clippings

I was already fond of the name "Michaela." Now I have another reason to use it the next time I have a kickass female character to name:
Alaskan girl first to win state wrestling title competing with boys.

Blessing the Fallen and Those Left Behind by Andrew Jacobs -- an article by Andrew Jacobs on the NYPD chaplains, which include

the Rev. Luis Serrano, a Hispanic Pentecostal minister, the Rev. Dr. Suzan Johnson Cook, a black Baptist and the first female chaplain, and Iman Izak-El Mu'eed Pasha, the unit's first Muslim religious figure who recently retired. (His replacement is being sought)

as well as a Catholic priest (the Rev. Robert Romano) and the chaplain-in-chief, Rabbi Alvin Kass:

With four decades on the force, Rabbi Kass is almost as recognizable around police headquarters as his boss, Commissioner Kelly. He is also a frequent presence at churches, mosques and Hindu temples. "If there was an entry in Guinness Book of World Records for the rabbi who attended the most Catholic Masses, I would win hands down," he said with a boyish grin.

Rabbi Kass has had a colorful run: there were the death threats that earned his family months of round-the-clock security and a starring role in a hostage crisis that was resolved with a pastrami sandwich. Rabbi Kass persuaded the self-identified Jewish hostage-taker to exchange his guns for two Carnegie Deli sandwiches.

On a more local to LJ level, I noticed this morning that a friend had written about her plans to mortify her son a decade or two from now:

You know that we are going to use the 5000+ digital photos and the carefully hoarded anecdotes at the bar mitzvah and the wedding or other committment ceremony.

This brought tears to my eyes, because I don't know how many people would have so readily acknowledged multiple possibilities with such matter-of-fact elan, and definitely not twenty years ago. I like that I am connected to people like this, and I like that I can also dream, "Perhaps twenty years from now we will call them all weddings," and that the New York Times reporting of single-sex unions is now routine, and that there are kids who won't have known it to be any different.

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All of this gives me hope, and that's good, since (on a far more mundane note), I have a sermon to write for this Sunday. It being Lincoln's birthday, I've titled it "Lovers of the Republic: Lincoln's Admirers and Their Legacies."

( The blurb )

triple drabble: "By a Nose!"

Title: By a Nose!
Challenge: "it’s gotta happen sometime" (for 30_hath)
Character/Pairing: Lupin/Voldemort, Snape/Lupin
Genre/Warnings (as applicable): Deliberate badfic, people.
Rating: PG
Words: 300
Note: Um, this is kind of for _lore and elenalink. There being a discussion about the rather public private life of the actor playing Lord V. that woke up a crackbunny... *sheepish*


( It was perhaps inevitable that Remus Lupin snapped when he did... )

Ghazal (or, The Song of the Lesbian Elephants)

For elisem's Competition Challenge. I wasn't the winner (congrats, redbird!) but I had fun writing this.
( To sing, you must listen to the roar of silence... )

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What's a ghazal, you might be asking? See here for a heap of detail; like many writers in English, I observed only the rule convenient to me -- in this case, that each couplet end with the same word; my referring to the competition hostess in the last line is a twist on the tradition of the poet mentioning their own name in the final couplet. :-)