The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Katrina Stonoff:

#15 Old Houses of Faith

When I was 35, I ran away from an abusive marriage. I had no money, no job, a 32-year-old car, and a toddler.

With nowhere else to go, we ended up at a shelter for abused women and children. It was an old nunnery: a two-story building with rows of narrow rooms upstairs, each with a closet just big enough for two outfits on hangers, maybe three. Downstairs housed spacious public rooms and the shelter's offices.

I was in crisis, full-on panic mode, but the stone walls exuded peace. We stayed for a weekend, sharing chores with the other women and laughing about the crazy things our partners did -- things I never dreamed I could laugh about. On Monday, the staff fed me breakfast, packed a lunch, gassed up my car, gave me enough gas money to get a day's drive down the highway toward my parents' home, and made arrangements for me to stay at a shelter that evening.

Traditionally, the stone walls of that building held a group of women who prayed from faith. For me, those same walls sheltered women who prayed from desperation - and found faith.

What I find most hysterical about the London Sunday Times gaffe is that the author of the article begun the bunk synopsis with the clause, "For the uninitiated."

ROFL!! I read it as, "For the uninitiated, like me."

Is it just my screen...or did the SoS community change their journal to white text on a white background?

Oak galls are nothing like acorns. Acorns are, of course, the natural fruit of the tree.

Galls are distorted growth in the wood caused by a little bug. There can be galls on leaves (those are the ones I'm most familiar with), but I believe the galls they use for ink are in the wood itself.

If you've ever seen a branch that has a rounded lump on it (knobby growth?), that's probably a gall.

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