ABULAFIA






		2 0 0 3 OCTOBER 03 OCTOBER 02 OCTOBER 01 SEPTEMBER AUGUST 02 AUGUST 01 JULY 02 JULY 01 JUNE 02 JUNE 01 MAY 02 MAY 01 APRIL 02 APRIL 01 MARCH FEBRUARY JANUARY WEDDING L I N K S AAA Abulafia Boardwalk Bread CHN Christ Lutheran Church Neighborhood Research Institute Old Oaks Olde Towne Polyphony INTP Business First Business First Daily Edition Call and Post Columbus Alive Columbus Dispatch Columbus Free Press Columbus Post Communicator News The Daily Reporter Inner Art The Lantern The Other Paper Suburban News Publications Short North Gazette NBC4 Columbus WSYX 6 10TV WBNS ONN BBC World Service CNN Christian Science Monitor The Guardian IndiaTimes Newsday New York Times StarTribune Washington Post Washington Times AfricaPundit William F. Buckley Jr. Command Post Crooked Timber Daniel W. Drezner John Ellis David Frum Hit & Run Instapundit Mickey Kaus Joshua Micah Marshall The Note OxBlog Virginia Postrel Wes Pruden Jim Romenesko Andrew Sullivan Volokh Conspiracy Day by Day Doonesbury Ted Rall Peter Steiner Tom Toles Tom Tommorow Rob Pegoraro Matt Drudge Cronaca Languagehat Language Log Open Brackets PaleoJudaica Candid Colors Communication Arts Conscientious Ecotone Wiki Smoky Mountain Journal Acme Art Company Ballet Met CCAD Columbus Arts Columbus Arts Festival Columbus Metropolitan Library Columbus Museum of Art Columbus Symphony Dialogue Franklin Park Conservatory Glass Axis Music in the Air Opera Columbus Thurber House Wexner Center City of Bexley City of Columbus Columbus City Council Columbus Police Columbus Public Schools OTENA egroup OTENA-NIC egroup OTENA-tours egroup OTENA-trustees egroup Old Oaks egroup Ohio Parsons Blockwatch egroup				> NOVEMBER 02 s N O V E M B E R 8 , 2 0 0 3 Learned how to make tea With honey, even Eclipse party AP Photo from cnn.com \| CNN story Janet's house It was cold, but with a large bonfire to warm by when stepping away from the telescope There were several dogs for Charlie to play with, though Duke was more eager to play with him than vice versa, and a little Jack Russell terrier had issues with Charlie -- they didn't get along He did seem quite interested in the alpacas, whose fleece was incredibly soft. Tallapia (I wanted to write asparagus, too) Green beans, rice Chihuly at the Conservatory Franklin Park Conservatory We picked up Amy's mother at Mike & Jen's and met Mom at the conservatory. Mom got to tour it a third time, and found several hidden pieces she hadn't seen before. AESQUE \| Link Three galleries of photos f N O V E M B E R 7 , 2 0 0 3 Donatos A pizza shop in German Village couldn't figure out if we were trying to call them or not, so we gave up. The Donatos pizza was very good -- they even have a pickup window at the downtown location now. Lost in Translation Website At the Drexel, which was nice; in the Mini-Me theater, which wasn't. The screen, which you are right under whether in the front or back, is not centered on the seats -- so that from one whole side of the aisle you nearly see the screen in profile. Before the previews, (several of which looked interesting to both of us -- perhaps some kind of record), Mayor Coleman urged the audience to go to the polls on Nov. 4. This would perhaps have been more effective prior to Nov. 4, and might even have helped the dismal turnout to top 26%. We both enjoyed the film. Amy liked the whispered climax, which left the viewer to speculate on what was said. I grew irritated and bored as they went from nightclub to nightclub, though as would have the same emotions if I did that myself, perhaps it was actually successful storytelling. We tried the hummus at the Radio Café prior to the show and even survived the man who had to order before us because his movie was starting right then. Amy to Columbus r N O V E M B E R 6 , 2 0 0 3 • Rhapsody in Orange \| Link "There is no blue without yellow and without orange," said van Gogh in 1888. The Secondary Colors \| Alexander Theroux [If I am blue and you are yellow, all we need is orange? Nasturtium, gladioli, cosmos? Poppies?] Prince of Orange? A Chinese proverb goes: "the Moon cannot be full for 100 days and flowers cannot be in full colors for over 100 days". But the national flower of Burma – the prince of orange – because of its long blossom period, is called "a flower in full color for over 100 days". Prince of orange is an evergreen shrub, and its blossom period lasts from summer to autumn. The flower blossom out for quite a long time but its colors would never fade. ... The Yisteha people of Burma have a quite romantic and interesting custom of marriage. They live along waters since ancient times. If a family has a young girl, they often build a floating garden with bamboos or woods on the water surface nearby home before their daughter’s marriage. The family would plant prince of orange in every place of the garden and tie the garden with chains or ropes to the banks. On the day when the young girl marries off, they would cut off the ropes and let the garden float downstream. The bridegroom would begin to wait for his bride from early morning in the downstream; when the small garden with his bride float near, the bridegroom would grasp the rope and push the boat garden ashore; then he would take his bride home to hold their marriage ceremony. Science Museums of China Orange is a bit garish, a little too loud, a shocked "O," (like the pumpkin from this year's carving party, or the Edvard Munch painting "The Scream," with its primal orange skies). Orange is round; orange as an orange, orange as a pumpkin; a fallish, autumnal, Halloween color. The true origins of Halloween lie with the ancient Celtic tribes who lived in Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Brittany. For the Celts, November 1 marked the beginning of a new year and the coming of winter. The night before the new year, they celebrated the festival of Samhain, Lord of the Dead. During this festival, Celts believed the souls of the dead -- including ghosts, goblins and witches -- returned to mingle with the living. In order to scare away the evil spirits, people would wear masks and light bonfires. ... In 835, Pope Gregory IV moved the celebration for all the martyrs (later all saints) from May 13 to November 1. The night before became known as All Hallow’s Even or “holy evening.” Eventually the name was shortened to the current Halloween. On November 2, the Church celebrates All Souls Day. American Catholic.org All Saint's Day is celebrated by Roman Catholics, the Orthodox, Anglicans, and Lutherans. However, because of their differing understandings of the identity and function of the saints, what these churches do on the Feast of All Saints differs widely. For Roman Catholics, the Orthodox, and to some extent, Anglicans, All Saints is a day to remember, thank God for, but also to venerate and pray to the saints in heaven for various helps. For Lutherans the day is observed by remembering and thanking God for all saints, both dead and living. It is a day to glorify Jesus Christ, who by his holy life and death has made the saints holy through Baptism and faith. Calendar updates - U.S. Holidays The House of Orange (from which Andrew, a one-time inhabitant of this house, claimed vague descent), was itself instrumental in Catholic/Protestant military disputes. William of Orange (died 1584, and his descendants) led the Dutch against the Catholic monarch Phillip II of Spain. William [III] married Mary Stuart , daughter to future king James II. In 1688 William embarked on a mission to depose his Catholic father-in-law from the English throne. He and his wife were crowned King and Queen of England on April 11 ,1689 . With the accession to the English throne he became the most powerful sovereign on Earth ... Wikipedia It's a stretch -- but gold is close to orange -- the schools colors of the College of William and Mary in Virginia, named after the patronage of the King and Queen, are green, gold and silver. How did people refer to the color orange before the discovery of the fruit? ... Thus, for instance, from the Secretis secretorum of the early fifteenth century: "Whos colour ys gold, lyke that ys meen bytwen reed and yalwe." The Secondary Colors \| Alexander Theroux So maybe gold's not that far off. Another way to refer to the color was tawny, as the ferocious, teeth-gnashing beast in Edgar Allan Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue -- with its hyphenated name appearing virtually as anagrams of orange -- is described as "a very large, tawny Ourang-Outang of the Bornese species." The Secondary Colors \| Alexander Theroux Ever since reading The Murders in the Rue Morgue I cannot help but think how much more wonderful Ourang-Outang is in appearance and sound than the current orangutan. I have never been to Borneo, but I was (relatively) close, on Java, in Indonesia. Ourang-Outang has the wonderfully musical doubled sound of many words or expressions in the languages there. Is there a sound of orange? Theroux nominates the high-C. Of Louis Armstrong and that last poignant note that comes out of Mimi's lovely throat as she exits with Rodolfo in the first act of La Bohème. Cs in the middle registers I see as definitely yellow, but sliding off, merging into, melding into orange, as they become higher and more showy. Now if I can just reconcile that with the key of G, my ever-blue key, we could be back to Van Gogh's essential -- the yellow, the orange, and the now-possible blue. It's a small world After all it's space that's big The spacecraft Voyager 1, launched in 1977, has become the first human emissary to approach the boundary region where the sun's domain ends and the vastness of interstellar space begins. Voyager 1 craft nears edge of solar system \| Washington Post What's wrong with paper ballots? Diebold, one of the major manufacturers of electronic voting machines, prefers to threaten people who question the security of their machines with lawsuits rather than address the shortcomings their own internal documents acknowledge. Nelson Pavlosky, a sophomore at Swarthmore from Morristown, N.J., who put documents online through the campus organization Swarthmore Coalition for the Digital Commons said the cease-and-desist letters were “a perfect example of how copyright law can be and is abused by corporations like Diebold” to stifle freedom of speech. He said that he and other advocates wished the college had decided to fight instead of take down the files. “We feel like they wimped out,” Mr. Pavlosky said. But with each takedown, the publicity grows through online discussion and media coverage, and more and more people join the fray, giving Diebold’s efforts a Sorcerer’s Apprentice feel. The advocates, meanwhile, are finding that civil disobedience carries risks. One student who posted the documents and has received a letter, Zac Elliott of Indiana University, said, “I’m starting to worry about the ramifications for my entire family if I end up in some sort of legal action.” ... “Are these companies staffed by folks completely ignorant of computer security,” [Prof. Rebecca Mercuri, an specialist in election technology who teaches computer science at Bryn Mawr College] said, “or are they just blatantly flaunting that they can breach every possible rule of protocol and still sell voting machines everywhere with impunity?” File sharing pits copyright against free speech \| NYT Updated wedding pages Wedding Added one more file to the bottom of the page Architectures -- and an interesting color idea In Japan, rethinking the shoe box \| NYT For example, Takaharu Tezuka, 39, and his wife, Yui, 34, designed a minimal, startlingly airy home for themselves in the Denenchofu neighborhood, about 45 minutes by train from downtown, by opening a loftlike room to the elements with wall-size sliding glass doors at both ends. With the doors thrown open, Mount Fuji looms in the distance and fresh air blows through the house, scattering sheaves of sheet music across the floor. Sliding basswood doors close off the bedroom and bathroom from the main space, where the family eats, works and plays the piano. "Children can study here," Mr. Tezuka said. "We can work here. Everything happens in one room." Along one wall is 24 feet of closets, which hold, among other things, 40 blue shirts (his) and 40 red shirts (hers). Buna, their 1-year-old daughter, wears only yellow. [Emphasis added] ... In Japan's most forward-looking new homes, walls and ceilings vanish altogether, replaced by skylights and transparent walls that slide away. Toshiko Mori, chairwoman of the architecture department at the Harvard Design School, said, "The architects compress daily functions, but somewhere it needs a release." A dreary commute I returned home earlier than usual today, leaving work just after 5. It is a time I dread to brave, as the roads are full of people maddly dashing for the interstates, but there were guests and loud discussions and raucous laughter, and I was not even slightly prepared to join in. I was caught behind a cab on Long Street, a dreadful thing in Columbus, where the cab drivers typically drive ten miles per hour below any posted speed limit, slow for green lights, and are less than punctilious in their observance of the designated lanes. This cab exhibited all of these maladies in its progress, or nearly lack thereof, down the street. Columbus is, after all, the city that posts signs (with green (it's ok!) lettering) on downtown streets reminding people that hailing cabs is permitted -- cabs are dispensable, and more likely in the way than useful, to the average resident. J.M. Coetzee \| Link South Africa's reclusive nobel laureate \| Slate Set in an outpost of empire lorded over by the Third Bureau, Waiting for the Barbarians explores the political expediency of the idea of an Enemy. We witness the imperial forces, emboldened by technological hubris, set out to crush the barbarians in the name of saving civilization. Coetzee understands the brittle macho posturing, the deceits and self-deceits that mangle crusades against evil and end up fomenting enemies in the name of crushing them. The military commander ultimately accuses and tortures the novel's narrator, a liberal magistrate, for consorting with the enemy. The magistrate has already been rendered ethically impotent by his own swirling fears and by empire's call for solidarity. Life and Times of Michael K continues Coetzee's fascination with the deforming impact of the Enemy on civic values. Michael K, a simple man who simply wishes to garden, can find no space to live in peace amid a civil war. Wrongly accused of being in league with the guerrillas, K is interned in a prisoner-of-war camp without recourse to legal representation. Return to November Rain: steady, light, and long, A lumbering cold front has also ended the unseasonal highs (70s, even once 80) we were enjoying. w N O V E M B E R 5 , 2 0 0 3 Grandpa was a Preacher Leroy Brownlow Really, it was a horrible book, split up into bite-size anecdotes such that it was impossible to put down. Also, there was the wonder at just how inexplicable the next one might be? Printed in 1969, it does not look worn at all -- possibly unopened, and deservedly so. Links of the day And yesterday, and even last week ( I operate on my own good time and not anyone else's) Camille Paglia \| Camille Speaks! \| Salon This Iraq adventure is a political, cultural and moral disaster for the United States. Every sign was there to read, but the Bush administration is run by blinkered people who are driven by ideology and who do not feel the largeness of the world and its multiplicity of religions, ethnicities and customs. Despite the multicultural ambitions of higher education in the last 25 years, there has been a massive failure in public education. Media negligence also played a huge role in this cataclysm. ... My view -- which is an extreme position -- is that we should get the troops out of Iraq now. But even many liberals are saying, "We're gone too far. We cannot turn back now!" Oh, yes, we can! Get the United Nations in there, and get out! I don't think this thing is worth one more American life -- not with the pressing needs we have at home. Who do people think the U.N. is if not us? The U.N. has no army. The U.N. gets all of its money from member nations, almost 25% from the U.S. (even when we're withholding most of it due to the whims of one senator or another). The U.N. does not have a wonderful track record of command in dangerous situations, and we would still undoubtedly have to provide many of the soldiers on the ground and the money to pay for it. Handing it over to the U.N. is a nice thought, but it wouldn't actually buy us very much. ... I don't personally hate Bush. I think he's sincere and well-meaning. But I feel very sorry for him. Every time I watch him, I feel his suffering, and I suffer with him. But he's out of his depth in this job. His view of the world is painfully simplistic -- like a Wild West video game where the good guys wear white hats and always win. Who she does hate is Donald Rumsfeld, though I think he is doing a decent job modernizing the military and did a fine job overseeing the war in Iraq. What he didn't do was plan for the aftermath -- and whether that's his job or Bush's or someone's to say "this is important," I'm not sure. ... And the Web in my view is a visual medium -- I don't log on to be trapped on a muddy page crammed with indigestible prose. ... As a writer, I'm inspired not just by other writing but by music and art and lines from movies. I think that's what's missing from a lot of blogs. Most bloggers aren't culture critics but political or media junkies preoccupied with pedestrian minutiae and a sophomoric "gotcha" mentality. I find it depressing and claustrophobic. The Web is a wide open space -- voices on it should have energy and vision. es. On Gabriel Gárcia Márquez Francisco Goldman \| In the shadow of the patriarch \| NYT Montiel once told me a story he had heard from García Márquez. For a while there were plans to make a film of his novel ''The Autumn of the Patriarch,'' in which Marlon Brando was to play the dictator. When people involved in the movie's planning came to Mexico to meet with the author in his home, they were accompanied by a tall, pale, taciturn man who sat through the meeting without speaking a word or even introducing himself. Later García Márquez asked about the mysterious visitor and was told that he was J.M. Coetzee, the South African novelist. García Márquez was astounded because he had long regarded Coetzee as one of his favorite contemporary novelists. (That enthusiasm is no secret: another friend told me that after Coetzee won this year's Nobel Prize, García Márquez joked that he had received so many congratulatory messages that he felt as if he had won the prize for a second time.) When the famously publicity-spurning Coetzee was in Mexico City for a literary congress in 1998, I had heard him read. I don't know what inspired that incognito visit to the house, but I could imagine myself doing the same. It seemed a perfect way to satisfy your curiosity about a writer's flesh-and-blood incarnation without interrupting the conversation you have long been having with his books or exposing your own baffling timidity. ... One day in a Guatemala City bookstore, I bought Mario Vargas Llosa's ''García Márquez: Historia de un deicidio,'' his staggering 650-page study of García Márquez and of ''One Hundred Years of Solitude.'' One chapter describes the younger García Márquez's struggles with ''the historical demon'' of political violence in Colombia -- 300,000 had been killed in under 10 years -- and the pressures he and other fiction writers were under to write about it in a politically ''responsible'' and ''realistic'' manner. In an essay addressed to those with whom he might have shared political convictions but not literary ones, García Márquez wrote that to write about the violence in the manner that others demanded would be to produce ''a catalog of cadavers.'' Literature was read by the living, he wrote, not by the dead. People needed something more from a novel than just a description of the reality they already knew too well. It took me years just to begin to understand and resolve some of the riddles posed by those wonderful words, such a rebuke to self-importance, so full of respect for readers. ... Literary influences are perhaps most interesting when they jump borders and languages. García Márquez always listed Faulkner, Kafka and Virginia Woolf among his major influences, along with Latin Americans like Juan Rulfo. In the now familiar logic of Harold Bloom's ''Anxiety of Influence,'' originality in literature is usually a matter of combining at least two unlikely influences. All over the world, García Márquez seems to have provided a part of that equation for writers like Salman Rushdie, Toni Morrison and Ben Okri as well as U.S. Latinos like Oscar Hijuelos. One scholar wrote recently that García Márquez is the most influential writer in contemporary Chinese fiction; in a story by the exiled Iraqi writer Najem Wali, a character rediscovers his city of Basra in Macondo. ... García Márquez's magic realism, derived from the surrealism of tyranny and empty stomachs, is also the massacre that people pretend never happened because it can't be addressed in the newspapers or courts; it is unanswerable power's extravagant appetites; it is the foretold murder an entire town is nightmarishly powerless to prevent. In societies without free expression or recourse to justice, solitary imaginative flights and haunted inner lives are also the voices of the community. In that sense, García Márquez, in his devotion to the profession of journalism and the nurturing of young journalists, and especially in his role as founder of the New Journalism Foundation, which has a school in Cartagena, Colombia, and sponsors workshops and scholarships throughout Latin America, is doing what he can to make the world that inspired much of his fiction obsolete. His refusal to speak out against his old friend Fidel Castro has been a source of controversy, especially in the United States. But it is also significant that the New Journalism Foundation has never taken a workshop to Cuba. Last December, when I gave a class in narrative nonfiction at the school in Cartagena, an administrator told me that they knew that taking the school to Cuba would be a betrayal of their role as uncompromising advocates of a free press. Questions for Noam Chomsky \| NYT How would you explain your large ambition? I am driven by many things. I know what some of them are. The misery that people suffer and the misery for which I share responsibility. That is agonizing. We live in a free society, and privilege confers responsibility. ... Have you considered leaving the United States permanently? No. This is the best country in the world. Photoblogs London and the North Blue Ridge Photos Cold Static Columbus at dusk \| Link The Joseph P. Kinneary Federal Courthouse in downtown Columbus AESQUE More reflections \| Link Pen West, a once-industrial area of Columbus, Ohio Spring-Sandusky interchange Map t N O V E M B E R 4 , 2 0 0 3 Moss defeated For reëlection to the Columbus School Board "It was my time. My number came up," Moss said last night, blaming a coordinated effort by the Democratic and Republican parties for his defeat. The parties each agreed to endorse two members of the four-person team. Columbus Dispatch I would like to think it had something to do with a recognition that Moss, while adept at identifying problems, is not capable of resolving (or even helping to resolve) them. His tactics have been divisive and demeaning to the people who work for the district. More election news Ohio Issue 1 actually failed despite gubernatorial support and many rich backers willing to put up money for ads. All incumbent Ds were (re)elected to Columbus City Council (Patsy Thomas was previously appointed, not elected) John Street (D) reëlected Philadelphia mayor; I would probably have voted for Katz on corruption concerns "The Philadelphia contest attracted national attention after the disclosure that the FBI, as part of an investigation of municipal corruption, had placed a bug in Street's office. The disclosure appeared to energize Street's campaign in the closing days of the contest." Washington Post Barbour (R) elected governor of Mississippi; not one of my favorite politicians (problems with (i.e. ties to) racist organizations, unsavory lobbying pedigree in Washington) Republican elected governor of Kentucky Louisiana governorship still to be decided Nov. 15 Updated wedding pages Wedding And added link at left Posted letters b,p,q,u,x,y IMAGO More reflections \| Link Pen West, a once-industrial area of Columbus, Ohio The Belmont Buildings Two Railroad bridges Boats m N O V E M B E R 3 , 2 0 0 3 Reflections \| Link Pen West, a once-industrial area of Columbus, Ohio The Buggyworks Building The Belmont Buildings East West Website redesign Columbus Dispatch Finally, the site takes on an air of professionalism -- the previous incarnation was beyond provincial in appearance. Much as I have (recently) come to appreciate the color orange, its absence in this particular case is a great improvement. n N O V E M B E R 2 , 2 0 0 3 Umberto Eco! An excerpt from a new book on translation ... Let us suppose that in a novel a character says, "You're just pulling my leg." To render such an idiom in Italian by 'stai solo tirandomi la gamba' or 'tu stai menandomi per la gamba' would be literally correct but misleading. In Italian, one should say 'mi stai prendendo per il naso', thus substituting an English leg with an Italian nose. If literally translated, the English expression, absolutely unusual in Italian, would make the reader suppose that the character (as well as the author) was inventing a provocative rhetorical figure - which is completely misleading, as in English the expression is simply an idiom. By choosing "nose" instead of "leg", a translator puts the Italian reader in the same situation as the original English one. Guardian To Columbus Unclear on the concept? A considerable number of homes in Fairlawn display yard signs for both competing candidates for mayor and finance director of this Akron suburb. Do they not understand that they can only vote for one? Is this the low-cost equivalent of donating money to both campaigns to ensure access no matter who wins? (Perhaps household members differ on their preferred candidates -- though as this is such a reasonable explanation, it renders wonderment at the situation pointless -- and thus will be ignored here). It was explained that at least one such citizen felt it a duty, as an owner of a corner lot, to allow any candidate to post a sign for the general education of the driving public -- an attitude I have not previously come across in Columbus or Washington. News books Telephones, American scenes, a preacher's anecdotes, ... And a box of Amy's books to bring home and begin to shelve. (By color, of course). Which led to the suggestion that she create a database of titles and authors linked to the color of the book so she would be able to find it -- probably a Carrollinian solution, unfortunately (the book remarked that he had a propensity toward crafting elaborate and time-consuming solutions that tended to overwhelm the minor problems they were intended to address). And two small bookshelves which shall at some future date be painted a color yet to be determined. Photographs \| Link Early November Charlie Sally Pumpkins Leaves Trees & sky Flowers & berries I had really been wanting to get out and get some more photographs, and the light finally cooperated -- it was beautiful, a blue sky and marching clouds that brought out the reds and yellows in the fall landscape. The remnants of a brief rain in the morning left a sheen across that caught the light and turned it back at my eye. Couples ministry With the Freshes On time despite a brief (unexpected -- self-directed) detour onto the freeway s N O V E M B E R 1 , 2 0 0 3 Lewis Carroll in Wonderland The life and times of Alice and her creator I had planned to bring H.L Mencken to read, but managed to leave the book on the kitchen counter. Large dinner More chairs than the (full) table could fit, but it worked well Bratwurst, sauerkraut, potatoes -- a good German meal -- though hearty and casual to eat from the more refined and delicate good dishes, of which there were (just) enough to go around And a very good cake for dessert All (Souls?) (Saints?) Something like that A very good service; I thought it captured a reaching, stretching to heaven for guidance and care. The homily was omitted (I shouldn't say thankfully, but I do), though the full liturgy was used -- an odd tradeoff for a Lutheran, in whose churches the congregation feels they haven't gotten their money's worth (enlightenment obviously not breaching the IRS' "no goods or services" rule) if the pastor doesn't preach. I was uncomfortable with the crosses out front (signifying "deaths" through abortion), and with the announcement that the church was making political endorsements for the upcoming election so that a unified moral stance might be maintained. It is not so much that I dispute the church's right, or perhaps even duty, to take a position on issues of morals, but that so many of its pronouncements are made absolute and do not seem to allow that moral and upright people might disagree. In a prior homily, (at a different church), it was explained that the congregation had fallen into "bad habits" regarding the passing of the peace, and this was to be remedied by following to the letter instructions too long by half. I cannot imagine that anything that the priest spoke of was truly a bad habit -- the new way of doing things could have been explained as a suggestion for enhancing the worship experience or for emphasizing important yet underappreciated themes and I would have been far more receptive. New or different practices ought to be able to be introduced to worship without demonizing the old ways. Yardwork Took down the remaining apple tree, cut down the very tall hibiscus branches, (I had such trouble with plant names all day -- the that stuff, out there, in that patch), took down the fence around the garden, cut back the herbs Arrival Mark, Elaine, et al. > OCTOBER 03