A Harry Potter Theme Park is coming to an Orlando, FL near you in 2009. According to the press release, the goal is to create an "Authentic World" where visitors can "immerse themselves" in the authenticly fake world of Harry and his friends. "Our primary goal is to make sure this experience is an authentic extension of Harry Potter’s world as it is portrayed in the books and films," said Stuart Craig, the film's production designer.

Book your tickets now.

Or you could get in your WABAC Machine and ponder this brief snippet from Umberto Eco. In 1975, Eco was describing hyperreality as:

"instances where the American imagination demands the real thing and, to attain it, must fabricate the absolute fake; where the boundaries between game and illusion are blurred, the art museum is contaminated by the freak show, and falsehood is enjoyed in a situation of 'fullness,' of horror vacui . . . The ideology of this America wants to establish reassurance through Imagination. But profits defeats ideology, because the consumers want to be thrilled not only by the guarantee of the Good but also by the shudder of the Bad. And so at Disneyland, along with Mickey Mouse and the kindly Bears, there must also be, in tactile evidence, Metaphysical Evil (the Haunted Mansion) and Historical Evil (the Pirates), . . . both at the same level of credibility, both at the same level of fakery. Thus, on entering [our] cathedrals of iconic reassurance, [we] visitors will remain uncertain whether [our] final destiny is hell or heaven, and so will consume new promises," (Eco, Travels in Hyperreality. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1975).

For my part I plan to buy, read, and enjoy Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows when it comes out, and to continue to seek and experience reality by following Micah 6:8

He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
   and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
   and to walk humbly with your God?

Back before Silvio Dante had made his bones with the Soprano clan, back when Silvio was still kickin' it old school as "Little Steven," back when anyone could feel like an activist simply by turning on their MTV, a group called Artists United Against Apartheid (headed up by "Mr. Dante" neé Van Zandt) produced a record/video decrying the situation in South Africa, and proclaimed "I, I, I, ain't gonna play Sun City." *

(*Being reminded that Sol Kerzner, the man behind the Sun City Resort, is also largely responsible for the Mohegan Sun Casino in Montville, CT.)

7 Years after that song hit the charts (#38 on Billboards Hot 100) a relatively small city on the southern coast of Shandong Province in China began a project of transformation that continues to this day. A new, and very different, "Sun City" (better yet, a Solar City) is emerging.

日照 Rizhao (which means "sunshine") is becoming a solar city. Renewable Energy Access reports that 99% of the city's residents have solar hot water. The city's traffic signals, and street lights are all solar powered. In the surrounding rural areas there is still considerable work to be done (only 30% have solar hot water)—but this is an improvement in a country where hot water remains a luxury for many people.

Rizhao is not in one of the remarkable Chinese development zones. It is in a rather poor part of a rather poor province. Nevertheless, a combination of factors have conspired to make Rizhao a sign of hope. What has allowed Rizhao to become a solar city? The REA article points to 3 factors:
1) a government policy that educated people, encouraged solar use, and financially supported research and development,
2) a local solar panel industry that actually used the government support to improve their products, and
3) the political will of the city's leadership.

Creating communities and public spaces that are green, life-giving, locally supported, and sustainable... does that sound like a pipe dream (sort of like bringing down a dictatorship with a song), or maybe it just a little too hard (I think Al Gore said something about lacking political will), or possibly just too little too late?

True it took Rizhao fifteen years to get to this point. On the other hand we have to remember that it took fifteen years for Rizhao to get to this point. We can change—we are changing. We are becoming more aware, becoming better at recycling, becoming better at using compact florescent bulbs, and all those things our friends over at Interfaith Power and Light have been advocating—but change takes time and effort.

When Steve Van Zandt gave voice to his outrage against Sun City Nelson Mandela was still in prison, and free elections were still almost ten years in the future. But Mandela was freed, apartheid was dismantled, and there was a Truth and Reconciliation process. Did the song help with that? Put it this way—it didn't hurt.

What will our communities look like ten or fifteen years from now? What are we doing now—and what are we willing to do now—that will affect the shape of all our futures? Maybe we need another song.

While you contemplate that, enjoy the video. Try to pick out all of the mid-80s rockers and rappers. Notice how really uncomfortable John Oates looks with Lou Reed's arm around him. Chuckle at Bono's youthful artistic facial hair.

In the wake of numerous stories about tainted food from China, here's a story from Jiang Gaoming (vice secretary-general of the UNESCO China-MAB—Man and the Biosphere)about the broader implications of modern farming, and a plea for more sustainable methods in the world's most populous nation.

Two stories caught my eye recently. We've all heard both of them before. But it's rare to see them next to each other (one of the happy accidents of rss feeds). The juxtaposition made them stand out in a new way for me.

The first, from Xinhua "China's Children Too Busy To Play," is on the immense pressures kids are under to succeed in China. Too many kids striving for too few spots in the country's schools equals insane demands to be successful at an early age. This madness is driven by a system that places a high value on wealth creation and economic superiority ("to get rich is glorious" as Deng Xiaoping said). But let's not fool ourselves into thinking we don't manifest our own symptoms of this disease.

The other story, from the Washington Post, "In Rural China, a Bitter Way Out," is another on the reality of suicide in rural China, especially among women. It is terrible and tragic, poor women taking their lives in their hands only to reach for a bottle of pesticide.

Because these stories tend to get told in isolation it's easy to miss the connection between them. However, there are many lines weaving these stories together. Here's what occurred to me. We have historically acquiesced to a system that values competition over cooperation, strength over flexibility, efficiency over complexity, and profit over virtually everything else. Consequently, we have allowed some fundamental concerns to slip out of our calculus of the common good, things that are so fundamental they actually mean the survival of our species, namely, childbearing, child rearing and nurturing healthy human relationships. The same forces that drive men in rural China away from their families and into low paying and often dangerous jobs in the cities (leaving rural women to pick up all the slack back on the farm), are the same forces that feed the fears of parents when they drive their kids past exhaustion so that they can "have a better life." They are the same forces that drive companies around the globe to require 50, 60, 70 or more hours per week from their employees in order to maximize the bottom line. They are the same forces that monetarily punishes women for pursuing the rewarding work of bearing and raising children, and the forces that monetarily rewards men choosing work over family, and simultaneously punishes them by removing men from their families and constraining them to equate love with money. They are the forces that enable us to know what is too little to live on—to calculate a poverty rate—but obscures from our sight any idea of what wealth (or greed) is. How much is enough is not a question we are equipped to answer easily.

These are complex issues. (A related story in the LA Times "China cites gains made by women" complicates the issue even more.) Yes, advances have been made. Yes, some are better off than they were before. No, things are not getting better for everyone. There are no easy answers. And there are no monolithic global answers.

In the Gospel of Mark (10:14) people bring their children to Jesus. The disciples (typically) don't get it and try to stop them. Jesus responds with the familiar line, as quoted in the King James Version, "suffer the little children to come unto me." The text in the NRSV says that Jesus was "indignant" and, never one to miss out on a teaching moment, told the disciples, "Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs." The image of children working for 12 hours a day in school, and needing the peace that Christ can offer, is partly what made me think of this passage. But in light of these juxtaposed news stories the Gospel opened up even more. As I looked at the context of this passage from Mark I noticed that it is sandwiched between two of Jesus' hard teachings. The first is one of the teachings about marriage (from whence we get the line in the marriage rite "Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate"). The other is the story about the rich young man who comes asking what he can do to inherit eternal life. He readily admits that he has kept all the commandments from his youth, so Jesus tells him there is only one other thing he must do—"sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me." We know how that story ends. The man went away grieving "for he had many possessions."

Marriage, children, wealth...

Is the Gospel saying something to us about the connection between family, the importance of children, and the danger of having too much—of making an idol out of material wealth? If the Kingdom of God belongs to the children (and the poor, the meek, the peacemakers, and those who hunger and thirst for justice, etc.), what does this say about the kind of kingdoms we continue to create. Kingdoms designed for the successful, the rich, the powerful, and the unattached, individual, completely rational agent? Who's side are we on?

"Nonlinear. Discontinuous. Collage-like. An assemblage. . . .
A seminonfictional semifiction. . . .
Obstinately cross-referential. . . ."

David Markson, Reader's Block p. 140

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Postmodern fictional conceit?

A foreshadowing of what you are likely to find in this blog?

A lucidly opaque description of the ongoing act of divine creation?

You be the judge.