Random song excerpt:

In the wee small hours of sixpence
and the lighted chandelier
stands a rusty old retainer
whose old eyes are filled with tears
for his master, Good Sir Galant,
who is now off to the wars
And although his eyes are crying
we know grief is not the cause
And if grief is not the reason
he must be of sterner stuff
and his sword though old and rusty
must be blunt as sharp enough.

--from "In the Wee Small Hours of Sixpence" by Procol Harum

To Save a Life:

I'm copying here part of an email sent out regarding Terri Schiavo, whose husband is about to begin starving her to death with the court's sanction, unless something happens to prevent him:

Today, the courts rejected the pleas of Terri’s parents to stop her husband, Michael, from withholding food and water from her. He has promised to begin starving her tomorrow at 1 pm. [Update: there has been a temporary stay ordered until Feb. 25, which is tomorrow]

Most of you are aware that Terri is not a "vegetable" or "brain-dead" as Michael and his lawyers claim, but responds to others and is aware of her surroundings. She laughs, smiles and, according to her nurses, has a small vocabulary.

Terri is not on life support and is healthy. She needs help eating and is fed through a tube (helping someone eat and drink who is impaired has never been considered artificial life support).

While Michael asserts he is carrying out Terri's wishes, he waited until after he received a large sum of money from a lawsuit against her doctors before making this claim . During the lawsuit, he alleged negligence and motivated a financial award with the potential cost of Terri’s rehabilitation.

However, Terri has been denied rehabilitation that experts testify could allow her to eat and talk. The courts in Florida have consistently blocked appeals to give Terri proper tests and therapy that would improve her life.

Terri may not have the capabilities she once had, but she is no less valuable and no less a person.

Here is what you can do to help Terri:

1) Pray for Terri and her family.
2) Blog - communicate the truth about what is going on and rally support for Terri 3) and the Schindlers.
4) Visit BlogsforTerri ( http://www.blogsforterri.com) for information and to join the team of blogs for Terri.
5) Deluge Gov. Jeb Bush with emails and phone calls. He has the power to intervene. Here is his contact information:

Governor Jeb Bush
jeb.bush@myflorida.com
850 / 488-4441
850 / 487-0801 (fax)

Last night, just as I was drifting off to sleep, I suddenly thought of men's ties. What are ties for? Most articles of clothing were, I suppose, invented for a reason. We all know, for instance, the point of the original fig-leaves. The leap from fig-leaves to suits--or even, I daresay, jeans and a t-shirt--is really not unforeseeable, inasmuch as they all clearly fulfill the same practical purpose. But why ties? What does a tie do, in fact?

I lay there last night pondering ties, and coming up blank. Suspenders, as we are aware, were invented to prevent the embarrassing event of one's pants falling down. Socks prove to be tactful intermediaries between skin and shoe-leather. I imagine underclothes were created for the same purpose, as well as providing needed warmth once we migrated away from the pleasant climate of the Fertile Crescent. Enter coats, hats and gloves. But a tie cannot conceivably protect the wearer from the intemperate elements of wind and weather.

Corsets were necessary to Elizabethan fashions, which demanded that there be wasp-waisted persons to fit into those wasp-waisted clothes. I have it on good authority that even men wore girdles for this purpose. We may disagree on the medical advisability of forcing ones' vitals out of their proper place in order to accomodate current fashions, but at least we can agree that there was a purpose, however laughable, in the invention of the corset, which has since evolved and adapted itself to more modern uses. I doubt we shall ever agree that a tie was invented to make Man's neck thinner.

Not that I shall be inconsolable if I never find out the purpose of the First Tie, since I have already passed cognitively from my original question to that of how one ties the darn things. I have a rather vague picture in my mind of tying a sort of overhand knot around the thinner end, and tightening it effortlessly with faultless execution into those things that men wear every day that they go into the office. It's a good thing I'm not a man, though, because whenever I've tried it in reality, it flops, and I'm afraid that means that ties will always remain a mystery to me. Which is all right, because I know that men will never be able to handle high-heels.