a banner day for the list

["John S. Quarterman" <jsq@quarterman.org>]

Congratulations, folks.  Yesterday (midnight to midnight GMT 6 Sep 2002)
saw 36 messages posted to the list.  That beats the previous record for
this year, which was 32 on 7 June.

And it had content and variety.  8 posters, at least 5 new subjects
never seen on the list before, several new sources cited, and one new
list member.  Welcome, Robert Bunzey.

Such swirling threads of discussion remind me of Mark Twain
writing in Following the Equator about pillars in the sky:

``Frequently, in Australia, one has cloud-effects of an unfamiliar sort.
We had this kind of scenery, finely staged, all the way to Ballarat.
Consequently we saw more sky than country on that journey.  At one time a
great stretch of the vault was densely flecked with wee ragged-edged
flakes of painfully white cloud-stuff, all of one shape and size, and
equidistant apart, with narrow cracks of adorable blue showing between.
The whole was suggestive of a hurricane of snow-flakes drifting across
the skies.  By and by these flakes fused themselves together in
interminable lines, with shady faint hollows between the lines, the long
satin-surfaced rollers following each other in simulated movement, and
enchantingly counterfeiting the majestic march of a flowing sea.  Later,
the sea solidified itself; then gradually broke up its mass into
innumerable lofty white pillars of about one size, and ranged these
across the firmament, in receding and fading perspective, in the
similitude of a stupendous colonnade--a mirage without a doubt flung from
the far Gates of the Hereafter.''

John S. Quarterman <jsq@quarterman.org>
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