[1357] in Humor
HUMOR? Brother URL
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Andrew A. Bennett)
Fri Mar 22 14:25:28 1996
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Fri, 22 Mar 1996 13:49:20 EST
From: "Andrew A. Bennett" <abennett@MIT.EDU>
Ya gotta love it...
-Drew
Date: Fri, 22 Mar 1996 16:03:14 +0000 (GMT)
From: Espacionaute Spiff domine! <MATOSSIAN@aries.colorado.edu>
Date: Thu, 21 Mar 1996 09:05:01 -0500 (EST)
From: Keith Bostic <bostic@bsdi.com>
Forwarded-by: UDSD007@DSIBM.OKLADOT.STATE.OK.US (Mike.Andrews)
Forwarded-by: "Carol J. Cannon" <cjcannon@neuheim.ucdavis.edu>
Forwarded-by: John McCartney <scorch@mtvmail-114.Corp.Sun.COM>
Forwarded-by: owner-antir@mail.orst.edu
ANCIENT ART GOES MODERN: MONKS PROFIT BY ILLUMINATING WEB SITES
(Elizabeth Cohen, NY Times)
ALBIQUIU, NM -- At Christ in the Desert, a Benedictine monastery tucked
between stark mesas, 24 monks follow the routine of prayer and labor that
has sustained their order for 1500 years.
They clean, chop wood, weave, carve icons, bake bread, and design sites
on the Internet's World Wide Web.
"This work goes back to the ancient tradition of the scribes, taking
information and making it beautiful, into art, said Brother Mary-Aquinas,
30, a bespectacled monk who was once a systems analyst in Denver. "In a
certain sense, the Web and what will happen in the next decade is a return
to that tradition."
Making art out of words is nothing new for the order: as long ago as the
sixth century, Benedictine monks worrked in the scriptorium, or writing
rooms, of Italian monasteries creating illuminated manuscripts from the
Bible and classical texts.
But for a community that has dwelt in isolation, going online was not
simple.
Before they could embark on their mission to bring the tradition of
illuminated manuscripts to the Internet, the monks, who range in age from
their 20s to their 70s, had to bring a few worldly necessities to their
remote home along the Chama River in the Sangre de Christo Mountains, 75
miles north of Santa Fe.
They added to their array of solar panels to generate extra power for 12
personal computers, some of them donated, found an Internet service
provider and bought a telephone.
These upgrades were matters of economic necessity. "Twelve new brothers
joined our monastery in 1994 and 1995, and we needed to find a new source
of income," said Brother Aquinas, who is the director of the Scriptorium
at Christ in the Desert.
In fact, the monastery, which was founded in 1964, now has 24 monks.
"For years it was small--3 to 4 monks--- and we could get by on revenues
from our guest house and our gift shop," Aquinas said.
"Then we got on the Internet---it seemed a good opportunity to supplement
our library so the monks could do scholarly work --- and we found out
about the Web. It seemed like a good way to supplement our income since
it is difficult to find creative work that adapts to the monastic
schedule."
Their home page (http://www.technet.nm.org/pax.html) beckons with bright
colors and a style that borrows as much from modern religious art as it
does from the medieval tradition of illumination.
"Welcome to Christ in the Desert," it reads, providing a link to a virtual
monk, Brother URL, who serves as the online guide to the monastery. (The
virtual monk's name is derived from the initials for "universal resource
locator," the form addresses take on the World Wide Web.)
In real life, the guide to the monastery is Brother Andre, the monastery's
guest master.
Online, Brother URL gives directions to various places: General
information about the monastery, the giftshop, the reservation area for
the guest house and an information center for people interested in joining
the monastery.
It also indulges in a discreet advertisement, letting readers know how to
hire the monks to design a hand-printed and illuminated Web site.
Since their site went up last May, a windfall of requests for their
beautiful hand-lettered Web sites and home pages---at $65 an hour for
programming and $110 an hour for art work--- have been pouring in. The
hand lettering is done on canvas, and the illuminations are scanned into
the computers before being incorporated into the Web pages.
Before the monastery's Web site began, the annual income of the monks was
about $48,00 a year. The revenues from their new occupation will probably
increase that to $200,000 this year, Aquinas said.
The monks also hope to be chosen to design Web pages for the Vatican.
These would include all of the Pope's speeches and encyclicals, and
material from the Vatican's museums and libraries. They hope the pages
will be added to the Vatican's current modest Web offering.
