http://communitas.wordpress.com Blabbings about family, community, sustainability and life from Frederick, MD. Mon, 16 Jul 2007 15:49:37 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en On Saturday I went and saw Satabdi Express at my church as part of its Second Saturday concert series that my friends Butch and Ed organize. Every band says that they are a "unique fusion of blah, blah and blah." But these guys are truly a unique fusion. First, they are dead-serious ... http://communitas.wordpress.com/2007/07/16/funky-india-jazz-fusion/ Article in the Post today about Obama and the National Education Association (the teacher's lobby).  The NEA is having their convention, and all of the presidential candidates are filing through, and they're all telling the attendees, of course, just what they want to hear. Except Obama. He's supporting merit pay for ... http://communitas.wordpress.com/2007/07/11/lets-choose-the-courageous-guy/ I haven't yet written about the biggest news in my life of late: the birth of our daugher Noelle on June 22. Her arrival was a long road with some crazy twists at the end, especially for my anesthesia-foreswearing wife. But she is here and well loved by her family, especially her ... http://communitas.wordpress.com/2007/07/10/welcome-noelle/ Some bummers today in the Washington Post. First, all of the moron energy convened in Fairfax County yesterday as they decided definitively to have the Metro line in Tyson's Corner to run above ground.  To the defense of the Fairfax Board of Supervisors, I think they would have all preferred ... http://communitas.wordpress.com/2007/06/19/bad-news-tuesday/ Many of our friends and their kids camped out at Greenbrier State Park this weekend. With Noelle coming, we didn't spend any nights there, but we were there from 10am to 8pm on Saturday. What a day! Sunny, pleasant in the upper 80s.  Canoeing. Guitar and singing. Hanging out on the ... http://communitas.wordpress.com/2007/06/18/summertime-perfection/ On Mother's Day weekend a number of other dads and I took all of our kids camping in a shelter on the Appalachian Trail in Frederick County. It was great to be able to get the kids in the outdoors. And great to be able to do so so close to ... http://communitas.wordpress.com/2007/05/25/kid-camping/ On Saturday Kita and I went to the West Side downtown saw Brennen Leigh, a country duo that we've seen before (forgive my horrible camera phone shot). They a brother-sister pair and are insanely talented. Brennen has a beautiful country voice that has twang and "yipee-kai-yea's" but is also ... http://communitas.wordpress.com/2007/05/09/country-prodigies-dowtown/ Deep Economy, Bill McKibben's new book, does the best job of laying out the social and environmental ills of our day and the path to fixing them. Put another way, it is hard to think of a more important book. "Social and environmental ills" is a poor phrase. The word "Environment" ... http://communitas.wordpress.com/2007/04/20/the-book-of-our-future/ Pictured above is Ret. Marines Gen. John J. Sheehan, who wrote a column in the Post today. He was asked by the White House to become the Middle East war czar, but he declined, and in the column he gave his reasons. He said that there were three major strategies at ... http://communitas.wordpress.com/2007/04/16/the-big-picture-in-iraq/ Harold Meyerson presents an interesting story today in the Washington Post about one of our country's big box retailers: On March 28, Circuit City announced that it was laying off 3,400 of its salesclerks. Not because they had poor performance records, mind you: Their performance was utterly beside the point. They ... http://communitas.wordpress.com/2007/04/11/things-fall-apart/