I feel better now!  Like a cloud has lifted. *breathes deeply*

In the tension building up to this election I haven't been able to accomplish anything, much less think.

Now, where was I?  I'm sure I was working on a story back there somewhere... *digs it out* ... Hmmm, if I could just remember where I was going with this...

First - apologies for the massive picspam in my last entry.  I tried endlessly to get the cut to work, but it wouldn't.  I'll take down the excess shortly.

As for tomorrow, Election Day in the U.S., 2008, I'd like to just share this link:

andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/11/barack-obama-fo.html

Andrew Sullivan pretty much says ( Read more... )

 ... under the cut.  'Cause we all know how tedious it can be to look at other people's vacation pictures...

( Tuscany picspam for the hardy... )

Home again.

Jetlagged and sleepy.

Eyes still full of glorious images.

Bones still rattling from zipping around in a tiny five speed car driven by the Master Jedi with quite exceptional brio.

Ears still full of the language that, I am quite convinced, allows for far fuller self-expression than mere English.  Am convinced that if I spoke Italian, ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

 Long time no post.  I can't think why.

First, thanks MUCH to everyone who did last post's meme.  Great fun!  Maybe that's why I haven't posted since.  Hard act to follow for sheer satisfaction.

In the meantime, I continue to be mesmerized and... increasingly... horrified by the US political scene. The campaign I had looked forward to so much as - ( Read more... )

 Picked up from 
( Read more... )

I’m redecorating another room in the vast suburban edifice that is, God help me, my house.

Let me say this up front:  I never wanted this house.  Everything about it feels alien:  too big, too suburban, too late 1980’s, too electronically wired.  It’s too needy, too greedy, too consuming of precious resources like time and energy and money.  ( Read more... )

September 11, 2008

Seven years ago, on one of the most beautiful, crisp, mild September mornings in living memory here in the NYC area, a couple of planes fell out of the sky and created an inferno whose embers are still smoldering and igniting new conflagrations in faraway places. Today it's chilly and overcast, the kind of day that makes you want ( Read more... )

 "Red Belt ( Read more... )