Plans for ‘Schu-huum’ 1322 Rockland historic mansion still concern Rockland Neighbourhood Association

+++  Development plans for 1322 Rockland Avenue, an important heritage mansion known as ‘Schu-huum,’ are still matters of concern for members of the Rockland Neighbourhood Association.  About a half dozen development proposals have been brought before the Victoria City Council for the property.  The RNA Annual General Meeting will be held February 13 at the Victoria Truth Centre.  Information about the RNA, and their positions over the years pertaining to this property and others in the Rockland neighbourhood is available at the RNA website: www.rockland.bc.ca/, which is found in the blogroll of the Concerned Citizens’ Coalition Weblog under the heading ‘Rockland Neighbourhood Association,’ in the tags, or under the category header ‘VICTORIA CONSERVATION HISTORY.’  There is also an article which I started at another website which is found at the following address:  vibrantvictoria.ca/forum/archive/index.php/t-2279.html  +++

Pattie Boyd, George Harrison’s ex-wife, writes in ‘Wonderful Tonight’: Bob Dylan “turned them on to marijuana”

+++  Pattie Boyd puts a  page reference to an episode with Bob Dylan as the first item in ‘Wonderful Tonight’s’ index under ‘Beatles and drugs.’ It’s hard to believe that the Beatles hadn’t smoked mota earlier in their career as black-jacketed rockers in seedy Hamburg clubs, but Patti Boyd, widow of the late Beatle George Harrison, says in her memoir ‘Wonderful Tonight’ that Bob Dylan ‘had turned them on to marijuana.’  ++  The English Catholic convent-educated Boyd, tells her fascinating story with Penny Junor, in a book that was published by Harmony in hardcover just before Christmas last year.  Here’s the quote from the chapter entitled ‘George’ on page 73:  ++   ‘On the last leg of their marathon American tour, the Beatles had met Bob Dylan in New York.  They had been thrilled – Dylan was their hero and mine – and George couldn’t wait to tell us about him and how he had turned them on to marijuana.  A mutual friend, Al Aronowitz, who worked for the Saturday Evening Post, had brought Dylan to their hotel.  He had apparently misheard a line in their song “I Want to Hold Your Hand”: where they sang, “I can’t hide,” he had heard, “I get high,” and had assumed they were seasoned drug users.  ”Right, guys” he said, as he walked into their suite.  ”I’ve got some really good grass.”  So Dylan had rolled a joint, they had opened a few bottles of wine and had a very jolly party.  George was full of it; they had laughed all night.’  +++  As I received  a recorded message this morning from a robot at the Greater Victoria Library saying that this book is now overdue, we will reluctantly have to return it, as there is a long list of others waiting for it.  +++ 

MARGARET PATRICIA HARRIS 1923-2007 by Patrick Jamieson, Island Catholic News, February 2008, Vol 22, No 1

+++  ICN FEB 2008:  MOURNING MARGARET: ONE YEAR ON…One year after the death of his dear mother Margaret Patricia Harris (1923-2007), ICN Founding Editor and former Concerned Citizens’ Coalition  candidate Patrick Jamieson writes about the mourning process in these excerpts from the original longer piece printed in the latest February 2008 number of the Island Catholic News in a full page article, on page three.  The article is accompanied by a black and white photo of the author’s late mother with his father James Jamieson, with the accompanying caption: ‘Margaret and Jim Jamieson circa 1951 in Edmonton.  At that point they had two sons with four more children to follow in the decade of the 50s.’  +++  It will be a year February 8th since my mother died and seems time to remember a few more significant aspects of her personality, life and dynamics in our collective family.  ++  We are all having a very difficult time, I would say, in integrating her physical disappearance.  ++  My sister Christine and I wrote tributes and eulogies a year ago at the time of the death which were printed in Island Catholic News.  ++  Mourning, it seems to me, requires self-conscious processing if we are to truly grow through it.  If we are to reap the benefits mourning grants to us as a grace.  ++  Too often the funeral itself is seen as a sour imposition upon family and friends and perhaps should be done without.  As Christians and Catholics my family feel they have no real choice.  It is spiritually too important to say goodbye properly and start the process of living beyond.  ++  The funeral and the year following were a critically important period of growth for those left behind, a gift just as much as the ones granted when she was alive.  ++  For my mother was someone who in her being granted gifts by her mere presence.  It was always a pleasure as a youth to introduce my close friends to her, knowing her charm would work on them.  I enjoyed watching how they reacted as it would reveal something about them, their character.  ++  She was hospitable and graceful in her loving way.  Personally what I miss most is just being able to sit in her presence and connect.  Chat about the day.  Bring her up to date on what is going on in the community, with the newspaper and often within the petty world of politics within the Catholic church.  That connection was a metaphysical compass bearing which gave meaning and direction to the deeper regions of my life.  ++ II.  She went to Saint Anne’s Academy, graduating in 1940, so her roots were in the region, although she travelled away with my father’s military postings until 1977 when they could return upon retirement to help care for her mother who lived on the Island from 1920, coming from Northern England at Darlington, a Quaker town.  ++  My father, after sixty-five years of married life together, it must be said, misses her the most acutely.  Although some of her children are close behind.  She was one of those people with a sort of personality that insinuates itself deeply and permanently into your psyche.  She was not to be denied.  In a good sense, as they say.  ++  My father, I would say, has had a very hard time filling in the gap.  He still lives in their condominium apartment but finds it haunted.  Wanting to move out of its confines but realizing it is much too soon.  Their apartment represents physically what we have left of her in a way.  A sort of permanent shrine, none of her children wish to see it sold yet.  ++  Christmas was interesting that way.  The feelings from the years when she constructed and reconstructed the traditions that had grown up through the years.  Because we were a rootless military family sort of group; Vancouver, Edmonton,  Whitehorse, Ottawa and Oromocto, New Brunswick as well as Chilliwack, Winnipeg and finally Victoria all added their dimensions.  It always seemed like it would go on forever with her mystically at the helm.  ++  My father has kept up his refugee work but with an obvious lessening of intensity at age 86.  But of course he realizes that it is all largely a distraction from this gaping maw at the centre of our collective life created by her passing.  His challenge, and ours, is to symbolically let her go again and again over these next few years.  ++  Just before my mother passed, a great grandson, Jamie, was born who she was able to hold two months before her death.  Now within the year of her passing a great granddaughter, Poppy, is born in Winnipeg and my father looks forward to meeting her soon.  ++  My sister, Rita, who lives in Winnipeg has drawn the connection already in her visiting with the baby and feels it helps in some small if concrete way.  The tangible experience of healing through mourning.  ++  … IV.  My mother’s creativity was how she created a whole phenomenal universe for her family.  Physically and emotionally.  It was a power she took for granted yet tempered with an alluring charm and graciousness.  She  rarely had to threaten.  He method of discipline was largely that of charm.  One never wished to disappoint her or go against her best values.  It lent itself to great difficulty when it was time to leave the emotional security of the family nest.  ++  She could be fiercely aggressive and highly articulate in defending and explaining her values, particularly in the earlier years when it was key to our earliest and permanent formation.  ++  This whole way of life she wove, converged at a central point in the values and spiritual principles that guided us out through its cone at the end and into weaving similar patterns in our own lives, ones that we had all but unconsciously learned.  ++  As my sister wrote in her eulogy, such a richly symbolic figure when she dies leave a huge gap.  The temptation is to try to fill that gap with another person, frenzied activity or some other false substitution.  ++  But as Dietrich Bonhoeffer says: “Nothing can make up for the absence of someone we love, and it would be wrong to try to find a kind of substitute: we must simply hold out and see it through.  This sounds very hard at first, but at the same time it is a great consolation, for the gap, as long as it remains unfilled, preserves the bonds between us.  It is nonsense to say that God fills the gap: he doesn’t fill it, but on the contrary He keeps it empty and so helps us keep alive our communion with each other.”  +++ 

SISTER MARY ANGELICA, LOFTUS, GERTRUDE MARY, SSA, June 24, 1908 – January 10, 2008, R. I. P.

+++  LOFTUS, Gertrude Mary (Sr. Mary Anglelica), born June 24, 1908, in Greenwood, B. C., of Irish/Scottish ancestry, died at Saint Anne’s Residence in Victoria, B. C., on January 10, 2008, at 99 years of age.  ++   Having made contact with the Sisters in Kitsilano, she entered the Sisters of Saint Anne on January 10, 1925, and pronounced her vows at Saint Anne’s Academy, Victoria, B. C., on February 2, 1927.  Last February she celebrated her 80th anniversary as a Sister of Saint Anne.  ++  Despite twice being stricken with TB, Sister Mary Anglelica’s years of ministry were many and varied, and brought her to several missions in British Columbia.  Her ministry encompassed cooking, housekeeping, laundry, gardening, assisting the nurses on night duty, serving meals to patients, and stamp collecting, as well as teaching crafts to patients and the handicapped.  ++  She ministered in Campbell River Hospital, St. Augustine’s in Vancouver, Smithers Hospital, St. Joseph’s Hospital, and for 24 years at Mount St. Mary Hospital in Victoria, at the sisters’ residences on Johnson Street, Mount Saint Angela, and Begbie Street.  It was while stationed at Mount Saint Mary that, in addition to her other responsibilities, Sister Mary Angelica began making pottery and teaching basket weaving.  She served in volunteer capacity at the Saint Vincent de Paul Store and at Arbutus Crafts, teaching basket weaving for 22 years.  She retired to Saint Ann’s Residence in 1989.  ++  Predeceased by her parents Mary Kennedy and John Patrick Loftus, sister Mrs. Irene Proctor (Leo), and cousin Joe (Marie) Loftus, she is survived by nieces Maureen (Norm) Okerstrom and Sheila (Duncan) Ross; several cousins: Gail Jones, Ann Cole, Bill Loftus, Pat Loftus, Terry Loftus, Joan Uede, Susan Hepburn, Betty Wallace, Mike Loftus, and David Loftus; and her religious community, the Sisters of Saint Anne. ++  Prayers were offered January 14 at Saint Anne’s Residence, 2474 Arbutus Road, Victoria, B. C.; where Mass of the Resurrection was offered on January 15.  Interment Hatley Memorial Gardens.  +++  This article was originally published by the B. C. Catholic weekly newspaper, on January 21, 2008 in the OBITUARIES section of the CLASSIFIEDS, on page 14, with a black and white photo.  +++  A link to the Saint Anne’s Residence at Queenswood is found on the blogroll under the heading ‘QUEENSWOOD,’ in the tags, or at this address: http://www.queenswoodcentre.com/newsletter.html +++  B. C. CATHOLIC newspaper website is provided in the CCC WE BLOG blogroll to the right under the heading ‘Catholic, B.C.’  +++   

Alms for Oblivion – Everything Costs Money by DAVID BURKE, ISLAND CATHOLIC NEWS, February, 2008, Vol 22 No 1, Guest Editorial

+++  I write out of sheer desperation.  Some people write for pleasure, enjoy the process and make money; I’ve made a little while struggling on the disability pension for the past twenty frustrating quasi-suicidal years and when I think back to when I read all of Proust – au recherche de temps grande fondu – I  think that man really had the real ticket, in spite of a lack of humour, and perhaps I love my electric typewriter more than any member of the opposite hex.  Everything costs money.  ++  The structure I impose on myself to avoid insanity is a dubious one but it works.  Commodity – the bias of the world according to Shakespeare – my refuge and bane.  The price of everthing.  While we all know that welfare is a death sentence, sometimes there are small victories that make the whole thing worthwhile, but the thirty-nine thousand dollar Jag-dream awaits.  One day I will write for money.  One day I will date J. K. Rowlings and the Queen of England.  One day.  We live forever on the never never back in my hometown.  ++  Tomorrow is cheque day and the poor of B. C. can breathe easy for a second, with Christmas coming and the sun always shining on Welfare Wednesday.  Beating the system is a full-time occupation and every government office should employ a small core of system beaters, just to be on the safe side.  When every farthing counts every penny looms large.  When every penny has signficance a twenty spot is still a windfall, even though it can hardly buy anything et al.  ++  I retired from acting because there was no money in it, sold a few paintings and reinvented myself as a writer of small chapbooks.  A meagre war.  A war of attrition.  George Orwell and his downs and outs very much became a god to me.  I thought of changing my name to Eric Blair.  Ordinary milk I cut in half, which makes a tolerable cup of coffee, with extra brown sugar stolen from Starbucks.  Toilet paper I buy in single rolls.  I use dishsoap for my laundry and buy tea candles in bulk.  Every now and then I buy two bottles of wine and have a welfare party.  This is as good as it gets.  ++  It’s a crying shame and grievous sin when money means everything, yet underneath the gay camaraderie, the joking, the drinks, the winks, the watching videos and making frantic love is the ticking of the clock of money, for those where time is money and money is time and finally one is driven to church to say please sir, I’d like a little more….time.  ++  So we all reap alms for oblivion.  For it is to the church that we must ultimately turn when times get rough, and times have been so very rough over these last twenty long years.  ++  I’m in constant pain and constant prayer mode.  Poverty is depression and anger is depression in another form, but I can’t market my anger, and so must subdue it, allay it, deploy it and finally satirize it, before the past twenty-seven years become a cross which I bear, from which I learn nothing, bearing only bitter fruit.  ++  Sure I wear clothes with stains on them.  I’m proud of the stains… to me a badge of honour and an indication that I never sold out or sold myself short.  The alms for oblivion take many forms and exactly what was the oblivion Shakespeare spoke of and the great sized monster of ingratitude.  How grateful should we be for our blessings and how willing to move to where the grass is greener and the bananas riper and the lotuses faster and sleeker???  ++  A cup of coffee is heaven, salmon and mayo a benefice and a donut with filling the high life; a day without a touthache is a good day and the evidence of hot water for a bath is the evidence of a God, who art not David Bowie.  ++  Many times I have been suicidal – tobacco-related illness and the ghosts of George Orwell and Beckett hover close by and assure there will be tailor mades in heaven.  Finally I have my superb books to sustain me in moments of smoker’s cough.  The pages crack open.  I enter and escape.  One day I shall not return.  And then the bus pass will not be so important.  The window is open… The field is clear for jumping.  But upwards with wings or downwards in smoke is anyone’s guess, and then the many many I have helped with their little lives are going to have to fend for themselves, as I make my way towards the podium.  +++ 

JURIANA: DAVID JURE, David Burke, John David Burke @ Concerned Citizens’ Coalition Weblog @ goyodelarosa.wordpress.com

+++  Island Catholic News is one of the very few publications in Victoria besides LA ROSA that has the courage to publish the work of DAVID JURE.  A Special Section is set aside here in the Blogroll of the Concerned Citizens’ Coalition WE BLOG site for this genius  GLOBAL ARTIST OF ARTS under the heading ‘JURIANA.’  It will pertain to anything written by or about DAVID JURE, JOHN DAVID BURKE, or DAVID BURKE.  The following link takes one to the Island Catholic News website.  David has a piece entitled ‘Alms for Oblivion – Everything Costs Money,’ in the current February number of ICN, which will be reprinted here as a new posting, and added to the website blogroll…if possible!  ++  http://www.islandnet.com/~icn/  +++

One hundred and fifty lines – an odyssey by DAVID JURE, poem for Robbie Burns’ Day, James Bay Books

+++  DAVID JURE  is the nom de plume of my good friend DAVID BURKE, or as he is sometimes known, John David Burke, poet, actor, cineaste, mental health patients’ advocate and a former Concerned Citizens’ Coalition candidate.  David is the author of a number of poetry chapbooks, including ‘Various Means of Escape,’ ‘Merlin’s Millenium’ and ‘Dazed and Confused,’ most of which are produced with the able computer handiwork of Louise Beinhaur of Wordworks.    He has a new big book of poetry in the making with Louise.  +++   Here is a new poem on blue-lined writing paper, neatly typed up on an old typewriter, as is the wont of David Jure, with the occasional typo fixed in blue ink, and the following scribbled at the top: ‘Jan 23rd. David Jure 220-2354.’  David intended to read this poem to those attending the Robbie Burns thing at the James Bay Book store last night, but we decided to take our tea instead here at our Hartnell-Keough Rockland aerie as his back was killing him.   After giving him a cup of tea and a couple of painkillers, he seemed to relax and he read it aloud to me.  Impressed and privileged, I gathered my courage before driving him home, to ask if I could borrow it to post here.  I suspected that this was his only copy.  Graciously, he gave me the envelope, inside of which was this poem on three sheets of lined paper, about fifty lines per page…I will have to add my own eliptical dots to the ends of his lines, as I fear that the Weirdpress computer blogging programme that we use here does not seem to allow for paragraph indentation, or spacing, or the peculiar word arrangement that DAVID JURE uses in his original typewritten copy.   I have also taken some liberties with David Jure’s punctuation and spelling where the errors seem unintentional, but where the orthography is merely weird and idiosyncratic, I leave it as is.  - CCC WE BLOG Editor, Goyo de la Rosa  +++  One hundred and fifty lines – an odyssey …  shakespeare in his thieving murderous way … stealing lines from Marlowe and everyone in sight ….  you would think that a man that wealthy would …  have more scruples … and was that word in evidence … he had a vocab of 24,000 words … which was prodigious … liked to love gorgeous bankside babes … had a fondness for tobacco … and was a good father … but after that we know absolutely nothing. … perhaps this mystery is a cachet….? …  how can I foster this mystery … Viktoria’s finest … seer in search of…… comfortable shoes … lover of hookers and booze … descended from robert the bruise … capable of knocking out a play in 24 hours … and once clocked at twenty eight miles an hour … beside the Uplands bus … breathing heavy on the flowers … as the quest for fame sours… … I retreat … I backpeddle … I lie on the bed waiting … for the magic phone to ring … but Trevor Nunntheless the words flow … and I prove inimicable in my incensed way … no nearer royalty than a beggar … but prodded by excellence … and proud of my rings and voices and trappings… … back to the theatre or forward into canlit … the big tit … charles tidler lorna crozier and roy green …  I yam in excellent company … however the pain … mounts … shoulders and neck not worth writing … hame aboot and ernie hemmingways letters on sale … at Sorensens for five dollars. … I demurred and drank my rum. … David Jones … welsh wonderkind… … my potent friends … its overwhelming to the new girl on the block … a brief pause… … gregory hartnell … parapundit … master blogger … labours long without this week getting his … pikture in the paper …. calls the mayors office to task on everything … and beetles around town in little blue car… …  The Viktoria police have been called again … and again on their brutal and rude behaviour … has stephen harper been notified … that five police cars show up to check out a stolen bicycle … Willow Kinlock handcuffered and tethered to a cell door … for five hours …what kind of a world are we living in … kindly Paul Battershill on suspension … perhaps he didn’t get the message across to his merry men.. … I have been in handcuffs a dozen times… … The secret is to relax and let the imperative observant mind … takeover … drink it all it in and don’t get upset … life is a grand adventure … a grand for thy avenger …. sold a book today to John Dobbs … son of legend Kildare dobbs … at the james bay coffee company.. … Shakespeare left a million words behind … with the redoutable smith corona I can do better … waiting for a redhead in a tight sweater … it’s no secret Im the biggest womanizer in the city … without a gal on the go I feel veritably shitty … a fan of beauty bright and the showcase sexy bits … culturally and rock and roll viktoria is the pits… …  the author spends too much money on cabs and lives the high life … still a big fan of the wind in the willows … and casual sex … wrote to beckett (sam) and got a reply … one grey day in the summer of seventy three … reading all of proust and feeling vaguely … depressed and compressed… … harold pinter … alone on the planet … having a pinter … david jure hovelist still gets calls from collection … agencies … gives them their pound of grief …. william shakspere poet and playwrite … had his financial griefs … all of london a giant dungheap smelt to the high heavens … with what the horses left in the street ….  plaintive wiccatoria … sweet smelling … but pushes its dung into the straight … in spite of the waging raging grannies…. …  Barak Obama smoker controversy man …  running for president … God speed. …  sam beckett …  warrior and saint … stabbed by a pimp in a paris suburb …was so kind as to visit the man in … jail … and see if he was alright… …  the coffee stained manuscripts of a seasoned mature author… veteran of a thousand treasons … that ass…. I wont speak to him ….  the pains taken and the insults given … on the street by the market on yeats some street person … called me a fat bastard and threatened physical violence. … I quoted ts eliot and zoomed away to private school …  golden threads and the intimations of childhood … molten pity and a new ditty … . if I could escape; gwen stephanie ….  funny how the radio grows and grows on one … as one gets older and milder and internally wilder …  soon to be in a wheelchair on the creaky … careworn streets of okey dokey bay …  I set the bed on fire with candles … at 3am one morning … and slept on … the chard remains … and now when coming … up in the elevator … sniff for burning pots in the hallways … and in respect … of the coldness and the brutal snobbery … I have experienced in the building … I am inclined to think … let her burn ….  oh for soho in the sixties … toronto in the seventies … and san francisco in the eighties ….   the world is too much with us …  al quaeda cells training in afghanistan … and paksitan … smoke that hashish … and are told that when they die they … go to heaven … and are promised seven virgins … I could use one now … how difficult it is to meet a tall beautiful … woman in insensate cromwellian wiccatoria …  i despair …..  and it turns into a bitterness about Hollywood north … car chases and explosions … cliff hangers.. …  meanwhile amazing poet Paul Burnside sleeps outside … with racoons … writes about irish goblins and heathrow accidents … never asks for help … found in Mcdonalds eating a meagre muffin and coffee … I ask you … what is wrong with the just society….  +++     

James Bay Coffee Books in mid winter: great photos on walls, friendly service, soft reggae

+++  I stopped by the James Bay Coffee & Books shop in James Bay the other day at the suggestion of my good friend David Burke (‘Jure’).  We sometimes go there in the afternoon to catch some rays on the sidewalk.  The ashtrays have disappeared, however, which disappoints David, a determined smoker, determined, that is, to quit like all smokers…someday.  David had given me a new paperback entitled ‘Performance Anxiety,’ published by Red Dress Ink, and written by none other than his own sister Betsy Burke, now resident in Firenze, Italia.  While he went over to Thrifty’s to do some grocery shopping, I browsed through the bookshop side of the place.  It’s a bit of a maze, but that is what gives it its funky charm.  I found a book by Stuart Underhill on the old Iron Church, the first Anglican church to be consecrated in British Columbia that predated the present Saint John the Divine church building of today.  There is a quite startlingly fabulous black and white photo of a dramatic fire that gutted the huge building December 9, 1960, taken at 4:30 am early one morning.   We were served by a friendly young woman who sold me the Underhill book while she played the reggae music at a reasonably moderate volume, which better enables conversation, of course.  David was enthralled with the quality of the photographs on display on the cafe’s walls, but I regret to say that I didn’t look at them…  RANT: How on earth is anyone going to take the MASSTER BLOGGER seriously as an art critic when I refuse to exam art on display when others are in the room?  Or, isn’t that GOOD OL’ ROBERT AMOS’ excuse for hardly ever getting out to shows anymore?   HMMM???  I wonder if he went to Roy Green’s show at the Sussex?   HMMM???  If not, he can read about it here, somewhere, I think.  I must be getting tired.  This prose, such as it is, is getting too much like promo..FOR COFFEEE!!!.  The art shows change here regularly, which is good.  There is also going to be an open mic to celebrate Robbie Burns Day tomorrow night, on Friday, I think, but am not sure of the time.  KILTS OPTIONAL, THANK GOD!   +++  

 

The tags refer to links that bring the reader to the Tourism Victoria review of the James Bay Coffee & Books shop, and a link to a Google map address is listed also for the James Bay Coffee & Books shop.  Both are found in the Blogroll under ‘James Bay Coffee & Books’ or under the header BOOK TOUR.   +++ 

 VIC. TOUR.: www.tourismvictoria.com/Content/EN/417.asp?id=A0003295  MAP: http://maps.google.com/maps?client=safari&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=James+Bay+Books&near=Victoria,+BC,+Canada&fb=1&cid=48414449,-123374907,8476513164021739351&li=lmd&z=14&t=m +++

E. CATHERINE MORONEY: The Chief who Danced, a short note by Gregory Hartnell (‘Goyo’)

+++  Here is a thin curiosity of an illustrated chapbook about the Salish people of southwest British Columbia by a retired Sister of Saint Ann. I remember meeting Sister Catherine at Island Catholic News board meetings in the early 90s, and was always impressed with her keen attention to detail, humilty and wisdom.  The two colour (black and red) illustrations by Art Harrigan are unusual for the way they attempt to fuse traditional Salish native design motifs with Western style caricature.   I imported this item from our Librarything account over here to the Concerned Citizens’ Coalition Weblog @ WordPress, goyodelarosa.wordpress,com/ where it should now be found under ‘Chief…’ or ‘Moroney.’    It is a short review I wrote of it for our CCC Library catalogue @ LibraryThing:  http://www.librarything.com/work/4655700     +++

STRANGE WEIRDPRESS: Reverse alphabetisation of category headers

+++  I just noticed that the category headers for this website are arranged in reverse order, with the As at the bottom of the roll, and the last letters of the alphabet at the top.  I don’t know if this is a peculiarity of weirdpress, but at least I see some attempt at order, even if it is backward…I like weirdpress generally though.  I wonder how people like the black presentation format?  I am trying to emulate FMR as much as I can.  Scroll down our blogroll for FMR or FRANCO MARIA RICCI and one will see what I like.  The black background sets off the colour of the pictures much better than white… +++