I grabbed part of yesterday's LA Times to read while at the laundromat this morning and saw an article on the role of weblogs in reporting and showing what happened on September 11.

A friend sent me the HTML syntax so a viewer can click on a picture to see a larger version. So here's another selection from the Wild Russia site, almond blossoms by Hendrik Zeitler.

[Edit: The photograph can be viewed here.]

Here are a couple [Edit: links to] pictures from the Wild Russia site.

These are fly agaric mushrooms (photo by Igor Shpilenok).

And Mount T'bga of Kavkazsky Zapovednik (photo by Robert Glenn Ketchum).

[Edit: I deleted the photographs and added links instead.]

Well, it's over. The lecture was delivered last night, and now life can resume. It went very well for a first attempt--the students applauded at the end! Thank you to those who gave me such good advice. My next task is learn to prepare for lectures more efficiently. Now that I've had the experience of giving a lecture, as well as having gained a better sense of the students' level of knowledge and preparation, hopefully the next one won't take so much time (or stress) to prepare. For me the highest reward was confirmation that this is what I really want to do. It's easy to lose sight of the goal during these long years of study.

This morning, while waiting over an hour for an appointment, I read an article in a back issue of Smithsonian Magazineabout nature reserves in Russia. The authors maintain a website called Wild Russia, where they post some beautiful pictures of these remote places. When I get home, I'll post a couple here.

I also learned about a Spiritualist town called Lily Vale in New York, cruises along the Inside Passage in Alaska, and sage grouse and their endangered sagebrush habitat. Somebody had torn out the article on a traveling Egyptian artifacts and monuments museum tour.

I just figured out that I can actually publish from work. (That probably was a dangerous thing to discover....) For some reason, I thought I couldn't FTP from work, but since the FTP link is between Blogger and my website, the type of connection I have at work is irrelevant. I knew a feature of Blogger is that you can publish from anywhere, but my brain hadn't thought through to the obvious conclusion.

I found Martin Marty's explanation of fundamentalism(s) in Sunday's NY Times Magazine helpful. I used to receive his Context newsletter, a weblog-esque review of and quotes from various articles about religion, culture, philosophy, and theology.

I'm obsessing over preparing a lecture I have to give next week, so I haven't been too engaged with the rest of life. However, I've read a few accounts of people visiting lower Manhattan, not as voyeuristic onlookers, but as people wanting to connect with the reality of what happened there over three weeks ago. Here are two from online journals, Rob's account and Susie's journal entry, and a column from yesterday's WSJ's Opinion Journal (free) site by Claudia Rosett. Last night I watched a Frontline program about American responses to terrorism in the 1980s. I was struck by how similiar some of President Bush's rhetoric is to that of President Reagan on the issue of terrorism.

Written Sunday evening: Late this afternoon I went for a stroll around my neighborhood. As I passed by a large California Live Oak tree, I saw a squirrel with its back legs and tail stretched out behind it sunning itself along a horizontal part of a branch. It merely looked at me as I walked by and continued enjoying its Sabbath rest. I don't remember ever seeing a squirrel that wasn't scurrying around looking for food, chasing another squirrel, angrily scolding my cats for disturbing it, or dashing up a tree to get away from me.

I am reminded, once again, of why I am a fan of reading book reviews. The cover review in today's Los Angeles Times Book Review is of Venice: Lion City by Garry Wills. The reviewer, John Julius Norwich, highly recommends the book: "For any true lover of Venice, here is a book to read and reread and treasure." In the course of his review, Norwich explains the subtitle of the book, a reference to Venice's leading relic, the evangelist, St. Mark, whose traditional symbol is a lion. I've never been to Venice; otherwise I would have known the story of how two Venetians stole the remains of St. Mark in 828 and brought them to Venice where they were housed in the Basilica of St. Mark. This is just one tidbit I learned in reading the review. Now I want to take a trip to Italy....