by Karen Traviss
So I ran out and bought the second one. Crossing the Lineis just as much of a page turner as City of Pearl. I love the ambiguity and complexities of the title pun. And I’m eager to see how it turns out in the third volume. (This one is not satisfying in itself.)
All is not what it seems. I’m just sayin’.
The New York Times has an article on A Religious Push Against Gay Unions:
Organizers said the petition had brought together cardinals from both the left and right sides of the United States bishops’ conference, including the liberal Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles and the conservative Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, as well as Cardinals Edward M. Egan of New York, Theodore E. McCarrick of Washington, William H. Keeler of Baltimore and Sean Patrick O’Malley of Boston.
The gist of the news is that this year support is higher from the Roman Catholic hierarchy for the current attempt to bring out Republican voters by proposing a federal constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. What I think we need is a constitutional amendment banning Roman Catholic priests from being near children.
by Karen Traviss.
I bought City of Pearl a while ago, but yesterday I needed a commuting book and finally picked it up. This morning at 2:00 I put it down. (Well, I did put it down while I was a work.) Yes, I wanted to see how it ended that badly. Some of the plot resolutions towards the end were predictable, but it was satisfying nonetheless. It reminded me of Julie Czerneda’s Species Imperative series. I’d certainly welcome a sequel (though this book is complete in itself).
(Lo and behold, I discovered Traviss has a website, and that there are two sequels, already in print. Yippee.)
Not a common experience. But last Monday I went to Norumbega Harmony’s monthly Sacred Harp sing, and we sang William Billings’s Easter Anthem, and pieces of it just keep going around in my head. I’ve found two versions online. (These links will take you directly to mp3 files hosted by Voices across America.)
And then my friend (and co-worker) Philocrites wrote about The gospel of forgiveness:
But there it is, the astonishing fact, right there in the news: These women and this little girl had the strength of character to forgive rather than seek vengeance. They even reached out to the man in an act of fellowship. Could I? Not yet. But when I made the decision eight years ago to renew my baptismal vows in an Easter vigil at King’s Chapel, I did it because I wanted to learn the discipline of living the resurrection. Jesus did not teach an easy path: His is a gospel of forgiveness and reconciliation, a witness to the grace that can take a vengeful world and a bitter heart and make it new.
She learnt to drive in 1945 when she joined the army
Even the Guardian is noting Queen Elizabeth’s 80th birthday.
From the Guardian’s take on the New Yorker report that US plans strike to topple Iran regime:
In Britain, Jack Straw told the BBC that the idea of a US nuclear strike against Iran was “completely nuts”.
Indeed. But nuts or not, I believe the Bush Administration is likely to consider it.
There’s a report on the critique of mainstream media’s coverage of Iraq over at Global Voices Online
The conclusion of the panelists seemed to be that the media isn’t presenting a full picture of what’s happening in Iraq, but there were no concrete ideas as to what can or should be done about this problem. Problems with the coverage include: It’s too politically polarized. There isn’t enough background and context due to space and time limitations in news outlets. News organizations are businesses and must tailor their reports to the interests and sensibilities of their audiences (which explains why non-Iraqi victims get more play than Iraqi victims in the Western media). There are physical limitations on what Western, other Middle Eastern, and Iraqi journalists can physically report on because the situation is so physically dangerous. Etc.
No big surprises in the post, but I am alarmed by the comments suggesting that editors are not journalists.
Great project underway at Global Voices Online:
In your country, how does the media’s Iraq coverage rate? Fair and balanced? Biased? Which way? How about bloggers’ reporting and discussion of the issue? Have blogs helped clarify things or added to the confusion? We want to bring the opinions of the world’s bloggers on this issue directly into the debate.
Adapted from the basic pancake recipe in The King Arthur Flour 200th Anniversary Cookbook, page 32.
Dry ingredients:
Wet ingredients:
A little melted butter in the cast-iron skillet for the first batch, and that’s about it.
If you can wade through the absolute twaddle inside the interviewer’s mind, Dawn French has some interesting things to say in this Guardian Observer interview
‘You mustn’t lie to yourself or have any shame about anything to do with your body. I really don’t know why I don’t. I have attributed it in the past to my dad, because of his cherishing of me. I might have done that because he died quite early, because I hero-worshipped him a bit. Possibly there’s that, but also I always moved away from people who made me feel bad and slightly swum towards people who are unafraid of it, who want me to be who I feel happy to be.’