Cold, beautiful night

It was dark. I looked out my window and saw clouds, and the moon, very bright. Got my camera and took a few. I almost never drink anymore, but I had a Becks, looking at this marvelous sky, waiting for my camera to say, "click."

I used to say that I remembered my childhood as a kind of dark age, with gray skies and dreary, stone walls, but now I'm not so sure.

I recall laying on the floor, on my back, with the crummy speakers of the crummy stereo on each ear, listening to Nights in White Satin, and swooning. 

"How can a thing be so good? What can this feeling mean?"

Nights in White Satin


Tuesday Afternoon

Don't pray for me, OK?

Good Lord, it's Louise Brooks!


Don't pray for me, please
(The Guardian)

The largest scientific study of the effects of prayer showed that it could, in fact, be harmful

…We now have all the evidence we need to show that prayer is not effective, and even that telling someone you are going to pray for them can be harmful. ¶ I say this on the basis of the largest and best controlled study of the effects of prayer. In the Harvard prayer experiment, 1802 cardiac bypass patients were divided into three groups. Two were told that they might be prayed for; half were and half weren't. The third group were told they would be prayed for and they were. The first two groups recovered equally well, but the group that knew they were being prayed for actually did worse. Perhaps their hopes were falsely raised, or perhaps they were upset to know that someone was praying for them. We don't know, but we can safely conclude that knowing you are being prayed for is not helpful….

State Atty. Gen. Brown defends 'downer' cow law

(The Press-Enterprise)

California Attorney General Jerry Brown has come out strongly in defense of a new law targeted in federal court by meat-industry groups. ¶ AB 2098, which took effect Jan. 1, makes it a crime to allow meat from livestock too weak or ill to stand to enter the food chain. ¶ The law also requires so-called downer cows to be humanely euthanized….

Dewey Martin, 68, of Buffalo Springfield, Dies

(The New York Times)

Buffalo Springfield

Dewey Martin, the drummer for Buffalo Springfield, the short-lived but influential 1960s California rock band that spawned the careers of Neil Young and Stephen Stills, was found dead on Feb. 1 in his apartment in Van Nuys, Calif. He was 68. ¶ … The cause has not been determined, the newspaper said; … he had had health problems in recent years….

This afternoon: first a hailstorm, then a rainbow.