Yet another test post; please ignore.
Monthly Archives: October 2009
The End of an Era
But also, the beginning of something new.
Today, the congregation of St. Luke’s of the Mountains Anglican Church worshipped in their old stone sanctuary for the last time. The court battle is over; the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles has won. What they’ll do with the historic building is anybody’s guess; it’s not at all clear that they can scrape together a large enough congregation to pay the bills.
It’s a sad moment. Jane and I were married at St. Luke’s and went to church their for the first twenty years of our marriage; our children were baptized there; and Jane grew up there.
Meanwhile, the congregation is looking ahead. Next Sunday they’ll be gathering for worship at a nearby chapel, and after services this Sunday they went down to take a look at it and have Coffee Hour, courtesy of a taco truck.
What are they leaving behind? The property, the old stone church, the stained glass, the pews, the prayer books, the dishes, the office equipment, the pencils, the crayons, the boxes of kleenex and rolls of toilet paper…and a message. This morning, the church sign at St. Luke’s quoted the 10th chapter of the Letter to the Hebrews:
You sympathized with those in prison and joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property, because you knew that you yourselves had better and lasting possessions.
I wonder how long it will take the new owners to get the words on the sign changed.
Secular Vampires
Creative Minority Report on the current vampire trend:
Secular monsters are boring. I mean vampires aren’t even afraid of holy water and crucifixes anymore. They are clingy and misunderstood. If I want clingy and misunderstood, I will watch a Woody Allen movie. Come to think of it, Woody Allen is scarier than these vampires.
It’s a Pity…
…that Zero Mostel never got to play Nero Wolfe. If he could have been persuaded (possibly with a large hammer) to play it deadpan, it could have been marvelous. Picture Zero Mostel, in Wolfe’s leather chair, looking up from his book to say
Pfui!
Now, who to cast as Archie?
16th Tcl/Tk Conference
I’m just back from the 16th Tcl/Tk Programming Conference, which was held in Portland, Oregon. Good conference. I learned a thing or two, but more importantly, I got to see the whole gang. I figured out yesterday that I’ve been to nine of the sixteen conferences, i.e., just over half; I’ve made a lot of good friends that I only get to see once a year. (I won’t list them; there are too many of them, and I’d be sure to miss one or two.)
The conference was a little bigger this year than last, continuing a trend; and as usual I was impressed by the international presence. There were two from Australia, at least two from Great Britain, one from the Netherlands, at least two from Poland, and several from Germany. Oh, and Jeff and Andreas from ActiveState, which is in Canada. (It was good to see Andreas; I met him at the first Tcl/Tk conference I went to, and we’ve had regular contact over the years, but seldom face-to-face.)
There’s neat stuff coming down the pike. Tcl/Tk 8.6 is nearly complete, with a bunch of new features (TclOO, coroutines, among lots of others), and there was much talk about Tcl 9. It’s a good time to be using Tcl.
The View from the Foothills 