PEACHFRONT SPEAKS

Recent entries flirtatious birbs of the home - 2019-01-27 little redheads - 2019-01-21 eclipse night - 2019-01-20 the hummingbird report jan. 13, 2019 - 2019-01-13 the theme is green - 2019-01-10 Read my new book, The 10 Best Things You Can Do For Your Bird at Amazon or at many other fine distributors like Barnes & Noble, iTunes, Kobo, and more. By public demand, and after a delay of an embarrassing number of years, I've finally put my notorious essay, Ender and Hitler: Sympathy for the Superman, free on the fabulous internets. A bibliography of my published books and stories. Here's a simple card-counting FAQ to get you up to speed on the basics. Here's the true story of the notorious DD' blackjack team, told for the first time on the fabulous internets. No other team went from a starting investor's bankroll of zero to winning millions of dollars. A Sadean take on Asimov's classic Three Laws of Robotics can be found in Roger Williams' NOW REVIEWED ON SLASHDOT!!! The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect. Adult readers only please -- explicit sex and violence. For updates on the "Dead Tree Project" and other topics, you may visit the official fan site, Passages in the Void.. My Bird Lists -- My Louisiana State Life List, My Yard List and, tah dah, My World Life List. HEY! What happened to the Peachfront Conure Files? The world's only OFFICIAL Peachfront Conure site now features free peachfront conure coverage, including a magazine length Intro to Conures previously published in American Cage-Bird Magazine, now free on the web. I offer the best free Peachfront Conure information on the internet. If you have great Peachfront Conure info, stories, or photos to share, contact me so I can publicize your pet, your breeding success, your great photograph, etc. on my site. Thanks.

cullman, alabama: the ave maria grotto, because why NOT built a fake cave out of shells in honor of mary? 2010-11-10 - 3:10 p.m. © 2010 by elaine radford check out brother joseph's hand-made stalagtites in the mary grotto Brother Joseph was born in Bavaria in 1878. Even if you didn't know that at first, as we didn't, it becomes increasingly obvious as you stroll through the grounds of his creation. You are seeing all these mosaics miniatures of the sacred sites in Rome or Jerusalem or whatever, created, in a surprisingly large part, from shells, even though you're nowhere near an ocean, and your mind starts to tick over. Where have I seen this before? Then, not too terribly far in, you get to the Statue of Liberty mosaic that he created in thanks for being naturalized as an American, and, all along the way, you encounter various bits of Bavarian or German folklore that don't really have much to do with the main grand theme -- the re-building of the entire city of Rome and the re-building of the entire city of Jerusalem and a huge frick-frackin' artificial cave (the grotto) in honor of Mary and so on -- interspersed here and there with the story of Hansel and Gretel (I did not know that they lived in a CASTLE complete with a dragon underneath the moat) or an entire Tyrolean village or various other random German bits among the rest of it. Oh, there's a cathedral from Ireland here, and a Peace Park from Hiroshima there, and -- oddly -- a Chipmunk Crossing and Lizard Condo -- with the Lizard Condo standing proud among a step pyramid of old and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, but there's certainly a quiet Bavarian theme. And then it hits me. Of course. The Residenz at Munich. They had a pagan grotto made completely of shells, by real artists, not by wanna-be monks who had to go to Alabama to be given a chance to show their stuff. It's a hell of a thing, an amazing thing, all these sea gods and goddesses made from shell, and then you find out that it was made twice, the first time in the 1550s, and, again, after World War II, when the people of Bavaria collected freshwater shells so that they could rebuild the city of Munich as it was before it was bombed into rubble. Well, I say, "by real artists." Was it "real artists" who just made a reconstruction? Was it "real artists" who made a fantasy to pander to the ego of a royal family? I mean "officially" recognized artists. And it's all amazing, all three of them. The original shell grotto, apparently a monument to "humanism." (I thought it was pagan, with a sense of humor, since no one in those days actually believed in mermaids or Neptune or whatever...maybe having a sense of humor is the same as "humanism," I dunno.) The religious spin-off in Alabama, where the shell grotto becomes a tribute to Mary, to Rome, to Jerusalem. The third grotto, the attempt to re-create what was destroyed by war, from old photographs taken before Munich was annihilated. Three very different stories told in shell -- "we are as gods," "no, we are not the gods, there are gods and goddesses more powerful that we must acknowledge -- and, anyway, there's a dragon under our feet," "we have been destroyed and it won't stand, we will fix this, we will make it right." all roads lead to rome back - next All Rights Reserved, Copyright 2002-2017 by Elaine Radford