Happy Thanksgiving

My America By Andrew Sullivan

Piece by a British ex-pat living in the U.S. about his thoughts on Thanksgiving.  I don't have anything original to post today, so happy Thanksgiving.

Tuition tax wouldn't be small change to students - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Tuition tax wouldn't be small change to students - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Not a full post, but since one of the seminaries I'm applying to is in Pittsburgh, I'm kind of annoyed at this. The City of Pittsburgh has decided that non-profits aren't doing enough to support the city, and so is retaliating by taxing post-secondary tuition, because higher education isn't already expensive enough.

Remembrance Day

Following my post on Halloween as an interesting holiday, I thought I'd postpone writing on the retreat last week and instead take this time to talk about a few other dates.

Today is Rememberance day, which means that this past Sunday was Remembrance Sunday, ( the Sunday closest to the Remembrance Day) which is, like Veteran's Day in the U.S. on the 11th of November, in commemoration of the end of the First World War. Unlike in the U.S. the holiday is also celebrated in churches, marked by participation of the Uniformed Organizations (Boys' Brigade, Girls Brigade, Scouts and Guides) these groups are similar to Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts in the U.S. but are generally more involved in the church, and marching plays a larger part (at least according to Andy).

The service is also marked by everyone (or so it seemed) wearing red poppies, most of them paper poppies sold in shops to benefit the Royal British Legion, which works to support veterans.

The other side of Rememberance Sunday and Rememberance Day (because there always is another side in Northern Ireland) is that it is a British (and therefore unionist holiday). This unionist sentiment is compounded by the acts of Irish Republicans during the First World War, and the neutrality of the Republic of Ireland during the Second, but there were still a large number of Catholic Irish from both sides of the border who served honorably in both wars, and these people risk being or feeling excluded, or that their service and sacrifice is unappreciated.

Another problem with Rememberance Sunday, or at least an obstacle for me is the ease with which commemorating soldiers can lead to glorifying war, especially in a divided society such as still exists in Northern Ireland. The events of the day can very easily be seen as highly jingoistic. and thus I was highly appreciative of the way the service was run here at Harmony Hill. The choir's anthem was a musical arrangement of the Prayer of St. Francis, and David's sermon addressed also the discomfort that I, and many others have "remembering war in case we are guilty of glorifying it, or of wrapping the gospel in one particular flag. But remembering is not glorifying, remembering is respecting."

For anyone interested, you can listen to Harmony Hill services here. The Remembrance Sunday Service under Sunday, November 8th, 2009. The choir anthem I referred to is at 740 seconds in, the sermon is 1,997 seconds in (the number shown is seconds). You can also find the service as a podcast on iTunes, in which case the choir anthem is at 12:20 and the sermon at 33:17.

Halloween

Halloween is an interesting holiday here.

There are a fair number of Christians who consider the holiday pagan and demonic, and thus want nothing to do with it. True, there are people in the U.S. who think that way as well, but there seem to be more of them here.

At the same time, however, the city of Belfast holds a pretty substantial concert/festival at the docks near city center. I didn't go because I had to work, but a few of the other YAVs went, and it was quite the show.

Trick or Treating does happen, but on a smaller scale than in the U.S., and money is a common substitute for candy. According to the experience of Amy and Madeline, the kids aren't at all hesitant to ask for cash either. We didn't get any here, but that might also be because I live in a high rise apartment block with controlled access.

The big thing that kids do here for Halloween is run around shooting off fireworks. I don't mean just little crackers, some of these are big, legit fireworks that people are setting off, and have been setting off for the past month. On Halloween night they were all around the building, some of which were quite nice to watch from the living room, but it was a bit unnerving having them surround you.

Riding my bike home from work that evening was also scary, since I could hear them all around me, and I'd heard stories of people throwing them from cars, so I felt like quite the target, but I made it home fine.

Coming out fine was actually a bit of a theme for the day. For the past several Saturdays, and finishing tomorrow, The Base has hosted a peer leadership program for some of the local youth, run by two other youth organizations which means that the youth taking it can get a certification towards their OCN (Open College Network, don't ask me to explain, I don't understand it myself, just that being certified/getting a certification is a good thing, I think). Anyway, it was, as per usual, raining that day. What was unusual was that we got what I like to call "Virginia Rain"--hard, big, fast drops coming in a downpour for a few minutes and then passing.

The problem with that is that while much rain is received here, it tends to be much more spread out. So the drainage system didn't so much work out well for us at The Base that day--the drain was clogged, and we almost flooded.

Yeah, the water is even with the weather strip there, part of the door is actually submerged. John and I had to clear some of the water with buckets before someone else could reach deep enough to find and remove the block. (Actually, eventually he had to go home to get chimney sweeping rods (which are slightly bendy) and used those to clear the drain, after which the water dropped the rest of the way, but John and I had already cleared 3 to 4 inches with the buckets.

In other recent events, we went to Planet Fun with some of the third years from The Base. Planet Fun is a travelling amusement park, with rides and games similar to what you might find at the Dogwood Festival in Charlottesville, or just about any county fair, the difference being that some of them were inside (the ever present rain).

Another odd thing is that there is a Halloween break from school here. Given, it isn't really Halloween, it's their half term break, and it just happens to generally coincide Halloween, but it has meant that I've been able to catch up on a few things in the past week, enabling me to FINALLY post another update.

There will be more coming later, mostly about the YAV retreat earlier this week, but for now I'm taking a break from writing. Oh, I've also uploaded a TON of pictures to facebook, going back into mid-September, so you can go there for a look back at what I've been doing, and even a sneak peak of what will be coming soon to here.