Saturday, April 07, 2007

A Good Friday

The reading of the Passion according to John

I don't mean to be flippant about one of the holiest days of the church year. It's just that it really has been a good day for me.

After the service, a stark reminder
remains of what the day commemorates.

It didn't start out great. I spent half of my work day trying to track down a $2400 discrepancy. I narrowed down the source of the problem, but was unable to solve it. Drat. Eventually I ran out of numbers to check and had to give up on it for this week.


Father Ed
Father Ed Harnsberger

At 11:00 AM I went to Confession, during which I was given a suggestion for amendment of life that will be fairly time intensive. We'll see how far I get with that one, but I'm not rejecting it out of hand. While I was there I finally got a decent photo of one of the priests. (Previous attempts at photographing him had not turned out well.) It's now edited and uploaded to the Clergy page, replacing an old, not very good photo which didn't even match the others in format.

I also tweaked the formatting on the Holy Week listings on the web site's main page. Somehow I'd forgotten to finish setting up the days and dates to look consistent all the way down through the table. It's still missing a space after one comma, but oh, well.

Father Smith, subdeacon Howard, and Rev. Angie

Once I had that page (almost) fixed, it was time to go off to church. I didn't serve, but I did take pictures, obviously. The clergy and subdeacons are breaking in some brand new vestments, including these red ones, after the parish saved up for years to buy them. I was also reminded that I still owe two of the three people above a picture of themselves from Palm Sunday, wearing ecclesiastic berets. Too bad those photos didn't turn out very well, but I need to send them along anyway.

Back at home after church, I discovered that the Wikipedia admin that closed the debate on the future of the Barbara Bauer article let an interpretation of Wikipolicy trump the clear majority of people who believed that the subject was sufficiently notable and the criticisms well-sourced. The article was deleted. This may surprise those of you who have followed my tribulations as I've worked on the article over the past 11 months, but I'm not heartbroken that it's gone. It was a tricky thing, trying to have a fair and balanced article about someone for whom nearly all the extant information is either negative, factually suspect or both. I did save the Google cached version to my hard drive, though. If this lawsuit she filed ever gains traction and there are mainstream news reports about her, that may affect whether she merits a Wikipedia article in the eyes of those who wanted it deleted before. In the meantime I don't have to worry about it any more.

What else have I don't tonight? I've watched some Doctor Who, researched the agent I'm submitting to next, and finally broken through the tricky bit of dialogue I've been stuck on in the Fayubi and Jor scene. It's posted on the fiction blog, and I'd appreciate a comment from someone just to know that it's been read. Can you guess where the sticking point was?

The agent I have in mind this time is one who wants three chapters, so I won't be doing simultaneous submissions. Nor will I mention his name here unless he expresses interest in my work. Suffice it to say that I'm going after an agent who is the very antithesis of Bauer, a highly respected and respectable one who nevertheless, according to his web site, is still interested in signing new authors. He charges no fees, of course, only commissions. I've had this particular guy in mind for years, ever since reading some advice he wrote in one of the annual writers' resource books. The only reason I'm not going to name him here is that I don't want to give the impression that I'm complaining about him if things don't work out between us.

Enough. Good night!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Does this look at all like what it was?
http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/bauer.html

Karen Funk Blocher said...

Hmm. Interesting. That's the December version. The last version before it was deleted can be seen at the Google cache from 4/5:
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:q77ZSufuJzMJ:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Bauer+barbara+bauer&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=5BR&strip=1

Anonymous said...

Thanks. I have no idea why Bauer included Wikimedia in the suit, but then I have no idea why she included me either. Oh well...