"Celebration" update and some links

Several people wanted to know about the timetable for our blog-through of Richard Foster's Celebration of Discipline. The central question was, "Are we going to start reading on September 5th, or start blogging on what we'd read the week before?"

I'm suggesting we start reading on 9/5, even though it's a holiday here in the US. I'm going to be posting my "Celebration" blog entries here - although there was a temptation to create a Cele-blog, for a bit. And who knows - it may happen yet. I'll also post a list of links to the Celebration bloggers, and on Saturday the plan is to post links to others' entries. I think it will be a good discipline - and a good time. We've sure got a flock of fellow bloggers, including a number of newbies! For them, especially, here's a big "Welcome to our [virtual] world!"

In other news, there is an extremely good article about what folks are calling "a good death" - dying with dignity and a minimum of suffering. The New York Times health section had this article on August 7th, which should be available for a couple more days. Definitely worth checking out.

And this year's Beloit College freshman mindset list is out - and for those of us of a certain age, it's pretty amazing. Tom McBride, who directs Beloit’s First Year Initiatives (FYI) program for entering students, notes that "This year's entering students have grown up in a country where the main business has become business, and where terrorism, from obscure beginnings, has built up slowly but surely to become the threat it is today. Cable channels have become as mainstream as the 'Big 3' used to be, formality in dress has become more quaint than ever, and Aretha Franklin, Kermit the Frog and Jimmy Carter have become old-timers." He also points out that many of them have never taken a road trip in a station-wagon, walked in the woods without fear of Lyme disease, or known that Howard Johnson's had 28 flavors. Check out the whole list here. That's all for now!