EMAIL: AUTO REPLY

Thanks for your email. However, I'm sorry to inform you that Rick Wilson is spiritually dead. He died recently from latent implementation atrophy (LIA). In layman's terms, he died from generating too many ideas without ever DOING any of them.

A rare type of extremely painful psychic constipation, LIA is known to afflict bureaucrats and other mentally sedentary people.

All of his email messages are being forwarded to his kingdom-come email account. He may occasionally be reading email on an after_life Blackberry in purgatory.

By the way, he wanted everyone to know that exactly 2.3 x 10^8 angels can dance on the head of a pin: But they can only comfortably slow dance.

His purgatory-mandated "angel on a pin" counting sessions are continuing for the other dance categories; foxtrot, swing, lindy, salsa,...

Respectfully,

Rick's Professional Soul Tender

Sunday Morning in Oldtown

It's so quiet you can hear the house age. Floors creak like my fifty-two year old knees. A faucet drips with the slow rhythm of a Sunday morning hymn, tic...tic...tic...

No NPR warning me of crisis nor folly. Even my Blackberry is quiet, its battery exhausted from a week of what passes for work these days.

I step outside for the Post. Laurel Ave sleeps. Route 1 is still, bracing itself for the crush of the after church crowd in a few hours.

I love to be the first one up on Sunday morning. I wallow in the quiet. Alone with my coffee, dog and paper. No need to rush for the Marc train. No need to steal myself for the countless noisy duties of the day. I seem to even breathe and think better in the quiet. A thought comes to mind and I have the quiet to savor it thoroughly.

I hear the shower. Someone has turned on Morning Edition. I've got to get ready for Mass at Saint Mary's. I plug in my Blackberry.

Sunday morning in Oldtown has recharged me.