Today's reading in Peacemaking: Day by Day, Vol. 2 (Pax Christi USA):

There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest. - Elie Wiesel

Cherries! Sour cherries, and lots of them, are in my kitchen today. We took a road trip to southwestern Virginia yesterday to pick cherries at Levering Orchard.

The Duke River is a success. I've been wanting to create my personal river for a long time. Dave's post today, Rivers are still the best way to get news via the web, made me think today was the day to just do it.

So, I did it.

I'm building my personal reading list at river.zuiker.com and displaying it at my.zuiker.com.

The itinerary for our trip to Provence later this month is filling out. Still left to determine is where we'll spend our final night there, in Paris. But what a city! I'm overwhelmed by the choices. I know we'll arrive at Gare de Lyon around 2pm on a Sunday, and we'll need to be at CDG by 8am the next morning.

Where to stay? What to do that afternoon? Where to eat? How to have a romantic night in the city of light? How to get to the airport in the morning?

What a lousy position to be in.

Apropos of my post yesterday about writing is this essay in the NYTimes today: Unless You’re Oprah, ‘Be Yourself’ Is Terrible Advice. I'm most certainly a high self-monitor.

Icons used on this blog are coming from 365cons, and other sources of icons, which I find via the Codrops Collective weekly newsletter.

I'm a very cautious, and slow, writer.  I often start a draft in one of my blogging tools, copy and paste into an editor on my laptop and edit and revise, and copy back into the blog editor before publishing.

I'm a cautious writer because I like to be as grammatically precise as possible, and because I want my writing to be as clear as possible.

I'm a slow writer because, well, I'm a slow thinker. I'm smart, not brilliant, but thoughtful. I try, too hard, perhaps, to be not opinionated.

1999 is a great tool, noted before, because its simplicity offers so little barrier to free-flowing writing. That free flow of words, I suspect, would help me think faster and deeper, and write more, and more fluidly.

So here's to more writing, in 1999, and finding more to think, and say, and write.

Around and around we go.

The Duke River has been flowing for the last few months. Now it's time for me to set up my personal river, with a collection of the blogs, sites and feeds that I rely on for news, links, perspectives and more.

For 1999, I'd like to set up the publishing callback, customize the editor, map a domain, and style my templates.

The pileated woodpecker has been working on a nearby tree for the last week, knock-knock-knocking each morning around 6 o'clock. A couple of days ago, I heard its laughing call.