Drudge has switched to one of those ghoulish images of the dead Pope. Sigh ...

iTunes is currently playing: Never Die Young from the album Never Die Young by James Taylor.

... by all the lying-in-state pictures of the Pope that are splashed across the home pages of most of the major news web sites? Thank God for Drudge, who has the good taste to instead show a collection of touching newspaper and magazine covers bidding John Paul a fond adieu.



(Interesting tidbit I learned while verifying the spelling of adieu: While we use the word to mean farewell, it is derived from "a dieu" which was Old French -- and later, Old English -- for "I commend you to God.")

iTunes is currently playing: Goodbye from the album Lost In Translation by Kevin Shields.

I use a nifty blogging utility called ecto. (I use the Mac version, but they have a Windows version, too.) The Wordpress interface makes it pretty easy to create and edit posts with a browser, but there are many advantages to using a full-featured blogging tool like ecto.

ecto is inexpensive ($17.95 for either version) and you can use it for a couple weeks before you buy to make sure you like it. The developer is constantly updating it and is very responsive to support questions, etc. If you do a lot of blogging, take it for a spin. Highly recommended!

iTunes is currently playing: Something To Talk About from the album Luck Of The Draw by Bonnie Raitt.

THE JERSEY SHORE

torrents fall on house.
cats run in all directions
dreaming of L.A.

Kathy Hand
9/13/03

iTunes is currently playing: I Think It's Going To Rain Today from the album Guilty: 30 Years Of Randy Newman (Disc 1) by Randy Newman.

During an interview with CNN, Brian Schiavo [brother of Michael] called the Rev. Frank Pavone, a Catholic priest and close friend of the Schindler family, "a poor excuse of a priest, I'll tell you that. ... He made a comment that said the flowers in Terri's room were being treated better than she is."

iTunes is currently playing: Cold, Cold Heart from the album 24 Greatest Hits by Hank Williams.

... but I never knew that Kendallville, a small town in the northeast section of the state, was the WINDMILL Capital of the world! Read about it here (courtesy of CNN).

iTunes is currently playing: Only Way Home from the album A Drop Of Water by Keiko Matsui.

I have found a number of web sites where you can add your own text to an image of a sign or some other object to create a personalized image for your own use. Some sites offer you the opportunity to buy magnets made from your images. Here are some examples. Visit and enjoy!

THE ACME LICENSE PLATE MAKER



THE ACME HEART MAKER



THE ACME LABEL MAKER



ATOM SMASHER'S ERROR MESSAGE GENERATOR



CHURCH SIGN GENERATOR



iTunes is currently playing: Getting Some Fun Out Of Life from the boxed set Portrait (Disc 4: Past Perfect) by Billie Holiday.

Reuters quotes a gentleman outside Terri Schiavo's Pinellas Park (FL) hospice shortly after her death:

"Well they got their way," said a grizzled New York City man who gave his name as "Lifeboat" and knelt clutching a wooden rosary. "We've become barbarians. We've lost our humanity in this country."

I really like the software (WordPress) that I am using for this web site. In my quest for "plug-ins" (WordPress enhancements) that I can use to make the site even spiffier, I stumbled upon the web site of ScriptyGoddess, a young lady named Jennifer who is a php/WordPress script writer extraordinaire.

In addition to her programming prowess, she is also an artist. She has an online business called Above The Fold that sells beautiful handmade origami earrings, among other things. I ordered the butterfly earrings shown below, but she also makes lovely crane earrings. Click here to visit her store.

... why is Terri Schiavo on a morphine drip?

Schindler family attorney David C. Gibbs III said on CBS' "Face the Nation" that "They've begun giving her morphine drip for the pain.", according to the L.A. Times.

According to another article in the L.A.Times , some experts claim that "dying of starvation and dehydration is a peaceful end for the ill."

A third L.A. Times article says the following about a woman who allowed her son's feeding tube to be removed: For six days, [the mother] sat by her son's bed, watching him die. Blisters pocked his mouth and tongue. His frail body shook with muscle cramps. It was agonizing, she says now: "gruesome, prolonged." (This mother, incidently, believes that her decision to discontinue tube feeding was the right one for her son.)

Maybe the truth is that some people suffer horribly when deprived of food and others don't, and we won't know how a person will react until we stop feeding them.