Less than total recall but...

... The Memory Hole (www.thememoryhole.org) finally makes it to the national consciousness. This was the only web site (that I knew of, anyway) who published the list of private companies, including U.S. firms, that had sold arms - including potential nuke components - to Iraq during the decade leading up to the Gulf War. German companies led the list which had been published in Europe... and the matter of the disclosure had been discussed in detail in the London Financial Times, among other credible places. But not here in the U.S. Which I found disconcerting, considering the idea that basically the press is free to report what is happening around the world.

Can you have a free press anywhere? - As Robert Bly said, "free this way and free that way"? Free from outside censorship - but also free from internal, institutional censorship maintained through pressure of any kind?

Anyway thememoryhole.org's operator had requested Pentagon photos of caskets containing bodies of U.S. soldiers fallen in Iraq. The request had been granted and suddenly everyone knows about thememoryhole.org. Today I can't get to the site - I presume it is because the traffic to it from places like ABC News and CNN is so heavy the server is unavailable.

You don't need a weatherman....

So I spend $5 on the Sunday New York Times, just to be able to sink in detail into the news from our Middle East quagmire.

But I do finally find a use for a sundial given to us by Mark Fleisher, a real estate agent, when we bought a house in Washington, DC, in our pre-Texas days. The sundial is about the size of a dinner plate, with well-rendered oak leaves and acorns circumambulating the intricate upright wedge, also oak-leaf embellished, in the middle. Almost a quarter of an inch thick, it weighs probably 6 to 8 pounds. A quality item, in short; however I always thought it was a diabolical gift. I've never been settled enough anywhere to have it affixed to any surface, never mind to contemplate time as it pushes its shadow-children across my deck. But now I find it makes a great patio paperweight to prevent the NYT from blowing away in the Houston wind.