Christian,

Uh oh.  I accepted "How It All Began" in November.  I haven't looked at ezone
lately, so I don't know if we got it in.  (I never have any sense of when the
next episode is coming out.)  Here it is again:

        How It All Began

        It was long ago when the world was somewhat
        flatter
        that the first farmer gave up growing
        rope
        in order to cultivate rats, charmed by the dears
        hustling
        to make the earth a labyrinth, an unseen
        order
        of soil and chips of lightning driven
        cruelly
        down the path of most resistance up
        straight
        into untouched air where the drill bits turned
        molten
        but not too soon, for the blood and rust machine
        shook
        and all at once a hundred million differentials
        meshed
        and up stood civilization on its own hind legs
        yowling
        for the flash and tonnage of razor cathedrals
        tumbled
        in the battle-lit night of smoke and flame
        cheerless
        as chaos and the grim expectation of the last
        command
        which, when it came, split open the planetary
        skull
        out of which cracked pot invisible consciousness
        grew,
        sent levers to the base of the buried sun,
        lifted
        the mean god into life and everlasting
        misunderstanding
        to shine on the clouded dawn of ratkind,
        who,
        in ceremonious appreciation, gave the last farmer
        land
        flat enough to look like home, although it smelled
        infested.

I have about four messages worth of submissions collected up right now.  I'll go
ahead and check them out right away.

Freeman

p.s. I've been okay.  Not working much, but busy writing things for church and
dabbling at music composition.  (When my time with Karl is up and I'm on my own
for a while again, I'm definitely going to take a music theory class.)  The
Christmas pageant was a success this year, both from a crowd-pleasing and
artistic standpoint, and I'm now working on stuff for Easter.  And hey, I
recently got an idea for a new website that I'm going to want to run by you some
time (but I don't feel like typing it all out right now!)

How've you been?  How are Rich and Martha and the kid?