I Love Cemeteries

They contain so many stories, the details of which we can only guess. These gravestones, located near my family's plots in Northwest Indiana, are two of my favorites. I want to know so much more than what appears on the stones...





iTunes is currently playing: Lost Child (String Quartet Remix) from the album Moto.Tronic by Ryuichi Sakamoto.

No wonder he chose to write fiction

The current (March/April 2005) issue of Poets and Writers magazine includes an article about a young fiction writer from Thailand named Rattawut Lapcharoensap. The article says of Lapcharoensap, who recently published a collection of short stories called Sightseeing:

When he lived in Chicago, his parents frequently took in political dissidents and foreign refugees. One day, an old, scraggly man, a diswasher at a local restaurant, showed up and took over the family's couch. Lapcharoensap asked his mother who the man was and what kind of work he did. "He's a poet," his mother replied.

iTunes is currently playing: The Book I Read from the album Live at the Sun Palace (Tokyo) by Talking Heads.

2+ mil for the lawyer, 49 cents for the plaintiff

An interesting article in today's L.A. Times explains how sleazy lawyers get rich by filing class action lawsuits and then negotiate settlements that give them millions while giving each "injured" party less than a dollar. Perhaps even more interesting is the fact that many of the plaintiffs don't even know they are a party to the action until they get a check that isn't worth cashing. Strange but true...

iTunes is currently playing: The Game from the album Another Place by Hiroshima.

How can we get reporters to stop talking to this guy?

From Drudge:
En route to Rome, Clinton told reporters the pope centralized authority in the papacy again and enforced a very conservative theological doctrine. "There will be debates about that. The number of Catholics increased by 250 million on his watch. But the numbers of priests didn't. He's like all of us - he may have a mixed legacy."

iTunes is currently playing: Your Cheatin' Heart from the album 24 Greatest Hits by Hank Williams.

Zogby has restored my faith in mankind.

A Zogby poll completed after the controversial death of Terri Schiavo finds that eight-in-ten (80%) likely voters say that a disabled person who is not terminally ill or in a coma, and not being kept alive by life support should not, in the absence of a written directive to the contrary, be denied food and water.

By a three-to-one (44% to 14%) margin, likely voters say that, when there is conflicting evidence on the wishes of a patient, elected officials
should order that a feeding tube remain in place.

The same poll also finds a majority (56%) agree that Schiavo's husband Michael should have turned guardianship for the severely-disabled woman over to her parents based on his decision to have a long-term serious relationship with another woman.

By a two-to-one (44% to 24%) margin, with one-in-three (32%) undecided, the survey finds that an incapacitated person should be presumed to want to live in the absence of written instructions such as a living will.

iTunes is currently playing: Life Holds On from the album Beth Nielsen Chapman by Beth Nielsen Chapman.

I spoke too soon.

Drudge has switched to one of those ghoulish images of the dead Pope. Sigh ...

iTunes is currently playing: Never Die Young from the album Never Die Young by James Taylor.

Is anyone else creeped out …

... by all the lying-in-state pictures of the Pope that are splashed across the home pages of most of the major news web sites? Thank God for Drudge, who has the good taste to instead show a collection of touching newspaper and magazine covers bidding John Paul a fond adieu.



(Interesting tidbit I learned while verifying the spelling of adieu: While we use the word to mean farewell, it is derived from "a dieu" which was Old French -- and later, Old English -- for "I commend you to God.")

iTunes is currently playing: Goodbye from the album Lost In Translation by Kevin Shields.

My Blogging Tool of Choice

I use a nifty blogging utility called ecto. (I use the Mac version, but they have a Windows version, too.) The Wordpress interface makes it pretty easy to create and edit posts with a browser, but there are many advantages to using a full-featured blogging tool like ecto.

ecto is inexpensive ($17.95 for either version) and you can use it for a couple weeks before you buy to make sure you like it. The developer is constantly updating it and is very responsive to support questions, etc. If you do a lot of blogging, take it for a spin. Highly recommended!

iTunes is currently playing: Something To Talk About from the album Luck Of The Draw by Bonnie Raitt.

haiku for a rainy day

THE JERSEY SHORE

torrents fall on house.
cats run in all directions
dreaming of L.A.

Kathy Hand
9/13/03

iTunes is currently playing: I Think It's Going To Rain Today from the album Guilty: 30 Years Of Randy Newman (Disc 1) by Randy Newman.

Well, the flowers got water, didn’t they.

During an interview with CNN, Brian Schiavo [brother of Michael] called the Rev. Frank Pavone, a Catholic priest and close friend of the Schindler family, "a poor excuse of a priest, I'll tell you that. ... He made a comment that said the flowers in Terri's room were being treated better than she is."

iTunes is currently playing: Cold, Cold Heart from the album 24 Greatest Hits by Hank Williams.