The LifeWarming party has its own section of the site now.

The Wall Street Journal is getting a new look. Whilre directing “The Hot L Baltimore” recently, I needed some 1970’s newspapers for the working newspaper machine I had on stage. The front cover had to have a photograph of the hotel, taken in the 1920’s. My solution was to take the Wall Street Journal (with it’s black and white cover and simple multi-column format) and paste on a black and white photo (that I also used for the poster design) and a color print of The Baltimore Sun’s masthead. It worked rather well, but I’d have to find a different paper if I did it again.

Kasmir: A Magical Land, The Face of War. Two moving photo galleries courtesy of the Washington Post.

Despite my self-imposed exile from theater, I begin rehearsal tonight fot Giselle, my first ever ballet. I’ll be playing the Prince of Courland, doing a bit of pantomime and luckily no dancing. I used to be in an acrobatics class at the YWCA, but that was twenty-four years ago. All I remember from that is the arabesque, and I can’t even spell that.

Chris discovered a family of beavers living on our stretch of the river the other night. We’d thought we’d heard the tell-tale tail slap a few weeks earlier, but I couldn’t find any evidence of them – nibbled trees, cut saplings, a lodge, etc. But she saw them firsthand, and told me about them. She ran to the store for a few things, so I went down to see. As I got to the river, I shut off my flashlight and walked as silently as I could to where she saw them. I guess I was quiet enough, because I kicked one sitting on the shore guarding the group. It was as startled as I was, and it leapt into the river, slapping its tail on the water as it went. Several other splashes followed around me, and when I focused my light in the river, I saw five little heads looking back at me. Three more were on the banks. They swam around for a little while, and then I left them to continue their work. Two of the beavers’ main predators are the coyote and bobcat. I’ve seen bobcat several times on and around our property, and every so often a pack of coyote loudly make their way up and down the river. I guess we’ve got a complete ecosystem on our little farm. So far our chickens have stayed out of the foodchain.

I’d noticed Mark Anderson had been mighty quiet lately. Turns out he was moving his lending library to the big time: Booklend: A Lending Library By Post. It even got a mention in the New York Times. It works like this: Mark has a lot of books. He wants other people to read them. You request one, he mails it to you. When you finish (take your time!), you mail it back in the pre-stamped envelope provided. Your cost? Nothing. “Remember, Booklend is like your local library. Except smaller. And less convenient. "

Live in Georgia? Keep a weblog? Then GAwebloggers might interest you.

Back in college, my friends laughed at the notion of colon irrigation. Have you heard of this? It’s basically a regimen the cleans your bowels from the inside, flushing out accumulated waste. It seems to be a fringe thing, but there are facilities devoted to making you squeaky clean. Ian Belcher, journalist with The Guardian went to one on assignment, sceptical at the beginning. After seeing what came out (his photographer released a marble he’d swallowed some twenty-two years earlier), he’s now a convert. I must admit… I’d like to go through the program myself.

Alton Brown, of Good Eats fame, had a fit of absent mindedness and wound up in handcuffs. He knows it was his fault, but he won’t be filming Good Eats at Kroger anymore.

I’ve been chatting this afternoon with a self-described Sustainologist, who is working on the problem of global sustainability – making sure that the human race lives in a way the planet can handle. There are many who think we aren’t currently, and many more who don’t care. And Jack Harich’s on the case. He’s got a great mind to apply to the problem. Be sure to catch the photos of his woodworking and house. They are truly inspiring.