View From the Phlipside - Suggestive Youth

These are the scripts from my weekly media commentary program on WRFA-LP Jamestown

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media. TV, Radio, the movies and more. I love 'em and I hate em' and I always have an opinion. Call this the view from the Phlipside

About 18 months ago a lot of the media talking head world of which I'm a part climbed up on our soap boxes to make whatever point we felt needed to be made about the photographs of teen media star Miley Cyrus taken by Annie Liebovitz for Vanity Fair. I came down pretty hard on Liebovitz and Miley's dad Billy Ray Cyrus for allowing his 15 year old daughter to be placed in that kind of a sexualized setting. We are teaching our children that it really IS all about sex and that you're never too young to start. As someone who works with young people and sees the damage created by that media message I was and am very much opposed to those kinds of images of and for our young people.

And that puts me in an interesting and admittedly uncomfortable position today. You see there's another instance of an underage young person being presented in very sexy photographs in the national media. Unlike the previous flap there is virtually no outrage about this case. In this case they are shirtless photos of 17 year old Taylor Rautner. In case the name means nothing to you (I will admit it didn't to me at first) Rautner plays the character Jacob Black in the current "Twilight" movies. The new movie and its promotional materials show him with less clothing on than anything in the Cyrus photos.

And no one has said a word. Why? Well 17 versus 15 certainly makes a difference. But at 17 he's still a minor and that should make a difference or we should get rid of the legal distinction. No, the more important reason is because he's a guy and there's a double standard. And that bothers me and I believe it should bother us all. If a 40 year old man has an affair with an 16 year old girl we are all outraged. If a 40 year old woman has an affair with a 16 year old boy there's a whole lot more people who just think the young man pretty darn lucky.

The reality is that sexually suggestive images are out of control in the media. That's neither new nor news. And yes, I'm a firm believer that adults are perfectly capable of making up their own minds on how to deal with it. But this ever more casual attitude towards suggestive images of young people needs to stop. It encourages inappropriate views of our kids both by outsiders and the young people themselves. The damage to self image, the glorification of shallow life choices have potentially devastating and long term effects. If it's wrong for Miley Cyrus it should be wrong for Taylor Rautner. And we should say so.

Call that the view from the Phlipside

Mission Photos

All Souls church, a former Walgreens, in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans.



Some of our youth in the French Quarter



You find these marks on houses in the flooded areas. This one has two marks because the teams had to come back to it. They are "X"s. The info on the left designates what search group checked the house, at the top is the date of the search, on the right is information about what they found and at the bottom is the number of dead bodies they found inside.

So the red one of the right says that such and such a group on Sept 16 couldn't get in the building (NE= No Entry). The white one says the next day 9/17 another group did gain entry and found no bodies. You see these on many, many houses still to this day.


One of several houses we worked on. It is nothing but bare wood and stud walls inside. This house is less than two blocks from the church and had water up over the eaves during the flood. Waters in this neighborhood were "only" 15-20 feet deep. A half mile down the road they were 20-25 feet deep.


Ever wonder what a "levee" looks like? The barge that flooded the Lower 9th hit this levee not far from where this picture shows. These are massive concrete walls that were simply not designed as promised (in many places) and failed or were broken.


One of the other leaders and I met this fellow as we were running around taking pictures. He's an elder at a small evangelistic church next door (Philippi Evangelistic no less!). This is his house which he's still trying to fix back up. The water was past the eaves and his 36 year old daughter died in that house. He keeps this sign posted hoping that New Orleans won't be forgotten.

I know I won't because I can't

Come to the Water

Along with my work in the Episcopal church I also work with the churches of the Southwestern Conference of the Upstate NY Synod of ELCA. It's been a challenge and a lot of fun along the way. Over the weekend we had an event with the local Lutheran camp and conference center (LCLC- Lake Chautauqua Lutheran Center). It's a great facility and we're trying to pump up the involvement of the nearest churches in its programs. So I led a group of 3-6th graders in the Bible study portion of the day. Those are a lot younger kids than I normally work with and I was a little nervous. Everything seemed to go very well and the adults were very complimentary about my teaching. The event was called "Come to the Water" and so I talked about water and its symbolism in the church. I used both the story of the Samaritan woman at the well and Peter walking on the water as examples. Plus did a little easy science by showing them how to float a paper clip on the water with no tricks (just God given surface tension).

There's a photo album of the event here photos of me courtesy of my friend and fellow blogger Tara at Uphill Idealist. I realize these are some of the first looks I've offered of the new, thinner me.

Peace

A little excitement for today

Our parish is right down town in the city on Main Street so we are often right on the scene for traffic accidents. Well today we were suddenly greeted by what sounded like an especially big accident. When we looked out our window we discovered how right we were:


She hit our church!



She's fine I hasten to add. We have no idea how she did this. She had to come up over the curb then up two steps to wedge the car between a wrought iron rail and a 100 year old stone wall. The railing is bent about 6 inches out of true, the wall shrugged the whole thing off. The car has the visible body damage plus it's torn away at least one rear sway bar. Her explanation makes no sense whatsoever and I've heard it at least three times.

Ironically she was headed to the garage just around the corner to get her tail light fixed.

Peace

For Lee

Because he loved photographing flowers. These are the first blooms in my yard and I thought of him.




Here's a daffy-dil! The first flower of the spring, right next to our front door.


I'm not sure what this one is - crocus? We've got a bunch of these and tulips that grow sort of right in the middle of our backyard. Part of the strange landscaping decisions of a previous owner.


This are little bitty guys about the size of a nickel, maybe a little bigger. These are on the opposite side of the house from the daffy. Don't know what they're called either.

Peace

Weekend Update March 2

The Week That Was - The week was pretty quiet but the weekend got hopping. I dropped two more pounds on the weight loss program which was nice. It'll be interesting to see tomorrow's weight since I had a lot of "road work" this weekend and had to figure out how to eat properly. I think I did OK.

Bishop's Ball went well. Numbers were more "normal" than last year. Two of the local school districts had dances the same day. Whattya gonna do? The folks who showed up had a good time. The bishop and his lovely wife both looked tired by the end of the evening. Many thanks to the very hard working volunteers at Calvary!

I've taken to spending the night of Bishop's Ball at a hotel simply because 1: I'm tired, 2: it's a 90 minute drive home and 3: you can't trust the weather in February. So I got up Sunday morning at went to church at St. Paul's Harris Hill. Wonderful folks, very welcoming (but we do need to talk about how they integrate kids into the worship service).

Then I had some fun. I've picked up an extra little job mid-week (which is an "extra" day off for me since I'm at 80 of full time)and I'm doing some video taping for a Lenten program with our ELCA brothers and sisters. It's going to put some extra, non-budget money in my pocket which my lovely, intelligent and graceful lady wife (who spoils me whenever she can. Love that woman!)told me I could use to buy my very first digital camera. I've been a hobby photographer for more than 30 years and it's clear that digital was something I needed to get. So the kid and I hopped in the car and went window shopping (My lady wife doesn't like window shopping. She shops like a man - know what you want, know where it is, get it, buy it, go home). I knew what I wanted (at least 8 megapixels, 10x optical zoom and under $200) and low and behold I found it! The Fujifilm Finepix S1000. 10 megapixels, 12x zoom and on sale! I have LOTS to learn now! Very exciting.

The To Do List - Video project( how much longer can I put this one off?), prep for our planning retreat in two weeks, hopefully get the camp brochures out, just the usual mad rush.

What Am I Procrastinating About? - Apparently I haven't stopped procrastinating about the video project! Maybe this is the week.

What Am I Watching/Reading/Listening To? Still working on "Soul Graffiti", finished Angels and Demons. I've started a Ray Bradbury book and I've completely forgotten the title!


Movies - None
Music - Nothing new

Next Up First and foremost is the planning retreat. I've got about 12 days to work that out.

How Am I Doing Still feeling frazzled. There's just so many things I want to get done and I'm kind of stuck in neutral. I just need to grab and rock and go.

Peace

A moment to catch up

A moment to savor the victory of my beloved Stillers. It was a great game (despite some whining I've heard elsewhere on the blogosphere...hmmph)if you enjoy hard hitting, fast paced football. Which of course Steeler fans do. My prayers still go up for Willis McGahee (former Buffalo Bill)who got his clock cleaned on that one hit. Glad to hear that he's got considerable movement and looks to be OK. I AM a little worried about Hines Ward. We could be in a heap of trouble without him. Yes, Arizona's offense worries me. Their defense is good but not as good as what Ben and the Black and Gold "O" are used to facing. Without Hines we need someone to step up big time. The best defense against Warner and company is keeping them on the sidelines.

Good news - Anquan Boldin is adding to the distraction factor, always nice with a first time team and the Steelers will be wearing their white jerseys. We've had very good luck in white.

I am so totally over snow. Really. Permanently. But I know some of you silly people think it's lovely. Sigh. I spoil you so. Here's a couple of photos courtesy of the kid:






The photos are from Chautauqua Institution which is just down the road from me. They have significantly less snow because of the trees. The kid took these as we took a sleigh ride around the grounds. The church shown is Chapel of the Good Shepherd (Episcopal). It is one of only two church buildings on the grounds. The kid takes good pictures.
Peace

Our newest family member

I meant to post this as part of the "Friday Cat Blogging" trend but the place where I store my photo files seems to have died (again!). So I had to establish a new place for the photos.


This is Zaphod. I award extra points for folks who catch the reference although that's costing me a LOT in points. It's not nearly as obscure as I thought. Which is kind of cool actually.

Zaphod is a long hair (sigh, not my choice. My two ladies picked her out and didn't check) all black kitten. I knew I was in trouble the day I picked her up. She was climbing the inside of the cage at the SPCA. Then when she was safely in her cat carrier on the way home she attempted to tear her way OUT of the cardboard carrier. No piteous mewings, no anguished yowlings. Just claws and teeth and full length extensions of paw and limb through the air holes looking for somethig to grab.

Since she's gotten home she's displayed all the usual kitten energy. Plus an absolute mania for climbing. Not just the usual though. She climbs like a lumberjack, wrapping her front paws around the newel posts of the stairs or even the door frames and kicking her way up. She's gotten well over five feet up the door frame several times. I have no idea where she thinks she's going. Fortunately she likes the scratching post I built for her (pretty spiffy if I do say so myself. Hand wound with 100 feet of sisal rope)

Our senior cat Amidala is less than amused by all this energy. Ami never had much of a kitten's sense of whimsey even when she was a kitten. Now she's a grumpy old dowager barely tolerating this tasmanian devil of activity. But no blood. Ami growls and swats when Zee gets too much for her. They've made peace at the food bowl so that's good.

It keeps life interesting for us all. Zee likes to announce her joy of life to me by rubbing, purring and licking my face each morning. Usually around 4 AM. I may be the one to draw blood.

Oh and a note on black cats. Black cats are a tradition in my family started by my father. We only had black cats all the years I grew up. They remain my favorite. I was very disappointed when we adopted our last two because there were none to be had at the SPCA.

More from my home in faith

My friend Lee got me started on these then I got distracted. So here's another look at part of my home parish. This is the old baptismal font. A few years back our interim wanted to move it to the more theologically/traditional correct place by the main doors in the back. Some of us tried to point out that there was no place back there to move this thing and that it would make the congregation have to turn and stand backwards in the pews for baptisms. He didn't see that as a problem (we did. I will note for fairness sake that I liked our interim and I think he did a wonderful job. We just a few disagreements along the way) What finally dissuaded him was the fact that it was cemented to the floor where it is! So there it remains. It is my habit (I can't explain why) to touch the angel on the wing as I pass by after taking Communion.

If you're looking for a sense of scale that's a grand piano visible in the back. It sits about 6-8 feet from the wings.

Peace

My Home in Faith 2

This is one of the stained glass windows in our chapel. We don't have ANY gargoyles like Lee does but we've got some pretty snifty stained glass. I've always liked St. George.

I find stained glass a challenge to shoot because the light is shining through the subject rather than reflecting off of it. Plus the problem with hot spots like on the good saint's thigh.

I'll probably add some more of the chapel saints as we move along.

Peace

My beloved home in faith

I'm doing this after being inspired by my buddy Lee. He takes some beautiful pictures of his home parish and posts them. Well, I love my home parish too, and I fancy myself a bit of a photographer so why not?

This is a statue that is not much loved by my congregation I'm afraid. It's very modern in style and our church is English neo-gothic so I suppose I see the complaint. But I've always had a soft spot for it and at certain times during the day when the light shines in just right...



This is in a back corner of the church, the only light is coming through the stained glass. I like the Madonna and child with Jesus entering Jerusalem in the background.

Thanks for the inspiration Lee! I'll do some more soon.

Peace