Betsy Hilda Talks

You know, this guy is a real piece of work. Nothing but a tired old ’60’s retread, an empty suit, nothing more.

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Hussein Obama said on Tuesday that the Bush administration has done nothing to defuse a “quiet riot” among blacks that threatens to erupt just as riots in Los Angeles did 15 years ago.The first-term Illinois senator said that with black people from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast still displaced 20 months after Hurricane Katrina, frustration and resentment are building explosively as they did before the 1992 riots.The ’60’s are over with Mr. Obama. Could you fast forward to 2007 and reality? I’m not going to say any more about Dumbo’s asinine comments. I’m just exasperated at the stupidity coming from the left.

Tags: obama, politics, news

In 1917 28 year-old lace factory worker Harry Lamin, from Ilkeston, Derbyshire left behind his wife and young child and went to serve his country as conscripted soldier in the trenches of the First World War.

We don’t know whether Harry made it through to the end of the war, whether he like so many of his countrymen perished in the awful charnel houses of Ypres, in the bloody battles of Messines Ridge or Paschendaele. Like Harry’s relatives, his wife, his brother his sister we must anxiously await his letters from the front.

We can share their experience of Harry’s war, because his letters have been turned into a blog, by his grandson Bill Lamin a school teacher from Poole. Remember that Bill’s father had been born before Harry went to the front, so we can’t infer from his grandchildren what fate awaits Harry.

Reading the posts currently on the blog there are some early accounts of action, understated, but giving some hint of the dangers and horrors of the conflict.

We have had a very rough time lately the Germans were only about 40yds away from us, we had a very trying time for the first, but I don’t care so long that I keep alright. It will be a good job when the war is over.

But it is the human detail of the letters that annihilates the distance of 90 years between us and Harry:

Jack has sent me some sardines and chicken paste which is all right here and it works the bread and butter down. I am glad Connie is going on alright at school I don’t think it will do her any harm.

The letters are a treasure trove, and blogging them helps us empathise with Harry but also with the family at home in England. Bill’s students are very lucky to have this resource, as are all who visit the blog.

It’s interesting to compare Harry’s epistolary blog with modern Milblogs. I know from writing and talking to Milbloggers that while many are maintained as a means of communicating with relatives and friends, most blog writers are acutely aware that they are publishing. A ware eye is kept on who might be reading, and in many there is an important political (and polemical) dimension. And there are security issues too of concern to soldiers and top brass alike.

Harry’s letters one assumes, would have gone through the censor, I haven’t asked Bill Lamin how much is redacted from the letters, I’d be interested to learn. I’d love to hear from modern milbloggers too, and what they think of Harry’s blog, and how it differs from their own writing. Do they imagine that 90-years hence school children may be reading their blogs, wondering about what it was like to fight in Iraq or Afghanistan

The wwar1 blog is a time travel blog. Diaries and letters, even newspaper reports, make excellent raw material for the blogger and the ability to link and to add commentary, to expand upon the original text means that the blog becomes much more than an act of republishing. Pepys Diary is perhaps the best known, but there are others. A number of the great diaries are on-line too, but not in blog form. John Evelyn’s diary of 1657 resonates, because it refers to my own neighbourhood.

July 3, A ship blown-up at Wapping, shooke my whole house, & the chaire I was sitting & reading in my study.

Reading the diary entries like that you realise that blogging doesn’t have to be complex. In 250 years perhaps people will read, “CuttySark on fire, much smoke, strange odour from fridge” or the endless quotidian minutiae of Twitter with more interest than the extensive op-eds that so often get the most traffic.

In the spring of 2004 my wife and eldest daughter had the chance to travel to England so that I could attend a conference. Since this was our first visit we planned to pack in as much as we could during the trip and in addition to a quick tour of London that included the British Museum, Westminster Abbey, Trafalgar Square, we headed up to the Yorkshire Dales where the real James Herriott (Alf Wright) practiced. Before making our way to the conference south of London we swung over to Oxford in order to get a look at where C.S. Lewis lived and worked. On a rainy Saturday, with the help of a local man who knows the pastor, we were able to visit the Anglican church near Lewis’ home where he worshipped for all of his adult life and where he was buried in the small church cemetery. Inside the church there are several remembrances of Lewis including a very nice window depicting a scene from Narnia and a marker on the pew where Lewis and his brother Warnie regularly sat. That’s my daughter sitting in the seat that Lewis typically occupied.

All of this came to mind as I was reading Lewis’ essay “On Church Music” published in Christian Reflections the other night. The essay attempts to navigate the controversy of “high” versus “low” church music with high meaning more serious music sung by a trained choir and low meaning hymns sung by the congregation. As Lewis often does he sees in both the opportunity for Christians to “humbly and charitably” sacrifice by either indulging the “lusty roar of the congregation” or remaining silent and respectful of that which one doesn’t understand. In that way “Church Music will have been a means of grace; not the music they have liked but the music they have disliked.” For his part Lewis was more skeptical that any music is very religiously relevant and even in this essay we find one of his famous quotes that “What I, like many other laymen, chiefly desire in church are fewer, better and shorter hymns; especially fewer.”

Given the admonition that at the very least music is a chance at sacrifice and a means of giving grace, I’m somewhat hesitant to proceed. And yet I’ll share what I found to be my own interesting reaction to one of the praise songs we sometimes sing in our church. The song is called “Indescribable” by Chris Tomlin, the first two verses and the chorus of which go like so;

From the highest of heights to the depths of the sea
Creation’s revealing Your majesty
From the colors of fall to the fragrance of spring
Every creature unique in the song that it sings
All exclaiming

Indescribable, uncontainable,
You placed the stars in the sky and You know them by name.
You are amazing God
All powerful, untamable,
Awestruck we fall to our knees as we humbly proclaim
You are amazing God

Who has told every lightning bolt where it should go
Or seen heavenly storehouses laden with snow
Who imagined the sun and gives source to its light
Yet conceals it to bring us the coolness of night
None can fathom

Now, this song is clearly extolling the power and majesty of God and has a melody and cadence that heightens the emotions and from what I observe is clearly one of the favorites of the congregation. That said, each time the second verse beginning with “Who has told every lightning bolt where it should go…” begins I cringe just a little.

To me, these lyrics that God has an interest in directing individual lightening bolts harkens back to the early 18th century when lightning was viewed as a means of God’s displeasure and/or the work of demons which, along with good spirits, were thought to have filled the air. In those days as a storm approached church bells would be rung in order to ward off the bolts as in the words of St. Thomas Aquinas “The tones of the consecrated metal repel the demon and avert storm and lightning”. As you can imagine this wasn’t an effective strategy and as Walter Isaacson related in Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, “during one thirty-five year period in Germany alone during the mid-1700s alone, 386 churches were struck and over a hundred bell ringers killed.” Of course Franklin’s invention of the lightning rod in 1752 began to change this way of thinking although some theologians resisted its use fearing that it would be impious to resist the hand and judgment of God. In one particularly tragic event over 3,000 people were killed in 1767, some fifteen years after Franklin’s invention when the church of San Nazaro in Venice was struck igniting gunpowder being stored in the church.

What I find interesting in all of this is that in the praise song lightning is viewed as just another display of God’s creativity and power along with the flowers and stars. And yet this is a power that has been tamed by the intervention of man and so in the song we can stand back and admire it without fear of consequences or judgement. While congregations 300 years ago may indeed have also looked at lightning as a display of God’s power, they would additionally have looked at it as an instrument of God’s judgement. The mention of lightning in a hymn would have conjured up far different notions to them than it does to us. One wonders whether including the other sentiments expressed in Tomlin’s song would even have seemed appropriate. Beyond that it seems just silly to praise God in worship songs for directing lightning bolts when we do our darnedest to intercept and redirect them whenever possible. What if the word lightning in the song were replaced with “tornado”? Would we really sing “Who has told every tornado where it should go…”? I just don’t think most modern Christians think God uses natural events to punish people and so I find it somewhat surprising that the concept is so blatant in a song that I’ve heard sung in more than one evangelical church in the last decade. Unless I’m wrong one would hope church leaders would do a better job of ensuring that what is sung and said in the service lines up with current Christian belief. To that end, I wonder what seekers attending services think when they see lyrics like this?

The point was also hit home a few weeks ago when we also had a guest worship leader who sang a song he had written that included the line “to the God of lightning.” Before the song he relayed the context of its writing which included sitting with his eight-year old daughter on the back porch watching the thunderstorms roll over the eastern Colorado plains. His daughter was awed by the display and before heading to bed asked to linger and then prayed that God would send another blast of lightning and thunder. Again, 300 years ago that would have been unfathomable.

To me, remembering the terror and destruction that lightning has caused along with how the church viewed it historically, I find it anachronistic and intellectually vacuous to sing praise songs in which we in effect blame God for a natural phenomenon.

Her "Lip Gloss" is poppin'…
Yes, there's some news out there today about new Bjork music and parties, new Rufus Wainwright music and dates, and all the buzz about the massive Live Earth shows getting planned in 'burgs like NYC and London (we're talking The Police, Kanye West, Madonna, Foo Fighters, Black Eyed Peas, Snow Patrol).
But my favorite today may just be the buzzin' new track, "Lip Gloss," from 17-year-old Brooklyn and Harlem-based rap diva-to-be Lil' Mama. Earlier this year she got signed to Jive records, and she's been in the studio with Swizz Beats and Scott Storch… And you can check on her progress by watching the kick-ass video for "Lip Gloss" like, now.
Back up and get ready… Lil' Mama is here.

Can you say "poppin'"???

Wie geht es Ihnen? As the Germans say. Today I’m here to talk about 2 German-language films, both Oscar winners, that are superb and well worth the effort of subtitles.

The German Democratic Republic, as East Germany liked to style itself, met its demise in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall, but I imagine that its ghosts still haunt its streets and its survivors. In The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen), we get a look at life in the GDR and the corrosive effects…
Sebastian Koch) writes what today we’d call “politically correct” plays that are popular with the public and the Politburo; nothing to rattle the status quo. His girlfriend Christa (Martina Gedeck) acts in the plays and is a well-known celebrity in East Berlin. Among their artsy social group are a few “undesirables” who question the East German state and maintain contacts in the West. In a spot of bureaucratic decision-making that would be funny if the outcome not so sad, the Stasi decides that Dreyman and Christa need to be surveilled. Wiesler (Ulrich Muhe), a senior bureaucrat/field agent/teacher at the Stasi School for Aspiring Surveillors decides to take on the task himself. Though he initiates the surveillance with the best of GDR intentions, he soon finds himself seduced by the life of these artists, leading him to, among other things, cover for their indiscretions. As you know it must, his simple joy in sharing their days (a fine feature of this movie is how you don’t begrudge him it, even though you know it’s extremely CREEPY) is repaid by sadness when his cover-up unravels and events get beyond his control. No one is unscarred by the experience.

One’s first thought on seeing the movie is amazement that such a society could even have existed — I want to say, didn’t you folks read 1984? But of course, they didn’t, probably couldn’t have, and wouldn’t have recognized themselves if they did. Beyond the totalitarian aspects, the sheer stupidity of the bureaucracy, which I’m sure began to undermine its very principles within minutes of being established, ensured its demise, although I imagine that is only evident in hindsight.

A second thought is how that society left everyone, seemingly, compromised. Honesty could not be a virture in such a world, and was seldom used as the coin of the realm. Artists, neighbors, friends, family, bureaucrats, officials, Polizei, all corrupted by the necessity to not stand out, to not rock the boat, to agree with the most outrageous and damaging things.

And third, could a man like Wiesler really exist? A friend said no, the Stasi were uniformly evil, but I find that hard to believe. Who’s to say he wasn’t swept up in the web of lies that each life was made of, then caught by his desire to do his job well, then finally confronted with the awfulness of it? I can’t in my heart believe that “all” of anyone, anywhere are uniformly evil or, for that matter, good. When a society so diminishes the individual, it’s difficult without walking in their shoes to condemn the petty wrongs that people do to survive. Not the extreme people, the torturers, the sadistic types — they exisit in every society, although the old USSR and GDR I’m sure gave them some fine career opportunities. I mean the day-to-day compromises people made with their own morality, to get bread on the table, to keep a brother or lover out of jail, to keep going another day. We’d all like to think that we’d be different, we’d be out there resisting, going against the grain, but would we?

I hope we never have to find out. Meanwhile, this movie is SO good and well deserved the Academy Award it was given in February. It will give you a lot to think about.

On DVD, a whole other set of Germans appear in Nowhere in Africa, which won the 2002 Best Foreign Language Oscar. It’s the story of a family of German Jews who move to Kenya ahead of the horrors to come. The handsome father, Walter (Merab Ninidze) goes first to Africa and finds work managing a rugged farm owned by English Kenyans. Then the Jewish community in Nairobi (apparently there was a large one) sponsors the wife, Jettel (Juliane Kohler) and daughter, Regina, to come. Told as the daughter’s memoir, it is beautiful, and heartbreaking, and a really good story.

Conflict arises because the father knows they are better off anywhere but Germany, and even though he was a lawyer in Breslau and they seemed quite well to do and had a lovely social life (all reeled by in the first few minutes), he was happy to have his family with him and to work with his hands and learn African (or whatever they spoke) and to be kind and grateful for the refuge they’d found, no matter how meager. He also has a small bit of wonder for Africa, which translated to the girl, who has a large bit. But the mother (who was very pretty) was used to her nice things and being done for, and she is spittin’ pissed about the dirt and the poor accommodations and sort of, “this too shall pass, we’ll be home next week” — like she was on a subpar cruise to the Caribbean — determined never to accept Kenya as a home. Meanwhile, the kid takes to Africa like a fish to water, as kids are wont to do. She has a foot in each world (and Lea Kurka is an amazing little actress).

[Caution: what follows if pretty spoilerific, so if you intend to see and want to be surprised, don’t read on]

And then, THEN, the Brits round up the family because they’re German, missing the not-so-subtle distinction that they’re Jewish REFUGEES from Germany, but eventually (and seemingly quite civilizedly) that gets ironed out, the father joins the Brit army, and the mother gets all Isak Dinesen on us and goes sort of native, taking over the new (slightly improved) farm that she’s found them by flirting (or more) with a Brit soldier while they were interned in a swanky Nairobi hotel (the women and children — God love those Brits). She learns African, keeps the farm in motion while Papa is in the Army, and eventually for all intents and purposes becomes African, in the way Isak Dinesen seemed to. She blossomed in the new country, found her footing — in a way she never, ever expected was possible.

Eventually, and this is when I started crying, Papa gets out of the Army, the war is over, Hitler is vanquished (and thank the Gods for that), and Papa has applied to return to Germany as a judge/lawyer to help start the new German government. Cried, I tell you. So he is ready now to go back to “civilized” life in Germany — whatever that meant in 1946 — but the wife wants to stay in Africa, where she’s found a sort of freedom and acceptance. And yes, both their families were killed (cried), and the wife is afraid (justifiably so) of the people back in Germany (cried), but the husband feels it’s his/their duty to help rebuild their homeland (Germany — even after what it dished out to them and their relatives, cried). Again, a lot to think about.

So grab a Beck’s or some weiss Wein and some popcorn or a wurst, and enjoy these stories from our Deutsche Freunde.

A new study by Wainhouse Research, sponsored by Citrix, shows
significant adoption of Web conferencing by small and medium-sized
businesses (SMBs) to meet with clients and increase revenue.

The resulting whitepaper, The Vital Role of Web Conferencing in Small and Media Enterprises,
is based on a Web survey that targeted a portion of the Citrix
GoToMeeting corporate customers. The survey results show that SMBs are
using Web conferencing as the medium of choice for product demos and
meetings with both clients and prospective clients. Of course, that’s
hardly a scientific sample, but the results do tally with our views.

Web
conferencing is enabling SMBs to reach more people — it saves travel
costs, and a hosted solution doesn’t consume scarce IT resources. The
survey also indicates that ease of use, reliability, good customer
support, and competitive pricing and security are the most important
factors when choosing a Web conferencing vendor.

The following are some highlights from the survey:

“Outbound” Web conferencing applications that involve customers and prospects are most important to SMBs.

75%
of SMB respondents believe the ability to involve/reach more people and
save travel costs and time are major reasons to use Web conferencing;
59% say it makes meetings more productive.

55% of SMBs (and 44%
of large enterprise respondents) say that in addition to the more
predictable improvements in business practices, Web conferencing
enables users to solve problems they could not solve before.

69%
of all respondents use Web conferencing to enable new meetings that
could not be held in any other way due to cost constraints, timing, and
several other issues.

Once again, don’t forget that these statistics are based on a sample of respondents who are already using Web conferencing, so are probably not representative of the market as a whole.

SMBs
are generally faster to adopt new cost-saving technologies that can
impact revenue, but expect to see Web conferencing usage continue to
grow as the collaborative benefits become better understood and the
technology becomes easier to operate.

… Colin R. Bush and Richi Jennings

“Ask your heart what’s right
And follow it.”

That’s on my housemate’s refrigerator magnet. They’re the sagest words I’ve ever seen. In fact I think my whole life (and certainly the life of this blog) is a never-ending exploration of practicing, encouraging and embodying that.

“And follow it,” being the very hardest part.”[T]here is a difference between destiny and fate. Fate is coming at you, but your destiny, if you are not careful and immensely determined, recedes ever farther away; and so, the transcendentalist, Ralph Waldo Emerson, said, “Hitch your wagon to a star.” The image of the Star tells you to have faith in your ideals, to dare to dream, and to hold tightly to your perceived purpose in life.” - meaning of the Star card in Tarot, from The Psychic Internet “You have divinity inside. It’s like a jar waiting to be opened with your free choice, and if you don’t open it, there are no solutions. Oh, nothing bad is going to happen. It’s just that that jar is going to be tossed by the waves like it has been all your life. But when you open that jar, out comes the divinity, which is you, and you start the process of true communication with Spirit, and wisdom to control the waves.” - Kryon, Manhattan, March 10, 2007The Star, in the Tarot deck, is a card that shows up for me a lot lately. Purportedly it tells one to have faith in their ideals, and to “follow their star.”"We are stardust we are golden, and we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.”
Joni Mitchell/CS&N (at Woodstock)To my exasperated frustration at times, I’m finding Life won’t budge an inch and grant me the luxury of compromising my highest ideals any longer. When I take baby steps out of anxiety, or I settle or compromise the result collapses like sand castles before a gulping tide… luckily before I get very far.

It won’t allow for infliction of Self-cruelty, even in the name of paying May’s rent. Nothing, but nothing, but my deepest desire moves with any semblance of frictionless grace. I am feeling the rising futility, and I text a friend. He replies: Just b.”Stretch, Risk, or Die. A stretch is something you’ll to do even if you’re a little scared. If you’re really nervous about doing something, then it is a risk. A die is something you would absolutely not do. The die is always what we secretly fear [it is our heart’s desire].” - Rhonda Britton, Fearless Living (via New Moon Journal blog)What?! That sounds like upside down thinking! How could we be most fearful of our own heart’s desire? Wouldn’t be skipping gleefully towards it?

That stretch, risk, or die pithy paragraph registers true. For instance, I’ve witnessed my own life-long avoidance of magic and music.

A week ago I write to a friend who’s own path often mirrors my own:you haven’t asked yourself in too long about what you realllllly truly desire from your deepest core and most absurdly idealistic creative dreamer part of you (not necessarily same as what you expect, or what you believe you “deserve”)Same friend I wrote a friend about a month ago:i don’t understand money & ownership and possession anymore
just friends kindred spirits and gifts and creating and freedom and
art and the end of world as we know itI really meant that. I find Wealth to be intimately tied to camaraderie, sharing, communal joy, gifts, flow and constant circulation.

Coming back to Silicon Valley has been a culture shock, to put it mildly. Fiercely missing the conviviality and community of New Orleans, so much that I have difficulty getting back into the swing of things - even writing this post. Last week on my return, when I saw a flyer at Philz Coffee for a room coming available at an artists’ collective in the Mission, I thought maybe that could be a step in the right direction.

I’m feeling more and more inclined toward encouraging the myriad of infinite unique expressions of living and being. Allowing every one to their own full flowering, with no desire for clones of this flower self, and so more than ever I’ve a “live and let live” philosophy. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with this art collective and arts incubator’s mission - it simply doesn’t jibe with what I want and so I move on… rather than settle, compromise or delude myself that I’d be helping anyone by persuading them over to my dream and changing them “from within.”

The nice - if painful - thing about contrast is that it clearly delineates. After New Orleans, it’s clear I’m personally done with Silicon Valley. (Though I’m still seeking a base in SF.) Puzzle pieces of things unspoken fell together for me, and I realize I yearn for the experience of community. And more. I wrote a friend in an IM chat:well, once i was in nola, i saw the whole caboodle - an interconnected coop/collectives of small farms, groceries, cafes, art-live houses, etcI want to celebrate & engage in a colony that cultivates seamlessness between magic, life, and art.

Art literally and figuratively at the very core of Earth.

I see, hear, taste, smell, touch it’s time to leap.

I’ve got to instigate my utopian visions myself together with a tribe attuned to these strands of music resonating from the spheres. Connected via hyperspace aether and Internet, and for those tangibly, tactilely inclined such as myself, a galactic center in New Orleans. (Actually I’d imagined an open Grail cup triangle with bases in SF, NYC, & Nola.)”Sometimes you just have to take the leap and build your wings on the way down.” - Kobi YamadaBonus: The main reason I came back to the Bay Area when I did just occurred this weekend. It’s beyond my ability to fully articulate, but the gist is it was multi-day ceremony that uses hyper-dimensional sacred geometry to reawaken dormant electromagnetic meridian points. But don’t quote me on that. I just know the stuff transmutes! The faciliators will be back from Bali in November, and next time, I’ll spread the word.

A cube is a hyper-square: If you want to understand hyperdimensions, here’s the popular (1399 fave saves thus far in delicious) Imagining the 10th Dimension site, book, and video. Though, I’m less interested in understanding, than EMBODYING. I say all this because I think the closer meaning of The Star card is expressed in the idea of that we’re on a divine & celestial mission - that it’s no accident we’re here in this time & place on this planet. In the Thoth deck, The Star speaks to the geometry of old being poured out and the new higher hyper-geometric forms flowing in (they’re not just spiral though):”Every form of energy is spiral; this is in anticipation of the present Aeon, that of Horus, [innocent child-god birthed from the masculine and the feminine divine] the crowned and conquering Child, successor to the “dying god” Osiris. The departing Aeon is shown in the rectilinear forms of energy issuing from the lower cup. These forms stand for the now abandoned Euclidean geometry. The figure of the goddess may be taken as a manifestation of the surrounding space of Heaven.” - Instructions for Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot Deckimages Origami art star, photo by Mary-Irene Lang; The Star card in the Thoth deck of the Tarot; aerial photo of a very large and sacred public art project ;-), here a pentagram crop circle by Allen Brown

Playing through God of War II now and I’ll post any costumes I manage to unlock. It looks like there are seven different outfits and/or alternate characters. Many of these require completing the game at the higher difficulty settings to it may take me a bit. I did manage to beat the original GoW on the highest settings, so it shouldn’t be an impossible task. The only ones I can find on the web are the Cod of War an Kratos in his armor. Not sure if that is the same one you unlock though.

The first of the Bullet Witch costumes downloads was just released. I can see myself picking it up a few months from now when all the DL content has been released and the game discounted to the $30 range. I’m thinking late summer there will be a drought of good games where such a scenario could play out.

First movies of Rachel in Ninja Gaiden Sigma hit recently as well. The game’s director confirmed she will have multiple hairstyles and at least one extra hair color. No word on other outfits though. A demo is scheduled to hit PSN late April. Totally psyched.

Well bloody hell. Anna Nicole Smith* has only been found dead. Saw the news in a fleeting instant having just logged into my yahoo mail account. Effective eh?

Post mortem is due to be carried out. Tragic story, it really is. Wonder when the film will be made and who will play her? Pammy?

*Image: Fad Toys.

My recent spate of heavy blogging with short posts, mainly containing links, was fun while it lasted. As Bren said, it’s a totally different direction from the personal space that this blog has been, and so it didn’t really feel like this was where it belonged. Also, it did take up a lot of my time. When I get my .com up and running I may incorporate that in a seperate section of the site, for two reasons:

1. I actually enjoyed relaying the news I’m reading/find interesting.

2. Going on visitor numbers alone, so did other people.

I saw record highs on my sitemeter three days running. That’s probably more a consequence of non-stop posting more than anything else. Return visits is a different matter, but that would get a start. Anyway, so it seems it may be a good ’strategy’ at some point, and something I’m thinking about.

That said, I’m very busy this week with uni, so from here on out will be trying to stay away from the blogging as much as possible.

What’s on? Final week of classes. French speaking final Thursday morning; three news stories by Friday noon; one television reader-voice-over script by Friday 5pm; French written, already overdue, to hand in if possible.