholic news source" and as reporting the news and analyzing trends that are important for Catholics, from a distinctly Catholic perspective. For much of its history, the Register has been right of center, "in service to the church." Over the past few decades, however, it seems to have moved off right center, farther right. On the other hand, the Reporter, during its first decade or so, was way left. During the past few decades, it seems to me to have moved to left of center. It seems proudly to be both Catholic and independent. In a recent development, the Register has been acquired by Mother Angelica's EWTN network, the Rupert Murdoch of RC media, which, of course, will move it toward the right edge.
• Catholic hospitals and Catholic hierarchy ... Who makes the call in th OR? Read here.
Opinion/Commentary
• Sargent Shriver: A life of grace ... [Colman McCarthy, Washington Post] It took only a walk with Sargent Shriver to learn how deeply loved and loving he was. Former Peace Corps volunteers, from the early days of the program that he began in 1961, or ones just back from stints in Third World outposts, would stop Sarge to thank him, embrace him and tell him stories about their life-changing service. Countless others approached him on airport concourses, city sidewalks and elsewhere: people whose lives were changed because of the anti-poverty programs that Shriver started in the Johnson administration - Legal Services, Head Start, Job Corps, Community Action,VISTA, Upward Bound. Or the parents of children in Special Olympics, the program begun by Shriver and his wife, Eunice, that revolutionized the way we treat those with mental disabilities. Occasionally, it was someone from Massachusetts who voted for the McGovern-Shriver ticket in the 1972 presidential campaign - Massachusetts and the District being the only places they won while the rest of America, narcotized, backed the soon-to-be disgraced Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew. In the three years - 1966-69 - that I worked as Sarge's speechwriter, traveling companion and suitcase carrier, I saw hundreds of these random moments. Hale and always effulgent, Sarge gave full attention to each greeter. It was a style of honest generosity that came naturally, a pole removed from the grip-and-grin fakeries of American politics. More here. And U2's Bono writes in the NYTimes about what he learned from Sargent Shriver.
Health
• The Purpose-Driven Walk ... [Newsweek] Maybe that parking space a half mile fom the mall's entrance is a blessing in disguise. A study published this year in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience provided evidence that aerobic fitness can keep aging brains healthy, "Even modest amounts of walking, 40 minutes three times a week, can engender substantial improvements in memory, decision making and other cognitive processes," said the study's lead author, University of Illinois psychology professor Art Kramer.
• Unintentional injuries to children in the home ... Every year, more than 3,000,000 unintentional injuries to children 14 and under happen in the home and require care in an emergency room. That is equal to 8,219 injuries per day. Sadly, each day approximately six children die from injuries resulting from fires, burns, drownings, poisonings, choking, suffocation, strangulation and falls in the home. More here and here. [H/T Diana Marshall]
Media/Film/DVD/Books/Tech
• On Faith ... A conversation on religion and politics. Here.
• Tech news round up ... Kat Lehman writes a bi-weekly (sometimes weekly) tech news round up. Sign up on our "Get Connected" box at www.diobeth.org for the diobethtech list.
• Wikipedia is 10 ... Here. [H/T Kat Lehman]
Additional sources of news/info/commentary
• Religion News Service Daily Roundup ... here.
• Diocese of Bethlehem
(1) The newSpin blog
(2) The DioBeth website
(3) Twitter.DioBeth
(4) Twitter.Kat Lehman
(5) Public news and info lists: At the Diobeth website, enter your name and email in the "Get Connected" box on the right hand side. You are welcome to subscribe to any or all of these. "Bakery" is our diocesan interactive list.
• Episcopal/Anglican
(1) NewsLine
(2) News & Notices
(3) Infoline
(4) Episcopal News Service
(5) Episcopal Church website
(6) Twitter
(7) Facebook
(8) YouTube
(9) The Lead, Episcopal Cafe
(10) Daily Episcopalian, Episcopal Cafe
(11) AngicansOnline.
• Find earlier issues of the newSpin newsletter here and recent ones in the left column here.
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Send info about newSpin to friends you think may be interested ... newSpin is an electronic newsletter that includes news, information and commentary related to the Diocese of Bethlehem, the Episcopal Church, the Anglican Communion and the world of religion ... with some spin, of course, from the editor. It is edited by retired communication minister Bill Lewellis and ordinarily published twice weekly, on Monday and Thursday. The newSpin newsletter is currently received by some 1,200 people, many of whom forward it to many others. To have it emailed directly to you, subscribe at the "Get Connected" box on the right column of www.diobeth.org. Select newSpin under the groups. You may find samples of the newSpin newsletter on the left column of the newSpin blog, www.diobeth.typepad.com.
About the newSpin newsletter ... Composed at least weekly (usually twice a week) by Bill Lewellis, the newSpin newsletter appears as a post within the newSpin blog, but newsletter and blog are not identical. The newsletter comes, of course, with some spin from the editor, but the views expressed, implied or inferred in items or links contained in the newsletter or the blog do not represent the official view of the Diocese of Bethlehem unless expressed by or forwarded from the Bishop or the Archdeacon as an official communication. Comments may be addressed to Bill.
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