From LIFE to the wine country

- Father’s Day Special: LIFE With Famous Dads and Their Daughters

- Photos of people in different countries, reading. I like the CS Lewis quote posted - We read to know we are not alone.

- If you care about bees, you might want to see More Than Honey ...



- Al Gore: NSA's secret surveillance program 'not really the American way'

- Damian Thompson writes about depression ...

[...] Depression is like addiction: it magnifies natural character traits and demonstrates that our bodies weren’t designed for the 21st century. Celebrities are notoriously prone to both, because they’re ahead of us in the queue for the rollercoaster of limitless choice. And that raises a tricky question: where do we start, and stop, in the prescription of drugs to control moods whose instability is made worse by our environment?

I don’t know. But I can tell you that crawling out of bed today was made easier by 60mg of duloxetine, an anti-depressant that, so far as I can tell, suppresses the feelings of despair and meaninglessness that start in the pit of my stomach and colonise my whole body. That’s what depression means to me. I don’t have it badly, I could probably ditch the pills, but, to put it bluntly, life would suck. So, like many people I know – and, I suspect, a frighteningly large percentage of future generations – I’ll keep taking the tablets ...

- Pope Francis wants a "poor church for the poor" but I don't think all the church guys have read that memo: Bishops and Catholic Leaders to Gather in Napa to Discuss the Church and 'Next America', and here's the resort/spa where they're staying ....