Again I have failed.  But again, I am so very close!  Tomorrow, I hope and pray, I’ll have this page done.  It’s just too much for me to finish tonight.  I think you’re going to like it though, for sure! Just twenty-four more hours, guys!

Poor Mike.  He got more than he bargained for, it seems.

Sorry for all the delays on this one – your patience was deeply appreciated.  Of course, you can see now why I ended up doing a design card for the Sentinel tank.  It was giving me a lot of trouble last week but I got it the second time around.

For my part, I had the enormous pleasure of seeing some old friends of mine this weekend.  Robert, an old buddy from college, came up to visit from Virginia, and we all went upstate to see some other friends of ours.  They are natives of Iran, but left their country, partly because of discrimination as a result of their Bah’ai faith; they are now Americans, and I, for one, am glad that they are!  We all, in true Persian fashion, drank tea and discussed law, fine art, politics, and the Old Days, then strolled through the Yale Art Gallery until they forced us to leave.  It was spectacularly wonderful, the kind of thing I so rarely get to do yet always genuinely enjoy.  And so, Shahin and Nasim, thank you both for your impeccable hospitality!

It’s an odd parallel that the craziness in Iraq, which is of particular concern to my friends, happens to be happening this week, of all times.  And also, that I happen to be writing this around the 100th anniversary of World War I.  Talking about both these things with Shahin and Robert dew this page into an oddly stark focus for me, and, well… I don’t want to go into the particulars.  You all know how I feel about the state of things in the world right now, and to mention any one crazy, insane, violent occurrence is to neglect all the others happening simultaneously.  Nevertheless, seeing Shahin and Nasim and Robert (whose little daughter is approaching two years old!) restored and reinforced my faith that, in the end, humanity and goodness can yet triumph over all of this.

Anyway, another week is underway for me, now.  I’m already in the thick of it, so I’d better turn in.