Tag Archives: bridgegate

Before Bridgegate: Bennett Barlyn

Faith and Social Justice, Uncategorized, , , , ,

10-5 Cover & Front (1-7).indd

“We were there first,” says Bennett Baryln. “Bridgegate has been fascinating because it lifts the veil of what we saw in Hunterdon, the taking over of agencies to serve only political ends.”

Barlyn finally got his just due — a $1.5 million payment from New Jersey settling the case against, as the U.S. 1 article states, a  “Bridgegate-like web — that includes small town shenanigans connecting to statehouse leaders, respected legal professionals getting fired, and a lone lawyer’s quest to find the truth.”

Dan Aubrey wrote the investigative article in this week’s U.S. 1  here. Aubrey’s first person similar investigation from 2014 is here. If you are a fan of Governor Chris Christie, either article will make you very uncomfortable. How could this happen? Bridgegate may have the answer.

Craig Barnes: The Writer and the Whirlwind

Faith and Social Justice, ,

seminary photoDespair is always at hand and it is the demon most difficult to exorcise.

Words haunt you from the basement of your soul. Angels or demons make their way into the souls of your readers, carried by your words.

In the encounter with Job, God took Job’s preoccupation with Why and replaced it with WHO.

God refuses to be accountable to us. God is determined NOT to give us hope. Hope comes from the turn in the plot, because we have dropped the question Why — because our hearts are so full of WHO.

So said Craig Barnes, president of Princeton Theological Seminary at the opening worship for the Frederick Buechner writing workshop at Princeton Theological Seminary. He used two texts (Job 38: 1-7 and Psalm 119: 105-112) for his sermon entitled “The Writer and the Whirlwind.” Several at this workshop asked for my notes, so here they are, as much of what Barnes said as I could write down. (Corrections welcome). Barnes’ audience was 250 plus writers (some clergy, some lay people) from around the country. 

CRAIG BARNES: . 

Job has two chapters of narrative followed by 35 chapters of lament. When it is your life that is interrupted, the chapters are long. Grief, hurt, anger returns.

Words were used by the . . . .

Messenger: disaster

Friends: judgment

Elijah: anger at bad theology

Job: wanting to prove his integrity, Job asks “why?”, complains he does not deserve this fate, he is devoted to a capricious God who makes no sense.

When YOU write, yours are not the first words people encounter.

People are hurt by words, people are inspired by words.

Angels or demons make their way into the souls of your readers, carried on the backs of your words.

As children, we learned that “Sticks and stones don’t break my bones.” What a crock.

Words haunt you from the basement of your soul.

Writers know the power of words.

Ps: 119: words have power to lead us to hope and to salvation.

Your word is a lamp for my feet,  a light on my path.

But even God’s words have a modest intention: lamp to feet, light to path — he gives us just enough to take the next step. Mary at the Annunciation — it was Grace that she did not know the future. Job did not have much light.

Job lost everything, including his former vision of God. But he is not in despair — he refuses to curse God and live (despite the encouragement of his wife!)

Despair is always at hand and it is the demon most difficult to exorcise.

 There is a “designer despair” shown by Tarantino, Manson, Jerry Springer, and the models for J Crew who seem to show “all the cool people are sad.” Versus the old-time Sears catalog with a model that smiled, selling jeans.

Message to teens: “there is no such thing as a bad idea” is one of the worst ideas. Despair is a bad idea.

Someone who knows how to write needs to interject words of hope and light that can take on despair!

In the desert, the Hebrews could not go back. They had to move forward to the Promised Land, but they needed a new vision of God.

Where is your own Promised Land? Do you have wrong numbers, wrong expectations, walls crumbling or at least leaking? What God most wants to give you — and your reader — is God!

God talks. God does not answer “why.” God says ‘remember who you are, remember who I am.”

In the encounter with Job, God took Job’s preoccupation with Why and replaced it with WHO.

So much of what people need in 35 chapters of WHY is, they need a better question. Job drops the Why. Explanations, justifications of integrity, don’t matter. Salvation — especially from despair — requires a new vision of God.

But the human side of it is that you have to struggle through it to be authentic. The story curve, is down, then up. After two chapters of telling how Job got there, the rest of the book is the recovery plan, a reoriented life and  anew vision of God is the turning point.

God refuses to be accountable to us. God is determined NOT to give us hope. Hope comes from the turn in the plot, because we have dropped the question Why — because our hearts are so full of WHO.

Bridgegate Journalist: At the Chamber

Around Town, ,

EScottStudio

So far, Eric Scott has been the only journalist to get a personal interview with Governor Chris Christie on the Bridgegate scandal. He is the news director for NJ 101.5, and speaks at the Princeton Regional Chamber on Thursday, April 3, at 11:30 a.m. For details on Scott and what he will say, here is the U.S. 1 story.

“Just like that, Mr. Aubrey fell into reputation’s ditch, and the Christie administration piled dirt atop him. Except — and this is not incidental to our story — Mr. Aubrey did nothing wrong.”

This is an excerpt from Michael Powell’s January 28 column in the New York Times entitled “A Lieutenant Governor, An Artist, and the Portrait of a Smear.”

It was written in response to the January 15 U.S. 1 cover story, Bully Pulpit, written by my colleague, Dan Aubrey. As editor Rich Rein says in his column today, Aubrey wasn’t eager to revisit an unjust lawsuit. “Then Aubrey and I both realized that his story might not connect the dots between Christie and Guadagno, but it would provide another dot that might help paint the full picture of this administration.”

Following that cover story in U.S. 1, economic guru Paul Krugman, a Princeton resident, wrote about it in his blog post ,  pointing out that though print media struggles, print media reporters are important, and that a mere transportation reporter broke the “Bridgegate” story.

Powell credits the Star Ledger with investigating and clearing Aubrey of any evidence of wrong doing. Powell looked further and found — Lo! — Guadagno’s attacks on the New Jersey State Council on the Arts were attacks on herself. “The lieutenant governor and Department of State, it turns out, had control of the Arts Council’s spending all along. Her divisions signed off on every payment.”

 

 

An article in this week’s U.S. 1 Newspaper, by Dan Aubrey, alerts us to a reception at the Princeton Public Library today (Saturday, January 18) from 3 to 6 p.m. it is for “Concentric Circles of Influence: the Queenston Press, The Woman Portfolio,” an exhibition that was inspired by the United Nation designations of 1975 as International Women’s Year.

Aubrey’s cover story, Defending the Arts Amid a Culture of Fear, has a much different tone. It tells about his ‘bridge closing moment,” on March 25, 2011, and if that sounds familiar, yes, it is about his battle with the Christie administration. Writes Aubrey.

While the current revelations about the Christie administration waging retribution on Fort Lee may be an eye opener for some, it is something I have lived through.

His 4,000 word account is an eye opener. Read it in hard copy or read it here.