Hugh Hollowell

Trying to build a a better world.

You need a website

This essay published

One advantage of being older is that you see ebbs and flows – you remember Friendster, MySpace, Twitter back when it was fun, and Google Reader.

Social media sites come and go. Websites come and go. It is popular to tell young folks that, before they post all their business online, to remember that the internet is forever.

But it isn’t. Not really.

I spent a few years in the middle of the last decade making websites for folks who wanted to maximize their appearance in search results. I can’t find any of those sites now. I can’t find any of the phrases I wrote, that I invested hours and hours of labor to craft. It is as if they never happened.

This is why you need a spot on the internet that you control.

And no, I don’t mean a Facebook page.

I know several activists who have been put in Facebook Jail – where they wrote content that offended someone, and as a result, were blocked from posting to Facebook for 30 days and in some cases, banned all together. In addition, multiple times this decade Facebook has changed its algorithms for how posts show up, especially posts from pages that represent businesses or organizations. Posts from pages like that get a fraction of the regular reach, in an attempt to get you to purchase ads to promote your page.

This, of course, privileges organizations that have the budget to do that, and not small nonprofits, activists, and bloggers.

The answer is the same as it has been for at least 30 years – you need your own website, and your own mailing list. Another day I will talk about your mailing list, but today, I want to focus on why you need a website.

You need your own website because you need a place where you control the images, the text, and most importantly, a place where you own the content.  All the hours you have spent writing Facebook posts, all the contacts you have made, all the emotional labor you have invested in that platform can disappear anytime they decide.

So you need your own website. This is your permanent home on the internet. It doesn’t mean that Facebook or snapchat or Instagram are bad – they aren’t, per se. They are just tools you use to point people to your permanent website. Tools change. But your website is your space. You have control over what it looks like, how minimal (or maximal) it is, and, for the most part, you can write whatever you want.

The other thing about having your own website is it is platform agnostic. Have you ever written something on Facebook, and wished you could have shared it with your friend who isn’t on Facebook? By writing it on your own website, you get a permalink, and anyone in the world can link to it and share it on any platform they want.

I know it’s easier to post directly to Facebook, but the price for that is that now you gave up control. One way I have combined the informality of Facebook with the permanency of my own site is what I call backposting. When I write something I think I want to keep and be able to share later, I cut and paste it to my blog on my website, thus preserving it and making it shareable, should I so desire.

So you need a website. The bad news is that it will cost you something – but the good news is that it is less than you spend right now for an Amazon Prime subscription.

You need a domain name, and a blog hosted using WordPress software.  You can do all that at a place like name.com for less than $50 for the year. I think it’s worth that to control your own space.

On Being Mennonite

This essay published

I have told the story before of my flirting with Buddhism in my 20’s (I loved Jesus, but needed to see other people), and how a Buddhist monk told me I was a shitty Buddhist, but that everything I was looking for in Buddhism could be found in Christianity. He introduced me to Thomas Merton, who introduced me to Dorothy Day, and then it was off to the races.

What I haven’t said is that Christianity seemed repugnant to me. I mean, I loved Merton and Day, but it was really obvious I couldn’t be Catholic. It was early days for my developing social conscience, but I couldn’t be part of a system that made sure I would never be led by women. I was really clear the Evangelicalism of my childhood held nothing for me. It was not interested in answering any of the questions I had, and their focus on the angry God who must be placated – the god who was pissed and took it out on his kid instead of on me – nauseated me.

But when I found the Mennonites, it was like coming home. As I said when I was credentialed for ministry, “It’s not so much that being Mennonite made sense to me, but rather it made sense of me.”

The other night in a meeting, I said that being a Mennonite was the last stop for me. That were I not able to be Mennonite, I couldn’t be Christian. I was on the way out the door when I found this place, and if I can’t be here, then I will keep on going.

There was a gasp in the room, a room filled with Mennonites.

Obviously, there is some hyperbole there, but the reasons I became Mennonite are still there for me:

  • The centrality of the example of Jesus.
  • The practice of peacemaking and non-coercion.
  • The idea that God is best experienced and scripture best understood in community.
  • The separation of church and state.
  • Choosing the words of Jesus (specifically the Sermon on the Mount and The Sermon on the Plain) as the “canon within the canon” (to use a Lutheran phrase) instead of Paul’s letter to the Romans.

There are other reasons, but those are the main ones that drew me in. And I recognize that some of those things can be found elsewhere. I know some Baptist folk who agree with all of that, but it isn’t because they are Baptist. And I know some Catholics who would agree with most of that, but it isn’t because they are Catholic. But all of those things are pretty baked into Mennonite life and theology.

And, I will be the first to say that like pretty much everyone else, Mennonites look better on paper than in reality. Some of the most coercive, passive-aggressive folk I have ever met were Mennonites. You can find Mennonite churches with US flags in them (although, thankfully, they are rare) and some Mennonites are so desperate for acceptance by the mainstream culture they have become Evangelical in their thinking.

But none of that matters to me, because we have an obligation, when examining a system, to see what it aspires to be, rather than what its current state is. And the paper version of what it means to be Mennonite is what I fell in love with, and converted to, and the way I now understand what it means to be Christian – or put another way, I’m not interested in being a Christian who doesn’t hold those values as central to their faith, or belonging to a community of faith where those things are not central.

A friend once said he was baptist, not Baptist, and that the lower-case b was important to him. I feel the same way – I am not Mennonite ™, but mennonite. It is sometimes hard for me to stay with Mennonite Church USA, and I know that there have been times it has been hard for them to stay with me. We may not always tarry together, and I don’t judge others for having already left.

Five things that made me a better cook

This essay published

NB: A new feature here is that on Saturday I will share five things around a theme. Maybe it will be five books I like, or five funny cat videos, or five Saturday morning cartoons I miss. 

Anyone who knows me knows that I love to cook.  It’s part of who I am, how I care for myself and my family, and fundamental to how I see the world. But cooking is one of those things that is easy to do, but also easy to do better. Sauteing with olive oil and butter is better in almost every way than sauteing in canola oil, and it requires but only a smidgen more of care. Likewise, inserting shallots instead of onion makes almost anything better with only minimal expense and care.

The other day I was helping a friend come up with a list of things they needed for their new kitchen, and it made me think about the things I use that are not essential, but are simple things that elevate my game. Here are five of them, with links to examples in case you need gift ideas for your friend who cook.

A salt cellar (filled with kosher salt): Almost everyone undersalts their food. And miss me with health concerns – the huge problem is all the processed food we eat, which is rife with sodium. Your blood pressure isn’t too high because you salt your pasta water.And Kosher salt is great because it doesn’t contain iodide, which is helpful in preventing goiters but hurtful on flavor

Having an open container of kosher salt next to the stove so you can grab a pinch or three and add it to your pot will make you more likely to do it, and your food will taste better. Mine came from Target and I can’t find it on their website, but I like this one and this one.

A pepper mill: Of course you can just use ground pepper from a shaker, but if you do, it won’t taste as good. Pepper begins to degrade when you grind it, and being able to grind it on the spot as you need it will mean you are more likely to do it.  I have this one.

The New Techniques cookbook, from Jacques Pepin:  Trussing your chicken is a simple elevator. So is crushing your garlic and seasoning under the chicken skin. You can get step by step guides to do virtually anything in the kitchen in this book.

“You know what? If Jacques Pépin tells you this is how you make a fucking egg? The matter is settled, fuck nuts.” – Anthony Bourdain

A french chef knife: You really only need 3 knives to do almost anything you need to do in a kitchen, and this is the king of them all – a chef knife, probably with an 8 inch blade. Most folks aren’t intentional with their knives, and if you don;t have a good knife with good balance, you will take shortcuts and be lazy, which means your food won;t be as good or as pretty.

All my knives are antiques and high carbon steel, but if I were to buy a new one today, it would probably be this one that all my friends have and rave about.

An immersion blender: I was late to the game on this one, but it makes making soups so much simpler, and the whisk attachment mean you will actually make fresh whipped cream or meringue. It’s easy to clean. (full disclosure: I got this one for Christmas a few years ago, but have only have ever used the whisk and blender attachments) This was a huge game changer for me.

What say you? Are there tools you use in the kitchen you wouldn’t be caught without?

Poverty changes your brain

This essay published

The ways poverty affects your brain, even when you are no longer in poverty, is unreal.

Like the feeling of fear when you see a truck from the water department rolling slowly down your street when you KNOW you paid your bill and they are not coming to your house.

The pit of your stomach shame when the register is broke and your card is declined at the store when you know to the penny how much is in your account and you KNOW it isn’t your fault.

Then the shame you feel when you realize it declined when you are buying a bottle of wine and some nice cheese for a party at your house, and you wonder if people are judging you for what you are trying to buy. How dare you, poor person, enjoy things!

The panic you feel when you are getting low on food, even though you have money in the bank and live near the grocery store.

That you will, for the rest of your life, always prefer mushy green beans from a can instead of the much healthier frozen or fresh green beans.

Berating yourself for buying the good olive oil instead of the generic, even when you can afford it.

The constant feeling that if there is money in your checking account, it is because you have a bill you have forgotten to pay.

Having a high resistance to paying for quality. Yes, you know the more expensive, better quality item will last longer and is thus a better value. But you also know the comfort of paying $30 for something instead of paying $65 and having $35 more dollars in the bank.

It really does change your brain.