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Oh good.

(The above from remarks by the Irish minister for health regarding keeping SARS from getting a foothold in Ireland. To quote [in case the Irish Times article is premium content]):

“Preventing a SARS outbreak in the State will need similar high-profile approaches as were adopted during the foot-and-mouth crisis, the Minister for Health, Mr Martin, conceded yesterday.

“However, he called for calm and some perspective in the debate about the virus, pointing out that many more people were dying from flu and malaria than SARS.

“‘We are dealing with an unknown phenomenon here called SARS which has just recently become known to the medical community internationally and it can’t be stopped by [stepping in] buckets [full of disinfectant] and water…’

One of the measures announced was the opening of the Irish Department of Health SARS information page. Despite the occasional typo, it’s fairly comprehensive.

Meanwhile, in China things are a little tenser. “UP to 2000 villagers torched a school earmarked as a SARS quarantine centre, ransacked government offices and overturned cars in China’s first reported instance of social unrest related to SARS.”

…The image to the right comes from Ziboy.com’s photoblog from Beijing. A little too much protection, possibly…? (Thanks to geisha asobi blog for the link.)

The house which inspired some of the material in C. S. Lewis’s “Narnia” books is up for sale.

Check this out first. A tutorial on How to Bow! (Thanks to Languagehat for the link.)

So the mail arrives. Credit card bill, junk mail, satellite viewing card. And this: “The Charles A. and Anne Morrow Lindbergh Foundation …congratulates you on the selection of your Young Wizards series for a special commendation…recognizing your outstanding contribution to children’s fantasy literature in the Anne Spencer Lindbergh Prize in Children’s Literature.”

The commendation goes on: “The Committee congratulates Diane Duane’s Young Wizards series for its courage in tackling moral and emotional issues set on the frontiers of magic. In addition, the author’s diverse worldview enhances the appeal of the series.”

Wow, oh wow.

After this, it’s kind of hard to be annoyed that I still can’t find the long version of the soup recipe.

The tree in the image to the left was just bare branches yesterday…or so it seemed. This morning I looked out the window and found it all covered with that perfect, tender new spring green.

It would be nice if the sudden change in weather hadn’t left us both with pounding sinuses, but that happens sometimes. Nothing to do but take an antihistamine and get on with things. The Ring work is going forward nicely, but the workload has just increased considerably with the urgent need to produce an extra draft well before what was the originally scheduled turn-in date. Argh!

Oh well. In the famous six stages of a project, this simply means we’ve progressed as far as “Total Confusion.” It was bound to happen eventually…

Every now and then I come back to Joseph Brennan’s Abandoned Stations site to see what’s new. Particularly of interest to SYWTBAW readers will be the page that deals with the City Hall IRT station. Though there are actually two City Hall “stations”, the other being a never-completed BMT facility, this would have been the one where the dragon was — the descriptions in the text of the “high ceiling” and the curved platform make the identification clear. Granted, the way Nita and Kit reach the spot in the book is somewhat circuitous, and doesn’t necessarily match “reality”. (But then they were in an alternate universe at the time, and one where things were unusually likely to be skewed.)

An interesting side issue is that a street named for a relative of mine is so very close…

…since almost certainly I know some of these people. “European animators gathered in the historical German city of Erfurt April 24 – 26 for the latest Cartoon Masters meeting to look at the creative side of the business.

“The Cartoon Master series is sponsored by the European Union subsidy org Media Program.”

However, they have a finance-oriented get-together scheduled for Cardiff at the end of June. Might make that, I suppose, if other business travel permits.

Or the Spike on the Pike, as some call it. (And I’m amused to see from the filename of the image to the right that at least one Web designer at the Times calls it that too.) NB: the “live” camera was a little crooked this morning, so I corrected the image. …Anyway, the Irish Times has a Dublin weathercam here — I haven’t looked at it for ages. But now that the Spire is up, the main webcam (looking north across O’Connell Bridge) gets a great view of it.

I know there are people who don’t care for the look of the Spike. I like it, though; I think it’s just what O’Connell Street needed. Possibly the opinion is irrational.

Meanwhile the rain continues. The fishpond is getting very full: the fish are spending a lot of time near the top of the water, either because the rain has warmed the pond up somewhat and they’re feeling more active, or because there are bugs to catch. (Not that I’ve had time to stand out there and watch to see if that’s what they’re doing.)

They may be warmer, but I’m chilly enough. I think I’ll light another fire in a while. (This is one of the good things about having your office in the living room, where the fireplace is… The other good thing about it is that tending the fire forces the busy writer to get up, stretch and walk around every half hour or so: go outside to the woodpile, get a little more wood… get another cup of tea, and settle down to work again. They used to tell us in nursing school that getting up to walk around every half hour, while studying or doing desk work, was imperative. Might be they had something there…)

My log files tell me that people have been wandering in here looking for news on some very delayed projects (at the moment, most specifically Rihannsu: The Empty Chair). And why wouldn’t they? So I’ve put a little list of what’s being worked on over in the first sidebar, under the fish count.

I know you folks are impatient about some of these projects, and you have a right to be. That said, I’m working quite hard right now, so please don’t joggle my elbow, OK? If you can be patient for just a little more, I’ll appreciate it.

And, as the nice men used to say (do they still?), “Thank Yew for Yer Continued Support.”

“The Savoy cinema in Dublin has dismantled a device it used to scramble mobile-phone signals, following an intervention by the Commission for Communications Regulation.” (Note: this link might be inaccessible if it’s been designated “premium content” — apologies if this is the case.)

“The Savoy had installed a device called a MobileBlocker to prevent people from making or receiving calls within the auditorium.

“‘What we had was a very low-powered device, which only affected the auditorium of the Savoy 1,’ said Mr Mark Anderson, operations manager of the Ward Anderson Group, which runs the Savoy complex.

“‘I thought the legal position was a lot more vague than it turned out to be.'”

The effect of the Gulf Stream on Ireland’s climate came up (it keeps winters mild enough, by and large, for palm trees and various other subtropicals to grow successfully). Here are a few links about that (the last one the best in my opinion, though it deals only glancingly with Ireland per se):

A snippet from “Earth and Sky”

The entry in Wikipedia

From Coastal and Geodetic Survey Stories & Tales: including Benjamin Franklin’s early notes on the subject. (That man…there was nothing he wasn’t interested in. But then, as the excerpt shows, the subject came up in the couse of his business as Postmaster-General.)

A little earlier in the same article: Martin Frobisher says (in the 1570’s): ” Sayling toward the northwest parts of Ireland we mette with a great current from out the southwest, which carried us [by our reckoning] one point toward the northeastward of our said course, which current seemed to us to continue itself toward Norway and other of the northeast parts of the world, whereby we may be induced to believe that this is the same which the Portugese mette at Capo de Buong Speranza [Cape of Good Hope], where, stricking over from thence to the Straits of Megellan and finding no passage there for the narrowness of the sayde Straits, runneth alongue to the great Bay of Mexico, where also having a let of land it is forced to strike back again toward the northeast, as we not only here but in another place also further northward by goode experience this year have found.” The writer of the article adds: “How the currents returned to the Cape of Good Hope from the ‘northeast parts of the world’ is not stated, but the general course of the Atlantic system is very fairly laid out.”

…This could start to get fascinating, and I have work to do, so I should stop this now. To one side, though, you can see a thumbnail of Athanasius Kircher’s 1678 chart of the Gulf Stream in the south Atlantic: the first one made, apparently.

Meanwhile, it’s a chilly, blowy, wet morning: high winds roaring through the branches of the trees, heavy rain. I lit a fire and took a turn through the house to see where the cats are. All are scattered hither and yon in attitudes suggesting that no one in their right mind would be conscious during weather like this: that the only thing to do is sleep through it. Well, it’s nice that they can get away with it, but for my own part, I need to go make some tea and then get busy with Holiday. (And later, see what Peter did with the script last night. He was up till something like 5 AM with it.)

Oh heck, why not confess? I love catching someone reading one of my books. On a plane, or in a subway train, or wherever. I sit there and practically twitch with the pleasure of it. (And no, I don’t go up to them and ask what they think. They might tell me. I’m such a chicken about such things.)

But here’s an interesting twist on the theme. I was reading some columns by Toni Schlesinger, in the Village Voice, and without warning ran across this:

“Lately, I look around and think, Who would I like to be stuck with in a [subway] car if something happened? The other day, there was the man with the tattoos reading an Ann Rice book and the chubby woman reading So You Want to Be a Wizard�they didn’t know each other, but maybe they should. I didn’t want to know either one.”

Oooooooo.

Well, I’m not exactly mortally wounded by this. But if I ever meet this lady at a cocktail party or whatever, I really must remember to take her aside and ask “Why? Why wouldn’t you have wanted to know that person?”

Of course, writing to deadline / writing for a newspaper being what it is, odds would be strong that she wouldn’t even remember the article…or the mood of the moment, or what precipitated it.

Oh well…