h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I sometimes see help-wanted signs for jobs that require steeplejacks. Not the kind of job for me . I can barely stand to lean my ladder against my trailer and climb up to pull snow from the roof so my chimney doesn't get covered. Yes, I'm a chicken when it comes to heights.

You're gonna love the January Create challenge.

I must be the only one who actually likes heights. Elektra doesn't, either. I don't know anybody else who does. I even like hanging bridges.

Can I join the height appreciation society? I remember standing at the top of the Sovereign Explorer when it was being built, wow!

Sadly the rig is now retired, hope the person who dismantled the tower enjoyed the view one last time!

Please don't spoil the suspense for me, Dmitri. As a practicing Hootooer, I will be able to make it disappear by designating it Someone Else's problem.

And now I know who the someone else will be.

Yeah. Talk about views, you remember the Fryburg church? There was a local historian, now alas deceased, who put together a story about the finishing of it. Let's see if I can find it, it's online...aha!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVpj18FXKg8

That's a wonderful video.

I noticed that the church was a 1/4 replica. The original must have been huge!

It's the one with those antiphonal organs.

Here's Freiburg (talk about having a head for heights, look at those workmen...):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdsaSny3BFs

Here's Fryburg again:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Tf7ELfReh8

For where they were and what they had to work with, they did an amazing job.

Yes, I'm not keen on heights, either - if I'm by eg the mouth of a staircase, it exerts some sort of pull on me so I feel as though if I stay there too long I'll fall down the stairs...

That is a lovely video about Fryburg

Those two links are truly beautiful Dmitri

The tune for the first sounds like something Philip Glass would have concocted. The tune for the second is "Amazing Grace."

When I was growing up, the church that my family attended was in white crackerbox style with a gorgeous white steeple. People driving by would fall in love with it and try to rent it s a venue for their weddings. In fact, my sister was married there (the minister who performed the service offered his services free of charge, as his gift to them. I sang "Be thouhg my vision," one of my sister's favorite hymns).

Apparently, in Colonial new England there wasn't a lot of money available for custom building of churches, so a few popular architectural designs were widely used. This proved to be economical, and it made it easy for visitors to tell which buildings were churches and which ones were not.

St. Michael's in Fryburg would not have benefited from that specific design, but who is to say that European churches themselves weren't often copies of other European churches? Maybe American churches started as copies of some European churches?

Be that as it may, I got so used to the interior of my original church that I feel right at home in other similar ones wherever I go.



(This does not mean that I won't complain about details of religious dogma that I find irksome . The church I went to was "federated," which meant that a wide range of denominations rubbed elbows with each other, including Baptists and Unitarians .

The most strident of Baptists can be a problem for me, but that is not to say that Unitarians, which I tolerate better than most, are always my cup of tea. Some Unitarian churches I like, while others turn me off completely.*

I can be very confused sometimes. Surprising, isn't it?




* Congregationalists who don't overdo it on the matter of doctrine can be a good fit. Unfortunately, it's an uphill battle to try to clue ministers in to the fact that their ship sailed 2,000 years ago, and they're basically erecting the equivalent of a theological Maginot Line. The Templeton Foundation is trying valiantly to urge people to introduce the idea of progress into religion, but so far their efforts have as little effect as a pebble-cast into the ocean. Yes, I've read Omar Khayyam.

The term 'Baptist' covers a multitude of sins. Traditionally, it was a tolerant denomination. Most of the weirdness comes from invasion waves by other groups, from pentecostals of all stripes to Calvinists, heaven help us.

I've known old-school Baptists who were very nice people. I tend to focus on people more than I focus on doctrine.

I try o avoid those people who are always going around asking whether I've been "saved." I don't consider myself on close enough terms with whatever deity might exist to know what's on Yt's mind. If there's an afterlife, I might find out whether I've been saved at that point.

I like the idea of karma. Things that I do to stay on a virtuous path are important to me. Do as much good and as little harm as possible. Don't kick puppies or spit in people's pizza (not that I would be likely to, I'm just throwing out examples of things not to do).

I don't remember pizza-spitting being in the gospels, but I'd think someone's pizza should be inviolate.

It's in the gospel of H2G2.