We are without power due to DC's stormpocolypse.  I have many thoughts about this.  In order, they are:
  • I'm grateful that no one we know was hurt
  • I'm grateful that our home is still standing... with intact roof
  • I'm grateful that the giant tree limb that blew across our yard Friday night at 11:30 pm like the cow in Dorothy's tornado missed our front window by the few feet it did
  • I'm grateful that the neighbor's picnic umbrella that was thrown like a javelin toward our house, only stopped at the window well and didn't go through the window where my kid was sleeping on the other side 
  • Those neighbors, however, are probably not grateful that they forgot to roll up all their car windows
  • I'm grateful that the neighbor's diseased tree that I've been trying to get him to cut down for a decade (or at least prune properly) didn't blow down because my newly repaired car would have been underneath
  • DC/MD/VA departments should really consider adding basic traffic direction skills to their officer training programs because having three guys standing at an intersection, staring blankly at their mobile phones and making random meaningless gestures without looking up - gestures no one understands (is there just a fly buzzing around your face or are you directing traffic?) - amazingly makes everyone forget that they all already know they need to treat an intersection where a signal is out as a four-way stop
  • I'm grateful for helpful reporters on the radio, who remind listeners that if something in their fridge seems spoiled, they shouldn't test that theory BY EATING IT 
  • More than a week to restore power for a storm that took fifteen minutes to blow through?  Really??!? How many times a year does this have to happen before the power company will admit that it has some SERIOUS problems with its infrastructure?

Anyway, Sunday church services are cancelled today and we are seeking power to charge mobile phones because our land lines don't work when there ain't any.  So here's a little Sunday moment from our brief stay in Salt Lake City last month:


Bertel Thorvaldsen was a Danish-Icelandic sculptor of international fame, who spent most of his life in Italy (from 1789–1838). Thorvaldsen was born in Copenhagen into a Danish/Icelandic family of humble means, and was accepted to the Royal Academy of Arts when he was eleven years old. Working part-time with his father, who was a wood carver, Thorvaldsen won many honors and medals at the academy. He was awarded a stipend to travel to Rome and continue his education. In Rome Thorvaldsen quickly made a name for himself as a sculptor. Maintaining a large workshop in the city, he worked in a heroic neo-classicist style...

Outside Europe, Thorvaldsen is less well known. However, in 1896 an American textbook writer wrote that his statue of the resurrected Christ, commonly referred to as Thorvaldsen's Christus (created for Vor Frue Kirke), was "considered the most perfect statue of Christ in the world."