And, icing on the cake?

Odetta cancelled her show at the Old Town School of Folk Music.

Thank God we're spending money in the right places!

"It appears that the money has been moved in the president’s budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that’s the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can’t be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."

-- Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 8, 2004.

Trading the safety of New Orleans for the oil in Iraq? Good call, W! That worked out well...

Read the whole (sadly, not unbelievable) story of this mess here.

The world is too much with me now

Science Boy and I watched the news coverage of New Orleans this morning. It's too heartbreaking to comprehend. He has friends there and loves New Orleans. I have always wanted to go and, in fact, had hoped to get married in Pirate's Alley some one day.

PLUS, what about the de Grummond Library's irreplacable collection of children's literature treasures? Has it all been destroyed? And what of all the other libraries all over the south? Children whose homes were literally washed away will not even be able to turn to the comfort of Curious George or Madeline?

That news was followed by word of a devastating crash near my former home and news of the hundreds of people killed in Iraq today.

Wordsworth wrote, "The world is too much with us," and that's how I feel today. Too much sorrow abounding.

I will think of something happy and will post again later.

Wishing peace and love to all.

If only I had seen this before I moved...

PaperBackSwap is a place where you can trade paperbacks with other booklovers, thus ensuring that you find a good home for the books you're done with while replenishing your own store of books with things you want to read -- all for just the cost of postage. Check it out.

(Then again, good thing I didn't know about it or Science Boy would have had to help me put up even more bookshelves...)

Ta-da!

Well, I never *did* figure out how to fix the problems with my blog, so I re-did the whole thing. Still a few things I would like to tweak (can't *quite* figure out how to change the color of the links in the sidebar, for one), but nothing really crucial. I think I kinda like the new design, although I *was* fond of the old one.

Maybe now I will post more. AFTER I get some work done, that is!

Arrrgh!

I have been putting off posting until I could figure out why my formatting suddenly changed and could fix it. But I CAN'T FIGURE IT OUT! I have tried a bunch o' stuff, including e-mailing blogger (which, for the first time ever, was NO help at all)... I do not know WHAT else to do. If anyone is still reading this and can me me some advice on how to fix the blog's formatting, please send me an e-mail!

Thanks.