Summer at Holden

The summer theme, Standing on Holy Ground, at Holden Village sounds great:

Taking off our shoes, pressing our feet against the soil and grass and stone of this beautiful planet, we will encounter again God’s call to live with care and responsibility on this holy ground. Care for creation has long been a strong emphasis at Holden, but this summer we will give this concern even more attention, so that it can increasingly become a strong emphasis in other places as well.

Dorothy Bass, editor of Practicing Our Faith, is the program director. Larry Rasmussen, who wrote Earth Community, Earth Ethics, will be speaking at the beginning of the summer.

Health news, etc.

First, an aside. I pulled up the WSJ to look up a column on health I read yesterday at work and read the first line of the top article: "A WINTER STORM BARRELED across the Midwest while the Northeast braced for more than a foot of snow." It's hazily sunny here in So Cal, probably in the low 70s. I sat on a boulder next to a rushing stream this morning with the sun warming my back while I read The Plot Against America for the knit one read too online book club.

To health. The USDA has published new dietary guidelines, including key recommendations and downloadable files of the entire report.

Ten minutes left on my hour of free library Internet access, which would cost me $12 at Kinko's at .20 per minute.

I just saw that Susie has started a cross stitch section of her website. Check it out!

Time's up.

Test template change

I changed the Knit One Read Two ring code in my template, but it doesn't appear to be "taking" on my front page. It's fine if you pull up an archive entry but not on the default front page....Maybe because I'm at Kinko's??

Winter in Pasadena

Today is another beautiful Pasadena winter day. The kind that reminds one of the reason Midwest industrialists built winter homes here a hundred years ago, like the Gamble family—clear, blue skies after all the rain; temperatures into the 70s; snow-covered mountains ringing the valleys; and the fragrance of eucalyptus trees bounding the empty field that someday will be a W*l-M*rt (although the eucalyptus trees probably hadn't been brought in to this area back then). The kind that, if not enjoyed with at least a short walk at lunch, would be a crime to miss by staying inside a building all day.

Random access

My computer decided to boot up tonight. I guess it just needed a few days rest, a week actually. Then I even managed to get the DSL working again by reinstalling the drivers that came with the new Ethernet card. At least, I think that's what did it. Nothing like trying stuff until something works. But I have the feeling it could stop working again anytime. Meanwhile, I've backed up some files onto disks, just in case.

A new Wendell Berry novel

I've yet to read any of Berry's fiction, so this link to Valerie Sayers' review in the Washington Post Book World of Hannah Coulter is to remind me to look for Berry's novels in the library.

So Cal storms

I've been reminded often of Washington state these past days while it rains and rains and rains here in Southern California. According to today's LA Times' headline story (registration required):

Los Angeles has received almost 21 inches of precipitation since July 1. That surpasses the average annual rainfall of 15.14 inches with five months yet to go. [...]
The current dousing, which began Thursday, has been the heaviest. The more than 15 inches that fell on Los Angeles in the first nine days of 2005 was as much as the average annual rainfall downtown.