Moshermas

Published by Helen | Filed under Faith, Wedding

(As of yesterday, says Dean, there is one less Helen Thompson in the world.)

The marriage of Miss Helen Heath Thompson, daughter of Wayne C. and Emily Heath Thompson of Colonial Heights, Va., to Dean Alan Mosher, son of Dennis D. and Diane Mosher of Front Royal, Va., took place on Sept. 1, 2008, in a private ceremony at Trinity Episcopal Church in Manassas, Va. The Rev. Vinnie Lainson officiated.

Jennifer Vatza of Philadelphia was the maid of honor, and the bride was also attended by her son, Kieran Shaw of Rockville, Md., and her brother, Richard Chittick Thompson of Richmond, Va. The groom was attended by his daughter, Darcy Park, of Fairfax.

Two receptions for the bride and groom are planned; one will take place in Philadelphia during October and another will take place in Front Royal in the spring.

The bride is a graduate of Colonial Heights High School, Lord Fairfax Community College and Temple University. She is employed by AFCEA International as a social media strategist and online editor and is a graduate student at George Mason University. The groom is a graduate of George Marshall High School and Northern Virginia Community College. He is employed by Capital Hospice as an information specialist in its development office.

The couple will live in Front Royal, Va.

Pictures as they become available will be at this flickr set and this one.

Coming soon to a bar near you

Published by Helen | Filed under Music

I’m really happy to announce that I’ll be collaborating with Mark Clay in the near future to actually put out some live music again. Good chance that we’ll produce some originals, too, as we both are songwriters. But we’ll also be putting our imprint on some music from the 80s.

Two years of wonderful

Published by Helen | Filed under Faith

Today marks my last post for Ask the Matriarch, a column the RevGals started two years ago that made me, as Gallycat, part of a weird A-list of bloggers that cause a room full of women priests to smile knowingly when they hear that name, even though phonetically it’s more commonly associated with a top publishing blog.

In this capacity I’ve been fielding questions from priests and passing them along to a panel of women pastors and priests with a tremendous amount of experience under their belts. And advice, dispensed with love, has flowed from them through me to a point that ever so briefly, I’ve been kind of an advice columnist in my own right.

It’s time for me to turn the reins over, however. I took a brief respite last summer during which time Listing Straight was kind enough to cover for me while I juggled a new house, a job transition, and summer with the kid at home. This year, it’s become harder and harder to keep up with the responsibilities I already had when I bit something else off: I’m starting graduate school in the fall–er, next week.

I’ll be getting my master’s degree in Public Administration, specializing in nonprofit management, and continuing to dedicate myself to helping organizations, including church organizations and faith-oriented progressive causes, understand and leverage web 2.0 technologies like blogging, social networks and new media.

And, in less than three weeks, I’m marrying my darling future husband, Dean, on the occasion of our fourth dating anniversary in a private ceremony in Northern Virginia. (FINALLY.)

Ann Fontaine of What the Tide Brings In and a colleague of mine at the Cafe, and the blogger RevHoney, both themselves matriarchs, are taking over management of the column for the foreseeable future. I will remain available to them as they take it over, and I do hope the column continues to be as much a success and as valuable a resource for you as it has been.

I really want to thank the RevGals for the opportunity, as it lead to other wonderful things for me, including my role at the Episcopal Cafe, my first published spiritual reflection, my present job, and my emergence as a social media strategist who’s “internet-famous” among a really amazing, creative, thoughtful group of people. I’m not as reflective these days, more intent on being a humorist and tapping my DJ roots, but perhaps this will free up just enough time to get back to weekly meditations.

I also want to thank the Matriarchs for their insights. I’ve learned a lot from all of you. And for all the RevGalBlogPals for participating each week, cheering us on, and being an amazing community of diverse viewpoints and experience.

May blessings run over for you all!

Blinding a-ha moments in the digital citizenship debate

Published by Helen | Filed under New Media, Social Media

There’s a metaphor percolating about with regard to digital immigrants and digital natives that quite honestly chafes me to the core, because I feel like I’m a first-generation native and my child is a second-generation native, but no one seems to give credence to that analogy because, well, the first generation natives are gen-x and no one really cares about us anyway. </obwhine>

Tonight I was brainstorming ideas for a community based around my high school. 20-year reunions really are the devil for those of us ENFP types who kick out grand ideas every five minutes and then scramble to get _any_ detail right, because, well, I’m inspired. Reconnecting with high school friends left and right and realizing I’m a natural at sleuthing out missed connections (everything from missing classmates to 30-year-old earworms) made me also realize that I would like a reunion to help me connect with my friends from the classes of 1986 to 1990, with a few fringers from years beyond even that.

So I started to create a group that, once I decide whether it’s viable or not, opens the floor to members of all those classes, and I was trying to figure out what classes to invite. My dates are kind of arbitrary, to be honest, but I felt like there was a period of time in there that my peers and I experienced something that would allow us to be more proficient with this technology once it became available to us.

I chose the classes of 1985 through 1994. Intuitively, this felt right, but i couldn’t put my fingers on exactly why until I thought about a significant even in my own life that transpired in 1994: I got online.

And I wasn’t sure why 1985 felt right either; certainly it wasn’t that they were the seniors when I was a freshman. But then I realized that they were born in 1966, which by some markers is the beginning of generation X.

Other markers pin the beginning of gen X as 1961, but, as I continued to mull this over, I realized that being born in the five-year stretch before or after this 10-year window put folks on a cusp with overlaps to the previous or succeeding generation, respectively.

And a funny thing about this subgroup of our generation, no matter how you define it: we are the pre-internet segment of generation-x. As I was bantering with one of my 20-year reunion organizers recently, I didn’t become an extrovert until I got on to the Internet. That’s ok, he replied. Computers didn’t become extroverted until they got on the Internet either. It’s funny, but it’s also a good point: we might not have been connected by technology to the greater, wider world as we were growing up, but we had computers, VCRs, cable, and a host of other technology that gave us the language and the culture that would allow us to adapt seamlessly to the new media horizon, some of us faster than others. But not as immigrants.

Nope. We’re your first generation natives–the PRE-INTERNET DIGITAL NATIVES, and we are your translators, no matter which side of us you happen to fall.

While you’re in the checkout line…

Published by Helen | Filed under Career, Faith, Yay!

Pick up a copy of the September issue of Good Housekeeping. Flip to page 128 and see a familiar face.

The whole article is worth a read–it’s how to avoid and handle burning out as a volunteer. That in itself is worth an Ask the Matriarch column!!!

But it also ties back to a column I wrote for the Episcopal Cafe last year–worth revisiting in light of the fact that Good Housekeeping felt my career evolution worth a spotlight. So any of you who google me based on my appearance in the magazine, have a look at it here:

From Transparency to Enlightenment: On taking the step of putting my volunteer “church” work on my resume.

Pandor—uhhhhhhhhh

Published by Helen | Filed under 80s, Bluegrass, Goth/Industrial, Music, Social Media

Usually, among my faithy colleagues, I’m the early adopter for most new toys. Being a DJ in my former life, it’s hard to let the control go, so I’d never given Pandora a look until the Very Rev. Nick Knisely, who’s oh-so-very VERY (heh, had to!) asked me why I hadn’t told him about its musicky goodness. I was caught clueless, and sheepish. See, I use Playlist.com to build embeddable playlists, Blip.fm to microblog my various earworms, iLike.com (via Facebook) to get updates from bands I like, and Last.fm to explore music (and I still use gnod, so there). So, I really didn’t think I needed another music tagging service to keep track of.

Nick+ had mentioned Pandora had iPhone integration so I decided to give it a whirl. Oh, Lord. See, I’m a woman of many genres, and finally I have a way to broadcast all of them on separate channels, tune into whichever I want, and share the results in all their crazy mishmoshedness.

So far I’ve set up Radio Helcat 80s, Radio Helcat Industrial, Radio Helcat Bluegrass and Radio Helcat Modern. And I’m quite sure I’m going to have to set up a Baroque channel, a movie score channel, and .. hmm. Eventually they’re going to have to cut me off.

But they, like every other social music service, totally lack any songs by Modern English other than that one we shall not name. That’s going to be the barometer, for me, of how fabulous a service is, because I will not rest until “Someone’s Calling” gets the love it deserves. (And for that matter, becomes my ring tone.)

No one expects the English Inquisition

Published by Helen | Filed under Anglicanism, Faith

Ruth Gledhill, reporting on yesterday’s developments at Lambeth, links the Anglican Faith and Order Commission to–well–fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, an almost fanatical devotion to, um, the Archbishop (at least, I think that’s what she’s saying), and nice purple uniforms.

Bishops are urging the setting up of an Anglican Faith and Order Commission to give “guidance” on controversial issues such as same-sex blessings and gay ordinations.

The commission was put forward as a proposal this week to the 650 bishops attending the Lambeth Conference as a way of preserving the future unity of the Anglican Communion. Insiders compared it with the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the body formerly headed by the present Pope as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and previously known as the Holy Office or Inquisition.

…

The proposals are a sign of how the Anglican Communion is centralising its authority in an attempt to prevent further schismatic events such as the consecration of a gay bishop.

Although he will resist describing himself as such, the effect of all these measures, if they are successfully implemented, will be to turn the Archbishop of Canterbury into a de facto Anglican Pope.

Seems like the press is all out of whack over this, but as my colleagues at the Episcopal Cafe point out, this is a HUGE leap, so say the least, so, uhhh — really. Don’t expect the English Inquisition.

Less snarky post on the Lead later.

The power of nature

Published by Helen | Filed under Life, Nature, Speculative Fiction, Writing

Last night, I was headed west on Interstate 66 at about 8 pm; looming ahead of me was something dark and menacing. While yammering into my cellphone to Utterz about it, I observed that being forced off the grid brings out my “voice,” that is, my writing voice. I started on this whole intarwebz thing 13 years ago wanting to meet and learn from other writers, after all.

Oh, but you do write, you say. You entertain us with this thing called blog and you have several hundred published articles blah blah blah. Yep. But I also have a slew of unpublished short stories and two unfinished novels.

And it may be that I’m an essay writer, after all. There’s something about being about to channel creative energy through one’s own experience; it’s something many writers do in terms of adapting their lives to fiction. But I seem to prefer reporting on the experience over distilling its essence and remixing it into fiction.

But then a storm like last night happens, and I find myself huddling in a corner of the library’s shelter area, a small section of the offices at the very center of the building, and had exactly 10 minutes left on my laptop battery. I wrote this on my private (but still online) journal to explain the difference between the energy I was feeling and the energy everyone else was putting off:

what’s really funny is listening to everyone say “I just saw major lightning!” Yeah. I saw a wall of charcoal-colored sky with the disco lights on full blast, an army of water marching with malice in its collective, soot-encrusted heart. I blinked.

I’d revise that now to say that I tried to stare down that wall to better illustrate what I mean by “I blinked,” but aside from that, yeah. A violent thunderstorm that eats the sky like that is like nature throwing an anarchistic disco party, and I wasn’t inclined to dance.

Random music on the streets of Asheville

Published by Helen | Filed under Bluegrass, Diocese of Virginia, Music, Music from the Streets, North Carolina, Out and About

Now that I have a Flip camera, one of the ways I’m most empowered to share things I discover with you is through video. Now, I’ve always been a journalist of the writerly kind, so this kind of media is a bit new to me, but I think I’ve got a strong first entry for you: a bluegrass band called Bear Down Easy. According to their MySpace page:

Bear Down Easy was forged in October of 2006 by five ambitious musicians eager to explore the realms of acoustic music. Our original members included Cole Sigmon on bass, Lucas Nelson on lead guitar and banjo, Andy Burke on mandolin, Paul Stroebel on fiddle, and Ian Mulrenin on guitar. When our talented bassist skipped town to work on a fishing boat, his position was quickly filled by Jonah Freedman. As such, our original vision remains, combining original tunes with traditional bluegrass, folk, gospel, and blues. Bear Down Easy lives and performs in Asheville, NC and looks forward to taking its act on the road in the future.

So not only am I a come-lately fan of bluegrass (in the past 2-3 years), I’m well-connected in the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia, and our bishop has a real love of bluegrass, and while I missed his bluegrass festival this year, I’m going to be sure to tag this in such a way that hopefully he’ll check this out, and lots of other folks will as well. Because even though my specialty is 80s alternative music, I loves me some bluegrass when I’m in country girl mode. This song is called “I Never Got My Dear John” (with an “allrighty” from your truly). We’re standing in front of an office building on Haywood Ave. in Asheville, where the band had set up to play an evening set, and Chris and I wandered up and… welllll…….quite the crowd gathered round by the end.

So, without further ado, a new feature here at helenmosher.com: music from the streets, with Bear Down Easy:

Strange places

Published by Helen | Filed under Music, North Carolina, Out and About, Travel

I haven’t been able to take a decent road trip in a long time. I spend so much of my “vacation” downtime in Philadelphia that even the backchannel routes I take to get there are becoming overly familiar. In those cases, it’s easy to take for granted the journey, especially when the destination has so much energy.

I’m presently in semirural North Carolina, just far enough outside of Charlotte, talking up all our creative pieces. from Etsy and knitting to comedy to public speaking and radio broadcasting with Xiane. I’m here while my son is hanging out in Chapel Hill with his friend.

It’s great hanging out with another retired DJ who’s contemplating going back behind the decks in a virtual environment. I just wish I had a better mixer than i-Tunes at the moment. While my focus remains primarily 80s alternative music (in fact, I registered http://dontyouforgetabout.me yesterday during the .me domain rush while everyone else was trying to get meme.me and aweso.me and all those other .me puns), I there’s a lot of other music I really love, everything from trip-hop and dub to bluegrass and old-timey. Plus I’ll always be just a touch of gothy punky gothpunk because, well, I am, even if I’m showing up in Good Housekeeping next month.

Oh, yeah, I’m showing up in Good Housekeeping next month, speaking of strange places.

And strange places brings us back to the point of this post: When I go to Philadelphia, the path is well-worn in my memory, soothing and comforting. In particular, some portions of the journey still trigger the memory of my journey out of Virginia in 1999, of learning to walk and fly on my own, and it’s a feeling of victory, of redemption. Those are good feelings, but nostalgic; and the drive to Philadelphia is mostly a chore to get to the only place that loves me as much as I love it.

But random road trips like the one I’m on now, where on a whim I decided to visit a friend I hadn’t seen in a long time (and last night, also on a whim, landing in BeckySays’s living room where we chatted until the sun had nearly gone down), and where every turn brings new discoveries–and I didn’t have the camera out today to catch such gems as the dollar store version of a car dealership where no car is more than $995–it’s trips like this where the journey is the destination, and as such, are the best kind.

Follow me on Utterz for media posts tomorrow as Xiane and I visit Asheville, NC.