The Haunted Palace

Thank you for being my grandmother, and for being so good to me—and to Larry. We will miss you very, very much.


Lattie Rochelle Pike Pettigrew
June 15, 1910-July 2, 2008

I am a part of everything that I have read.

— Thomas Roosevelt

I’ll miss you, man.

This century’s Make Way for Ducklings mom has stepped forward, by rescuing her six ducklings from the sewer.

She followed them above ground for over an hour, then waited with them for four hours more, until alert humans realized the ducklings’ plight.

• The ex-CEO of American Airlines says that the government should stop pricing abuses by airline companies. Hear, hear. The fare schedule, such as it is, is obscene.
• In order to stem the tide of child pornography, ISPs Verizon, Sprint, and Time Warner Cable will be blocking access to Usenet. (Psst, y’all, newsgroups are accessible via Google Groups. Just in case you didn’t know.)
• John McCain is asking supporters to spam political blogs with his talking points…and few people have done so.
• Alex Kozinski, the chief judge in an obscenity trial, was found to have obscene materials on his personal website. His defense is that he didn’t know it was available to the public.

Seasons 1 and 2 will be released as one set on September 16! (Larry is so very pleased.)

I’ve started a Flickr group for Amherst and Nelson counties on Flickr; feel free to join us!

• Image pool
• Group’s map
• Discussions

Perhaps this should be the season of quiet reflection.

To wit:

Brigitte Bardot was just charged with her fifth—and heaviest—fine for inciting hate speech.

Sharon Stone stated at the Cannes film festival that the earthquake that killed 68,000 people last week in China was karmic payback.

Ms. Bardot, the French government has told you, formally, five times now that you need to keep your thoughts about people of Islamic faith to yourself. Heed.

Ms. Stone, please quietly sit in a corner, and read some Buddhist and Hindu texts on karma. Hopefully you will come to see that a game of cosmic neener-neener is not appropriate…or especially helpful to anyone. No death should be celebrated, in any fashion.

Pop culture celebrities of all stripes:

There is a reason you’re famous. However, it most likely is not for your political or spiritual acumen. Please keep this in mind when choosing what to say or write for public consumption. We all have to do so; you’re not exempt just because your face is on the cover of magazines.

the PostSecret books, compiled by Frank Warren

Before chasing spirits was popularized by television ghost hunters armed with digital gadgetry and infrared video, one young woman traveled to the darkest corners of the globe, communing with the dead and chronicling her experiences in pen and ink.

At the time, Countess Catherine Buxhoeveden was married to famous paranormalist and author of 140 books Hans Holzer, and for years she and her husband sought out ghosts all over the world. He wrote about their haunted adventures and her illustrations brought the dead and their often forbidding dwellings to life. A Southampton resident, Ms. Buxhoeveden recently had a show of her drawings and a collection of new paintings at the Romany Kramoris Gallery in Sag Harbor, where she was joined by her 37-year-old daughter, Alexandra Holzer. An author and rising star in the paranormal world in her own right, Ms. Holzer signed copies of her new memoir, “Growing Up Haunted,” which recounts her colorful upbringing as the child of a countess and a ghost hunter.

27East article

Alexandra’s blog entry