Not Buggin' Here

If long-cherished ideals and time-honoured institutions, if certain social assumptions and religious formulae have ceased to promote the welfare of the generality of mankind, if they no longer minister to the needs of a continually evolving humanity, let them be swept away and relegated to the limbo of obsolescent and forgotten doctrines. Why should these, in a world subject to the immutable law of change and decay, be exempt from the deterioration that must needs overtake every human institution? For legal standards, political and economic theories are solely designed to safeguard the interests of humanity as a whole, and not humanity to be crucified for the preservation of the integrity of any particular law or doctrine.-- World Order of Bahá'u'lláh, p. 42

What Percy said...

After being head-down for months (years?) at work, I tried easing my way back into blogging on my work blog with this post about Derek Trucks. It's been a popular post among people doing google searches for Derek Trucks, at least according to the referral logs.

In reply to that post, my first boss at Microsoft, David Luebbert, pointed me to a social web site, mog.com. I think "mog" is a contraction of "musical blog," and, well, "mogging" is blogging about music.

Dave's been mogging for about a month, and I've been having a blast mogging for the past few weeks.

It's been particularly fun doing this with Dave, because he and I have a bit of knowledge about each other's musical taste and backgrounds. For example, dave posted an item about The Meters and The Wild Tchoupitoulas, and I got to riff on that with some videos on the connections between The Meters, the Wild Tchoupitoulas and The Neville Brothers.

I've even been able to slip in a chant of a Bahá'í prayer into a discussion about Qawwali music.

So, if you're wondering what Rick's up to, I'm mogging my life away. There are RSS feeds there, so, if you're interested in music, subscribe to mine and Dave's. Or, better yet, start your own mog.

It's Just the Beginning was a film made during the 1970 Bahá'í Youth Conference. In 1971, as a boy, I participated in a teaching project in Racine, Wisconsin where this film was used. I signed my delcaration card during that teaching project, and I still remember portions of that film.

The US Bahá'í web site has an article about people who became Bahá'ís during the 60's, and it has links, at the bottom of the page, to parts of the film that have been uploaded to YouTube. Or, you can head over to Dan's post and watch them there.

Excerpts from talks by Ruhiyyih Khanum and Glenford Mitchell (whose voices still ring in my ears after all these years) and the late Phil Lucas singing "World Citizens". Great stuff.

Rick