text:
114 search results for Dead Island
Dead Island Riptide
Type: Event | Date: Tuesday, Apr 23, 2013This first person shooter is the latest installment in the "Dead Island" franchise.
Zombie videogame 'Dead Island' being resurrected for the big screen
Type: Article | Date: Monday, Aug 4, 2014'Dead Island 2' is set for release next spring
'Wolfman,' 'Mummy' producer Sean Daniel acquires 'Dead Island' rights
Type: Post | Date: Friday, Feb 18, 2011Two days after the trailer goes viral, a movie deal is set
'Dead Island' trailer a sensation, but is a movie next?
Type: Post | Date: Thursday, Feb 17, 2011Is Hollywood seriously ready to start optioning 45-second video game commercials?
The Professor from 'Gilligan's Island' is dead at 89
Type: Post | Date: Thursday, Jan 16, 2014
The final word on the 'Dead Island' movie rights... for now
Type: Post | Date: Thursday, Feb 24, 2011When buying the rights to a movie, it helps if you're negotiating with the people who actually own them
'Dead Island' publisher denies reports of sale as the plot thickens
Type: Post | Date: Sunday, Feb 20, 2011If one party is sure they bought the rights another party is sure they didn't sell, what happens?
'Gilligan's Island' Professor Russell Johnson dies
Type: Article | Date: Thursday, Jan 16, 2014Actor admitted he had trouble finding work after show's cancellation
Ask Alan: Jon Snow vs. Glenn, and what's TV's most recognizable theme song?
Type: Post | Date: Friday, Apr 22, 2016And has Peak TV ruined the moviegoing experience?
The Morning Read: Gondry tackles Philip K. Dick's 'Ubik' and 'Men In Black 3' takes a break
Type: Post | Date: Wednesday, Feb 16, 2011Plus 'Sherlock 2' gets a title and Devin Faraci goes 'Supernatural'


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.I have an 94 ford escourt lx wagon. I just got it and cleaned it all up. I lifted the emergency brake up to clean under the handle and put it right back down. Now the brake light won't go off. What do I do?
Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011 AT 3:58 PM

subset: commoncrawl


text: 22 Mar 2013 Places celebrities love to hate Previous slide Next slide 1 of 20 View All Skip Ad Bajram Curri, Albania Who hates it? Jeremy Bowen. "Everyone who lived there seemed to be some kind of bandit, and my cameraman and I had to barricade our room door with heavy boxes. That still didn't stop us being robbed at gunpoint the next morning." Romford, Essex Who hates it? Ross Noble. "I've done a few gigs there over the years and have always found the audiences there a bit lairy - and not in a friendly way either." Blackpool (and London) Who hates it? Dominic Sandbrook. "I filmed a documentary in Blackpool not long ago and it's fair to say I'm not a fan. And I don't know which I dislike more: actually going to London, or hearing Londoners congratulating themselves for living there." Las Vegas Who hates it? Sian Williams. "There was a woman playing on a slot machine when I went to bed one night, and she was still there in the morning." Hugh Dennis. "You can't go anywhere without walking through a casino and seeing people play one-armed bandits at six in the morning. I couldn't wait to get out of the place." Manchester Who hates it? Janet Street-Porter. "It's just not my kind of town. It's a bit flashy and vulgar. All those women dressed up to the nines on a Friday night. I just can't cope with it." Sevenoaks, Kent Who hates it? Omid Djalili. "I've never met a happy person from Sevenoaks or played a good gig there - I've always been booed offstage. That's got to tell you something about the place, hasn't it?" Murmansk, Russia Who hates it? Chris Tarrant. "The worst place I've ever been to on Earth is Murmansk: it's just the dullest, drabbest, most tedious place imaginable, and there's a real sense of aggression everywhere you go. Don't go there." Washington DC Who hates it? Kate Mosse. "Too many men in black suits with earpieces, perhaps, and a sense of always being on one's guard. Not relaxing if you're on a book tour." Los Angeles Who hates it? Oz Clarke. "Whenever I've been there I've wandered around thinking: "Where the hell am I?" I just don't get the place." Phil Davis. "It's big and sprawling and has no centre." Bangkok Who hates it? Chris Mullins. "I think they have comprehensively destroyed their own culture, turning it into a sort of Los Angeles of the Far East." Steve Harley. "I loathe Bangkok. No great architecture, no romance, just pollution. I played a concert there a few years ago, and we took a tuk-tuk for an hour's sightseeing. I had to keep a damp handkerchief over my nose and mouth to make sure I still had a voice that night." Jenni Murray. "I'm not a fan of Bangkok, which to my mind is hell on earth. What's more, the traffic is demented. If you go to Thailand, my advice would be to get out of Bangkok as fast as you can." Perth, Australia Who hates it? Jenny Eclair. "The beaches are lovely but I found it desperately provincial and it seemed to be full of drunken cowboys." Johannesburg Who hates it? Henry Goodman. "I always try to look for the best in everywhere I visit, but despite having relatives there, I could not say that Johannesburg is really my favourite kind of place." Deborah Meaden. "I think I missed the point of Johannesburg. Nobody was out on the street and I found it very hard to find the city's heart." Casablanca Who hates it? Elizabeth McGovern. "The name might be evocative but it's a real let down and not somewhere I'll be going back to in a hurry." Moscow Who hates it? Ed Stoppard. "While it has a fascinating history, the city as a whole is brutal. If it were a person, it would be an adolescent with an Asbo." Honolulu, Hawaii Who hates it? Chris Packham. "Tasteless and overcrowded." Tokyo Who hates it? Stirling Moss. "Although people say it has a tremendous buzz it just doesn't do anything for me - it seems to be lacking in heart. I've visited about 10 times, often to watch sporting events, but am never disappointed when it comes to leaving and heading home." Singapore Who hates it? Philippa Gregory. "It's very big, very modern and very urbanised. As a rule, I prefer older places where you get a sense of the history." Clare Balding: "I went to Singapore some years ago and didn't like it. But then again, I didn't have much money in those days either and, let's face it, nowhere's much fun if you're short of cash." Tim Brooke-Taylor. "I visited Singapore about 10 years ago and didn't much take to the place. That was at a time when you weren't allowed to chew gum or anything, and you almost felt that the walls were watching you." Hull Who hates it? Steven Berkoff. "I wasn't that thrilled with Hull - although the people were wonderful." Hanover Who hates it? Ken Follett. "I came back from a book-signing session, looking forward to a drink and dinner, only to be told that the hotel restaurant closed at 9pm. Perhaps they get up very early in the morning..." Cairo Who hates it? Gok Wan. "It was much too busy, and to me the city felt quite hostile." Adam Boulton: "The biggest dump I've been to recently is Cairo." Back to image Back to image Back to image Back to image Back to image Back to image Back to image Back to image Back to image Back to image Back to image Back to image Back to image Back to image Back to image Back to image Back to image Back to image Back to image Back to image Back to image


text:
Logged In: YES
Originator: YES
This is the diff that will escape the blanks in the directory names:
< echo "$WHICH" | sed 's/ /\\ /g'
> echo "$WHICH"
I am running the latest snapshots of msys quite successfully on a German windows.
- bash-3.1-MSYS-1.0.11-1.tar.bz2
- coreutils-5.97-MSYS-1.0.11-snapshot.tar.bz2
- MSYS-1.0.11-20071204.tar.bz2
- msysCORE-1.0.11-2007.01.19-1.tar.bz2
However whenever I use ls -l or date, then
MSYS outputs the UTC time and not the time
of the timezone to which windows is set.
(in my case I am in timezone
"GMT +1:00 Amsterdam, Berlin, ...")
It would be great if msys would recognize the
actual timezone even with a German localization
of windows.
Btw: Also with the current release version of msys
the same problem exists.
thanks in advance
Logged In: YES
Originator: YES
This is the diff that will escape the blanks in the directory names:
< echo "$WHICH" | sed 's/ /\\ /g'
> echo "$WHICH"
Logged In: YES
Originator: NO
For timezone try adding a TZ environment variable.
For which, check out the most recent version from CVS. It is best to not mix issues.
Logged In: YES
Originator: YES
sorry for the diff post, I clicked the wrong task
Logged In: YES
Originator: YES
unfortunately there is no way for automating the correct setting of the TimeZone
via a shell script as the correct TimeZone names which are used by the shell are
not known/returned by windows.
since we would like to deploy msys on an international scale this really is an issue!
N.B.: on windows the TimeZone information is stored in the registry key
The SubKey ActiveTimeBias contains the offset in minutes to GMT
When setting the timezone to GMT-ActiveTimeBias/60, then the time itslef is correct,
but the displayed timezone is wrong!
Logged In: YES
Originator: NO
In ~/.profile add one of the following. I'm not sure which will work for you.
export TZ=MET-1DST
export TZ=Europe/Amsterdam
Logged In: YES
Originator: NO
This Tracker item was closed automatically by the system. It was
previously set to a Pending status, and the original submitter
did not respond within 30 days (the time period specified by
the administrator of this Tracker).


text:
Synonyms of property in English:
1 lost property
possessions, belongings, things, effects, stuff, gear, chattels, movables;
2 private property
building(s), premises, house(s), land, estates, realty, real estate
Definition of property in:
What do you find interesting about this word or phrase?
Comments that don't adhere to our Community Guidelines may be moderated or removed.
= trending


text:
Press Room
His Majesty King Abdullah II called for taking immediate and practical steps to facilitate the arrival and departure of Iraqi citizens on the Jordanian-Iraqi borders.
27 June 2004
His Majesty King Abdullah II affirmed during talks in Aqaba on Sunday with the US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, William Burns, that the Israeli plan to withdraw from Gaza should be a starting point for a full Israeli withdrawal from the occupied West Bank.
His Majesty King Abdullah has said "justice is the basis of governance" and progress of communities can't be achieved except through justice, equity and equal opportunities.
His Majesty King Abdullah II affirmed Jordan's readiness to provide all forms of support to the Palestinian people, particularly with regard to habilitating Palestinian security cadres.
His Majesty king Abdullah II, the Supreme Commander of the Jordan Armed Forces, patronized on Wednesday in the presence of His Royal Highness Prince Faisal Bin Al Hussein, a training ceremony at the Royal Artillery Force on the occasion of the Independence day, the Great Arab Revolt and the Army Day.
22 June 2004
His Majesty King Abdullah II expressed his hope that stability and security will prevail in the Republic of Congo.
22 June 2004
His Majesty King Abdullah II affirmed the importance of the French and European role in ensuring the success of efforts that aim at putting the peace process back on its normal track. During a meeting at Bait Al Baraka with the French Foreign Minister, Michel Barnier, His Majesty said that the success of the Israeli withdrawal plan from Gaza depends mainly on implementing it within the road map peace plan, and on fully ending the occupation of all Palestinian lands. The King underlined the importance of helping the Palestinian government in rebuilding the Palestinian institutions and supporting the Palestinian economy.
21 June 2004
His Majesty King Abdullah II received on Monday, His Holiness Moran Mor Ignatius Zakka I, Patriarch of Antakia and the East, and Head of the Syriac Orthodox Church in the World, currently on a visit to the Kingdom to strengthen cooperation between Jordan and the Syriac Patriarchate.
20 June 2004
His Majesty King Abdullah II on Sunday affirmed his support to Saudi Arabia in its drive to fight terrorism. During a telephone call with Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdel Aziz, the King expressed Jordan's support to all steps taken by the Saudi government to combat terrorism and eradicate it.
20 June 2004
His Majesty King Abdullah II met on Sunday with a US Congress delegation currently on a visit to the Kingdom within a tour to the region. During the meeting, which was attended by Minister of the Hashemite Royal Court, Sameer Rifai, Foreign Minister, Dr. Marwan Muasher and the US ambassador to Jordan Edward Gnehm, His Majesty reviewed Jordanian-US ties as well as the situation in Iraq.


text:
tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-191910022016-07-19T14:29:22.610+01:00blethers"Blether - n. foolish chatter. - v.intr. chatter foolishly [ME blather, f. ON blathra talk nonsense f. blathr nonsense]" - Concise Oxford Dictionary.Christine McIntoshhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-19191002.post-17790323378152962972016-06-24T19:31:00.000+01:002016-06-24T19:31:24.455+01:00A song for a sad day.Brain keeps singing songs - even today, when the news is so bad and the country has gone crazy. Scotland votes to stay in Europe? No matter. We don't have the say. But the songs keep coming, and maybe it makes me feel better to let them. I'm not up to more cerebral poems anyway.

Unity no more

I woke up this morning
with the sun on my face
for a moment lay peaceful
just a moment of grace

till the memory roused me
of the graphs and the polls
and I reached to discover
that we'd traded our souls.

The country had chosen
to be duped in their choice,
to reclaim some lost freedom
to follow the voice

of those who shout hatred
for the lost and the strange
who would make us a fortress
put up barriers to change.

But the sun is still shining
and the birds sing in tune
and it's only the people
who will recognise soon

That it's too late for thinking
and it's too late for love
and the voices have drowned out
the song of the dove

And the magpies are fighting on the grass
And the magpies are fighting on the grass.

C.M.M. 24/06/16

Christine McIntoshhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-19191002.post-42532257187396356722016-06-20T17:57:00.001+01:002016-06-20T17:57:52.673+01:00SongIt's strange how one can be so influenced in one's writing by what's going in - visually, through reading the work of other writers, or - as in this case - audibly. I've recently been listening to a good bit of Leonard Cohen's music - realise I enjoy it far more now than when he and I were both much younger, when he had the kind of voice I didn't care for at the time. But what interests me now is that with that rhythm in my brain, I've found myself thinking in a lyric metre - and that the journey there was far more seductive than the suggestion made over the years by one critic of my work that I should discipline my writing in this way.

Not that this is disciplined - and not that I took much time over it. It's a song looking for a tune, and it's a song for now, for me now and in this time, when I know that all over Britain people of my generation are going to vote to leave Europe and I feel ashamed, when politics are vile, when my friends seem self-selecting and everyone else is lost.

 I also feel furious - but all that happens is a song without a melody.

But for what it's worth ...

SONG

When I think about today
and what I am and where
and the world keeps crashing in
with anger - do I care?

Well yes, I find I'm thinking,
though nothing seems to move
in the world that I inhabit
in the people that I love -

but the violence and sorrow
and the voices screaming hate
cut across my passive questions
take me out beyond my gate

to the people sunk in apathy
to the old and the unwise,
drive me far beyond the safety zone
to where the world cries.

And though I'm growing older
and common sense says fear
in my heart I'm still protesting
in my head it still seems clear

that we cannot stand and wonder
while the world dissolves in flame -
we must fight to save the future
not live content with shame.

C.M.M. 06/16

Christine McIntoshhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-19191002.post-70321358811534875302016-04-13T13:25:00.000+01:002016-04-13T13:25:53.320+01:00Unpredictable - a poem revisited.I've finally got round to some revising - a poem I wrote in Vietnam, in the heat and humidity of our first days there, before I'd settled into accepting it all. I was put off by the comments of someone I'd considered a sympathetic critic - made the mistake of letting him see the raw first draft. However, re-reading it and changing the structure more than the content, I find it recreates the moment, the strangeness, the otherness. So here it is, more than I year after I first wrote it.

Unpredictable

The lawns of rice deceive the eye
until one sees unwillingly
the ditches and the depth
and something strange and out of place

like graves or shrines in centre-field
and recognises foreign-ness
as tangled in this alien world
as mats of green inexorably
drifting on the muddy tide, which
people eat, like snakes in wine
and scorpions, and spiders piled
in glistening heaps to tempt the eye.
And flowing round the air's embrace
is heavy with the drifting smoke
of stubble burning in the fields
beyond the river's parapet where
sunset comes before its hour.
A song comes from a hidden bank
and cattle, golden in the light
descend to drink and all is strange
and lushly vibrant in the dusk.

C.M.M. Vietnam 03/15Christine McIntoshhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-19191002.post-55539822321079731012016-03-14T18:59:00.000+00:002016-03-14T19:02:53.895+00:00Fair buzzing in Oban

Victorious table at dinner

I've mulled it over for the past five days, but now I realise that Synod reports are being demanded - not, happily, from me - right left and centre and it's time I put down my take on the Argyll and The Isles Diocesan Synod. The main impetus, to be honest, came from two online sources: the Primus' blog, in which he said his synod had 'a buzz', and the commiserations of friends on Facebook that I should be enduring this thing.

I'll deal with the latter first. The only commiserations I might have deserved lay in the fact that the Synod itself was held in (yet another) windowless room on a gloriously sunny day in a location next to a sea loch and an attractively wooded shore line: I did get stir crazy, and spent the lunch break picking my way down to a beach and over dub and mire as the birds sang round me. The rest of the time I was really enjoying myself, both on the pre-Synod day (it's hardly worth it to bring people from such a far-flung area unless they get a decent shot at socialising) and during Synod itself.

And that brings me to the former stimulus: I don't know what caused the buzz at the St Andrew's Synod, but I have a good idea of what contributed to our buzz. (I'd really like to know, by the way, what manner of buzzing goes on elsewhere ...) First of all, of course, we have an extraordinary bishop who could cause a buzz in a morgue. He delivered an ode, for Heaven's sake. But actually it was more than this. I am convinced that the excitement arose from the fact that instead of sitting in stupor listening to presentation after presentation we were allowed to talk to each other, about everything from the balance sheets to the first time we'd encountered the Holy Spirit.

This was achieved by a variety of methods, but primarily by the fact that on the Pre-Synod day, reviewing our progress with Building the Vision, we had two facilitators making us mix - moving people from one table to another after the manner of a Snowball waltz, for instance. At Synod, each table had a facilitator (I was one) to get people talking, as at General Synod a couple of years ago. And yes, we talked about the accounts and as a result made demands for more detail, clarification, amplification ... Before anyone asks, I had a plant at my table, an accountant who could make more sense of a balance sheet than I care to, so that I could merely render into words the data he fed me.

By the end of the two days, I came to this conclusion: people are excited by what brings them together in a situation like this. They become animated by the chance to share it with others whom they don't really know - because this unlocks the kind of honesty you sometimes find in a hospital ward, the honesty of strangers, when inhibition and fear of something you say coming back to bite you can be cast aside. So that is what lay behind the astonishment of the imported facilitator when she remarked on the alacrity with which pairs and groups got to grips with the Big Questions - she couldn't believe how little fencing she met as she moved round.

I have to confess that I enjoy facilitating a group. I love being able to make people feel at ease with one another and with the topics they've been asked to consider. I love realising I've managed to break the ice without losing anyone under it. It feeds all sorts of my own needs for interaction - and that's before we get on to the subject matter under discussion.

I haven't mentioned the other aspects of this meeting, that had me and others in Oban from late on Monday afternoon till late afternoon on Wednesday. I've not talked about a riotous dinner after the Synod Eucharist, nor about the quiz that my table won and the Bishop's Easter Egg (our prize) that I suspect may have vanished to Cumbrae. I've not mentioned the Monday night, the dinner on the pier with old and new friends, nor the delight of watching a first-time visitor grow in confidence as the days went on. I can't tell you how much I laughed, nor how much I was laughed at. It was all part of the whole.

So yes: there was an enormous buzz at the Argyll Synod. There was laughter, there were tears, there was pastoral work being done over lunch breaks, there was kindness, there were friendships rekindled. For me, there was also the knowledge that it was my last: I've served on General Synod for the past 10 years as alternate or elected representative, and it's time to step down. I'm not a committee person, and I hate being trapped indoors. But even with all that, I'm sure of one thing. I'll miss it.Christine McIntoshhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-19191002.post-29739506487924499392016-02-01T18:55:00.000+00:002016-02-01T18:55:53.797+00:00Of urban open spaces and a post-war childhoodI was reading the other day about a dispute over an area of land in the West of Glasgow which is currently used as a (relatively) wild place for children to play, for people to grow things, to be free, and which is threatened by proposed housing development. The writer went on to enlarge on the features that make it so important to retain its use for recreation, particularly the benefits to children's health and wellbeing of such unstructured play in a traffic-free area in a city.

It had me thinking of my own childhood freedoms, also in the West End of Glasgow - freedoms positively enhanced by the relatively recent World War 2. I'm sure I've mentioned much of this before - the place where the land-mine demolished a bit of Polwarth Gardens' tenements, and the huge blocks of red sandstone that still littered the site sticks in my mind, although as a Novar Drive kid I didn't stray there often; we were very territorial in these days. My usual companions lived in the next close and we barely tolerated strangers ...

My usual playground was an open space in Novar Drive where the end of Lauderdale Gardens didn't reach as far as the Novar and was linked to it by a muddy track over empty, hilly ground. On the lower side, which has now been built on, there was a rubbish dump, an infill site, I suppose, where building debris (a result of bombing?) shared the space with more mundane litter like soot left by chimney sweeps (great face-paint) and at the top of which was the underground air-raid shelter in which we sometimes lit illicit fires. To the far side of the dump were two brick-built shelters with thick concrete roofs; we rarely went inside (too smelly) but played Kingball, precariously, on the roof of one.

When it snowed, I borrowed a sledge from a neighbour whose daughter was a good 6 years older than me - she would be at school and I'd be hurtling down the sloping field, often alone, for hours. I have a feeling that the winter I'm recalling was my first at school, when Hillhead Primary had an intake in January; some primary teacher must have doubled up and taken my class in the afternoon after her morning class had gone home. My mother, already having to attend to my 2 year old sister, would despair at converting my wet, grubby morning self into a schoolgirl in time for the 1pm start. (Crazy idea, now I think of it again.)

When the days grew longer, we spent hours climbing the stunted hawthorn trees on the hillier side of this area; swinging from branches and making dens under - or on top - of them. And then there were the marathons, when we ran round and round a small path that cut through the long grass until we were gasping and scarlet in the face ... and the hiding places in the grass where we used sticks for rifles ... to say nothing of playing chase the arrows all over Hyndland, all the way to Clarence Drive ...

I was always grubby, always scratched, always exhausted by the time our parents summoned us all from the windows of our flats. When we left Hyndland for a "low door" in Broomhill I was devastated. At the age of 10, my life outwith school had been changed for ever. Shades of the prison house ...

I looked up my old haunts on Google Earth. They're barely recognisable, though "my" tenements haven't changed. This first picture is of the play area I've described in such tedious detail. The whole tenement block on the right is new - that's where the rubbish and the overground air raid shelters were. The trees are new - though clearly they've been growing for a while. The play-park just visible on the left is new, and I would have scorned it as tame and at the same time treacherous (I always got sick on swings).

 The second picture looks from the same place as the first, down Novar Drive. New tenements on the left - but you can make out where the old ones begin, with a lane in between which was always there. The top flat we lived in has the bay window just before that tall chimney head on the right of the road. It all looks very crowded, with the cars on either side. We played in the street and in our wilderness, and no-one worried. (Actually, children don't know the secret worries of the mother marooned with a baby in a top flat who suddenly can't see her firstborn and wonders where it might be ...).

What I'd actually like to know is how my own offspring would have fared in this environment, instead of the seaside town we brought them up in - and even how their children would cope with a top flat. What I do know for myself is that I couldn't return.

It was good, though, back then ...Christine McIntoshhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-19191002.post-67408250644990901812016-01-17T18:22:00.000+00:002016-01-17T18:22:28.756+00:00A cold collation ...The weather wasn't promising. Snow yesterday and a cold night - a typical recipe for a stressful cold coming to church in the morning, with the added complication of visitors driving over from Rothesay and the Bishop and Mrs Bishop making the journey from Oban. Verily a recipe for an anticlimax, if not a disaster. But the county gritters had seen to the roads and our heroic Priest-in-charge-now-our-Rector had cleared the drive so that even the most timid could get to church for the service that would collate Andrew as our Rector. (This was a new word for me, in this context: given the weather and the temperature inside the building I could only think of a cold collation that might be served if one turned up late at Downton Abbey - but I wander).

It was joyful to hear +Kevin tell us that we were a sign of the promise that we could be the instruments of our own change, that we had achieved what had seemed impossible and were a shining example, etc, etc ... and as I sat there I did think back to the days of doom and gloom and no money and doors that would shut forever after seven years, though mostly I thought that if we'd been less fortunate in getting this curate who used to design battleships then we might well have sunk without a trace. (That seems a suitable collocation of ideas, as opposed to a collation ...)

And there was another joyful thing. Yesterday - and on Friday, when the leak first escaped that the Episcopal Church in the USA was to be rapped on the knuckles for its acceptance of same-sex marriage, when the less well-informed press were announcing that they'd been kicked out for being naughty - yesterday I wasn't looking forward to today, much - didn't feel happy in my Anglican shoes, as it were. But then I arrived in the church, already pretty full of our own flock and the intrepid Rothesay people with whom we share our Rector - and found that all around I could see people were wearing badges. Not little, discreet lapel pins, but big, bright protest-style badges, courtesy of Kelvin, like the one I was wearing, like the one I'd given to Mr B to pin on his scarf (leather jackets and pins don't go well together). Badges like the ones in the photo. And I felt at one with the world - or at least the world in our part of it.

Because that's the point. There is no way a community can rejoice and congratulate itself and share fellowship if it is silently complicit in an injustice to not only many of its members but also countless other human beings who only want equality and justice. But I'd say enough of us are in this together to make rejoicing a possibility.

It was a good day in this part of the diocese. A good day.

Christine McIntoshhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-19191002.post-65471806602864456782016-01-07T13:11:00.000+00:002016-01-07T13:11:18.626+00:00The meeting

THE MEETING

This the night when under the dark dome
the hard stars shine and that one
shines brighter than them all, the night
when power and pomp and wisdom and wealth
come seeking a king and find instead
love in ordinary, human love, vulnerable
to all that wounds beneath the sky -
This is that night. It comes again.

For earthly power was melted then
in tears of joy, of journey done,
of understanding what lay there
in poverty of place and rank
and all they knew, these visitors,
collapsed in shards of sudden loss
and left them free to live again -
This is that night.

©C.M.M. 6/01/16

Christine McIntoshhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-19191002.post-79128847769743149432016-01-02T17:20:00.001+00:002016-01-02T17:20:33.526+00:00Sere or sage?

No, it's not a typo. In fact, I'm rather pleased with the title of this post, which came to me with the delightful inconsequence that sometimes surprises me. The punning possibilities are wonderfully appropriate too ... look it up yourself (if you need to, erudite reader) and see for yourself. But not, perhaps, before you've read this, my little New Year's ramble through my head ...

Like my friend Mother Ruth, I've been thinking I ought to get back to blogging more - the thought coinciding this time with the reflective season. As my memories of Christmas tend these days to be trotted out on Blipfoto, I'm reflecting this new year on what comes with the passing years. Is it honour, love, obedience, troops of friends (there's a theme here) and nothing more? Is it in fact none of these? (obedience? I ask you!) Is it something more ... inward?

Well, yes, actually. Inward, with outward manifestations. And it's to do with confidence. Not, I hasten to add, the confidence that had the 10 year old me scooshing along a slide in the ice, sure of my balance and the supple joints that kept me upright; not the confidence that takes you down a rocky path even faster than you clambered up it. No. There are endless nibblings that erode physical confidence by the time you get into that seventh decade. But I've recently realised that I no longer fear being somehow "found out", and that's a big compensation.

So what kind of fraudery was I scared of being discovered in? Perhaps the easiest to pin down was one I've mentioned before. When I moved to Dunoon with my five-week old baby I discovered that everyone I met regarded me as a fully-fledged, adult mother who also happened to be a fully-fledged member of the Scottish Episcopal Church. In fact, my membership of that body was almost as young as my son, and I no more felt like an adult that I did a Klingon. (Why did that comparison slide in there?) I was playing a part, and surely it was only a matter of time before I was found out.

Five years later I became a member of the General Synod of this church I had only recently joined. I was the youngest lay member, for sure, and may even have been younger than the most juvenile clergyman present (remember - they were all men, in these far-off days. There were only 13 women on the whole body in this, its final manifestation; we had voted ourselves into extinction by the time my stint was over). I looked in awe at practically everyone present, and was sure they thought me a child. The only person who seemed on the same planet as me was Richard Holloway; one day, at lunch, he offered me "some barbecued peas" and we laughed. Did he realise how I felt?

But to the present. The joy of being the age I am now is that I know who I am, what I can do. I am less likely to take on something that I don't feel comfortable doing, so the things I do undertake I undertake confidently. I care less, much less, what people think of me - whether it's the colour of my hair (currently a sort of Pentecostal red) or my political opinions. The people I love may disagree with me about issues large or small, but it won't stop me loving them. I have fewer bosom buddies than in my teens, but have learned the importance of knowing who can be relied on in a corner.

I could, I realise, go on and on ... Bishops are all younger than me; clergy have to earn my respect like anyone else; I don't worry about fashion (did I ever, much?); I don't mind people knowing I watch East Enders (hasn't it been black over Christmas?); I no longer read books because I should. I find myself able to speak to all sorts of people on all sorts of topics, from bereavement to equal marriage, and find them listening as if I actually have something to say. I will no longer be patronised.

Perhaps all this is what lies behind the wearing of purple, the living in a van, being Lady Violet Crawley ... all these impossible old women of popular culture. Purple doesn't go with the hair right now, and I'd find a van chilly, but I can see a future here ...Christine McIntoshhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-19191002.post-49118787425810665022015-12-24T17:13:00.001+00:002015-12-24T17:13:48.663+00:00The ghosts of Christmas Past

It's a strange phenomenon, the power of Christmas Eve to resurrect memories so strongly and yet so randomly. As I listened to the first of the closing voluntaries from the Service of Nine Lessons and Carols from King's, there came into my mind a memory of myself, in my late teens, stricken with some inconvenient malady on Christmas Eve and spending that short afternoon in bed with the radio on, drifting in and out of sleep. I can't remember what ailed me, and cannot think it lasted, but at the time it felt unreal and solitary as the day darkened.

The small me in the photo (I think I was two) lived in blue dungarees and had to be coaxed out of them for family Christmas tea. (The yellow duck didn't join us - his red felt beak was too chewed for respectable company). We ate Christmas lunch, I remember clearly, in our top flat in Novar Drive, Hyndland, and went for tea to my grandparents' house in Hyndland Road. The whole extended family - the Stewarts, that is - would turn up there at some point in the day, though as I was the first of my generation I was the sole child for the first few post-war years. Families tended to live close, and there was public transport for those who were beyond walking distance.

I was remembering this morning how in my early married life I didn't do any Christmas food: my parents' house was ten minutes' walk from our flat (still in Hyndland) and we went there for lunch and stayed, stupefied, until it was time for bed. My first ever Christmas cake was made just before I had my first child - I'm sure I've recounted how, having slipped on ice in Clarence Drive, I had such a sore behind that I couldn't sit down, and dispelled my fears by baking. But the Glasgow Christmasses didn't end with our emigration to Dunoon; Cal Mac ferries seem to me to have run on Christmas Day and we headed back to Glasgow with our baby son. I do recall, however, that on the first year in Dunoon I iced the cake just before heading out to Midnight Mass: for the first time in my life I was attached to a church and had singing to do.

The long years of running Christmas myself occupied the greatest part of my life, having ended only five or six years ago. It still seems odd not to be making stuffing on Christmas Eve, and ramming it into a recalcitrant bird before church, odd not to waken to the smell of cooking and worry that the overnight temperature had been too high - or too low if the smell wasn't making it as far as the bedroom. There are no small children for whom stockings will have to be filled. I no longer have the restless wait for all the grown-up family to be safely here, nor the unholy rush between the end of term and the 25th. There is, theoretically, all the time in the world.

Time, in fact, to miss family; to look forward to seeing some and regret not seeing others; to have a suitcase packed and worry about taking the right things or forgetting presents or cooking brandy. Time to think about having dinner so that we can have a proper rest before our midnight sing/play/pray (have I got the intercessions? the music?) Time to wonder how we ever had the energy to drag sleeping choristers from their beds to come with us (really).

Now these choristers are cooking turkeys, looking after young children, preparing for visitors, in different parts of the country, and we are here, with the dark firth calm at last and the rain peppering the windows. Everything changes but the message of that distant birth. Even the carols - tonight our introit will be Advent Song, which is only four years old. And then Advent will be over, the waiting over.

And it will be Christmas.Christine McIntoshhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-19191002.post-39115339845333542532015-12-12T12:46:00.000+00:002015-12-12T12:49:06.002+00:00Three snacks and outI found myself, in a procrastinating moment, leafing through a leaflet from the Co-op, a Christmas leaflet promising all manner of festive treats that could readily be bought or whipped up using a range of Co-op products. I was lured to check out the helpful little labels at the foot of each recipe - you know, the ones with the 'traffic-light' system of grading content of fat, salt, sugar etc.

I suppose I was thinking of the disturbing news the other day that doctors no longer know what the average healthy weight of an 8-year old is because almost all children in Scotland are overweight or obese. It seems that the adult population is also heading for the buffers fully laden, as it were, and the NHS is doomed as a result. (Ok - I was sweeping a floor at the time and may have condensed this slightly, but you get my drift.)

One caller on the dreaded Call Kaye programme suggested labelling every instant meal with an example of the kind of exercise that would burn off the calories contained therein. I thought this a marvellous idea - it was the realisation that to rid myself of the calories of an average pizza I would have to climb a Munroe carrying a pack that had me decide that life was too short to eat pizza and would probably be shorter if I did.

Back to the leaflet. On average, the calories contained in the average helping of the snacks whose recipes looked so tempting - and these are one- or two-bite nibbles we're talking here - the average content was between 400 and 500 calories. Thats's appalling. The main culprits seemed to lie in the use of cream and butter, even on apparently healthful things like sprouts. Three of these snacks would constitute the recommended calorific average for someone of my age, build and height for a whole day unless I took some exercise.

That's it, really. I'll probably eat a few such items over the gluttony season, leave my body to complain afterwards of the abuse, but not without thinking about it. I'm not miserable about that at all - any more than I am about cutting out, say, oysters from my diet (they have dire consequences for me). And I am reminded of something my father said when I was a skinny teen going to the cinema regularly and eating a bag of peanuts in the darkness. "That's enough to feed a starving family for a day."

He was ahead of his time, I think.Christine McIntoshhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-19191002.post-69051620587551428332015-12-11T18:55:00.000+00:002015-12-11T18:55:49.875+00:00All we go down ...

I was at a funeral yesterday, not as a mourner but as a provider of music, one of a quartet singing the Kontakion for the Departed at the end of a service in the Cathedral of The Isles on Cumbrae. This was significant for me personally in one important feature: it was doing exactly that at my very first funeral in that same cathedral 42 years ago that convinced me of all that I now believe in, as a consequence of which I was confirmed 9 months later and as a further consequence of which I came to live in Dunoon. There were differences, of course - that first funeral was of a friend, it was a requiem mass, the coffin was between the choir stalls and therefore right on front of me.

So I'd actually have gone a long way to sing this music again in that place and with these same musicians. But another truth dawned on me yesterday as I sang, and after the plainsong Nunc Dimittis with which we finished. It was a truth about music - that kind of music, timeless and beautiful and still. For after all the words, the telling to God of the deceased's character (thou knowest, Lord, the secret of our hearts ... ) and the hymns that were deemed suitable, this was the moment when it seemed to me that the otherness of death came close, that the life of the world was dimmed and the life of heaven opened, and the possibilities of eternity were real and endless.

And weeping o'er the grave, we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia.

I would like to think that this music will be present for my end.Christine McIntoshhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-19191002.post-40935376256320635732015-11-21T17:30:00.000+00:002015-11-21T17:32:10.244+00:00Dragons on Social MediaNow here's a thing. I have an ambivalent attitude to Facebook. It shows in the fact that I very rarely

post directly to it; I will share something that I find interesting or provocative but apart from that anything that appears from me comes through other social media outlets, primarily Twitter. But I use Facebook because it's useful - useful for contacting people, for posting group updates, for finding people.

That said, there are some implications in using such a medium. I came up against one yesterday, when I discovered quite by accident that someone I know in real life (RL) had "unfriended" me. (Vile phrase, but that's what it says). I only found out when I wanted to tag this person, to draw his attention to a piece of local news that could have had an effect on him. What could I have done to offend him? Had I snubbed him hideously? Maligned him in public?

Not being the reticent type, I asked him. His reply indicated that he'd found my posts too limited in range (i.e. not interesting to him personally). I'll not say anything about the things he posts about, nor about the online "friendships" he has struck up with people who are actually my friends. (I know - I've just said it. No details, though ...)

And I realised - or at least I think I did - that actually it was ignorance that had caused him to cut me off in this unseemly fashion. For it is perfectly possible to hide the posts of someone you find tedious without actually consigning them to virtual outer darkness. Either he didn't care (so not ignorant) or he hadn't realised.

The fact is that I don't actually care either. But it brought home to me the added dimension of having an online connection with someone you see on a regular basis. It made me want to shun Facebook, as a goodly number of people do - but that's just silly. When I suggested it to another friend (RL as well as virtual) she protested that she enjoys my posts and links. So I'll just carry on for now.

But I realise that my attitude to this chap whose grasp of the niceties of relationships is so inadequate has changed. Perhaps I've learned something about him that it's good to have found out before it impinged on my everyday life. And I am reflecting on the fact that I originally signed up for F/b (long after I was an early adopter of Twitter) because it allowed for a more varied collection of people to stay in touch - former pupils, former colleagues, my family - and that is as important as it ever was.

But I shall think twice before automatically accepting the "friendship" of people I consider acquaintances - for there be dragons.

Christine McIntoshhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-19191002.post-35463695165376433572015-11-02T23:43:00.000+00:002015-11-02T23:43:09.418+00:00Remembering on All Souls

Holy Trinity Dunoon: All Souls

This evening we remembered. We lit candles in front of the altar for family and friends lost. We considered our mortality, and our human response to it. We were reminded how faith and raw emotion can make difficult bedfellows. And I remembered a poem I wrote over a decade ago.

Communicating

Today I would have phoned -
wished to share the small
details of my life, the
safe return, the laughing
at the rain which fell
as if the Flood would come.
But had I rung the number
as familiar as my name
you would not be there.
A stranger's voice would say
your words, and the strangeness
would be too much to bear.
And contemplating this
a glacial shifting in my soul
gave promise that in weeks not lived
the frozen tears would find the way
and spill into a distant sea like
drops into the ocean of my love.

C.M.M. 4/05

Christine McIntoshhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-19191002.post-35276857543584867882015-10-15T13:07:00.001+01:002015-10-15T13:07:41.782+01:00A Mass of QuestionsWas it wise to get me started again? Today I have a question. A question that returns to trouble me when I stray beyond my accustomed paths of worship for whatever reason - or sometimes when I'm in my familiar environment and find myself profoundly grateful for what I find there.

So: the question. Why do Roman Catholics sound so perfunctory in the celebration of the Mass? The rapid delivery - so rapid that anyone unfamiliar with it can't make it out, microphones notwithstanding (yes, I know - the rapid mutter of the Mass is a cliché, but it's one that would be well abandoned), the perfunctory prayers, the almost apologetic readings ... I'm not even going to mention the music; I suppose that's something that rather depends on what you've got. But why make the holy mysteries sound so very matter-of-fact?

You can tell from this that I've had a recent experience. And I noticed one difference from the last time. They said "Amen" in the way I'm accustomed to, rather than with the stress on the second syllable with the "Ah" said as "Ae". Who brought this about? Was it part of the upheaval that took the liturgy back to the language of the Prayer Book?

So come on, good people. I want to know.Christine McIntoshhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-19191002.post-21716448540844090692015-10-14T13:48:00.000+01:002015-10-14T13:49:29.476+01:00Planning or living?This blog post is an act of conscience, brought on by Kelvin's reminder of how much I've been neglecting my blog. So here's a wee blether for today ...

A couple of hours ago I was phoned by a pleasant-sounding woman - youngish, I'd say, West of Scotland accent - offering to help me plan for my old age. Just a few questions would do it. And I'm afraid I laughed. No, no, she said - it's for anyone over 35; 35 to 80 year-olds can do this thing, whatever it was.

She was clearly not happy with me. I told her I was probably past planning for my old age, and that rather than think about it I really needed to get out to the shops as my bare larder might result in our not needing to plan further. And she let me go.

Thing is, I can't accept that I'm old. And if I think about planning for when I'm utterly ancient I become depressed. Which makes me wonder if in fact that only people who should be planning for their old age are my children's generation, because then it still seems unlikely that it's ever going to happen to you, this old age malarkey.

But take heed. It does happen - but people like me, we stick our heads in the sand and sing "la la, I can't hear you". We continue to wear jeans and turn our hair improbable colours. We walk and we sing and we go on holidays. We play on social media and we watch rubbish on the telly when our absurd lifestyle wears us out and we need a wee sit down.

We often laugh a lot. Sometimes we weep. People fall off their perches around us, and we become sober for a while. We talk about what the future might hold, and agree not to think about it. So don't ask me to plan for my old age. I'm too busy living. Right now.Christine McIntoshhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-19191002.post-3395527609312827212015-09-03T17:51:00.005+01:002015-09-03T17:53:14.150+01:00Washed up - a poem for todayWashed up

The children on the beach
have no cares.
Their garments lap upon the waves
that brought them here.
They are not playing -
they are dead.
Hair like seaweed in the foam,
their small bodies come to
rest where other children play.
So small, so dead. The hot tears
flow but cannot warm
those tiny souls that drift
and sigh into my heart as I
turn away, their image
floating useless in my mind.

©C.M.M. 09/15

When people take their children into leaking rubber dinghies in the dark to cross rough seas, knowing how many die every night, there is nothing "bogus" about their desperation. - Polly Toynbee, writing in the guardian, 3 September 2015Christine McIntoshhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-19191002.post-19183351208979560062015-09-02T10:50:00.000+01:002015-09-02T10:50:49.905+01:00The Education debate - a builder's takeI was chatting to our builder yesterday about schools. It seemed to me that this successful tradesman, running the building firm that he inherited from his father, had the secret of attainment in school well sussed. He attended the same school as my children, at the same time, and he told us a story.

He was in a science class - about S3/4 level - who were being taught by a supply teacher. She was pleasant, but deadly boring. He and his pals began to amuse themselves; the lesson was doomed. So, it seemed, was the supply teacher - for all knew well that she'd never regain the control necessary for learning to take place. Ah well.

A week later his father called him over for a quiet word. The essence of it was this: You were in a class being taught by Mrs. Bloggs? And you misbehaved and upset her? Right. Mrs Bloggs is a good customer of ours - in fact, I'm working on her house right now. If I ever hear that you've stepped out of line in her class again, I'll f******g well do you. Right?

Crude but effective. But it contains the seeds of success in many a small town school, where no-one is unknown and where the strangest connections emerge with remarkable rapidity. Pupils, teachers, Head Teacher and parents are linked in a symbiotic relationship in which all have to play their part or be found out. It makes for a relatively enjoyable existence for all - and that is where I taught for over 20 years without any of the negative fall-out which newcomers to a small town tend to fear.

But what else can we learn from this story? Nothing new, actually. The seeds of underachievement are to be found on both sides of the garden: boring teachers who wouldn't inspire the most docile of students, and uninterested or incapable parents. And then there's the growing sub-group of hostile and resentful parents as well, the ones who encourage their children not to let the teacher "get away" with any attempt to prevent their precious weans from walking all over everyone. Any one of these on its own will spoil the business of learning; more than one and we might as well all go home.

So what do you do to ensure that none of these weeds enter the Eden of education? No amount of pupil testing is going to help Mr Tedious to become a glowing enthusiast; no closing of the attainment gap is going to happen without somehow involving the parents in the enterprise. And no political manifesto is going to make a scrap of difference unless a whole generation of teachers and parents are somehow unified in one glowing, aspirational whole where the excitement of maths and the joy of literature and the joy of finding out become more important than a tidy record of work or where the next meal is coming from, or the next boyfriend, or the next fix.

I wouldn't have Nicola Sturgeon's job for anything. But those who advise her, who tell her that National Testing is the way to ensure that every child can have the same chances that she did, these advisors should perhaps begin by pointing at the Sturgeon family. They were the bedrock of the First Minister's success.

And she maybe managed to avoid the boring teachers ...Christine McIntoshhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-19191002.post-59892198943955585362015-08-28T12:59:00.000+01:002015-08-28T12:59:57.167+01:00Women and men and trains - and Jeremy.I clocked Jeremy Corbyn's thought about women-only compartments on trains but didn't dwell on it until I read Kelvin's post and tried to leave a comment (it was eaten by gremlins so I'm doing it here instead). So - would this be A Good Thing? Or is it too reminiscent of purdah and all that western women associate with such seclusion: veils, burkahs, kinder, küche, kirche ...? And I considered my immediate reaction, and tried to reconcile it with the person people think I am, and this is what came bubbling to the surface.

I don't travel solo much on public transport these days, but one of the pensioner-like things I do is use the bus from Dunoon - Glasgow. It's free, it takes you on the ferry without your needing to get wet on the pier, it drops you in the centre of town, you can doze off on it and not be taken past your stop. But nowadays I either sit on the outer seat of a pair, or sit beside another woman, because of an incident a year or so ago. Dear, sensitive reader, picture the scene:

I am sitting on the bus which I boarded in Dunoon with about seven people. I am in a window seat, looking out in a dwam at the wet road when we stop to let people on in Gourock. A tall man - not fat, just tall - of about 70 sways up the aisle and crashes down in the seat next to me. He lands half on top of me, to be accurate, squashing my arm and pressing his own arm into my right tit. I wait for him to apologise and move. I go on waiting. I stare at him. He smiles, complacently. I point out that he is too close for comfort, but he makes no move. I tell him he's invading my space and I want him to get out of it. He scoffs, and moves very slightly. He then begins to complain in a loud voice about unreasonable women, until I tell him I'm going to make a scene if he doesn't desist.

I take refuge in Twitter, in which medium my niece saves the day by making me laugh aloud. (Annoying man finds this discomfiting and I am glad). She has coined a phrase to describe her pet hate on public transport, for it is younger men with lava crotches that give her the most trouble. And happily annoying man isn't going all the way to Glasgow and I am freed from his clammy presence.

Kelvin in his post talks about the need to deal with violence against women, and I agree with him. But neither my Annoying Man nor my niece's spread-legged travelling companions are being overtly violent - they're just behaving in a way that none of the men in my own circles would ever behave. They wouldn't be in my circles for long if they did. But they represent two distinct classes of public transport-users: throwbacks to a past age and present-day strutters (you know the walk?) who still think they are the dominant species. The former are likely to think it's all right to address women as "dearie" if they complain, and the latter to use Anglo-saxon monosyllables every second word in conversation as well as hogging all the available space.

None of which is actually threatening - or is it? And yes, in a way it's less threatening as one becomes frankly old. But if I had to take an evening train alone, as I used to when I caught the 11pm from Edinburgh to Glasgow in my student days after a concert, I'd love to have the choice of a women-only carriage. And if there were to be such a thing, I'd use it. Every time. Even though I feel ashamed of writing that, even though it seems a betrayal of the equality I have worked for all my life, I know it's true.

And maybe it's because Jeremy Corbyn is my generation that he knows it too ...Christine McIntoshhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-19191002.post-91151575592664009562015-08-25T11:23:00.001+01:002015-08-25T11:23:47.019+01:00Tea-parties and bigotryI've just been reading a most unedifying church magazine. It's called SATNav, and purports to help the good people of Ayr to navigate the life and witness of Holy Trinity Church in the centre of that town. The very first item is, unsurprisingly, the Rector's letter, which begins thus:

All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.
2 Timothy 3: 16
The July/August edition of SAT Nav contained a press release about The General Synod of the Scottish Episcopal Church's decision to move, over the forthcoming two General Synods, toward the introduction of same-sex marriage being permitted within the SEC's churches. I thought it appropriate that I let you know my views on this matter…

... And then he reveals that he has signed the declaration of the statement of the Scottish Episcopal Evangelical Fellowship issued shortly after General Synod. This states:
In contrast to [the decision of General Synod to "delete any reference to marriage as being between a and a woman"], we reaffirm the doctrine of marriage as given in the Old Testament in Genesis 2:24, reaffirmed by Jesus in Matthew 19:5 and by Paul in Ephesians 5:31 - 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.'

At the end of the statement, he invites people to add their names to it by email. Lest they should hesitate over this step, he adds:
What General Synod has done then, is not only to take a major departure from authentic Biblical Christianity as practised by the overwhelming majority of churches worldwide, but to hasten the decline and possible final extinction of the SEC.

He backs all this up with this sweeping assertion:
As the SEEF statement makes clear above, God's wish since the dawning of time for all humanity is that marriage between one man and one woman is the only place for sex to take place and that everyone else, irrespective of their sexual orientation, should lead a life of celibacy. That is because, in God's design, through marriage, men and women are meant to complement one another in many ways, not just for reasons of procreation; ways that are just not possible in same-sex relationships.

I become terribly worried when people assert that they know God's wishes in this fashion. We could all do that, could we not? No. Surely such dogmatic insistence trivialises belief. For Christians like me, only one command comes through with that kind of clarity, and that is the demand that we love one another as God has loved us. Heaven knows, that's hard enough without adding man-made conditions (and yes, I mean man-made).

We are then assured that there will be no same-sex marriages in his incumbency, but that anyone who comes to the church will be loved and cared for regardless ... etc etc. Presumably his flock will conveniently forget that they will only experience this care up to a certain point - or might indeed simply note that no priest in the SEC is allowed at the moment to conduct such ceremonies and wonder what he's going on about.

The letter ends thus:
As a church, ahead of forthcoming Diocesan and General Synods, there will be plenty of opportunity to further discuss General Synod's decision.

On an entirely different subject, I am looking forward to the Holy Trinity tea parties we'll be hosting at the rectory and in members' homes from this month. (You'll find more about this on the back page.)

If you read my blog post of yesterday - which I wrote about an hour before seeing the above - you will know that the scones and stereotypes kind of mission is alive and well in Ayr, but that's a wry comment rather than the main point of my putting all this stuff here. What I'm asking is this: How would you feel if this arrived in your inbox, as a member of Holy Trinity Ayr? What happened to all the thoughtful discussion that went on at Synod? What happened to the care for ministry to all that would prevent a rector from coming out with such a bold statement of personal prejudice? Did he, I wonder, tell the vestry who appointed him that he was mired in the first century and would admit of no further growth in understanding?

He refers to the imminent demise of the church if it chooses to remove the clause about men and women from the canon on marriage. Does he know that that specificity was a recent addition to the canon?

But I'm becoming incoherent. I'm putting this stuff here because I am realising what we're up against when it comes to moving forward in the church I want to remain in. The person who forwarded the newsletter to me did so with the comment that now I would know why she was never going back to Holy Trinity Ayr. She's not a stereotypical agitator - she's a straight woman in her 60s who is furious. How is she being ministered to? She can't just go down the road and find another church - it's not easy when a team rector's influence covers a wide geographical area.

I know how fortunate I am at the moment. My local church is ministered to by a thoughtful, forward-looking priest who is careful to take everyone with him and who thinks about the consequences of his words. This could change in the future, for clergy move on. But to my mind, tea-parties and bigotry make up the poison that is eating at the credibility of our church, and if numbers indeed flock to hear their ignorant prejudices confirmed on a weekly basis it's not a church that I want to have any part of.

So - a sour note to start the week after the exuberant joy of Saturday. God help us.Christine McIntoshhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-19191002.post-12471332793359476742015-08-24T15:44:00.001+01:002015-08-24T15:44:03.713+01:00No scones, no stereotypes

I found myself thinking about Mission in church yesterday. I suspect something in the sermon triggered such thoughts, and the reflection that the word tends to make me uncomfortable. I have never been able to contemplate standing on a street corner with a sweet smile and a bible in my hand, nor picture myself chapping on doors to ask the bemused inmates whether or not they're saved; I'm not the kind of person who invites neighbours round for tea and scones because I don't bake, much, don't eat scones, and drink tea that makes most people turn up their noses. So there's never been an area, especially since I stopped teaching, where much mission seemed a possibility. (Note: I never tried to indoctrinate my little charges; there's just so much Christian background to our literature that it was easy to hold it out, as one might a visiting card...)

But yesterday I realised that I'd been indulging in a spot of Mission (with a capital M) on Saturday. Yes, it was on the initiative of Provost Kelvin and his pals in St Mary's Cathedral, but there I was walking through the streets of my native city, in the middle of the Pride parade, holding aloft a placard saying "The Episcopal Church Welcomes You". And as I've remarked already, people clocked this, pointed out the placards and the big plastic banner (quite heavy after an hour) and took photos of us and - on more than one occasion - gave us the thumbs-up.

The surprise element in Mission. That's what was up on Saturday, and what used to work, I felt, when I was teaching. It was underlined by Kelvin's wee badge: Yes, I am real. Not for me the polite presence behind a tea-table or the lone voice on the doorstep - because both would put me off religion for a start. Mission as the unexpected presence, the assertion that one can be a Christian and not conform to stereotypes - that's where I belong.

Another problem nailed. Cheers, Kelvin!

Christine McIntoshhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-19191002.post-52028258509777451532015-08-22T18:22:00.002+01:002015-08-22T18:22:46.402+01:00Proud to march with Pride

I'm no novice when it comes to marches, gatherings, protests and the like - from joining in a CND march when I was 16, the day after the fire that destroyed Glasgow's St Andrew's Halls (how do I remember that?) to organising marches in Dunoon in the 80s, picketing the pier at the American base on Holy Loch, marching through Clydebank, gathering in George Square; from producing a handful of protestors at Faslane to joining the huge anti-war march in Glasgow in the Blair era. I've walked miles in various linked causes, mostly in the rain. You'd think I might have had enough ...

But today I joined my first Pride march through Glasgow, as part of a group of Episcopalians stressing the point that there is a church where gay, transgender, bi and straight are welcomed, and where some of us are working for the day when anyone - of whatever sexual orientation - will be able to marry there if they want to. That's why I was there - a straight marcher among the most varied crowd I've ever been in - because the injustice of the current prevarication and and discrimination in church circles that means we're still wrangling over whether or not we'll join civil society in a bit of human decency.

What was it like? Well, to be honest, it was brilliant. I think a big part of it was the sheer exuberant joy of the thing. No-one seemed to be angry, resentful, pugnacious - though God knows many present must have had reason to be. The music, pumping from supermarket lorries bursting with people and sound-systems, was infectious (as long as you weren't standing right in front of it. Then it was merely deafening.) Dancing Queen at that volume? The Proclaimers? Great. Loved it. And as we marched from Glasgow Green through the city, people hung out of windows, took photos, waved, smiled. It was particularly gratifying when people clearly took photos of the banner shown above, gave the thumbs up, showed others that there was a real live priest in his black duds and all marching under a rainbow umbrella.

I wondered how it'd feel, being so much in the minority on this day, but to be honest it didn't feel like anything. I felt I was in a crowd of people, united in a common purpose. No-one could tell if I was straight or not; I couldn't have cared less. Everyone was friendly. It was a good place to be.

But it would have been lovely to have had one of our bishops marching beside me ...

Christine McIntoshhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-19191002.post-90294876234524779302015-08-15T20:56:00.000+01:002015-08-15T20:58:31.208+01:00The Missing Link

 Readers of this blog will know that I've been dabbling in my family tree - can one dabble in a tree?

It was this photo that clinched the knowledge that the families I'd been trying to link were indeed the one extended family. This came from a tweet from the cousin I've been pestering for the past year, intermittently, with suggestions about various relatives and dates, and when I looked carefully - i.e. not on my phone screen - I recognised faces. I hope he doesn't mind me sharing it further, with my part of the family as it were ...

The first face I recognised was that of the young man in uniform in the middle of the back row. He was my uncle, my mother's wee brother. I didn't notice right away, but I'm convinced the woman second left on the front row is his sister, my aunt. But the face I saw next was the woman standing beside my uniformed uncle - and then the man beside her. My Great-aunt Chrissie, and her English husband Jack Smith. That tilt of the head - those ears ...

And then I went burrowing and found this photo in a box, a nice, clear photo taken by my father.

Recognise the same couple? This was taken in 1958, in Arran, outside the house we rented every summer, and I remember the day they came to visit - presumably because we were there for the whole 8 weeks of the school holidays when they had paid a visit to Scotland, travelling from Letchworth where they lived. And yes, that's me in the photo, with a dire hairstyle - it took me a while to find what to do with short hair after my pigtails came off; I owed, I fear, a debt to Helen Shapiro for several years thereafter.

But how strange that it should be Aunt Chrissie, someone we rarely saw, who should be so immediately recognisable. My grandfather's sister, whose voice I remember as being wonderfully deep - a family trait. I can remember her telling her husband to go and keep my father company when he went outside on this day, worn out by hours of family gossip, seeking solitude: how we laughed! He always joked ruefully about how this same Aunt Chrissie told him that when he married my mother he became her 57th relative; for the rest of his life he referred to my mother's family as the Heinz 57 varieties.

So that's today's excitement. This genealogy malarky can become engrossing - and hugely time-consuming.

Christine McIntoshhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-19191002.post-47864510012534041062015-07-20T16:29:00.001+01:002015-07-20T16:37:52.420+01:00Rummaging among the ancestors

James Roger Stewart in 1937

I've been spending today, this rainy day, in the company of shadows. Piqued into action by a succession of Tweets with a second cousin I only know online, I started looking at old photos first - my grandfather in the Witwatersrand Rifles, in his adventuresome young manhood when he took off to South Africa to help run a school in Pretoria; my grandmother as the pupil teacher who set off from rural Aberdeenshire to meet and marry this man she hadn't seen for two years; the tinted photographic postcards he sent her, photos of the house, the school, the countryside, the grand buildings of Durban and Johannesburg. Eventually I shall get round to digitising some of these images, but for now I need somewhere convenient to put down some names.

Because that was the second thing I did, as the rain worsened and the day grew drearier: I phoned the brother-in-law whose persistent patience means that he knows more about my rellies than I do. And that way, I learned about one strand of the family tree - that of my maternal grandfather, James Roger Stewart, he who was a prize shot, who went to South Africa but returned with his wife and his two-year-old daughter Margaret, my mother, and who was heartbroken that a stomach ulcer prevented him and his skills as a marksman from being sent to the Front.

This is what I found:

Father David Stewart, born Ireland c. 1852; d. 15/11/14 in Gairbraid Road, Maryhill, Glasgow.
Mother Sarah Rogers, d. Maryhill, 1894.

James Roger Stewart (1878-1958); my grandfather.
Frederick Stewart (1879 - ?) -----------sons James Stewart, 1909 - ?; Frederick Stewart.
Margaret and William John, twins; died at 2 years.
David Stewart (1885-1916)
Mary (died in infancy)
George Thomson (1889 - ?)
Jane Cunninghame (died in infancy)
Sarah (died in infancy)
Christina (Auntie Chrissie) (1893 - 1978) Lived in Letchworth when I knew her.
Sarah Agnes (1894 - ?)
and by David Stewart's second wife, Margaret Cameron, whom my grandfather called "Steppie" -
Clara (d. infancy) and John (neonatal death)

Gosh. All those babies, and all those deaths, including the death of a wife. Apparently the advent of the second wife drove my grandfather to leave home - he'd have been in his late teens and they didn't get on. The photo I have here is of a younger man than I knew, but the hat and the pipe and the moustache are familiar accoutrements. My own father took the photo, presumably in the days when he would set up his spare room as a studio with four lightbulbs screwed into the base of a jelly pan and mounted on some contraption to produce the ideal lighting conditions. More photos will follow.

This century beckons ...Christine McIntoshhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-19191002.post-29999892806192906542015-06-16T11:39:00.002+01:002015-06-16T13:09:51.898+01:00There, then, you have it. Synod recollected in tranquillity.

We used to have an English teacher, a formal, pin-suited, begowned sort of chap, who was in the habit of saying "There, then, you have it" at the conclusion of any discussion. It's the phrase that comes into my head as I sit down to recall the events of last week's General Synod of the Scottish Episcopal Church, perhaps because in all likelihood it will be my last. If it is, I'm glad I made it so far; glad I was able to make a contribution to the effort to move my church forward in its recognition of the diversity and sanctity of human relationships. Others - notably Kelvin and Beth - have been much quicker off the mark, blogging in the evening what had happened during each day; I blame the fact that I only had my phone with me to excuse my failure to do more than tweet at the time.

It began, really, with the motion showing on the screen in the photo. There were other motions that seemed more promising, but this was the starting point. We'd all (I hope) read the Doctrine Committee's lengthy report, and receiving it was a start. The thing was that every time - were there three times in all? - the issue came up, people debated. Some contributed considerable points; others expressed bitterness. There were clearly people who felt that their traditional stance was no longer being given a chance - and believe me, it was traditional. I worry when someone says with calm certainty that they know what God wants. But there were also contributions on the side of change delivered in the measured tones of compassion and reason - words spoken by people I have grown to respect and admire - and I could feel a change in the atmosphere as we moved towards the vote that would result in Synod's deciding to ask the Doctrine Committee to remove the first section of Canon 31. ( The Doctrine of this Church is that Marriage is a physical, spiritual, and mystical union of one man and one woman, created by their mutual consent of heart, mind, and will thereto, and is a holy and lifelong estate instituted of God.) Apparently - and I hadn't realised it - this section dates only from 1980 or thereabouts, and was inserted by the last Provincial Synod, of which I was possibly the youngest member, after the debate on the remarriage in church of divorced persons. I well recall that debate; it seemed such a big thing at the time.

You can read more details in other places. Don't come to me for details. I'm inside my memories now, and they're not especially precise. At the end of the first day's debate, I spoke on the nature of marriage in relation to the idea of man and wife being one flesh. That makes it sound measured, considered - "I spoke". But it wasn't like that. I was prompted to my feet when someone said something that I couldn't let pass, and then sat there waiting my turn with nothing in my head but scraps of Shakespeare - Hamlet saying "Husband and wife are one flesh; therefore my mother ...". I didn't know how I would begin, even, until I stood up. And then it came, and I said my piece fluently and I enjoyed saying it (I love a microphone) and people clapped. The following day I was bowled over by the words of another woman of my own generation - and people clapped. A bishop made it clear that sexual ambiguity is in all of us, and did so by recounting his own experience, and the silence as we listened was one in which I felt that something hugely hopeful had come into our midst.

But when later that day the votes were counted, there was no applause. No-one punched the air, and the sense was one of relief rather than triumph. It was as if none of us dared to believe that after all these years the church had taken the first hesitant step towards recognising that the God we believe in made us all the way we are. I was aware of tension lifted; there were tears from those that in the end we had been discussing all those years. There was a knot of people sitting together who had voted against the motion and against the idea. Their faces were tight, expressionless. It will be hard for them, though not, in my opinion, as hard as it has been all those years for the excluded and the patronised, those who, like all of us, have no choice in the matter of their sexuality.

One thing seemed to lurk like a cloud on a sunny day, and that was the defeat of the Rule 10 motion on Saturday. In a house depleted of those who didn't attend on the last morning, a majority wanted to discuss the possibility that the bishops would look again at their decree that no-one in an equal marriage could be considered for ordination.* But it was not the required 2/3 majority, so we didn't even get to discuss why they might decide to let it stand. I know that at least one bishop voted for the motion, but the Primus did not. Oh yes, there's a kind of logic to this apparent failure of logic: the change to Canon 31 will take over 2 years to become law, and has to pass through two readings and debate at diocesan level before it can do so - therefore let's not pre-empt the outcome by even thinking about changing our minds on this one. No hope held out, then, to someone in a same-sex marriage who might long to put herself forward for consideration and training; they will have to wait even longer.

It must be tough being the chairman of the board, the Primus inter Pares (first among equals) who has to front the decisions and - presumably - carry the can for whatever goes wrong. The Primus presumably doesn't want further to dislocate the noses of those who are sure we're all heading to hell in a handcart. But at least one of his equals felt we should be discussing further thought, and I thank God for him and for all the brave souls who have spoken selflessly and thoughtfully for change. It is they who inspire confidence in our church and its future.

Despite that last-minute barrier to change, it is once more a church to which I feel able to belong with joy.

*As has been pointed out elsewhere, you can apparently be considered for ordination if you are in a civil partnership, or merely quietly getting on with whatever arrangements you like to make for yourself. It's marriage that's the bar.Christine McIntoshhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-19191002.post-81600177389940504542015-04-27T16:11:00.000+01:002015-04-27T16:14:08.021+01:00Being Wilma, or a day in the life of a church organist.

I shared the joke on the right the other day, on my Facebook page. Dead funny, eh? Wee Wilma with her big organ and her shotgun. Snigger. But it got me thinking, and then I was talking to an organist. (I do this frequently, you understand). And what follows is the result of my chat, and the sniggers we shared about Wilma - a joke I first saw on the timeline of another organist of my acquaintance.

Now we can't tell from this picture if Wilma is any good at the organ. After all, she's a wee old wifie who'd be fair game for a sneer anyway. But that's not the point. This is:

If the organist plays a prelude (the music before the service, if it's not a familiar word) he or she (I shall give this dual gender up from now on - take it as read) has probably taken time to choose what to play (I can't do that one again - someone will notice I did it last week ...) and had a bit of a practice at it. If she wanted to use the pedals, that would probably mean spending time in the unheated church (midweek church is usually baltic) because she doesn't have an organ in her sitting-room.

Sunday comes, and Wilma is there early enough to change her shoes and get her music out. She may have to put the hymn numbers up as well, but she hopes someone will be there to help with this. Five minutes before the service begins, she sits on the organ bench. There is bedlam in the church as people greet one another loudly, argue over whose turn it is to read, or just catch up on the week's news. She starts to play, straining to hear the quiet passages above the noise. It's still noisy as she finishes, but as if by magic the very fact of her ceasing to play quietens people - because someone will likely announce the first hymn any minute now.

And that's only the Prelude.

By the end of the service, the valiant Wilma has played five hymns and accompanied the singing of the Liturgy. (We're in a Pisky church ...). Depending on the preference of the celebrant, the procession will either wait for Wilma to play something else (a Postlude) or will start processing in the expectation that she'll get going in a moment. So Wilma plays again. This week, she's playing something rather beautiful by Orlando Gibbons. Last week, she hadn't had time to look out something and instead extemporised on a tune that had been used for a hymn. She has a gift for improvisation, but is never satisfied with her own efforts. This matters not a jot: the congregation had burst into spontaneous applause at the end. Not so this week. The Gibbons flows serenely to its conclusion and, released from prayer and politeness, the congregation gets back to its conversations.

Wilma isn't happy. She knows all too well that the Gibbons met the musical needs of perhaps two people in the church besides herself. She also knows that she could improvise tear-jerkers or rabble-rousers every day of the week, but that wouldn't make her happy either. She can't help wondering if the people who applaud one week and not the next know how insulting they are. She ponders the possibility of playing nothing outwith the actual service (and did you know that the use of "outwith" is confined to Scotland and that's why I have a red dotted line under it just now?) Would it worry people, having nothing to signify that it was time to be quiet, time to go for coffee?

Who knows. Most of all, actually, Wilma wishes one thing.

She wishes they wouldn't applaud.Christine McIntoshhttp://email@example.com


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text:
Comments about 'Is Congress trying to exempt its own from Obamacare?'
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Republicans and Tea Party alike warned of all the pitfalls. They were shouted
down as liars. here is just another example.
Politicians know this stinks and are doing anything they can to not be subjected to it. They get the choice and we don't.
Liberalism will be the downfall of this country.
- 5:00 p.m. April 25, 2013
- Like (11)
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What else did you expect from Obama.....he thinks someone making $50000 is rich
and should shoulder the healthcare cost of someone who wont work and is on the
public dole! Thatcher rest her sole said it best "the trouble with
communism is the run out of other peoples money"......
America is just waking up to this foolishness.....and will vote this Obamacare mess out in 2014! and Render Obama the lame duck that he is!
- 6:23 p.m. April 25, 2013
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These are the same ones who wanted ten years of Romney's tax records.
Obama paid 18% in taxes, compared to 35% for Mitt.
Now exemption from Obama care?
- 7:46 p.m. April 25, 2013
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No sense in actually READING the article before commenting.
Not when the title is enough to incite the desired result.
Bottom line, Grassly put in some wording to stop the Govt from subsidizing its employee healthcare.
Now their healthcare costs will go up significantly. (just like yours would if your employer stopped contributing)
Because of Obamacare? Nope, Because of political games by GOP Senator Chuck Grassley.
But, don't bother to read the facts. The headlines are good enough.
- 5:05 a.m. April 26, 2013
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Sen. Grassley did not realize that the Democrats would resort to the idea that it has to be passed in order to find out what is in it. Some Senators did not realize that there were a lot of controversial clauses as well as all of the pork that was used to entice a few to vote in favor of this catastrophe. Now the bad parts are being revealed as we get closer to full implementation and people in both Houses of Congress are scrambling to correct anything that will adversely affect them without repealing it altogether. The rest of us will just have to live with the parts that adversely affect us.
- 6:29 a.m. April 26, 2013
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Mitt Romney was right!
- 7:24 a.m. April 26, 2013
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Thank You Joe, your absolutely correct. Just more "I hate Obama" hubris from the right.
- 8:00 a.m. April 26, 2013
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@Happy And what is not to hate?
- 8:20 a.m. April 26, 2013
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No, from the article, "Grassley's amendment was intended as a "poison pill," meant to embarrass Democratic lawmakers, not actually become part of the law."
The bottom line is Grassley put the amendment in in an effort to stop this monstrosity, but dems wanted it, warts and all. I guess you missed that. Dems didn't even bother to read it before they passed it!
There is NO WAY repubs can be blamed for ANY of this monstrosity! NONE!!
Happy Valley,
I guess you neglected to read the article as well. And you don't EVER evidence hate in ANY of your acrid comments? hubris indeed!
- 8:39 a.m. April 26, 2013
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Yeah, talk about reading the article, I'd have preferred that the politicians who voted for it have had time to read the bill! Remember Pelosis famous, we have to pass it to know what is in it.? She should have been kicked out of Congress for such an irresponsible position when dealing with 1/6 of the U.S. economy.
- 9:10 a.m. April 26, 2013
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The thing that galls me about Congress, is they already "exempt" themselves from the Social Security program that they insist we all who are not government employees pay into. If SS is so good they why don't they live with it too? Or, if their program is so much better, which I'm sure it is, then why don't they give regular people the ability to have something else too? It should be a "choice" not a force.
- 9:28 a.m. April 26, 2013
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"No sense in actually READING the article before commenting.
Not when the title is enough to incite the desired result. . . .
But, don't bother to read the facts. The headlines are good enough."
Does this apply to Democrats as well? Remember HOW the healthcare bill was passed? "We have to pass it to find out what's in it!"!
- 10:10 a.m. April 26, 2013
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One word for Senator Grassley and the Good Old Boys's club. KARMA!
- 10:56 a.m. April 26, 2013
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Obamacare is a poison pill.
- 11:06 a.m. April 26, 2013
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HS Fan,
you mean the Good Old Boys' Club of ALL the senate and house dems (especially nancy pelosi who didn't bother to read it) who voted for this monstrosity? Is that who you mean?
Or are you just throwing ill-aimed barbs at those repubs you hate and who did not vote for it (except for the one or two RINOs needed for passage)?
- 12:16 p.m. April 26, 2013
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Just like a republican to slip a ruffie in someones drink and then blame them
for not knowing.
Reminds me of the scorpion riding across the river on the frog.
- 12:38 p.m. April 26, 2013
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@Lost in DC
The Good Old Boys club is full of Republicans and Democrats. Good on them that their staff would have to live by the same rules as the general public. The analogy of the scorpion and the frog is an excellent one.
- 12:47 p.m. April 26, 2013
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But, we have to comment on it to know what's in it! Why read it?
- 1:21 p.m. April 26, 2013
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The question you have not made clear is who is represented by the scorpion and
by the frog?
I can tell you this though, the Republicans have been the frog a whole lot when dealing with Democrats and their false promises of cutting budgets and securing borders in order to pass bills. Obama was quite a scorpion when he said that "if you have a doctor or health care plan that you like, you can keep it." And remember, Obamacare was and is a 100% Democrat plan. And was not then or now popular with the majority of people.
- 1:27 p.m. April 26, 2013
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SCfan said" "Obama was quite a scorpion when he said that "if you
have a doctor or health care plan that you like, you can keep it." And
remember, Obamacare was and is a 100% Democrat plan. And was not then or now
popular with the majority of people."
When did Obama take away anybody's doctor or healthcare, please cite something cause that's news to me as nothing has changed in my health insurance.
Thanks for giving Obama 100% Credit but to be honest they got the plan from folks like the Heritage Foundation and Mitt Romney's Mass. Plan.
The Majority of people like many aspects of Obamacare, but most have been fooled by those scorpions into believing it's all bad. When asked about the individual parts most agree with them. When asked in general without detail, the radio fans become obvious.
- 3:01 p.m. April 26, 2013
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