Merkin

Thanks for the heads up on PanDigital. I like my 'Simple Touch' Nook reader a lot and it seems to do everything claimed for it, but I wouldn't risk it outside of my checked luggage going through airport insecurity. I have a hard enough time keeping track of both of my shoes. For airplane reading I fall back on my tried-and-true method of buying used paperback books and tearing off pages as I finish them. Thus I never lose my place and it usually fits my pocket by the time I disembark. James

No matter what freedom we may have to express our opinion wherever we may be, the Secret Service, charged with protecting the U.S. president, takes every uttered threat extraordinarily seriously and will travel halfway around the world and invoke the aid of local authorities to investigate such envisioned threats with heavy-handed thoroughness, causing no end of embarrassment, personal inconvenience, and a severe pain in the ass, no matter how innocent the intent of the comment.

http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2012/02/17/man-falls-ill-eating-heart-attack-grill-burger/

Apparently you don't have to wear much of it to be fashionable.

What they all said.

Seems redundant. Moses got only ten.

Poodles prefer Orangina, but there's no accounting for French taste.

Ben I appreciate you are telling us to allow for all variables, but I'm not at all sure what your main message is up above. When you propose the view that '...why couldn't it be that the expression, the actual development and action on those feelings, might *vary* throughout life?' do you mean to be saying that relationships cannot be expected to become stable and that we should not count on famiies to remain intact for any length of time because partners cannot be expected to stay united?

What, exactly, is Gabbana selling?

Although I believe this to be important work I am always a bit uneasy when the subject of such studies are very young children, or even adolescents. Researchers in their zeal have been known to overreach.

It would be nice to think that we will be remembered by more than fragments of our work. Yet even a fragment of what remains of the Library at Alexandria has been enough to pulse the blood and excite the mind.

Said from the heart, Ben. Thanks for that. As Cole points out, people are out to get other people. But, sadly, it's not a modern phenomenon, and we are still dealing with the fallout from the Crusades. It's exhausting being gay. We all want peace and quiet to live our lives. It's no wonder many of us seek out the safe places, the cities we've identified where we can coexist, the enclaves where we are relatively safe. But I'd like to be safe, and respected, and included regardless of where I choose to live and work and engage in 'relationships'. Must we settle for a ghetto culture? If society cannot accept me, I want laws to protect me and mine. Harsh laws.

Welcome, Nick. Don't be slow to participate! I'd settle for a 4-wheel Morgan of any description, but sadly they are no longer available (or legal) here.

Grrr. Thanks a lot, Camy. I've just spent a day and a half working through this can't-put-it-down novel which, if it weren't for you, I never would have picked up. Wonderful characters, enormously complex plot, one crisis after another, and twists and turns on every page, to say nothing about the author's extraordinarily witty and breezy style. The chapter subheadings alone are worth the price of admission. I'll never again be able to think of bunny slippers with a straight face.

Blue, if you are in need of professionally recorded "audition tapes" to peddle as samples of your ability, I have a suggestion. If your local public radio station is anything like the public radio station in my area, they will have a contact who can point you to the local volunteer reading service, a gang of readers who read the local newspaper and also books for sight disabled people. These readings are recorded at the local station and widely circulated hereabouts. The one here is funded by some federal money so I am supposing this service is nationwide. Although as I say it is a volunteer effort, it will yield for you some professionally recorded samples of your work that you might be able to leverage into a paid job somewhere as a reader or performer. When I was teaching full-time at a university about forty miles from my home I filled the drive time with audio books, and I became very loyal to a few of those recurring reader voices, to the extent that I would search out books recorded by them. I would think that this is a professional area someone like you might explore. James

I agree, Cole, that the silence is in the middle, and hope desperately that on election day the electorate will make it's dissatisfaction with extreme positions on either side known. But I am terrified by what has happened within our Congress, for it is there that we see the outcome of rabble-rousing and negative campaigning in each of hundreds of congressional districts.

Unbelievable. Some remind me of the best work by Dorothea Lange, our Depression-era photographer.

Literally rolling on the floor.

Now I am snarky enough to do something to Blue's anti-aunt like James Savik has suggested. But I'm wondering if Blue might not get more traction out of turning the table on her and starting a practice of forwarding to her those articles we see here on AD almost daily now detailing the suppression and degradation of innocent souls? I'd start with that devasting article about the dad who wired his son and sent him off to school. Something like that just might jostle her withered spark of humanity into life.

Caught between snorts of amusement and nods of my head in agreement, I experience deep regret that this developing discussion happens to be linked to Colin's very excellent story.

Thanks, Hoskins. Sadly, both the CRVboy and the Gay Authors posting for '52 Panhead stop at chapter 48 and nothing new has been posted on the story since January 2011. Too bad, because the storyline is poised at the edge of an exquisite cliff.

At the right hand of a beer John Joseph sits in conversation at the bar with an archangel who keeps his glass full. 'Too much effort' ? Whatever amount of effort you took to produce that stanza was well worth it.

I don't know about busing them from town to town. How about putting them in stocks on the back of a flatbed truck?

Merkin I have no idea what was on my mind when I posted this.

I offer you this: Gardening A meditation Each day, grow. Watering: Regard your self within the world. Tell your self the world has nurtured you. Tell the world how your self has contributed. Together we all are the garden. Tending: Look for the spent leaf and cull it. Bind up wounds and wrap weak limbs. Cleanse infestations that eat at the heartwood. Prune to a shape that pleases. Blooming: Prepare the blossom. Cultivate beauty and restful harmony. Arrange a presentation to complement others. Contemplate your handiwork. Regard your self within the world.