An article over in The Atlantic asks the question -- We all know there are deal breakers in our search for The Right One. Is Religion one of those deal-breakers? Should it be?

It was for me. I realized that I could marry someone of another faith, but only if he respected my right to believe what I believed. Yet kids I'd met who were raised between two very different faiths usually ended up believing in neither.

Hard choices. Hard decisions. I know someone who was a devout Calvinist who married a Catholic, and loved her so much he agreed to let their children be raised Catholic. His family is still appalled, I imagine, although she is the most wonderful person you could imagine.

As part of my manga research while designing my first foray into manga writing and art, I've started getting RSS from several popular manga sites, including TheRumicWorld. Inuyasha Manga Editor Annette Roman has a nice post today about trees in fantasy -- as spirits, religious focuses, sentients, demons, and just friends who protect your home and make it a better place to live. Below, I have links to the kinds of trees she talks about, as well as sequoias and redwoods. We probably need a baobab tree, too....

I have lived in the southwest too long -- I would NEVER cut down a tree unless it was sick and threatening to fall on my house. Too messy a tree? Tough. Get an Arborist to make it look its best and suck it up -- or don't buy that house. I might get rid of something small like a crepe myrtle, but never a TREE.

(You can threaten crepe myrtles and get them to cooperate, if necessary. I dislike white crepe myrtles, because they tend to bloom puny and their husks don't fall off, spoiling their display. So I warned a white crepe myrtle when I moved into a house once that it was on notice and a red crepe myrtle would look great there.

I swear -- within the WEEK it was covered, and I mean covered, in white blooms. Prettiest crepe myrtle I'd ever seen. So it got to live. We discovered it had a Hack berry growing inside it crowding it, so we cut that down (under power lines -- they would have topped it every five years, and unstable Hack berries are dangerous, as Texans know). I fed it crepe myrtle food, and guess what? It's a lilac crepe myrtle. Thus proving my point -- it wasn't a white crepe myrtle.)

Da trees:

Wonderboom (In 360!)


Dragon Tree


Guilty Chinese Scholartree


Major Oak


Chestnut Tree of One Hundred Horses (Despite the legend, don't try this ever!)


Giant Sequoia


Coastal Redwoods


Postscript: New Major Oak link 02/16/2010; some people were having trouble with that 360 site.

From Newsweek:

The Texas-Size Debate Over Teaching Evolution (by Christopher Hitchens)

Sure, discuss Darwin's 'strengths and weaknesses.' Just not in biology textbooks.


http://www.newsweek.com/id/191400/page/1

And also the sillier it gets. For those becoming confused by the players, here are cliff notes on Christianity:

http://holyoffice.livejournal.com/80073.html