From the Salmon

• six
  

  Bright Eyes - I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning

  I know nothing of Oberst’s past sins as a songwriter. All I know is that this collection of broken tales should bring absolution aplenty. Let it also be said that it’s hard to go wrong when the incomparable Emmylou Harris has your back.

  Website | Amazon | iTunes

• seven
  

  Iron & Wine - Woman King EP

  In contrast to the rustic bygone-era sound of his early work, Iron & Wine’s Woman King EP practically shimmers. Beam finds eager new partners for his usual… [ Full Review ]

  Website | Amazon | iTunes

• eight
  

  Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - S/T

  They swear up and down that they’re not influenced by the Talking Heads, but I’m not buying it. Throw in a little Pablo Honey-era Radiohead and a drop of Arcade Fire exuberance, and you’ve got yourself a recipe for indie rock euphoria.

  Website | Amazon | iTunes

• nine
  

  The New Pornographers - Twin Cinema

  A.C. Newman’s solo album was one of last year’s surprise gems. Surround him with Canadian indie rock royalty, and Newman’s melodic gifts become downright fearsome. Watch out for Neko Case, for she’s liable to steal the whole show.

  Website | Amazon | iTunes

• ten
  

  Feist - Let It Die

  After establishing her indie street cred backing up Broken Social Scene and the Kings of Convenience, Leslie Feist proves that her agile voice deserves higher billing.

  Website | Amazon | iTunes

Albums 11-15
Albums 16-20

(This list has been a little flaky in Internet Explorer. I didn’t have time to fix that before we left. Use Firefox, already.)

• eleven
  

  Spoon - Gimme Fiction

  Gimme Fiction is about as solid as they come. There’s no excess here, just taut, muscular rock with a pop sensibility that borders on Lennonist.

  Website | Amazon | iTunes

• twelve
  

  Iron & Wine and Calexico - In the Reins EP

  How will Iron & Wine’s now familiar rustic southern whisper fare when plied against the spaghetti western flair of Calexico’s Burns, Convertino and company? [ Full Review ]

  Iron & Wine Website | Calexico Website | Amazon | iTunes

• thirteen
  

  Beck - Guero

  The groove of Odelay with the melodic maturity of Sea Change. Beck doesn’t break new ground but gives us a complex album that wonderfully plays to his strengths.

  Website | Amazon | iTunes

• fourteen
  

  Anderson - weradioanderson

  Layering Kings of Convenience harmonies over ebullient glitch-pop, this dutch acoustic duo has crafted a radiant delight of an album that is my serendipitous discovery of the year. Dutchboys represent!

  Website | Paste Music | MySpace

• fifteen
  

  Death Cab for Cutie - Plans

  While Plans wasn’t exactly the quantum leap forward fans expected with a major label debut, there’s nothing not to like here. Gibbard’s maturing lyrically, and even if it’s not as interesting as Transatlanticism, it’s still every bit as enjoyable.

  Website | Amazon | iTunes

Albums 16-20

(This list has been a little flaky in Internet Explorer. I didn’t have time to fix that before we left. Use Firefox, already.)

• sixteen
  

  The Decemberists - Picaresque

  Palanquins! Tamaracks! Roustabouts! The Decemberists are back with another set of anachronistic shanty pop….
  [ Full Review ]

  Website | Amazon | iTunes

• seventeen
  

  José González - Veneer

  When you’re planning to drop a quarter of a million superballs and you need some background music, who better to turn to than an Argentinian Swede? Quiet is indeed the new loud.

  Website | Amazon | iTunes

• eighteen
  

  Headphones - S/T

  Pedro goes Postal? Sort of. While uneven in parts, Bazan is still spinning bleak tales of brokenness, which is reason enough for joy.

  Website | Amazon | iTunes

• nineteen
  

  Summer at Shatter Creek - All the Answers

  One-man show Craig Gurwich’s latest is a wistful treasure of achingly fragile beauty, each track just dripping with layers of forlorn falsetto.

  Website | Amazon | iTunes

• twenty
  

  Erin McKeown - We Will Become Like Birds

  Forget for a moment that “Through adversity to the stars” is the Kansas state motto. McKeown lifts her sights high and delivers a soaring set of summery pop that leaves her folk days far below.

  Website | Amazon | iTunes

(This list has been a little flaky in Internet Explorer. I didn’t have time to fix that before we left. Use Firefox, already.)

I’m outta here until next year.

We’ll be trekking northward to visit family and friends, especially this one.

But do not fear, loyal Salmonistas. This site shall not lay dormant.

I’ve worked up my year-end list of the top twenty albums of 2005 and it’s set to pop bit-by-bit over the course of the next few days. Even if you’ve been following my music list over the course of the year, I think there will be some surprises.

Oh, and I didn’t have enough time to fix those posts so that IE would like them. So if they look like crap, you know what to do.

Have yourselves a safe and happy New Year’s weekend.

I saw this in the bookstore yesterday and it made my childhood weep.

One year ago, South Asia was hit by a wave the likes of which the world hadn’t seen in my lifetime. When it subsided, it left hundreds of thousands dead or displaced.

It seems so long ago, doesn’t it?

Truth be told, it’s been a hell of a year. The tsunami, genocide in Sudan, Operation Murambatsvina in Zimbabwe, food emergencies in the Sahel, hurricanes in the Gulf, an earthquake in Pakistan….

There’s a term used in the relief and development community for the effect that years like this have: “compassion fatigue.” It’s a term that should be an oxymoron, but is all too real. As each horrifying disaster tears at our hearts, as we open our checkbooks yet again, as we say prayers for yet another situation so far beyond our ability to control or solve, we run the risk of incrementally hardening ourselves to a world of pain and need.

This year was also a year that saw an interesting new relationship between these types of disasters and the internet. The growth of blogs and the maturation of collaborative online references like wikis brought with them a new kind of activism, a new kind of storytelling, and a powerful new clearinghouse for information.

One of those new efforts was led by The World Wide Help Group, a grassroots partnership of bloggers, programmers, and others who came together to create the South East Asian Earthquake And Tsunami blog, wiki and database after the disaster struck a year ago. Since then, they have created similar resources for Hurricane Katrina (blog, wiki) and the earthquake in Pakistan (blog, wiki).

On the one year anniversary of the tsunami, The World Wide Help Group has called for a Disaster Rememberance Week. This is a week to look back, to admit how easily we let some of these stories fall off our radar, and to see if we can fight our tendency for compassion fatigue by finding a way to continue to give.

We’re traveling later this week, so I won’t be able to turn this into a series of posts. But in a season when we celebrate giving, I hope you might take a few moments to find a need and to do what you can to help meet it.

If you need some resources for connecting with charitable organizations, here are three pages from The World Wide Help Group’s disaster wikis:
- South East Asian Tsunami
- Hurricane Rita
- Pakistan Earthquake

In addition, InterAction features lists of US aid groups involved in bringing help to various areas:
- South East Asian Tsunami
- Hurricane Katrina
- Earthquake in Pakistan
- Sudan
- Niger and the Sahel region

As always, I’d encourage you to do some research before you give. Organizations like InterAction are a good place to start, because they require a certain standard from their member agencies. Other groups like Charity Navigator can help you learn more about the stewardship of individual charities. If you’d like recommendations, let me know, and I’ll see if I can help you with your search.

I’ll admit that I suffer from compassion fatigue as much as the next person. I’ve fallen far short of my desire to write more in depth about some of these needs. And often, I’ve let writing substitute for giving.

As we look back at what the world has been through this year, here’s a sampling of some of what I’ve written over the past ten months (I don’t have any tsunami posts, since I started this site in February and since I shamefully neglected to write any follow-up posts):

Sudan

- This Is Good News, I Think
- Just Say No
- Darfur Accountability Act Update
- Darfur Update
- Africa Update - Sudan and Zimbabwe
- Darfur: Action is Character
- One Year
- Darfur Update: How Much Genocide Is Too Much?
- More Kristof on Darfur

Zimbabwe

- One Man’s Trash
- Africa Update - Sudan and Zimbabwe

Food emergencies in the Sahel

- Famine in Niger
- A Free-Market Famine?

Hurricane Katrina

- Katrina
- Don’t Be Afraid to Cry at What You See
- I Have No Words for This Yet
- When All Around My Soul Gives Way

Pakistan Earthquake

- Earthquake in Kashmir

Extreme Global Poverty

- Fighting Poverty: Bad News and Good News
- Are We As Generous As We Think We Are?
- The End of Poverty?
- A Trial Run for the End of Poverty
- Poverty and Praise
- Are We As Generous As We Think We Are? (Redux)

Tags: Disaster Remembrance Week

It has been brought to my attention that since my last post, Internet Explorer for Windows has started rendering my site in unspeakable ways.

Perhaps this is part of the War on Christmas(©FOXnews) I’ve been hearing about.

I won’t tell you what I think of IE, because I don’t want to make the baby Jesus cry. Suffice it to say that I’ll fix this in due time.

Until then, make it a New Year’s resolution to use Firefox.

Please.

Update: Funny, all I had to do was drop the F-bomb and IE is now pretending that nothing ever happened. I’m not fooled. Internet Explorer, you’re on notice.

On the way to church this morning, we got about as close as you can get to a white Christmas in the Bay Area.

That is, if by white you mean really, really foggy.

Hey, fog is just underachieving snow, right?

Merry Christmas.

A few days ago, I offered up a whole mess of music for your Christmas downloading pleasure. So for this final installment of Friday Advent Lyrics, I thought I’d return to an album that isn’t available for download: Signature Sounds’ Wonderland compilation. This is probably one of my top three Christmas albums, particularly for songs like last week’s “American Noel” and this week’s sublime selection: Richard Shindell’s “Before You Go.”

In my humble opinion, I’ve saved the best for last. This might the simplest song yet, but it’s also the most rich. As a tender prologue, it’s a perfect song for Advent.

But it’s so much more than that.

With a few spare words, Shindell paints for us a portrait of a relationship beyond our understanding and yet familiar in so many ways. This is Philippians 2 in first person — the hesitancy and staggering humility of Incarnation.

Enough setting the scene. Great art should show, not tell. And I’m doing way too much telling, when I should just let Shindell’s art shine.

“Before You Go”
by Richard Shindell
from the Wonderland compilation

Love, just a word before you go
Just a few things you should know
Come and sit here by my side
Love, how I wish that you could stay
There can be no other way
I must send you on your own

Love, here’s a place and here’s a name
Love, she will hold you in her arms
And show you who you are

Love, you’ll be hungry, you’ll be weak
You’ll be tempted, you’ll be free
To turn away from me
Love, dressed in rags and far from home
You will wander all alone
You will wonder where I am

Love, you will laugh and you will cry
Love, you will live and you will die
But only for a while

There’s a world that you must bear
They’re waiting for you there
To lead them from the night
And bring them to the light

Love, here’s a place and here’s a name
Love, she will hold you in her arms
And show you who you are
She will show you who you are
She’ll show you who you are

Purchase “Wonderland” at Signature Sounds
Purchase “Wonderland” at Paste Music

Have a blessed Christmas. If your church isn’t open on Sunday, find one that is.

Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost and Justin Taylor at Between Two Worlds have sponsored a bit of a symposium on torture. Sensing that Christian intellectuals had been fairly silent on the national debate about torture, they invited several Christian ethicists and writers to respond to Charles Krauthammer’s Weekly Standard essay, “The Truth About Torture.”

Krauthammer’s piece and the eight symposium contributions are worth perusing, not simply because this debate is timely, but because this is a critical part of a larger debate over who we in the United States want to be as a country and, separately, over what role we who claim to be part of the Christian church must play in this debate and others.

I think it’s worthy to note that, of the eight participants, four are Baptist, two are Catholic, one is Presbyterian, and I’m not sure about the eighth. This isn’t a criticism, since I would imagine that it’s not the easiest thing for a blogger to get a broad representation of Christian scholars to participate in a medium like this, and because I don’t know who was asked but chose not to participate. But if you consider that the two major historical Christian traditions regarding war and violence have been just war and pacifism, it’s a shame that the symposium didn’t also include the thoughts of a scholar or two that came out of the latter tradition.

That said, I was a little surprised by the essays. Particularly, I was shocked that only two saw fit to mention Jesus. In fact, there were just as many mentions of Alan Dershowitz. That’s not to say that these weren’t written from a recognizably Christian perspective. There was plenty of Augustine and Romans 13 and such. But the repeated choice not to consider the arguments for torture in the context of the teachings and life of the Christ of Christianity was troubling to me.

It’s also somewhat telling. The essays that do mention Jesus (Mark Liederbach and Rob Vischer) make the some of the clearest statements that Christians cannot condone torture. And I wonder whether this is in part because it’s hard to imagine the Jesus of the Gospels condoning coercive violence. I don’t ask this to be flippant or to reduce this important or weighty question to a bumper sticker platitude, but can you imagine what Jesus’ response might have been if He had been asked whether torture was ever permissable?

(more…)

So part of me wants to keep working on a few posts about separation of powers or Christian views regarding torture. Nice, light, cheery pieces, all of them. The other part of me wishes that it was about 25 degrees colder here so that I could go outside and play in the snow instead of all this rain.

This post comes from that second part.

This is maybe a little too late, since many of you are probably oversaturated by now with Christmas music on the radio and in the stores. (If so, it’s yet another indication that us liberals are just no good at war. We can’t even get our purported War on Christmas[©FOXnews] right.)

I put together two iMixes at the iTunes Music Store a few weeks ago for the folks over at Bad Christian. I’ve updated them with a few new tracks, and I’m pointing to them here in case you need a last-minute boost to your Christmas music collection.

The first mix starts all traditional-like and the second branches into non-traditional Christmas songs that I still really like. It’s a decent mix of sacred, not-so-sacred, and downright silly. Enjoy.

:: :: :: ::

For Lo! The Days Are Hastening On

1. Wynton Marsalis - “Hark! The Herald Angel Sing”
2. Jars of Clay - “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen”
3. Vince Guaraldi Trio - “Christmas Time Is Here (Instr.)”
4. Martin Sexton - “Do You Hear What I Hear?”
5. The Blind Boys of Alabama - “Last Month of the Year”
6. Bill Evans - “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town”
7. Low - “Silent Night”
8. Tracy Chapman - “O Holy Night”
9. Nickel Creek - “I’ll Be Home for Christmas”
10. Vince Guaraldi Trio - “O Tannenbaum”
11. Aimee Mann - “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”
12. Joshua Redman & Brad Mehldau -
    “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town”
13. Guster - “Carol of the Meows”
14. Newgrange - “Go Tell It on the Mountain”
15. Buddy & Julie Miller - “Away in a Manger”
16. Jars of Clay - “Little Drummer Boy”
17. Bruce Cockburn - “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear”
18. Big Bad Voodoo Daddy - “We Three Kings”
19. The Blind Boys of Alabama (Feat. Mavis Staples) -
    “Born in Bethlehem”

Go to the iMix at iTunes.

:: :: :: ::

There’s a Future Shining in a Baby’s Eye

1. Danny Elfman - “Making Christmas”
2. Dar Williams - “The Christians and the Pagans”
3. Blues Traveler - “Christmas”
4. The Kinks - “Father Christmas”
5. Iron & Wine - “Freedom Hangs Like Heaven”
6. Keb’ Mo’ - “Jingle Bell Jamboree”
7. Pierce Pettis - “Miriam”
8. Emmylou Harris - “Light of the Stable”
9. Vigilantes of Love - “On to Bethlehem”
10. Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds - “Christmas Song”
11. Low - “Long Way Around the Sea”
12. Marc Cohn - “Baby King”
13. Bruce Cockburn - “Cry of a Tiny Babe”
14. Joni Mitchell - “River”
15. John McCutcheon - “Christmas in the Trenches”

Go to the iMix at iTunes

:: :: :: ::

In case that’s not enough goodness, here are a few additional treasures worth downloading:

• Three Christmas EPs by Sufjan Stevens!
• Feist - “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming” (from Dreams of Horses)
• Peter Mulvey - “River” (from Paste)
• Claire Holley - “Mary Visits Elizabeth” (from Paste)
• Outputmessage - “Carol of the Bells” (h/t Opus)

This has the potential to be very, very big.

At least at this point in what is a developing story, it appears that President Bush decided in 2002 that the NSA should be allowed to conduct electronic surveillance of communications originating in the US without first obtaining the warrant required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. On Saturday, in his weekly radio address, Bush said that not only had he authorized this surveillance at least 30 times, but that he would continue to do so.

This is important for a number of reasons. One is that Bush appears to have broken the law. That would be bad enough, but it actually may very well be bigger than that. It seems that Bush has decided that there are certain parts of the law that don’t apply to his administration during wartime.

This is unacceptable.

Presidents don’t get to decide which laws apply to them. They all apply. Every last one. Even in wartime. The President can’t just issue a secret executive order making it okay to operate outside the law. If Bush thinks that a particular law hinders his ability to protect the United States, then he should lobby Congress to change it.

Certainly, in times when national security is threatened, it’s appropriate to discuss whether we need to give up some of our freedom in order to protect ourselves. But that’s exactly the point. It needs to be a discussion. There needs to be transparency. And people in the US need to understand the tradeoffs that they’re making.

President Bush thinks that the NSA should be able to spy on people in the US without a warrant? He needs to make a public case and let Congress decide whether the law should be changed (and then he’ll likely have to convince the Supreme Court that the law doesn’t violate the Fourth Amendment). President Bush thinks that the CIA should be allowed to torture suspected terrorists in foreign prisons or send prisoners to other countries to be tortured? He has to convince us to withdraw from international treaties first.

The President is not above the law. The President is not a king.

This needs to be investigated aggressively. Ideally, this investigation would take place in Congress. But the modern political party (particularly the current Republican party) has dulled our Madisonian institutional antagonism to the point where I highly doubt this will happen in a meaningful way.

If Congress was truly serious about its responsibility to oversee the executive branch, it would start with a subpoena for the records of exactly what surveillance the Bush administration has done without appropriate warrants issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Then, Congress would give the president this ultimatum: “If you claim executive privilege, we’ll hold up the Patriot Act. You want to take this to the Supreme Court? Fine, but it won’t be a court that features one Mr. Alito. And if you stonewall us even once, we’ll give widely expanded powers to Mr. Patrick Fitzgerald. Does that work for you, Mr. President? Great. We’ll see you on Tuesday. Under oath. And without your vice president.” And the first questions Congress would ask would be “The FISA gave you a perfectly serviceable system to approve legal surveillance. Why didn’t you use it? And who are you spying on without the approval of the FISC?”

But that won’t happen. Because most Republican congresspeople are Republicans first and members of Congress second.

I’m not presuming guilt here, and I’m not talking about punishment. I’m no lawyer or legal scholar, and I will readily admit that I’m relying on others to point out the relevant passages of the FISA. Maybe I’m missing something big here. As always, I’m open to well-reasoned arguments to the contrary. But it seems to me that these are serious charges that are at least worthy of investigation. And that needs to start with Congress resuming its oversight responsibility.

Update:

A few links for your perusal and so I can find them later…

Two press conferences today: Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and General Michael Hayden, Principal Deputy Director for National Intelligence and President George W. Bush.

And two GWU law professors offer some preliminary legal analysis: Orin Kerr, specialist in internet surveillance law, and Daniel Solove, specialist in information privacy law.

And, for good measure, one more piece from Obsidian Wing’s Hilzoy.

This week’s song is from a brilliant songwriter who left us way too soon. Dave Carter, who recorded a few wonderful albums with Tracy Grammer, passed away a few years ago. But before he did, he penned a song called “American Noel,” which was released on a benefit compilation alongside tracks by Peter Mulvey, Erin McKeown, Richard Shindell and others. Ordinarily, I’d be very wary of a Christmas song with America in the title, but this one is a beauty.

“American Noel”
by Dave Carter & Tracy Grammer
from the Wonderland compilation

Three wise men
Riding hard through the cold
Lost on some big city street
With no place warm to go
They are looking for a manger
Or a sign in the lights
But they’re a long way from Bethlehem tonight

But they heard about a savior
And a preacher in the park
Who will camp with the homeless
Where they shiver in the dark
He’ll deliver salvation
To the weary and the cold
And he’ll bring joy joy joy to the wandering soul

The cleaning lady sighs
As she closes up the gate
‘Cause this job don’t quite pay the bills
And she’s always working late
But all in a moment
Comes a light from above
It’s an angel speaking words of joy and love

And he tells her of a savior
And a preacher in the park
Who will camp with the homeless
Under bridges in the dark
He’ll deliver salvation
To the weary and the cold
And he’ll bring joy joy joy to the wandering soul

Four in the morning
At the Tradewinds Motel
The register reads “all full up”
And the clerk thinks just as well
But out in the tool shed
‘Round an old Coleman lamp
A little family makes its meager camp

The Wise Men bring presents
And the angels gather ’round
The cleaning lady slips in through the door without a sound
And an old black dog
Looks on with the rest
At the little babe upon his mother’s breast

And there comes a savior
And a preacher in the park
And he camps with the homeless
Where they shiver in the dark
He delivers salvation
To the weary and the cold
And he brings joy joy joy to the wandering soul
And he brings joy joy joy to the wandering soul

Purchase “Wonderland” at Signature Sounds
Purchase “Wonderland” at Paste Music

What songs reflect the joy of Advent to you?

Thanks to a recommendation from Opus, I’ve been enjoying 24 Ways, which is kind of an advent calendar for web designers.

Many of the tips are things I’m tucking away for when I might need them in the future, but yesterday’s article gave me a snippet of code that I’ve already put to good use.

Some of you may have noticed that I’ve been keeping lists of books, music, and films that I’ve enjoyed. I couldn’t find a plug-in that did what I wanted with the lists, so I’ve been hand-coding them. That wasn’t a big deal at the beginning, but as the lists have grown, it’s become a bit of a chore to change the CSS on every item to maintain the alternating background style. It’s gotten so that I haven’t been updating them as often as I’d like (particularly the music list — I’m way behind on that).

Getting the background style to alternate isn’t something I should have to do manually, but I haven’t had the time or the PHP chops to figure out how to incorporate that into WordPress page content.

Enter 24 Ways. In yesterday’s entry, Patrick H. Lauke of splintered offered a concise javascript solution for this very problem. All it took was a few tweaks to the site, and my listing just got a whole lot easier.

And we’ve still got nine more days of goodies to go!

You may have heard that our governor is a wee bit unpopular.

So unpopular, in fact, that even Republicans are turning on their shining star.

So people must be questioning whether it was the height of wisdom to elect an action hero to govern the fifth largest economy in the world, right?

Wrong.

It seems there’s a movement afoot among California Republicans to draft Mel Gibson as a challenger to the Governator in the next primary. Apparently, Gibson “seems to be more consistent with the Republican message.”

I guess Arnold shoulda made a Jesus flick.