My monthly update on some stats . . .
Communion of Dreams has now been downloaded over 9,500 times. I would like to thank the three people who have been busy downloading so many copies to make my stats look good. 😉
No, seriously, this is still really cool. Like April, May saw about 500 downloads – a little bit slower pace than in some earlier months, but still very heartening. Particularly since it still seems to be completely word of mouth. We should cross 10,000 downloads sometime this month.
The blog is now just under 20,000 hits, and the average is still running about 70 unique visits a day. Thanks to one and all who visit regularly.
And bonus points to anyone who can ID the source of the title quote without having to look it up.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Ballistics, Gardening, General Musings, Guns, Health, Patagonia, Predictions, Publishing, Richard Matheson, Science Fiction, Sleep, Travel, Writing stuff
You may have noticed that some of my posts have gotten a little longer over time, at least in the last couple of months. I haven’t been doing word counts or anything, but that is my sense of it, looking back over the archives. This is because I am emerging from the exhaustion of caring for Martha Sr, slowly but surely.
And as this progresses, it is interesting to see how certain aspects of my life are starting to come back to me. My wife and I have started to resume something that can be called a social life, getting together with friends for lunch or dinner, having people over. I finally got that book review of the Matheson Companion done – that had been hanging over my head for a while. I’m putting together the stuff for the ballistics testing, and figure that we’ll have the website for that up next month some time. I got my garden in, and am harvesting strawberries. This is good.
And I’m starting to get a creative itch again. No, not the low-level sort of creativity that goes with this blog and my conservation work. I’m thinking about the next novel. I’ll probably toss out what I have written of St. Cybi’s Well, and just start fresh – those first couple of chapters were so long ago that I barely remember what I intended to do with them. It takes (me, anyway) a lot of mental energy to juggle all the various threads in a decent novel, and I’m not ready just yet to tackle that. But I am thinking about it, and that is a very good sign.
And I have another idea for something completely and totally unrelated, which would also be a lot of fun. But I have to wait to get a new computer system for that – this old thing just doesn’t have the capabilities which would be required. I would also need to learn some new software programs. From these facts you can guess that this idea would have something to do with the ‘net, and you would be right, but that’s all I’ll say for now.
Oh, yeah, and I need to learn survival Spanish sometime before going to Patagonia in October.
It’s nice to feel this way again.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Astronomy, Babylon 5, Fermi's Paradox, General Musings, J. Michael Straczynski, JMS, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Space, Writing stuff
One of my favorite episodes of the SF series Babylon 5 comes in the final season (not my favorite season, by a long shot). It is episode #92, A View from the Gallery, and is unusual in that the main focus of the episode is on a couple of maintenance workers, and their ‘common man’ perspective. Here’s what the series creator, J. Michael Straczynski, had to say about the episode:
One of the things I always do is look for ways to turn the series format on its head, and show us our characters from other perspectives, since perspective is so much at the heart of the show. Whether that’s jumping forward in time, or an ISN documentary, or seeing everything through the eyes of a third party (or two), it’s always a risk, because it’s never what one expects to see, and a lot of people like to see what they expect to see.
“… a lot of people like to see what they expect to see.” Indeed.
* * * * * * *
A new study comparing our sun to the general range of ‘main sequence‘ stars has concluded that it is pretty much run-of-the-mill. And this has significant implications for the possible development of life elsewhere. From NewScientistSpace:
There’s nothing special about the Sun that makes it more likely than other stars to host life, a new study shows. The finding adds weight to the idea that alien life should be common throughout the universe.
“The Sun’s properties are consistent with it being pulled out at random from the bag of all stars,” says Charles Lineweaver from the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra. “Life does not seem to require anything special in its host star, other than it be close.”
And from Cosmos:
To get a better answer, Robles and his co-workers simultaneously compared 11 stellar characteristics that could plausibly influence the evolution of life.
They looked at parameters such as: the Sun’s mass; age; metallicity (the amount of elements heavier than helium and hydrogen, such as oxygen, carbon and nitrogen); as well as its rotation rate; its whereabouts within the galaxy; how it ‘bobs up and down in the galactic plane’; and the activity of its photosphere. Using statistical methods, these were measured against data available on other stars.
* * *
“When analysing the 11 properties together, the Sun shows up as a star selected at random, rather than one selected for some life-enhancing property,” Robles said. “The upshot is that there doesn’t seem to be anything special about the Sun. It seems to be a random star that was blindly pulled out of the bag of all stars.”
* * * * * * *
When I was growing up, I always wanted to think that I was special. I was that unlikely hero from so many Science Fiction stories, the kid who had some undiscovered special ability or trait that would prove to be remarkable. Believe it or not, the death of my parents just as I was entering adolescence fed this fantasy. Think about literature, and you’ll see that this is actually a fairly common trope: the orphan who discovers his ‘real’ history, and goes on to greatness. There are even elements of this in Communion of Dreams, both with the main character and with the Chinese girl. It is a very common theme.
Of course, real life isn’t like that. As smart and well educated as I was, I didn’t grow up to be particularly remarkable. I’ve had plenty of successes, plenty of failures, accomplished things which gave me a touch of fame here and there. But for the most part, I am like most people – just trying to get through life with my self-respect more or less intact.
And that’s OK. Oh, there’s nothing wrong with a bit of fantasy – of having dreams and desires, goals that you work towards even though they may never be achieved in quite the way you would like. I wouldn’t have started this blog, were that not the case. But it is healthy to maintain perspective, to understand that only wishing for something will not make it so.
* * * * * * *
“… a lot of people like to see what they expect to see.”
Think about that again. JMS was talking about some of the flack he took over doing something a little bit unconventional with what had become a well established and much beloved television series. But he did not betray any of his principles, didn’t go for some kind of a cheap emotional trick. He just offered a different perspective, challenged people to open up their thinking a bit.
For centuries, one of the basic tenets of common belief was that God put us here, and that we were at the center of creation. As science has expanded our understanding, we came to realize that we weren’t at the center of creation. Or the solar system. Or the galaxy. Or the universe.
As I mentioned a few days ago, there is a growing awareness that Earth may not be unique in holding life, even intelligent life. Discovering that there is nothing particularly unusual about our local star adds to this awareness. We may be nothing special, just one island of life in a universe teeming with the stuff.
And that’s OK.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Health, Pharyngula, PZ Myers, Religion, Science, Science Fiction, Scientific American, Society, Writing stuff
Hello, my name is Jim. I’ve got a writing problem.
Via PZ and Evolutionblog, news that blogging (and writing in general) is actually a therapeutic form of self-medication:
Self-medication may be the reason the blogosphere has taken off. Scientists (and writers) have long known about the therapeutic benefits of writing about personal experiences, thoughts and feelings. But besides serving as a stress-coping mechanism, expressive writing produces many physiological benefits. Research shows that it improves memory and sleep, boosts immune cell activity and reduces viral load in AIDS patients, and even speeds healing after surgery. A study in the February issue of the Oncologist reports that cancer patients who engaged in expressive writing just before treatment felt markedly better, mentally and physically, as compared with patients who did not.
Scientists now hope to explore the neurological underpinnings at play, especially considering the explosion of blogs. According to Alice Flaherty, a neuroscientist at Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital, the placebo theory of suffering is one window through which to view blogging. As social creatures, humans have a range of pain-related behaviors, such as complaining, which acts as a “placebo for getting satisfied,” Flaherty says. Blogging about stressful experiences might work similarly.
Flaherty, who studies conditions such as hypergraphia (an uncontrollable urge to write) and writer’s block, also looks to disease models to explain the drive behind this mode of communication. For example, people with mania often talk too much. “We believe something in the brain’s limbic system is boosting their desire to communicate,” Flaherty explains. Located mainly in the midbrain, the limbic system controls our drives, whether they are related to food, sex, appetite, or problem solving. “You know that drives are involved [in blogging] because a lot of people do it compulsively,” Flaherty notes. Also, blogging might trigger dopamine release, similar to stimulants like music, running and looking at art.
OK, I don’t know about doing it ‘compulsively’, but I do know that writing has always been a way for me to cope with stressful events in my life, and I can honestly say that writing about caring for Martha Sr for the last year of her life with Alzheimer’s helped me keep some hold on my sanity.
Likewise, writing at UTI about the absurdities of modern life, with a particular emphasis on the effect of religion and politics, allows me to blow off a little steam and keep things in perspective. Some dialog with others, getting feedback and another perspective, also helps, and is the appeal (to me) of blogging over just writing for myself. This blog has a different emphasis, though there is some overlap (and why I cross post a fair amount between the two). I tend to be more personal here, and to tie things more often to the vision of the future portrayed in Communion of Dreams.
And as addictions go, it’s a lot less self-destructive than many options.
Jim Downey
(A slightly different version of this is at UTI.)
Filed under: Art, movies, Pandemic, Publishing, Richard Matheson, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Star Wars, University of Missouri, Writing stuff
This is a review written for the Columbia Tribune, as drafted. If and when they use it, I will link and/or copy the finished version here.
– Jim
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Pulp writers – those hacks who churn out Science Fiction and Fantasy, Horror and Westerns – have rarely received much in the way of respect from the academic community.
So it is remarkable that among the William Peden Short Story Collection at the University of Missouri – Columbia there is just such an author. An author who was one of Dr. Peden’s students, and who grew to become a friend, corresponding with Dr. Peden for more than thirty years. That author is Richard Matheson.
Dr. Peden developed the Creative Writing Program at MU. He established the University of Missouri Press. He was the co-founder of the Missouri Review, which still bestows an annual fiction prize in his name. He was widely respected as a scholar of writing, and as an author in his own right. And he said this about a young Richard Matheson, writing a friend who was a publisher:
“A former student of mine [is] going to call you within the next few days and I think you might be interested in talking with the boy . . . The chap’s name is Richard Matheson and I really believe he has possibly an extraordinary future ahead of him.”
I would not have known this were it not for The Richard Matheson Companion (ISBN-13: 9781887368964, available from major booksellers). And it wouldn’t be in there except through the efforts of another Columbian, Paul Stuve, who is one of the editors of that book. It turns out that Stuve has one of the most complete collections of Matheson’s work in the world.
I contacted Stuve and asked him what got him interested in Richard Matheson.
“The first time I knew I was a Matheson fan was in high school, but the fact is I was a fan long before that. Through his Twilight Zone episodes mostly, and then Duel, and even the dreadful Omega Man (which was adapted, very badly, from Matheson’s modern-day vampire novel “I Am Legengd). But the first time I connected a name with the work was while watching The Legend of Hell House on TV with my dad one night. I promptly set about trying to find the book, and in the process I discovered who he was. I’ve been collecting him ever since.”
And how did he get involved in the Matheson Companion?
“When Matthew Bradley (whom I knew from another project) was asked to assist Stanley Wiater with the Companion, I volunteered to help with the detailed bibliographies and filmographies that were going to need to be compiled. I have a nearly complete collection of all the first published appearances of Matheson’s writings (and the limited editions, and the, well, it goes on and on…), and it seemed like it would be a fun task. As the project wore on, I became more and more involved (the lists themselves are nearly 200 pages long), and during the process I was made an associate editor, and finally a full editor.
What was the most rewarding part of the project, for you?
“For me, the real coup of the project was when I wandered over to the MU library
one day to see if I could turn up anything that Matheson wrote while he was a
student here in the late 1940s. I was expecting perhaps a letter or brief item
in the student newspaper, but I wound up discovering a file folder of nearly 30
years of correspondence between Matheson and William Peden, his advanced writing
professor at Mizzou.”
Some of those letters are reproduced in The Richard Matheson Companion, the most comprehensive collection of information about this versatile author, which also contains reflections and tributes by those who knew and worked with him, along with a previously unpublished novella by Matheson. It is a phenomenal resource. As co-editors Stanley Wiater and Matthew R. Bradley write in the Introduction to the book:
“Matheson is one of the most acclaimed and influential fantasists of our time. He and his work have won the Hugo, Edgar Allen Poe, Golden Spur and Christopher Awards, plus multiple World Fantasy (“Howard”), Bram Stoker, and Writers Guild of America Awards, including Lifetime Achievement awards from the World Horror and World Fantasy Conventions.
Yet, quite amazingly we think, there has never been a legitimate biography of the man, or a writer’s companion to his work. It is the latter that we have striven to create – the last word on the millions of words produced by Richard Matheson in a career that has already gone beyond the helf-century mark, with no signs of ending anytime soon.”
The recognition of Matheson’s contribution to the literature and popular culture of the second half of the 20th century will only grow with time. He was an inspiration to the likes of Stephen King, Chris Carter, and George A. Romero. It may yet be a while before he becomes of ‘scholarly interest’, but it was already clear to Dr. William Peden over fifty years ago that Matheson was a writer who was worthy of consideration and respect.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, General Musings, Health, Hospice, Machado-Joseph, Science, Sleep, Society, Uncategorized, Writing stuff
It’s now been three months since Martha Sr died.
You’d think by now that I’d be caught up on sleep. You’d be wrong. As I look over the last few month’s posts I note that time and again that I mention sleep. It is still the default that I want more, more, more. Even when I’ve gotten a good night’s sleep, and am not fighting any kind of cold or flu, a nap in the morning or afternoon tempts me. For someone who thinks of himself as energetic, productive, it kind of goes against the grain. For someone who has a backlog of work running to years, it can be a little maddening.
Yet, sleep is still the default.
* * * * * * *
My sister called the other day.
“Thirty pounds? Wow. Be careful.”
I assured her that I wasn’t trying to overdo anything. That it was just my body moving back towards a natural set-point, as mentioned in that blog post.
But she has a good reason to be concerned: in our family, weight loss is one of the markers for the onset of the family genetic curse, Machado-Joseph disease. To be honest, this is one of the major reasons that I have always felt a little comfortable in being a bit overweight – it provided some sense of protection against the disease (which was very poorly understood or even known as I was growing up). That’s not how it works, of course, but it was always there in the back of my mind. If you’d lived with seeing what the disease does, you’d be willing to risk obesity, too.
* * * * * * *
Go back to any of the entries from last year under the tag Alzheimer’s, and you’ll see that one of the most common things I talk about is just how tired I was. For years – literally, years – my wife and I had taken turns being “on call” each night, lightly dozing while listening to a baby monitor in Martha Sr’s room. On those nights you’d barely get anything which amounted to real rest. When you weren’t “on call” sleep usually came, but wasn’t as easy or restful as it could have been – having your partner there more or less awake next to you all night wasn’t that conducive. Sure, there were naps whenever we could squeeze them in, but I would still say that my average sleep per 24 hour period was probably about 5 hours, maybe 6. Things did improve once we had a health aide three nights a week, but by then we were in hospice care, which had its own stresses and demands.
* * * * * * *
ATLANTA – People who sleep fewer than six hours a night — or more than nine — are more likely to be obese, according to a new government study that is one of the largest to show a link between irregular sleep and big bellies.
* * *
The research adds weight to a stream of studies that have found obesity and other health problems in those who don’t get proper shuteye, said Dr. Ron Kramer, a Colorado physician and a spokesman for the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.
“The data is all coming together that short sleepers and long sleepers don’t do so well,” Kramer said.
The study released Wednesday is based on door-to-door surveys of 87,000 U.S. adults from 2004 through 2006 conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Surprise, surprise.
* * * * * * *
I’ve got a pretty strong work ethic. And it was shaped by conventional standards: get up, go to work for 8 -10 hours, come home. That’s not how I work – hasn’t been for years – but it is still the baseline instinct for me, the initial criteria I use for whether or not I am “getting things done”. So it is frustrating to feel sleepy and want a nap. That doesn’t pay the bills, get the backlog under control, get the next book written or the ballistics research written up.
Three months. Seems like a long time. And our culture doesn’t understand grief well, nor leave a lot of room for recovery that takes time. We expect people to “get over it”, to take a vacation and come back refreshed. It is part of who we are – part of who I am.
But I try to listen to my body. It is naturally shedding the excess weight I put on, now that regular sleep and exercise are again part of my life. Realistically, it is only halfway done – I’ve another 30 pounds or so to go to get back to a point which I consider ‘normal’ (though that’s still about 20 – 30 pounds heavy for me, according to the ‘ideal’). Does that mean I have another three months of wanting naps all the time? Yeah, maybe. Maybe more. I’ll try and give it that time.
I’ll try.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Emergency, Flu, Flu Wiki, General Musings, Government, Health, NPR, Pandemic, Plague, Predictions, Preparedness, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Survival, Writing stuff
Well, we all will, unless there’s some sort of miracle breakthrough in medicine or technology. But that’s not what I’m talking about. Rather, I’m talking about something anyone who has thought about it much has probably already assumed is true: that in the event of a large-scale pandemic, procedures will be put into effect by medical authorities to determine who will be treated and who will be allowed to die.
This is called triage. And to the best of my knowledge, for the first time such procedures are being publicly put forth as being applicable for all hospitals in the US, in recognition that it is better to have consistent and uniform criteria already in place before a disaster hits. The May issue of CHEST, the peer-reviewed journal of the American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP), today carried a supplement titled Definitive Care for the Critically Ill During a Disaster. From the press release on the ACCP website:
(NORTHBROOK, IL, May 5, 2008)—In an unprecedented initiative, US and Canadian experts have developed a comprehensive framework to optimize and manage critical care resources during times of pandemic outbreaks or other mass critical care disasters. The new proposal suggests legally protecting clinicians who follow accepted protocols for the allocation of scarce resources when providing care during mass critical care events. The framework represents a major step forward to uniformly deliver sufficient critical care during catastrophes and maximize the number of victims who have access to potential life-saving interventions.
“Most countries, including the United States, have insufficient critical care resources to provide timely, usual care for a surge of critically ill and injured victims,” said Asha Devereaux, MD, FCCP, Task Force for Mass Critical Care. “If a mass casualty critical care event occurred tomorrow, many people with clinical conditions that are survivable under usual health-care system circumstances may have to forgo life-sustaining interventions due to deficiencies in supply, staffing, or space.” As a result, the Task Force for Mass Critical Care developed an emergency mass critical care (EMCC) framework for hospitals and public health authorities aimed to maximize effective critical care surge capacity.
So, is this just good public health planning? Well, yes. But it is also very sobering to read the following:
The proposed guidelines are designed to be a blueprint for hospitals “so that everybody will be thinking in the same way” when pandemic flu or another widespread health care disaster hits, said Dr. Asha Devereaux. She is a critical care specialist in San Diego and lead writer of the task force report.
“When”. Emphasis mine. Not “if”. The news report goes further:
Bentley said it’s not the first time this type of approach has been recommended for a catastrophic pandemic, but that “this is the most detailed one I have seen from a professional group.”
While the notion of rationing health care is unpleasant, the report could help the public understand that it will be necessary, Bentley said.
Devereaux said compiling the list “was emotionally difficult for everyone.”
That’s partly because members believe it’s just a matter of time before such a health care disaster hits, she said.
“You never know,” Devereaux said. “SARS took a lot of folks by surprise. We didn’t even know it existed.”
Again, emphasis mine.
I’ve written many times about the possibility of widespread flu or some other kind of pandemic. Partly this is just because such a catastrophe sets the stage for Communion of Dreams. But more importantly – and this is even part of the reason *why* I wrote Communion of Dreams – is that I don’t think that people give this matter nearly enough thought.
It is good to see that the public health authorities are taking this step. And I was heartened to hear about it on NPR as I started to compose this post. Maybe it will prompt people to stop and think for a moment about what they themselves should be doing to prepare for some kind of pandemic or other disruption. Because I bet that almost no one you know is actually ready to ride out such an event – and by the time you hear of a pandemic starting, it will be too late to get everything you will need to increase the chances of you and your loved ones surviving. This is not fear-mongering; this is taking some reasonable precautions – the same sorts of precautions that have lead to the development of this new triage plan. If you want to know more, check out the Flu Wiki (where they also link to this resource).
Yeah, we’re all gonna die. And I can easily imagine disaster scenarios where I would not want to live. But I sure as hell don’t want to die needlessly from something I can avoid, or ride out with a little advance prep.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Feedback, General Musings, Hobbits, movies, Promotion, Science Fiction, Writing stuff
Nah, other than a mild cold, things are going OK. But since it is the first of the month, thought I would post a quick note about how stats look hereabouts.
April saw just under 500 downloads of the .pdf of Communion. This continues to happen in clumps, for whatever reason. Comparing it to over 1,100 in March, you might think that things have slowed down – but that’s just the clustering effect, I think – there was a substantial cluster right at the end of March. Had it been a few days later, the stats for both March and April would have been almost the same. We’re now at about 9,000 total downloads.
About 50 people downloaded the MP3 of the novel last month, bringing that total to just under 100.
I still have a hard time getting a handle on how people find out about the book, or this blog. In March I signed up for some additional stats/information about the Communion of Dreams website, which gives me all kinds of data, but it still seems that the majority of people who find out about the book do so by word of mouth. Not a bad thing, just a bit odd. Particularly in that I get very little feedback or commentary from people – yet they seem to be passing on a recommendation to others to download the book. Goodness knows that I haven’t done anything remotely approaching a real effort at promotion, so something is happening of its own accord.
This blog is now at 18,000 total views, averaging upwards of 70 views a day. The somewhat odd thing is that there is a consistent bit of traffic to look at one post: Welcome to the Hobbit House from almost a year ago. That gets 20 – 25 people a day. I think that the secret to getting a lot of traffic would be to write about Hobbits. At least until the new movie is done and out. So, if you see me mentioning Hobbits just randomly in posts, you’ll know that I am just blog-whoring, trolling for hits.
But hey, Hobbits are cool. Right? Just saying the word is somehow comforting: Hobbits.
Uh, sorry.
Anyway, that’s just a brief look over the current stats. Something more meaty later, or tomorrow.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Flu, General Musings, Pandemic, Predictions, Preparedness, Press, Science, Society, Writing stuff
Communion of Dreams is set in a post-pandemic world, some 40 years after a new flu strain has caused massive death and global disruption.
For the most part, people never really think about the flu or any other virus presenting much of a threat. Partially, this is due to not wanting to think about such things as death. Partially, it is because there really isn’t much in the way of treatment for most viral diseases. As a result, sometimes it is difficult to get much information in the news, unless you really work at it. A good example of this is the recent outbreak of EV71 in China – my wife caught a brief mention of it on the BBC news, told me. I had to really hunt around to find this:
Mass intestinal virus infection up to 1,520, kills 20
HEFEI — A lethal outbreak of intestinal virus in Fuyang City in east China’s Anhui Province has killed 20 children and befallen 1,500 others, the provincial health department said on Tuesday.
Du Changzhi, Anhui Provincial Health Department deputy chief, said the virus, known as enterovirus 71, or EV71, had altogether sickened 1,520 children, claiming 20 lives by Tuesday morning.
Of the sick, 585 had recovered thus far. At present, 412 sick children have remained in hospital for further medical observation. Of the total, 26 are seriously ill.
The Wall Street Journal did have this:
China Suffers HFMD Outbreak
Common Illness Catches Attention Of Global Officials
HONG KONG — A deadly outbreak in eastern China of a common childhood illness that rarely kills people has caught the attention of international health officials.
The outbreak of hand, foot and mouth disease, or HFMD, has killed 20 children in Fuyang, a city in eastern Anhui province, and has affected some 1,200 children altogether, according to the Anhui provincial health department. Of those cases, 341 children are still in the hospital.
A report by the state-run Xinhua news agency late Sunday evening said the outbreak began in early March and cited the city’s health department as confirming that the disease was caused by enterovirus-71, one of several viruses that can cause HFMD.
* * *
China’s Health Minister Chen Zhu visited Fuyang on Saturday, according to the Xinhua report. Chinese health officials at the local level in the past have sometimes played down disease outbreaks early on, only to be caught off guard later.
Indeed. There have been a number of such problems with reporting outbreaks in China, as we saw with the SARS virus in 2003. What this means is that a new virus can get established before anyone really knows what is going on. And that could be really catastrophic in terms of implementing public-health plans to limit the spread of any major new disease.
[Major Spoilers Ahead.]
At the end of Communion, I reveal that the new engineered flu virus which has been released comes from China. I did this for this reason – to draw attention to this very real problem. It’s bad enough that some virus could pop up just about anywhere where there is very little public health infrastructure, and so be missed. That a threat could come, and be intentionally ignored, is really dangerous. You really gotta wonder just what people are thinking when they do this.
Just as you really gotta wonder why such things are not covered in the news, rather than the latest celebrity gossip or outrage.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 