In a speech Thursday at St. John Lateran, Nicolas Sarkozy said, "No one denies that the French system of laicism is a guarantee of liberty: liberty to believe or not; liberty to practice a religion and to change it; liberty to refuse to betray one's conscience with public practices; the liberty of parents to educate their children according to their beliefs; liberty from discrimination from government due to beliefs."

Sarkozy, who was at St. John Lateran to take the title of "honorary canon," traditionally bestowed on heads of the French state, said his country has changed a lot. "The French have greater differences in convictions than before," he said. "Now laicism presents itself as a necessity and an opportunity."

However, he added, "Secularism should not be a denial of the past. It does not have the power to sever France from its Christian roots. This has been tried. It shouldn't have been done."

Sarkozy met with the Pope at the Vatican on Thursday morning.

"Like Benedict XVI," he said, "I think a nation that ignores the ethical, spiritual and religious heritage of its history commits a crime against its culture, against the whole of its history, patrimony, art and popular traditions, which permeate living and thinking in such a deep way."

The president added: "To uproot is to lose meaning; it is to weaken the foundation of national identity, and to drain even more the social relationships that have such a need of memorable symbols.

"For this reason, we have to join the two ends of the chain: to accept the Christian roots of France -- even better, to value them, to defend the laicism that finally reaches maturity. This is the step I want to take this afternoon in St. John Lateran."

"I am calling for a positive laicism," he said, "that is to say, a secularism that watches over freedom of thought, of belief and unbelief, does not consider religion as a danger, but as an asset."

so I've updated my template - I don't know if it's all that noticeable. I'll probably make it a work in progress and play with it for a while. meanwhile I'll play with photos using picasa2 (yay free downloads) and post lots of stuff on my photo page...

snow is falling again - it's slowly been falling all day. it is dampish snow and i am somewhat afeared that it will freeze over night and make the roads hellish.

but for now it is simply and utterly beautiful. everything curves - the tree branches, the mounds collected on the holly leaves, the sinks where the leaves are fallen on th ground.
they are saying that it is likely to be gone tomorrow but i don't care. it is beautiful now and now is where i am.

I just got thank-you letters from an entire second grade class. I'd taken their class on a nature walk back in October - I actually don't quite remember doing it - and something must have made and impression (on the teachers at least...).
hmmm, I'll have to go and look the date up to see if it was just me or if I'd only helped... it would be a shame to take all of the credit.

in other news - paper cuts are a pain.

leaf blowing: one of the greatest exercises in futility that i have ever encountered.

they are blowing leaves off the roof and from around the building - again. this is the weather report. but as the man said "job security - they pay the same each time!"

there is something broken in our government...and i don't know if it can be fixed.

first snow!!!

it was just a light dusting but it did come down. and we're supposed to be getting more tonight and tomorrow...

...snow...

well, i had wanted to say something...

in other news - my computer hard drive is nearly full. it took longer than i thought it would though - nearly three years.
i really need to just dump stuff onto my external hard drive...

*thinking*

no time like the present...
it's saying that this is going to take a while... 15 mins remaining.

i downloaded picasa2 so that i could play with my pictures on my own computer. i need to figure out how i can resize the files - they are unwieldy when they come off my camera... is there something better out there for me to pick up for free?

i'll come back and ramble in a bit...

so i've added two more links... chaps i found while doing some research on the community gardens here in the park. the odd thing is they are in the UK and i'm in DC. but they write well and seem to be living the sort of modern globally and environmentally concious farmstead life that i would one day like very much to have...

so i thought i'd share...

the one rub is that the wizard is rather pagan...this makes reading rather interesting sometimes- leaving one with a feeling of "if he only know the whole of it..."