Author: Jonathan Erdman

Will protests stop Trump?

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My time is winding down here in McCarthy, and so I’m trying to enjoy the last week of my time in Alaska, which isn’t hard to do with all the September sunshine, a welcome relief after an Angry August of rain and cold. It’s also easy to enjoy the time here because as more and more folks disperse in the annual Alaska diaspora, the bar empties out save for locals. Last night I was chatting with a local buddy at the bar. He lives in McCarthy now, but he’s originally from California. We started talking politics and culture, and eventually he began reminiscing about attending Iraq War  protests, back during the Bush years. The protests seemed to have left a distinct impression on him, mostly negative. They felt a bit ineffective, quixotic even. He mentioned a certain festival type of atmosphere, with fire jugglers.

A heck of a word

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It’s getting a bit cold in my tent, these September mornings. I wake up, I feel a blast of cold air hitting my face as my head pokes itself out from my cocoon of sleeping bag and blankets, and then I glance at the thermometer next to my bed. If it shows 40 degrees or higher, it’s a warm morning. Needless to say, I’m looking forward to warm Cali weather and Santa Cruz sun, coming in just a few short weeks. But I’m not the only one traveling to California. Our classy Ex-Prex is kicking off a tour around California, as regards that hoped-for “Blue Wave” victory in the November Midterms. However, this is not a political post. It’s about words, and on that count I have to question Obama’s choice of words.

Trademarking LOL? WTF?

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Procter & Gamble, the household products company, has applied to trademark acronyms common in textspeak including “LOL” and “WTF”…. P&G board member Nelson Peltz told CNBC in March that younger consumers did not want “one size fits all” brands but products “they have an emotional attachment to”. According to the statistics portal Statista, millennials in the US are expected to increase their annual spending to $1.4tn (£1.09tn) by 2020. From The Guardian

Cloud Atlas (film, 2012)

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It was the end of my summer season working Glacier Bay National Park, which puts it sometime circa 2012 or 2013. I decided to visit a bit of southeast Alaska, including Sitka, and while in Sitka I stayed at a pretty rad little hostel. I was told that the little group of guests would be watching a film that night, and so I joined the merry band. It was a rather odd forum for film viewing. We all sat in the hallway, awkwardly leaning up against the walls or lounging on pillows, contorting our bodies every which way in order to view the projector screen that was set up at the end of the hallway, in the door that led to the porch. And so it was that I watched Cloud Atlas, for the first time. And like many fans of the film, I knew I would have to see it again. And again, and again, etc.

Communion

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This summer I’ve turned more attention to blogging, and I’ve started phazing out Facebook. In the process I’ve been pleasantly surprised to cross paths with several new blogger friends, bloggers who are Christians, and they are Christians with whom I share key commonalities, a form of fellowship, so-to-speak. It’s been interesting to flip my mind back into theological mode, here and there. One perspective that I still share, that I still have in common with Christians is the sense that in some way there was a communion that was broken, that in some sense our original state of being is communion and harmony. So given that we are living in the days of rage, in a period of increasing cultural coflict, this idea of communion has come to take on greater meaning for me.