During a recent performance of Mike Daisey’s Invincible Summer, a group of 87 adults and teenagers who identified themselves as a Christian group, but who were there from a public high school, walked out en masse, refusing to explain themselves or talk to Daisey at all.

As they left, one of them poured a bottle of water all over the handwritten notes that were the only copy of the script that Daisey used.

Later, Daisey contacted both the administrator of the school and the “man” who had defaced his work.

I ask him to do one thing for me. I ask him to talk to everyone in the group together, parents and students alike, and talk to them about what happened. I do not even ask him to apologize, nor do I dictate what he should say–that’s his prerogative. I simply ask that he open the door for the conversation be allowed to happen. I believe in the truth, and I want him to let the group speak its mind to him and to itself. I do not know if he did this–I hope that he did, and I will continue to hope.

And then I forgive him. He is very quiet–he is obviously shocked. And I tell him, “I want you to remember that a liberal atheist has forgiven you today. I don’t want you to ever forget that, as long as you live, do not forget what happened here. I don’t have God behind me, but I speak for myself, and I forgive you for myself, and for you. Never forget this.”

He said that he would. I wished him good luck, good luck with everything. He wished me the same.

Thanks to Laura for the link.

One of TalkingPointsMemo.com’s advertisers is HistoryShots, which creates posters that show such things as the Moon Race, Political Party History, and other neat stuff.

Then you might want to check out “WE ARE ALL PHOTOGRAPHERS NOW”, an exhibit at the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland. I submitted my picture of the Cineplex in Downtown Seattle: if they use it, I get a picture of my picture. :-)

And caladan_dd strikes again with a beautiful “sketch” of the battle from Order of the Phoenix…

In any case, if you’ve ever listened to Sunday in the Park with George or admired Georges Seurat’s paintings for other reasons, you need to go check out this flickr set of a group of friends who recreated the painting Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte photographically.

I’ve seen the link floating around, but I was finally motivated to post by seeing it linked in the flickr Blog.