MONDAY
> The secret of a thriving city.

> Kirk is home for the summer -- arrived this afternoon. Anyone want to hire him? He's only home for seven or eight weeks -- making conventional summer employment difficult.

> Not quite a Class M planet -- but getting close.

> No, you will not find me speculating about what went right and what went wrong in the Michael Jackson trial. (I'm much too busy doing important web-surveys and tagging people.) If the experts can't figure it all out, how in the world are the rest of us suppose to know up from down in one of the most bizarre cases in ages. Our gratitude to the jury, though. Not only were they able to sort through the inconsistent details in this circus case -- but they actually came to a consensus and now perhaps -- just perhaps -- we can all have some relief from the Michael Jackson case. Dream on.

Before you forget about him, though, it is worth looking at the Michael Jackson website. They've obviously been working on his "not guilty" production for some time. Perhaps we can look forward to an "innocent" tour. Always a performer.

> Thomas Hohstadt on preaching to a postmodern world where the prime directive says never dabble in someone else's world.

> The rediscovery of the ivory-billed woodpecker could provide economic stimulation for at least one depressed rural Arkansas town. There is a certain irony in the story.

> Mavis Tell, who is from Hilmar, who teaches at a DoD school in Germany, and who remembers me from when I was a live-wire youngster at First Covenant Church in San Jose, emailed me with a link to Dan Clendenin's website. I had read his great books on Orthodoxy several years ago and have recommended them numerous times since. I discovered his website a few years ago but he has since developed it quite a bit. Thanks, Mavis, for pointing me back there.