fishers, surfers and casters

When I finally left her at the bus station, we mentioned that we’d record our experience on our respective blogs, and she said I had a head start. But she managed to get in first, because I’m so slack at remembering to blog things lately.

This person in question is Umm Yasmin, a self-professed Muslim feminist living in Melbourne. I came across her blog from another in our blogging community (don’t you just love this phenomenon – we have a community – and our meeting up proved it!) and was wowed by her ClustrMap, which showed her audience to be from every continent.

I posted a comment on her blog about how I liked it, and received an email from her. I actually didn’t expect one, given how famous her ClustrMap made her out to be; I had the impression she was a professional blogger-type-journo. But lo and behold, she was a lowly postgrad student just like me.

And she was excited to talk to me. We had a few things in common. She is studying the effects of migration on a group of Iraqi Mulsims in Cobram, and I am working for an agency that supports this work. One of my colleagues had great things to say about her and of the great impression she had made on some of our clients.

We met up last Friday over coffee in Shepparton – very unlikely spot for bloggers to congregate – and we talked about everything. I was particularly interested in her understandings of feminism in Islam, religious blogging, her impression of the emergent church (she has had some positive experiences there) and her take on this blogging community thing.

Thanks, Umm Yasmin, for a brilliant conversation. You and yours have to come up again and spend time with my partner (you guys can talk the Battle for God well into the night) and the kids.

Ginger Briggs, a columnist for The Big Issue, finds this quote from Myron Ebell, a member of the Competitive Enterprise Institute:

Given that the negative impacts of climate change are expected to hit developing countries first, this suggest that for the United States at least, net impacts might be positive for a greater amount of temperature change.

It’s bad enough that countries like the US and Australia ignore the call to economic reform to save the planet. Now we can be heartless enough to view global warming as a tool for greater economic power over the third world. Don’t we control the poor enough?

I need to pray.

Call me a heretic, but whenever I hear the name Michael Franti I think “Praise the Lord”. A big fan of his music since he led the Disposable Heroes, I found him the lone writer who could point the finger at all the world’s poverty and corruption, and at the same moment remind you that the world is beautiful solely because you are in it. He has been my constant companion on lonely journeys between Shepparton and Melbourne, and can turn my fatigue to resolve in one album.

I’m always sceptical of musicians who try their hand at film, and especially of musicians who release big budget documentaries about their own touring (see U2: Rattle and Hum and In Bed With Madonna), but I have faith that Franti’s I Know I Am Not Alone will surprise me. Anthony Minghella watched it and said “Watch this film then insist that Michael Franti becomes President of the United States!”

Big call.

http://www.iknowimnotalone.com/

Scary, somebody slap me into sensibility…

Your Famous Last Words Will Be:

“I can pass this guy.”