Dylan Thomas
from A Child's Christmas in Wales

Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the color of red-flannelpetticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smeltlike Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlors, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, theEnglish and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode thedaft and happy hills bareback, it snowed and it snowed.
But here a small boy says: "It snowed last year, too. Imade a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea.""But that was not the same snow," I say. "Our snow was not only shaken from white wash buckets down the sky, itcame shawling out of the ground and swam and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees; snowgrew overnight on the roofs of the houses like a pure and grandfather moss, minutely -ivied the walls andsettled on the postman, opening the gate, like a dumb, numb thunder-storm of white, torn Christmas cards."

An Urgent Appeal: Please Release Our Friends in Iraq

Four members of Christian Peacemaker Teams were taken this past Saturday, November 26, in Baghdad, Iraq. They are not spies, nor do they work in the service of any government. They are people who have dedicated their lives to fighting against war and have clearly and publicly opposed the invasion and occupation of Iraq. They are people of faith, but they are not missionaries. They have deep respect for the Islamic faith and for the right of Iraqis to self-determination.

To find out more & sign the petition, check out http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/freethecpt

After the petition, a "free" offer will come up--ignore it! It's **not** free, in case you are still naive!

THE BOSS
When Bruce Springsteen made the album Born To Run about 30 years ago, it took six months of grueling studio time to perfect it. The members of the band worked day & night, and Bruce himself drove it all. He talks about a thick notebook that went on for pages and pages before even one line of music that got used on the album came out. I learned all of this recently, from an NPR special and an article in the British magazine Uncut (did you know the British did not like Bruce at all??). After being a BS fanatic for 32 years, all of this information has caused me to rearrange my set of beliefs about the Boss. Contrary to the laid-back rocker image he projects, he comes across in these interviews as a fear-driven, perfectionistic, borderline obsessive. (In other words, he's a real human being).This does not make me like him less. On the contrary, it helps me understand that behind every work of genius, there is an extraordinary amount of work, drive, and attention to detail. There's a lot of magical thinking about creativity, and art of all kinds, and I think one truly enters the realm of the artist when one acknowledges that what's required is dedication and discipline, not just vision. Wow.