WAG 
Vol. 1, No. 8
July 1994

Table of Contents
Cover story:  Wind Aloft, Rum Below
Travel:  Touring York
Advice:  Dear Stinky the Clown
Sports:  Stop the Presses! The Wave Has Reached Richmond & Recognizing the Diamond's Four Millionth Fan & The Amateur Athlete
Book Review:  John Grisham's The Chamber & Shot in the Heart
Music:  The Rolling Stones Get Some $atisfaction
Computers:  The Internet
BBS Listings
Astrological Forecast
Reports from the Edge
About WAG


Wind Aloft and Rum Below
by Jim Quinn

The captain soon went down below
and said to his steward
"There's a storm begin to blowx
Go and make me a drink
that'll make me cough
for it's better weather here 
than it is up above
xwith a yo-ho-ho
 toe-row-row
  Wind aloft and rum below"

It's not unlike all the other sailing days I'd spent on the Chesapeake:  up with the dawn and drive east to Deltaville with a change of underwear, socks, tee-shirt and a pair of shorts.  
But it's an unfamiliar boat, with a crew I had never sailed with before.  Any mild qualms I feel, though, are eased as we talk.   By the time the owner joins us, we are all much better acquainted.
Our skipper, with whom I'd never sailed till that day, asks us what our particular strengths are to assign positions for the race.  Mine, I'm proud to admit, is being able to do whatever I'm told with the minimum explanation.  Furthermore, I'm completely devoid of ego.  I've had a teenager lean towards me on the low rail of a boat and say, "Uhxthat jib could come in a little more, Mr. Quinn," and a seasoned salt yell, "Dammit, get that sail inxIN!!  Morexmorex.Somebody get down there and help him."  
It doesn't pay to have a thin skin on a racing sailboat.
As  we are going over crew assignments, the skipper announces we are still a man short.  My heart sinks a notch as I notice the  'missing man' walking up the dock towards us like a cat stalking its prey.  I'd raced against this guy on other boats.  I'm sure the creators of Cheers based Cliff's character on him, but then toned it down because nobody-nobody-could know everything about everything.  Once, before a race, I happened to be walking across the parking lot on the way to the docks and noticed him coming up on my right, gear in hand.  He focused his sunglasses on me and asked which boat I'd be on that day.  I told him, and he kept walking, saying "You must like going slow."  
Motoring out, the owner takes the helm and suggests that, because of our inexperience working together as a team, we get out early and do a couple spinnaker sets and take-downs to prepare for the race.  Flying a huge, brightly colored spinnaker is one of the most beautiful sights on the water.  But it can also be the most spectacular screw-up you can imagine (other than sinking the boat).

On our third practice set and take-down, I feel a little more confident, but I notice that everyone else knows what to do much better than I.  It is decided that I should handle the halyard on the appropriate winch near the base of the mast, then keep the running backstays out of people's way when we gybe the chute.  
The halyard is easy enough.  With two other guys 'jumping the halyard on the mast,' all I have to do is crank it in on the winch.  If they do their job right, there's very little I can screw up.  The running backstays, however, are a different story.  The mast is already supported by large-diameter shrouds, or rigging, that holds it upright.  The running backstays serve to tilt the mast toward the windward side of the boat to help hold as much wind as possible in the sails.  
The top of the mast can actually be seen to bend backwards when the running backs are tightened.  Since the line controlling them is on a set of pulleys, not a lot of actual strength is required.  You must merely be quick and make sure they aren't fouling something before you pull them tight.  When they're loose, they whip across the cockpit and need to be clear of everything and everybody before being snugged up.  
It's also my job to make sure any 'loose lines' are kept out of the water.

We arrive at the starting line area in plenty of time.  We're fairly relaxed, but there are so many things that can go wrong on the boat.  Last fall, one of the big boats broke her mast a foot above the cabin top.  We still aren't sure how it happened.  All I saw was the huge mainsail in the water and people on deck looking at the damage.  Popular opinion is that they had the main cranked down too hard for the weather and were trying a maneuver when it happened.  We notice this boat is now floating close to us, and someone shouts across the water, "Heyxnew stick?"
It looks like we'll be racing about eight other boats in our particular class.  We're bigger than any of the competition by far, but with a complicated handicap rating, we're all equal.  We'll have to beat the next fastest boat by nearly fifteen minutes, when it's all over.  And it'll be a  l-o-n-g  day: we're racing a fifty-miler.  
At best, it'll take us about nine hours to complete the course; two triangles with two legs that take us across the Bay almost to the Eastern Shore, then north to the Rappahannock River and back down to Deltaville.  

As  we sail close to the committee boat, we realize that a course has already been selected.  The first turning mark will be across the Bay, well out of sight over the horizon.  
A fifty-miler tests navigators.  Or as the navigator on our boat says, 'naviguessors.'  In the committee boat's windows, we read out the large red letters, denoting specific marks on our charts.  The red letters mean we leave all marks to the left, or portside, as we come around them.  Last year, I was on a smaller boat, and we finished well after sundown in a dying breeze.  Some boats were still racing well after midnight.  It could happen like that again today.  But the boat I'm on will be one of the fastest in the racing fleet, and I predict we'll finish around nine that evening.

As we come around the committee boat a second time, I notice a person standing in the back of the boat, holding a twelve gauge shotgun across his chest.
As we get closer, I see him tilt his head down and twist the gun to check the safety, then raise it to the sky.  A timekeeper counts down:  "Threextwoxonexfire the gun."
Some of our crew simultaneously mark the exact time on their watches.  "Ten minutes till our start," someone says.  
"You know, skipper," I say, "the last time somebody fired a shotgun that close to my head, he said 'what're yer intentions towards my dotter, boy?'" That gets a good laugh from everyone.
The best place to be in a yacht race is on the line with the best speed and in clear air.  Finding that elusive position will help any boat to win a race, and we're no exception.  With a mistake in our position, we could be 'over early,' in which case the committee boat would sound a horn and call out our sail number or the name of our boat.  We'd then have to duck back and re-start the race. Having that happen doesn't necessarily mean you'll lose too much time to win.  
But it's precious time, nonetheless.  

This is the only time all the boats in the race will be crowded together, and things can happen.  Boats have 'bumped' each other and worse.  On the other hand, you have a close-up view of the beauty of sailing.  The boats establish a special rhythm with the waves, dipping into them and sending spray half the length of the boat; the fabric sails stretch until they're smooth, aerodynamic shapes with the incredible power that pulls a boat upwind.  
I have only a moment to enjoy the scene, though, because I have to get to the high side of the boat after we tack and put my weight on the rail to help 'right the boat.'  I'm rail meat.  Ballast.
That's fine with me.  I concentrate on watching how the boat is tacked over the first time, so I can do it just as well when I need to.  We're a 'slow-tacking boat,' not especially a good feature to point out, but since we're the biggest (and heaviest) boat out today, it shouldn't be unexpected.  But it's a smooth tack.  The sail comes in to its proper trim as the skipper settles into the new heading, and we seem to be flying through the water.  
Only two of the boats that started with us have flopped over to our tack, and we seem to be pulling ahead of them.  Our wake forms a gentle arc behind us, gradually straightening out as we take our new course.  The naviguessor gives the skipper a three-digit compass heading to put us across the Bay.  We're lucky the wind has shifted slightly to our right; we can point our bow more closely toward the mark.  Of course, the wind is helping the boats behind us too, but we hope it isn't as strong for them.  
Wind on the Bay is a funny thing.  Boats can be three lengths apart, and the same puff of wind helps one boat at the cost of the other.  Next time you cross the Huguenot Bridge, check the wind on the river. A small oval patch of disturbance on the surface indicates a puff that's reached the water.   It's no more than twenty by thirty feet and dies as quickly as it came up.  Imagine two sailboats in that same general area.  One boat might be helped by that puff, but it might die out before the other boat can catch it.  That's what 'playing the shifts' means.  In a boat our size, playing the shifts is an art form.  
The skipper seems happy with this particular breeze, and we hold our course.  We're all settled in on the windward rail, ballasting the boat with our bodies to help us go even faster.  The smaller boats windward of us are falling farther and farther behind.  Almost as if the fellow to my right can read my mind, he says "We owe them about twelve seconds a mile."  I look towards the twelve-seconds-a-mile-boat and grunt.
Time passes slowly when you're rail meat.  There's nothing to do but stay still, be as comfortable as you can be wrapped under the lifelines, keep the rest of the people dry when an infrequent wave breaks across the bow and keep track of the boats behind you if you're sitting closer to the stern.  
If an unusually large wave should rise up, the bowman's job is to 'call it' by shouting, "wave in three two one."  Upon hearing this, the helmsman will fall off his course slightly for a little additional speed.  By the time the bowman's cadence reaches 'one,' he's swinging the bow into the wind to punch through the wave and then fall off again to build the speed back up and continue on the previous course.  
The sight of a sharp bow smashing through a wave is spectacular, with the large wall of white and heavy green spray sloshing back across the rest of the boat.  A good bowman will catch much of this water on his chest, keeping his shipmates dry.  Once, on this leg, a wave does exactly this, and a wide shallow stream flows down the deck to where we're all sitting.  I hear someone mutter, "You're fired," to our bowman, who has hunkered down on the rail with us.
The wind has shifted significantly to our left, away from the mark we're headed for.  The skipper has already looked behind to see what the other boats are doing, and he decides to tack rather than change course.  In yacht racing, this is usually a smart move, but any boats behind you see that the wind has changed several minutes before the change affects their course.  If they're smart, they'll tack too, saving some precious seconds of time.  If we fall off a little, the other boats will see a different angle on our hull, and they'll know the wind ahead has shifted. Either way, we're giving away information to the other boats.  
On this tack, it's my turn to crank in the big headsail, while another person hauls in the sheet.  The winch I'll be cranking is the size of a salad bowl in a Ruby Tuesday buffet, so it shouldn't be too difficult for a man of my size to work it.  As we all slide out from under the lifeline, I hear a stern voice say, "I'll put the wraps onxyou crank." The voice is followed by a slap on my shoulder by, of all people, Cliffie.  Swell.
Tacking takes some getting used to.  As the boat tacks, the deck slopes from one side to the other abruptly.  In the meantime, the brace you chose for your left foot is moving up towards the area of your knee, and you're suddenly leaning out over the lifeline and the open water.  All the while, the mainsail boom is gliding across the cockpit, and you try to avoid being knocked overboard.  The jib sheet is spinning around the winch, still a long way from being trimmed in, and I am breathlessly aware that the handle I'm cranking around the winch is getting toxbeximpossiblextoxmovexanotherxinch.    But it's a two-speed winch, and by reversing the direction I'm cranking, it'll switch gears and become easier (although slower) to crank.  
Shifting my weight again, I become horribly aware that I was in the easier gear.  This winch ain't gonna move.  Cliffie puts a strain on the sheet, grits his teeth and shouts to everyone, "Get it IN!  Get IT IN!"
In the millisecond I have to think about it (I can already feel the tightness in my chest, and for a second I see an elephant charging out of my television set, and a phone number to call for chest pain), I know I'm not capable of finishing the job. Someone else will have to come back down to the low side of the boat to help me. This will slow us down.  The skipper, who is standing just an arm's length away concentrating on finding the best angle of sail for this tack, glances down to check my progress (this has literally taken less time than you've taken to read it, even in my lean and concise writing style) and looks back to windward.  
I then do the worst thing.  I ask the skipper to head into the wind a second to relieve pressure on the sail and let me finish cranking it in.  Instead of glaring at me, he gives me an "Oh sure, this happens all the time" look and points us up a couple of degrees.  The sail flops for a millisecond, and the crank flies around a full turn and a half, moving the sail in nine inches tighter.  
Wrapping the sheet around the top of the self-tailing winch to hold it securely in place, I scramble behind the skipper and take my place on the rail, next to Cliffie, who berates me for not getting it in fast enough.  I refrain from a suitable reply and focus on the horizon and the new boats we can see to leeward of our position.  After a few moments on the new tack, someone on the rail looks back at the killer winch, furrows his eyebrows and says, "That jib looks a little too tightxsomebody oughta ease it out a little."
I begin to extricate myself from the lifelines, being the closest person to the hostile winch.  Then someone snickers, "NOT."  Okay, I can take this.  These guys have done it too.

After what seems to be a short time, we notice the shoreline of the Eastern Shore coming up.  Soon, we can make out the treeline and then houses, and finally we see a tall bell buoy, the one we've been sailing towards for the better part of an hour.
"Ixuhxthink that's the one," our naviguessor says. "Uhxcan you get closer?"
Seeing the mark means we'll be busy soon. Before we round, the huge spinnaker has to come up on deck in its special bag, the spinnaker pole must be rigged and preset, the chute has to be hoisted to the top of our mast and the jib dropped to the deck.
 Most of this is done at opposite ends of the boat.  The bowman and a helper prepare everything and then jump the halyard while someone cranks it in on the winch.  In the cockpit, people set their sheets onto the winches and hunker down to crank them in or ease them out, as the case may be.  We've practiced this, so there are no real surprises, and the sail change happens like clockwork. 
The wind is behind us now, after being in front during the previous leg.  The naviguessor calls out a new course heading and tells us what the next mark is.  We then settle into the 'easy' part of sailing.  One person trims the spinnaker while the rest of us lounge around, spreading our weight out to balance the boat.  I'm ready for a nap, so I stretch out on the cabin top and quickly fall asleep.

When I wake up, the colorful fleet is strung out behind us, flying a multitude of chutes.  Some are stripes and bands of magenta, bright green, pink, or yellow; others are a solid color with a distinctive design stitched into the fabric.  It's a little easier to see who's behind us and where they are in relation to our position.  The skipper gestures towards them.  "We owe him twelve seconds a mile," he says.  "Him we owe fifteenxthat one we owexI forget how much."
We're doing well, given the wind and seas.  In the relative shallows of the Eastern Shore, we pass lines of crab pot floats and use them to determine whether the current is pushing us toward the next mark or if it's slack and about to shift.  
I take off my shirt, fold it up under my head and snooze for a while, gently rocking in the slight swells.  When I wake up, the other guys are passing around sandwiches and snacks.  Meals aren't served at pre-determined times.  We eat when it's convenient.  There have been times on other boats when  I didn't have much of an appetite.
But I'm reveling in this day.  The sun slips behind clouds now and then, it isn't too hot and it's not windy enough to chill us if we should get wet.  All in all, an idyllic day in Paradise.
Now we can see the next mark.  It's right on our bow, exactly where we thought it would be.  The skipper reminds us that we'll have to drop the chute on the next leg and re-set the jib for the third leg.  We'll need the chute again before the day is over, so the skipper assigns two people to handle the re-bagging below decks while the rest of us are getting the jib back up and trimming it back in tight. I stare at the winch, planning my attack.
The worst thing we can do is drag the chute in the water when it comes down.  This can be avoided in two ways.  First, by easing the halyard down while everyone yells  "faster! FASTER!!"  The other is to grab huge handfuls of the lightweight fabric and haul it aboard while everyone else yells "FASTER!!!"  Take your pick.  If the sail touches the surface of the water, it will dance across the surface while you pull it in.  If you lose a grip on the billowing fabric and water gets on top of the sail, it becomes an instant sea anchor, pulling you backwards while your momentum is still moving you forward.  
Someone has to stay on the halyard to make sure it runs free; all other hands line the leeward rail (the side away from the wind) and pull the sail in.  Once again, it's something we've practiced, so we know what to do.  The skipper announces that we better get the number-one jib below decks and the number two up as soon as possible.  Without argument or question from me, I hop forward to help.  The mark rounding is coming up, and in addition to getting the chute down, we have to get a big sail off the deck and a completely new one set.
The sail change is executed professionally, for the rest of the fleet to envy.  I glance behind us one more time as we turn up into the wind, looking for a sharply defined shadow of ripples to come at us, a visible indication of new, fresher wind.  It's as still as before.  Trimming the sail in without nearly as much effort, we lock it down and head for our familiar positions on the rail.  One of the guys is looking intently at  and the sweep second hand on his wrist-watch, counting off the seconds as the other boats round the mark.  "First boat around in one minute forty-five seconds," he calls out, to no one in particular.
"How much time do we owe him?" is the next question.  We've sailed roughly twelve miles, and in handicap performance timing, he's breathing down our necks.  We can still make some time on him if we're smart or if he's careless.
I look back at the 'first around' boat.  He's heading directly into the wind,  sails flapping, trying to get the big jib down and a smaller sail up.  
"Could have been us," I say, just as the boat seems to stop dead in the water.  

The third leg takes us back towards the Piankotank.  Then, with the wind coming almost abeam instead of ahead, we reach across the Bay again and back downwind under the chute.  As we douse the chute for the last time and set the number-two jib, we have a good idea of how much longer we'll be out.  The last leg is only a couple of miles long, close in toward the shore, and unless things change drastically, it'll be after sunset when we finish.
The wind seems to be staying with us as we pick out our last mark and try to spot the race committee boat.  Figuring out which side of the line she's on is our final navigation problem. We pick out the marker easily enough, since we know it's a light flashing every few seconds.  There's only one mark like that where we're going.  But close to it, in the darkness, there seems to be another boat, also sitting at anchor.  We split the difference, aiming for the flashing light, and with about seventy-five yards to go, we make out the familiar committee boat's superstructure. 
As the first boat to cross the finish line, we get the 'gun.'  We then drop our sails, start up the engine and hang around to see who's behind us and how many minutes back they are.  A horn sounds across the water, and we check the time.  He's beaten us, but only by a narrow margin.  
I go through a quick mental checklist of what we could have done differently, more quickly or more smoothly.  Then I remember my experience on the winch.
Well.

Now, though, in the enveloping darkness, motoring into our slip, I have a more urgent question:  What color are my legs, exactly?  They seem to stand out from the white deck and topsides, instead of blending in like they did ten hours before.  I reach out and touch my right thigh.  A big, yellowish-white island appears under my finger, only to turn dark red again as the blood rushes back into my skin's blood vessels.  Ouch!
This, I think as I stand up, could mean trouble.

Editors' Note:  Ever fearless, the sunburned Mr. Quinn sails the Bay whenever he can.  To get into the spirit, he says, he listens to Naval Academy Glee Club compact discs.  They are available, he tells us, from Richardson Records (1938 Baltimore Annapolis Boulevard; Annapolis, MD  21401-6248).


Touring York
by Deborah Owen
Easter weekend was still a week away, but it seemed that all of Britain had started the holiday early.  Add the fact that there had been a rail strike the day before-on a Friday yet-and the result was a train packed nearly to bursting with eager vacationers.
It hadn't occurred to me to make a seat reservation, so I ended up standing between cars with several other unfortunate travelers and accompanying luggage, for the entire two-and-a-half hour ride from Edinburgh to York.  When we finally arrived at the station, there was a collective sigh of relief as the travel-weary passengers poured from that sardine can on rails.
The brief taxi ride from the station to my accommodations showed me little of York, since I was staying at a bed and breakfast house just outside the walls that surround the city. One of the first things I learned about York was that the streets are called gates, the gates are called bars, and the bars are called pubs.  The Mont-Clare Guest House was just off Gillygate near Bootham Bar.

After settling in, I thought it would be a good idea to check out some of the shops, since the following day would be Sunday and I wasn't sure what would be open.  Bootham Bar is the oldest of the four entrances to the city, and after passing through the ancient gateway I got my first good look at York Minster. The Minster, as it's known, is the largest medieval Gothic cathedral in northern Europe, and everything in York seems to converge on this dominant structure.
South of the Minster is Stonegate, one of the major shopping streets.  Stonegate is closed to traffic, as a preventative against claustrophobia and noise pollution.  The shops are housed in medieval and Georgian buildings, and often the architecture competes with the goods being sold inside for the attention of the tourist.
Mulberry Hall, with its Tudor front, was built in the 15th century as a private dwelling.  It now contains fourteen showrooms of tableware and collectibles, including English bone china by Wedgwood and Royal Doulton and Waterford crystal.
Souvenir shopping can work up an appetite, but most of the eateries, including McDonald's, were becoming crowded with shoppers who all had the same idea.  The quickest alternative was to grab an order of Mcfish and chips.  Being that it was a gorgeous day, I plopped down on a bench in St. Helen's Square and munched to the accompaniment of a band busking for the tourist dollar.  The abundance of street entertainers-most quite good-gives York a festive atmosphere, and it is easy to forget that it's a real city and not some theme park version of Merry Olde England.
One of the more famous shopping streets is the Shambles. This was once the butchers' quarter, and the name comes from the benches, called 'shammels,' on which the meat was displayed. The Shambles is so narrow that two people could shake hands by reaching across the street from third-floor windows.

After a day of standing and walking, I decided to make it an early night.  The following morning, I stuffed myself with the full English breakfast, which included cereal, toast, eggs, sausage and tomatoes.  I'd been eating like this for five mornings, and I just couldn't take it anymore.  So I requested a lighter breakfast of cereal and toast for the remainder of my stay.
My table companions made the morning meal a strange and not altogether pleasant experience.  The tables in the breakfast room sat four, and a party of five had to be divided up, with my table getting the overflow.  The party consisted of two women (one fortyish and one sixtyish) and three teenage girls.  At Sunday breakfast, I greeted the two girls sharing my table with, "Good morning."  An inoffensive, generic greeting-or so I thought. The young ladies cringed and fretted as if I'd spouted a filthy stream of expletives.
The following morning, the girls sat at one table, and the older women joined me at mine.  Again I tried the generic greeting, which was met by nervous silence from Fortyish and Sixtyish.  Okay, I give up.  I am not what you would call an outgoing person, and I had no intention of insinuating myself into their group.  But since when do the words "Good morning" cause such distress? I came to the conclusion that it must be a cultural thing. These people were obviously English, but beyond that I couldn't say.
Since I couldn't help but hear the conversation between the two women, I was forced to listen to petty complaints about the food, such as Fortyish stating, "I don't really care for tomahtoes served in this fashion.  Now, if it were a proper tomahto that would be different."  This left me pondering over what exactly constitutes a 'proper tomahto.'  Sixtyish contributed this disturbing observation: "I don't think these are Kellogg's corn flakes, do you?"  What a way to start the day.

On a full stomach, I set out for the Museum Gardens bus stop. The blue, open-top bus was there, ready to leave for the York City Tour.  Many British cities offer this same deal.  For about $6 you can take the tour, and you can also hop on and off any time, at any stop, throughout the day.
On this first tour of the day, I seemed to be the only passenger.  I told the guide I could come back later, but he said he'd have to do the whole spiel even with an empty bus. Thus began my private tour of York.  The tour is a good way to get an overview of the city as well as an opportunity to see all four bars at one go.
There's Bootham Bar on the north road and Micklegate Bar, the traditional monarch's entrance, on the south road.  Monk Bar, with its working portcullis, is the tallest of the bars, and squatty Walmgate Bar has an Elizabethan house built on the inside walls.
The origins of the architectural treasures seen from the bus include Roman, Viking, Norman, Medieval and Georgian, sometimes layered and interwoven in patterns that sneak by the casual observer.
The original wall around the city was built by the Romans in the 1st century, but the current walls date from the 13th century.  The walls themselves have become a popular tourist trail, and the two-and-a-half mile walk can be an alternative to the bus tour as an orientation.  However, you'd miss the stories the rambling tour guide dispenses, such as the one about Dick Turpin, the horse thief who was hanged on the site that is now the race course.
And there are many ghost stories connected with York.  In fact, York is known as the most haunted city in Europe.  That must be why there are three different ghost tours traipsing about after dark.  The oldest and most popular of these is the Original Ghost Walk of York, which is advertised as being accurate, authentic and gimmickless.
I finished the bus tour and rode back around to the York Castle Museum.  The castle no longer stands, but the area has several points of interest.  The museum is devoted to everyday life in York through the centuries.  My favorite feature was an authentic reproduction of two York streets, Victorian Kirkgate and Edwardian Half Moon Court.  Shop windows evoked the past with displays of period trinkets and toys, and a horse and carriage stood motionless on the cobblestone street.
Nearby Clifford's Tower was the keep of York Castle.  On this site in 1190, five hundred Jews sought refuge, from an attacking mob, in a wooden tower.  Sadly, the tower was burned, and lives were lost.  The present tower was built in the 13th century and named for Roger de Clifford, a Lancastrian leader, who was executed and hung in chains from the tower.
Museums abound in York, among them the Jorvik Viking Centre, built on the site of the excavation of a Viking street, the Yorkshire Museum of archaeological artifacts, and the National Railway Museum covering two hundred years of railway history.
The Museum Gardens, adjacent to the Yorkshire Museum, turned out to be one of my special favorites.  Inhabited by countless examples of flora and several peacocks, this park flanking the River Ouse (pronounced ooze) is full of fascinating buildings and ruins.  St. Mary's Abbey (dating from 1098), St. Leonard's Hospital and the partially Roman Multangular Tower are glorious remnants of the past.  The Hospitium, an intact, half-timbered building, was once the abbey guest house.

During my visit, the Hospitium was hosting a craft fair. A mere 25 pence (about 40c) purchased a ticket that was redeemable for a cup of tea.  The building wasn't usually open to the public, so I took advantage of the opportunity to go in and look around.  I bought Yorkshire-made socks, sachets, a brass ornament, two matted photographs of English country scenes and some of the best chocolates I've ever tasted.  And of course I had my cup of tea.  My foray to the Stonegate shops hadn't been nearly as successful.
The 25p cup of tea had been small, and I thirsted for more. Back into the Snickleways and thoroughfares I headed, in quest of afternoon tea.  The shop I found served scones along with the unofficial national beverage, and I consumed until sated.
I spent the rest of the day backtracking over attractions I'd missed and pausing once again to enjoy the street performers. After a leisurely dinner, I went back to my room to watch TV and found that a strange version of Dracula (not as strange as Francis Ford Coppola's) was on.  This was an odd coincidence, since I'd hoped to take a bus to Whitby, on the Yorkshire coast, the following day.  In Bram Stoker's original novel, Lucy becomes the vampire's victim at Whitby Abbey, and there is a self-guided Dracula tour of the town.

On Monday morning, I decided that the Whitby excursion was not to be.  It had rained enthusiastically through the night and was still drizzling during breakfast.  Fortyish, Sixtyish and the three graces were late coming to their respective tables, and, fortunately, I was leaving as they were getting to the daily food critique.
I had passed York Minster about a dozen times over the weekend but still hadn't been inside, so it was now or never.  The Minster was built over a period of two hundred and fifty years and was completed in 1472.  Among its many treasures are one hundred and twenty-eight stained-glass windows. The Great West Window includes a heart shape in the tracery and is known as the Heart of Yorkshire.  The Great East Window is the size of a tennis court and is the largest area of stained glass contained in a single window.
For a small fee, you can tour the undercroft and climb the lantern tower (two hundred and seventy-five stairs) for a view of Yorkshire.  In the Crypt, you can see Norman pillars from the original Minster and the Doom Stone which used to stand outside as a warning to sinners.

Many visitors to London experience York as a day trip, but with so much to see, the city deserves-almost demands-more than a few hours.  You could spend the better part of a day in the Minster itself.  A three-day weekend allows enough time to shop and see the sights with some left over for a leisurely stroll along the River Ouse.


Stinky the Clown 

Editors' Note:  Stinky the Clown mysteriously disappeared last month.  In place of his usual advice column, we are running these excerpts from his private diary.  Anyone with any information on Stinky or an explanation for his absence is asked to write us at:

Stinky the Clown 
P.O. Box 71092 
Richmond, VA  23255

Fax: 750-1046
E-mail: stinkyclown@aol.com

4/2-Is it just me, or is all TV in league with the devil?  I think Bob Barker is the head of the whole conspiracy.   For God's sake, man, dye your hair.

4/5-Another great day.  
Fatima caught me making out with Sweezy the Clown behind the big top.  My old friend Dumpy had tipped her off and had even accompanied her to make sure I was found.  I was seeing pink elephants for hours after she smacked me on the noggin with that little parasol.  It was quite a scene.  
After a few blows from the parasol, I fell into a convenient mud puddle face-first.  Then Sweezy, who until then had never heard of Fatima, began kicking the big red patch on my butt.  That set off the little ink spritzer on my fake buttonhole flower, which was now turned towards my face because of the fall.  Some of the ink must have gone down the wrong way because I started choking and coughing.  Of course, Dumpy had an instamatic camera on him and whipped it out for a few quick photos (which everyone in the circus was to see before the night was done).  
I didn't even bother to clean off.  I just headed straight for the bars and said, "What are you looking at?  Jack Daniel's and keep 'em coming."  That's the tone you need to shut 'em up right away and give you the privacy for some real boozing.

4/6-Fatima refuses to answer my phone calls and has gotten phone block on her line so my number can't call through.  Sweezy, in contrast, calls every ten minutes to tell me what a jerk I am.  Of course, I have to answer the phone in case it's Fatima, so I'm forced to listen to this constant haranguing.  Every fourth phone call is someone laughing and then making choking noises, which I swear to Bozo is Dumpy talking through some tube.  Real ingenious.  Tracing the call only shows that its some pay phone down the block.  Life stinks.

4/7-Spent two hours in a dumpster squatting next to some stale milk and a rotting tuna fish sandwich in order to keep an eye on that pay phone.  Finally gave up and went home.  The first call I got, in a high pitched voice:  "Ha-Ha ack-ack I'm choking, quit hitting me har har."  
I will track that harlequin down and have him killed if it's the last performance this clown gives.

4/8-Clown suit came back from the cleaners with big, unremoveable ink stain.  
Stinkymobile released a strange bluish-black puff of smoke and refused to start up.
Walked to the mall for a bite to eat and who did I run into arm and arm but those little lovebirds, Fatima and Dumpy.  Dumpy was making little cooing noises to her, and  she was laughing at his stupid jokes.  
I had to steal change from the mall fountains to make bus fare.  All the way home, the bus driver talked about how much he loved Bozo as a kid.  I told him Bozo was a marketing scam that he bought into like the consumer drone that he is.  Had to walk the last ten blocks home.
Got drunk on what was left in the cabinet and then called up Fatima.  Phone off the hook.  You know that stinking clown Dumpy was over there.  Of course, it was too late for a bus and the Stinkymobile wouldn't turn over.  So I grabbed my bat from that baseball skit we did a couple of months ago and flat-footed it over there.  
Lo and behold, Mister Dumpy and that little trollop were sitting on the porch, rocking on the hammock that I helped build.  I let out a little rebel yell and jumped the hedges, brandishing the bat, and swung towards Dumpy.  Direct hit.  He fell back, and I whipped him across the shins until he bent over.  The coup de grace was me smacking him on the butt with a blow that would have made Babe Ruth envious.  That put him on the ground, sniffing my big red shoes.  
At that point, Fatima broke down and confessed she'd done it all to make me jealous and she never liked Dumpy anyway.  I gave Dumpy a final smack on the head, poured what was left of my hip flask on him and dragged him out to the sidewalk.  
The master's touch:  I called the cops and told them some drunk had been outside yelling.  A few minutes later, when they picked him up, he was stumbling around asking what had happened.  
Good-bye, Mister Thorn-in-my-Side.

4/11-Turns out old Dumpy had to spend a couple of nights in the Pokey before the cops figured out he wasn't drunk. It was a major concussion that caused all the gibbering, it seems.  That's the way the big top folds, clown.  
Of course, Fatima gave me an alibi, swearing I was with her the whole night, minding my own business.  In the meantime, I ripped through Dumpy's place and retrieved those photos of me, along with a few items to even things up.  He doesn't need a CD player or a TV set anyway.  On the way out, I unplugged his refrigerator, cut the air conditioner on high and ordered a bunch of commemorative Barry Manilow dinner plates from the Home Shopping Network on his credit cards.  I used the same trick to pay for a big steak dinner for Fatima and me.  Even smoked a big cigar at the end of the meal.  Now we're styling.  
That'll teach that little half-wit jester to cross me.


Stop the Presses!
The Wave Has Reached Richmond!
by Doug Childers
There isn't much to see in a ball park before the players start playing.  So it's always a little surprising to see how many people show up early.
Sure, some kids show up an hour early to beg for autographs behind the dugout, and some general-admission ticket holders show up early to secure good seats.  But that leaves a sizable majority of older, reserved-seat ticket holders who show up merely to sit and stare idly while the infield is watered and the players sprint back and forth in the outfield.  
The near-continuous stream of information coming from the park's PA system doesn't justify the early arrivals; largely, the information seems to pass unnoticed.  To a person, the majority of the earlies merely sit.  Some chat quietly, some nibble contentedly on French fries and popcornxbut they are uniform in two ways:  they are all early, and they are all idle.

Naturally, things get a little more complicated, once the game begins.  But the crowd can still be classified by a handful of types.  Normally, they behave just like you'd expect them to.
First, you have what might be called the socialite fans.  Some of them come for the hot dogs and beer.  Some come to chat with familiar neighbors.  Others come as families and spend most of their time trying to maintain themselves as such.  But they all share one common trait:  they pay little or no attention to the game going on in front of them.
Next, you find what might be called the forgetful fans.  They certainly pay more attention to the game than the socialites do, but they watch only the play before them and have no memory of past plays.  This is a large group.  You're doubtless familiar with their sort.  They get most excited late in the game, when the stakes for each swing seem higher and the chances for catching up are correspondingly lower.  
The forgetful fan dreams of those rare moments when the bases are loaded in the bottom of the ninth, with the home team down by three and the club's leading slugger swaggering into the batter's box with a few powerful practice swings.

The third group, which might be best described as fans with memories, marks a significant step toward actually studying the game.  They are distinguished chiefly by the fact that they recognize a batter's return to the plate with a knowledge of his past effort.  "Let's make some contact this time," they will shout, much to the bewilderment of the socialites and forgetfuls.
After the fans with memories, we step into the last and most rarefied group:  the self-isolators, who come to the game with radios and Walkmen tuned to the local radio broadcasts of the game.  They are significant chiefly because they openly acknowledge their inability to enjoy the game without an aid.  There are few self-isolators in a stadium.  They tend to be season-ticket holders, and most of them claim a wide turf at the top of the stadium.

Of course, rallies are great equalizers in a ball park.  When the momentum shifts to favor the home team and the Budweiser board calls for noise, everyone is more than happy to oblige with whistling, clapping and foot-stomping.
But there are two things Richmonders don't do, as a rule.  They don't chop, and they wave.  The chop, of course, is that politically incorrect movement of the forearm that suggests a tomahawk is being swung.  Until it became too controversial, it was done enthusiastically in Atlanta, the Richmond Braves' parent club.  But it never really caught on in Richmond.  
Nor did the wave, that rarefied moment when a baseball stadium becomes so unified in purpose that the entire audience stands and lifts its arms to cause a ripple effect from one side of the stadium to another.  It's old hat for the rest of the world, but here in Richmond, the wave is a radical, dangerous force.
In the past, efforts at starting a Richmond wave have stalled with only a handful of socialites and forgetfuls lifting their arms and then quickly sitting down red-faced.  Like bad singers in a timid chorus, they soon discover that without massive participation, the wave looks fairly foolish.
But that was before June rolled around this year.  Not once, but twice, Richmonders got together a fairly good wave.  The second effort even looped around the stadium, from right field to far left.
Since that second appearance, the wave hasn't returned to Richmond.  But it's only a matter of time.  Who knows-by the end of the season, as the earlies begin to drift in, barriers might fall down.  The lamb may lie down with the lion, the self-isolators may find themselves falling into familiar conversations with the socialites, and the fans with memories may even put down their scorecards to practice the wave or even the chop.


Recognizing the Four Millionth Diamond Fan
When she became the four millionth fan to pass through the Diamond's ticket gate, Kathy Miles couldn't have been happier.  Once she decided all the hoopla was for real, that is.  For the first few seconds, she seemed more scared than anything else.  Miles, a Chester resident who had driven into Richmond with her husband, daughter and a friend just to see the Braves play, says she was convinced she'd been caught doing something wrongxonly she couldn't figure out what, precisely.
"My heart's just pounding," she said, as Bruce Baldwin, the Braves' general manager, presented her with a Braves hat, an autographed bat and four box seat tickets to the night's game.  She also received four box-seat season passes and a parking permit for the 1995 season.  And as if that weren't enough, Baldwin then informed Miles that, if the Braves happened to hit a grand slam home run in the seventh inning, she would win $100,000.
Asked what she believed her chances of winning were, Miles beamed and replied, "I have faith in the Richmond Braves."
Unfortunately, the seventh inning went scoreless.  But it wasn't without drama.  As luck would have it, the Braves' half of the inning started at the start of their lineup.  Brian Kowitz singledxthe crowd went wildxEd Giovanola sacrifice-bunted, advancing Kowitz to secondxthe crowd went wildxTroy Hughes hit a grounder to left and beat the throwxthe crowd went wildxand then Luis Lopez, with a .322 batting average, came to the platexthe crowd went wildxif Lopez simply drew a walk, Jose Oliva, the International League's home run leader, would swing for the fencesxbut, sadly for Miles, Lopez hit into a double play to end the inning.  And the crowd let out a collective sigh.
As consolation, Miles was given $1,000.  When asked what she planned on doing with the money, she said, "I told my husband I'd take him out to dinner."
-D.C.

Maintaining the Indian
From a distance, the Diamond's giant Indian mascot seems frozen in mid-stride.  With one elbow poised over the concession stand and the other flexed in front of him to bear his weight, he appears to be in the process of raising himself up high enough to swing first one buckskin-clad leg and then the other over the wall behind which he crouches.  What, exactly, he'd do once he reached the sidewalk is unclear.  In the right light, he can look both sly and stolid, and peering up at him from the ticket gates, one must wonder whether he is himself certain of his next step.  
It's a good image for a baseball park, I suppose.  Slow yet suggesting coiled speed and strength, he's an enigma to the idle glance and a subtle threat to those who believe they are about to watch a mere game.

Four times a year, two men set an old ladder up against the concession stand and carry a pressure washer up to clean the giant Indian.  Up close, he loses a little of his subtle threat.  What from a distance looks like one coiled figure is, in fact, a series of separate sections of molded plastic bolted together along their seams.  The face and neck are one piece, but the back, chest and shoulders are separate.  Mid-biceps, a new section appears on each arm.  And the hair, whose various strands appear more dynamic at arm's length, is itself a separate section bolted to the forehead.
But no matter how disappointed one feels at the sight of the regularly spaced bolts or the little strips of wood slipped under one side of the base to make it meet the floor flush, the Indian's size endures.  Three-foot-long fingers, an eight-foot-high face and seven-inch-wide nostrils are nothing to sneeze at.  Just clambering over him from one side to the other is a task.  
Coming from behind him and seeking to confront him eye to eye, one must either slither under his left arm or scramble precariously over its various ripples of molded muscle.  To the uninitiated, neither option appeals.  To the two men who have climbed the ladder to clean the Indian, though, navigating their way around-and over-him seems second nature.

Except on a day like today, when the wind is so strong the men have to forgo the pressure washer in favor of brushes with long sticks.  "With the pressure that machine gives out," says Jerry McCray, "it'd be a little risky."  His partner, Joseph Green, nods in agreement as the wind blows frothy soap bubbles off the Indian's hair.
In forty minutes, they are done.  If the wind hadn't prohibited it, the pressure washer could have let them finish earlier.  As it is, the wind dries the molded plastic before the men have pulled the ladder down.  

From the parking lot, the Indian seems largely unchanged.  A shade darker, perhaps, now that he's lost a few months' worth of pollen and dust.  But he still menaces, and by the time I reach my car, I have forgotten about the bolts and the strips of wood altogether, and remember only what it was like to scramble over something that, even inches from our faces, seemed ready to lift itself up and shake us loose as if we were nothing more than idle flies.
-D.C.

The Amateur Athlete
by Wirt Shinault
Racing.  It's not just for the fast.  As a matter of fact,  in most areas, there are more of us average middle-of-the-pack gang than there are speed demons.  
Racing lets us know how our training is going and it keeps us hungry.
Entering a race for a training check is the best motivation for increasing your goals.  You want to have a plan.  Search out a race that appeals to you, with a date that will allow you to get in the training you think you will need to obtain your new goal.  Use common sense and don't pick a race that takes place a week after your vacation.  Otherwise, you'll spend your vacation feeling guilty about the training you're missing, and then you'll end up with discouraging results.
Choose races that fit the distance and terrain you prefer.  Try to practice under the same conditions, such as time of day and the weather in which you expect to compete.  If you are training for a race in August, don't cheat yourself and train only on cool mornings.  Train in the heat.
At times, I find myself needing an extra reason to work past a lull in my training.  It could be something as minor as the dog days of summer.  In these cases, I find entering a race can give my training new purpose and enjoyment.  And when you train for fun, with no anticipated outcome, it can lead to unexpected results.
Prior to race day, review the course, if possible.  Try to look at the course at the same time of day the race will take place.  Decide what part of the course will be your strength and notice everything:  pavement type, shade, hills, wind (and its effects on which strategy you will use), waves and currents.  Think of it all for your particular race.
Racing is for showing us how much we have left to learn, and where we can improve.  Use it as a building block for training and knowledge.

Remember: You have already beaten the rat race.  Relax.


The Grisham Phenomenon
When Will It Stop?
It is one of the 20th century's great mysteries that John Grisham, a one-time lawyer turned novelist, has sold more books than anybody else in the history of the planet.  There is nothing particularly wrong with any of Grisham's five novels, but then again, there's nothing all that special about them either.  
Why, exactly, did fate choose this mediocre writer of page-turners to outsell Shakespeare, Tolstoy and Hemingway?  Are more people reading more books than ever before?  Is the endless population growth finally affecting book sales?  Is everyone suddenly monolithic in their book-purchasing patterns?  
Grisham has done more than anybody else to make lawyers the prototypical protagonists of the '90s, but his books aren't alone on the bestseller lists.  They're riding the fame waves with self-help and UFO abduction books, and the common thread that draws them all together remains obscure.  
Having Tom Cruise and Julia Roberts star in Hollywood adaptations of Grisham's novels hasn't hurt sales, but againxwhy Grisham?  Why not Tom Clancy or Danielle Steele?  They've certainly had their fill of TV / movie packages.  Does Grisham deserve to be the bestselling novelist of all time?

Let's hope it's an anomaly.  Grisham isn't strong enough to represent the late 20th century to future readers.  Doubtless, someone equally undeserving will best his showing next year or the year after that, when the public's interest shifts to murder mysteries solved by fly fishermen, say, or action novels written by Catholic priests.  
Should we be reassured by the idea that mediocrity never rests but pushes ever onward in search of new, undeserving kings?  Is it better to think that Grisham will be replaced by yet another undeserving millionaire, and another and another and another?
There are certainly more deserving writers working in this country today.  Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon, Nicholas Bakerxbut don't expect to see their names mentioned as candidates for the crown. 

In the meantime, half the country's going to lug Grisham's fifth and newest novel to the beach and make the guy a little more famous and, if possible, a little richer.
As always with Grisham's novels, The Chamber isn't entirely inept.  Worse writers have achieved fame.  The Chamber's most obvious feature is this:  like all of Grisham's books, it is merely competent.  But this time, achieving even that seems like a struggle.
The novel opens promisingly enough, with an explosion that goes awry.  The two Ku Klux Klansmen who set the bomb meant merely for it to destroy the law office in the middle of the night.  Instead, the bomb explodes the next morning, minutes after "the radical Jew lawyer" and his twin sons have entered the building.  The lawyer survives; his sons do not.
Twenty-three years pass, and one of the two men is about to be executed for the crime.  The other man remains at large, his role in the bombing not even known by law enforcement.  
Then, with the grace of a drunken bull dog, Grisham throws us the novel's biggest surprise.  A young lawyer nine months into his first job out of law school steps forward and volunteers to defend the convicted terrorist.  He is, we soon learn, the terrorist's long-lost grandson.  (The collective gasp of several hundred thousand readers stumbling onto that fact this summer will doubtless cause tidal abnormalities.)
Naturally, there's more to the 486-page novel than just that one awkward surprise.  We also get to see the young lawyer earn his wing tips under the guidance of an elderly, big-hearted lawyer.  But don't expect literary gems to fly from either lawyer's mouth.  One would have to go back to Yoda and Luke Skywalker to find a clumsier master / student combination.

A careful reading of The Chamber suggests Grisham may be on the verge of producing truly incompetent material.  Maybe not the next bestsellerxbut the one after that could be a real clunker.
I suggest we cut short his reign and actively seek his replacement now, before matters get worse.  Perhaps this time out, we could find someone with better dust jackets.  Something with a bare-chested and gloriously illiterate he-man rising stallionlike from an inexplicable crouch on a sandy beach.  
Perhaps we could dispense with the author altogether, and make Fabio the intellectual spokesman for our times.
-Charlie Onion


Shot in the Heart
In January of 1977, Gary Gilmore was executed by the state of Utah.  He was the first person to be put to death in the United States in more than a decade (the Supreme Court had recently overturned its ban on capital punishment), and his sentence and subsequent execution made headlines around the world for weeks.
His brother Mikal has now written a powerful, troubling book about his family history, and the violence-physical and emotional-that ruined all their lives and probably helped to land Gary Gilmore in front of a firing squad.  Shot in the Heart (Doubleday, $24.95) offers an obscene twist on the theme of traditional values, as it chronicles the story of a family bent on destroying itself.  The murders for which Gary Gilmore was executed were just the ultimate expression of the senselessness of his whole life, and that of his brothers and parents.

Although Gilmore includes stories of his mother's fanatical, and often violent, Mormon ancestors, it isn't necessary to reach back a century to find the real villains of the piece, Gilmore's parents.  "In a better world," he writes, "my parents would not havexmarried and had a family.  In a better world, I would never have been born." 
It's hard to disagree with that assessment.  The Gilmores were, in their way, the model family currently so admired by social conservatives:  tight-knit, rather insular and ruled by the expectation that every member has an overriding obligation to the family unit.  Unfortunately, any love that existed in their home-and Gilmore insists it did-was invariably poisoned by anger, fear, secrecy and cruelty.  His father practiced a harsh, sadistic discipline, beating his sons mercilessly on the slightest pretext.  His mother was emotionally unstable, unwillingly cast in the role of protector to children she never wanted and didn't know how to love.  
The tension between these two erupted regularly into shouting matches and fist fights, and they did not hesitate to use their sons as weapons against each other. 

There were four sons altogether, two of whom became criminals.  Mikal was the youngest by several years, and his upbringing was somewhat less traumatic physically than that of the others.  He writes:

Had I been beaten as much as they were-in particular, as much as Gary, whose pain and fear only seemed to gain him especially savage thrashings-there's a good chance that I also would have ended up as a man who spent his whole life preparing to pull a trigger.  When I think of what my brothers went throughxthe only thing that surprises me is that they didn't kill someone when they were still children.

In the end, Gary Gilmore did indeed kill-twice.  
Necessarily, Gary's story is a major portion of his brother's book; without Gary, the Gilmores are just one more dysfunctional family, albeit an extreme example.  With him-with his crimes and his execution-their story becomes one of domestic evil spilling over into the outside world, with tragic consequences.  Even if you don't accept the premise that his criminal career was a direct outcome of his brutal childhood, Gary Gilmore's life and death make for compelling reading.

The book's most affecting chapters deal with Mikal's attempts to persuade his brother to fight his execution, and his threats to intervene legally on his behalf.  He was morally opposed to capital punishment, and he had no wish to share in the increased notoriety his brother's execution would inevitably entail.  
But Gary had spent nearly twenty-two of his thirty-six years in reform school and jail, and he had no interest in spending the rest of his life incarcerated.  He wanted to die, and he wanted the state to end his life.  In fact, Gilmore believes that his brother murdered solely to bring about his own violent end.  He quotes his brother Frank: "He had found the perfect way to beat the system by having them kill him.  Then he's out of it.  In his way of thinking, I'm convinced he believed he had won."
If Gary won, he's the only member of the family who did.  Another brother, Gaylen, died in the sixties from wounds he received in a stabbing.  Frank, the oldest, ended up living with his widowed mother until her death, putting aside the desire for a family of his own.  And of himself, Gilmore writes, "I may have spent years telling everybody I wanted a family, [but] I never made the right choices that could have made that dream real.  It's as if what had happened in our family was so awful that it had to end with us."  

There is little or no redemption to be found in Shot in the Heart.  There's no woman waiting  for Gilmore in the last chapter, whose love will conquer his melancholy.  There are no declarations of victory over his troubled life, no healing revelations, no happy ending.  For Gilmore, the book turns out to be little more than an exorcism that doesn't quite take-the ghosts of the past will obviously continue to haunt him forever.  
Doubtless, some people will find that depressing, even pointless, which is always a risk when reading non-fiction.  Sometimes, real life is pointless.  Readers who require books to be reassuring and uplifting no matter what are advised to skip this one and treat themselves to Dan Quayle's new autobiography instead.  
Those who are less put off by reality in all its potential harshness and complexity will find Shot in the Heart a poignant and gripping memoir.
-Ray Powell


Voodoo Economics
The Rolling Stones Get Some $atisfaction

As the light of that August summer sky begins to fade into blackness, the Rolling Stones will stand backstage, ready to kick off the opening date of The Voodoo Lounge tour and introduce its namesake album.  They won't await any signal.  At this point in their careers, they decide when the show starts.  Nothing-and nobody-will hurry them.  Not their entourage of bodyguards or the best backup musicians money can buy.  Or 50,000 fanatical fans impatiently awaiting the group's return to touring after five years.  
Mick Jagger, running in place to get juiced up for the marathon concert performance, will make the call, timing his arrival for maximum effect.  By the time he hits the stage, he will have been in training for months, jogging alternately forwards and backwards to get in shape.  While Jagger warms up, Keith Richards will be quietly chain-smoking Marlboros.  After touring thirty years, he's seen them come and he's seen them go, and he has little doubt that no one in his lifetime, or possibly ever, will surmount his group's title of "the world's greatest rock and roll band."  
On his side of the room, Charlie Watts will just begin experiencing that extraordinarily divisive feeling that, as much as he likes playing the drums, he wishes he were home with his wife.  (At home, unfortunately, he has the reverse feeling.)  Ron Wood, wide-eyed after all these years, provides the band's cohesion and will eagerly await the chance to showcase his guitar talents.  He still gives the impression that he not only loves performing but is thankful to be a part of the band, any band, doing what he likes best.  
And what of Bill Wyman, the group's long-touring bass player?  Well, to put it simply, he quit.  And if I were him, I'd be sitting at home realizing I'd just passed up the chance to make an unbelievably large sum of money in an incredibly short period of time.

You see, short of finding a patented, easily marketable process for curing cancer or inventing a gold-making machine, there isn't anything these four guys could do under that seasonal sky to make more cash.  
Put aside your notions of energetic but idealistic musicians being used by record companies, or even your more contemporary view of a shallow, money-grubbing retro band out for a quick buck.  None of those visions comes close.  The Rolling Stones are Rolling Stones INC.  For sheer, endless, revenue-producing power, they left every other band in the dust long ago, with demographics ranging from newly turned-on kids to retirement-age rockers.  And they don't just do it in America.  At a minimum, the Voodoo Lounge tour will see Canada, the Far East, Mexico, South America and Europe.  Unfortunately, there aren't many more industrialized societies on the planet with the economic base necessary to support the tour-or, like Coca-Cola, they'd be there too.

So how much money are we talking about here?  
The exact payments for the tour won't be available until they finish, of course.  The Stones have an obsessive thirst for secrecy, brought on when they became tax exiles from England in 1971.  English socialism was at its peak, and the tax rate for the Stones was an eye-popping 98% of their gross.  Sailing for less oppressive waters, they became true international expatriates.  As the bemused Richards puts it, "I am a resident of nowhere."  It's the ultimate tax dodge, and it works.    (Charlie Watts eventually moved back after Margaret Thatcher came into power and much of the tax burden rolled back.)
Despite all the secrecy, though, a hard look at the Stones' last album (Steel Wheels) produces some relatively solid numbers on their cash flow.  Jagger, a dropout from the London School of Economics, cuts the band's deals, in conjunction with his financial adviser, Prince Rupert Loewenstein of Liechtenstein, and attorneys John Branca and Richard Leher.  During the Steel Wheels contract negotiation, Jagger stunned CBS record chiefs by figuring out the French royalty to their albums, doing the currency conversion, and taking off the VAT tax all in his head.  
For The Voodoo Lounge release, Jagger and Co. penned an estimated $44 million contract with the Virgin Music Group.  After the deal was done, they took Virgin chairman Richard Branson out to London's Mosimann's Night Club, partied until the early morning hours and left Branson with a massive hangover.  

Here are a few details from the Virgin deal.
Part of Virgin's contract involved an immediate $10 million advance, plus an $8 million advance for each new album, with a twenty-five percent royalty on each copy sold.  Virgin is hoping to use some of the Stones' music in their expanding software division, CD-Videos and software games.  But Virgin only owns the rights to the audio.  The Stones, unbelievably enough, retain the rights to all their videos and movies-past, present and future.  
If you're thinking that Virgin got ripped, think again.  Even on non-touring years, Stones albums sell over one million copies annually, providing the Stones with an easy $3 million a year for no work.  Look for a boxed-set retrospective from Virgin, an easy money maker.  Oh, and don't forget, the Stones get about five cents each time a song of theirs is played on the radio, and with the tour, they'll get plenty of airplay.

So with all this cash coming in, why bother to tour?  
A quick look at the numbers from their Steel Wheels tour shows some deals that even the most jaded rocker couldn't pass on.  For that tour,  the Stones were guaranteed $70 million for showing up, plus a cut of the profits.  But ticket prices were a flat $30 then.  Now they're as high as $50, with a lot more play dates and expanded overseas touring.  And remember:  the Stones were the first group to sell T-shirts and related memorabilia at their shows with Visa and Mastercard.  They push the merchandising hard.  Granted, stadium owners and promoters get roughly a 40% cut.  Even so, a $100 million take for the Stones for this tour would be a very conservative estimate. 
 With the Steel Wheels tour, they also got cuts from a retrospective tour TV show (domestic rights alone estimated at $6 million), the concert album (Flashpoint), and the critically acclaimed, $10 million IMAX concert movie, At the Max.  The specially-filmed IMAX movies are ten times larger than standard 35-millimeter films (thus offering viewers six-story-high Stones) and also feature vastly improved high-fidelity sound.  Ticket prices for this after tour remembrance?  Fifteen dollars a seat.  If you missed buying concert merchandise at the live show, it was also available at select IMAX theaters.  
Anheuser-Busch added to the pot by paying $6 million to call Budweiser the tour's sponsor.  This worked out to about $5 per North American ticket sold.  Look for similar deals to be cut over the coming months.

It all adds up to the kind of cash that even America's top corporate chiefs can only dream of.  Jagger's old English business school counterparts, secure in their London clubs, smoking the occasional cigar and ringing for dinner, probably wonder what happened to that odd, thick-lipped chap who dropped out of the University so many years ago.
Don't worry.  He's doing fine.

The Rolling Stones' opening date for their "Voodoo Lounge" tour is August 1st at Washington's RFK stadium.
-Richard Harrington


The Internet
From Cold War to Global Village
You know you've stumbled onto something important when Congress tries to rename it.  
A few months back, a Congressman decided the 'information superhighway,' the Shangri-La of the digital future, was due for a name change.  His suggestion, the 'infobahn,' hasn't quite managed to replace 'information superhighway' in the popular imagination.  But we should still take note:  when the federal government gets interested in something, big (and expensive) things are bound to happen.

Actually, at least one section of that amorphous, digital creature of the future has been under Federal control for years.  Indeed, the Internet itself is something of an Army brat.  
Back in the early 1960s, when it seemed like one side of the world wanted to melt down the other, the ultraconservative RAND Corporation got the brilliant idea of making command-and-control computer systems less vulnerable by making their locations more diffuse.  If information duplicated at two sites is less likely to be destroyed by nuclear assault, twelve or twenty-four should be even safer, right?  But what if the sites needed to communicate with each other during and after the assault?  We're not talking about hiding a few old bones here and there; we're talking about the ongoing effort to conduct and survive a nuclear war.
This raised one of the stickier questions about networking computers, and the RAND Corporation's solution has had a lasting effect on the Net.  After some brainstorming, Rand decided that the command-and-control network should have no central authority, since such centrality would work against the diffusion principle.  So all sites or 'nodes' on the network were co-equal.  They each could create and send original messages, as well as relaying messages from one node to another.  A message reaching a destroyed node would simply be bounced to the next node that still functioned.  And, following the diffusion principle, the message would be divided up and sent out in small, individually addressed packets, to insure greater likelihood of safe passage.  In this way, the network would be capable of working in less than perfect conditions.  
Ironically, by creating a system that maintained control in the middle of chaos, the Rand Corporation laid down the groundwork for the system that many experts say is the world's one truly anarchical organization.

The military is as obsessed with names as Congress is, but it takes pleasure in obscure acronyms rather than catchy phrases.  So when the Department of Defense built a RAND-inspired defense network in 1969, they dubbed it ARPANET, after the giant Pentagon agency that funded its creation (ARPA, Advanced Research Projects Agency). 
Strangely enough, ARPANET's users found the network was a handy way to send personal as well as official messages.  Soon, as the number of nodes grew from four in 1969 to fifteen in 1972, an extensive e-mail subculture emerged.  Shortly thereafter, the first 'mailing lists' appeared.  (In a mailing list, a single piece of e-mail can be sent simultaneously to several users on the network.)  The first mailing list's subject, as all sci-fi fans will gladly tell you, was 'sci-fi lovers.' 
By the time the military side of ARPANET broke off in 1983 to become MILNET, the number of nodes and casual users had grown so dramatically that the notion of a global, decentralized network slipped from the federal government's control.  The very principles upon which the Internet was founded-decentralization, the independence of each node and the ease of adding new nodes-were central to its going public.

ARPANET received federal funding until 1989, by which time both the Cold War and computers had changed dramatically.  The Berlin Wall came down, the Soviet Union was limping to the guillotine and tens of thousands of personal computers were linking themselves into the nodes spawned from ARPANET.  Five years later, 'Internet' and 'cyberspace' are all the rage.  Currently, the Internet boasts twenty-two million users worldwide, with twelve million computers continuously logged onto the Net.  And every thirty seconds, someone logs on for the first time.
But what, exactly, does Internet offer the average user?
Well, first of all, there are the three things spawned from ARPANET:  e-mail, mailing lists and access to remote computers.  Thus, on the Net, you can e-mail a friend, join a mailing list on just about any subject, or download files from Dartmouth, Cornell or several other universities, libraries and various organizations from around the world.
You can also join 'newsgroups.'  (Though technically not a part of the Internet itself, they are a part of the broader Net that includes the Internet.)  Many casual users consider the newsgroups to be the heart of the Net.  They are almost certainly its most addictive resource.  
In all, there are as many as 10,000 newsgroups, although the exact number a service will offer varies from 2,500 up (most users in the U.S. wouldn't be interested in a Botswana newsgroup, and some Russian newsgroups are in Cyrillic). Topics range far and wide, from Amiga computers to a cappella vocal groups  to Bigfoot.  
It is probably not a good indicator of the newsgroups' breadth that a group on 'foot fetishes' exists.  That sort of thing should pop up like spring mushrooms, given the anonymity of the Net.  People are remarkably candid in cyberspace, and it's no surprise that copious newsgroups exist to make their secrets public.  What is impressive, though, is the fact that a newsgroup is dedicated entirely to pancakes.  A system has reached a highly sophisticated state of replicating our society when it offers a newsgroup on pancakes.  And it is precisely this replica quality that makes the newsgroups so appealing to armchair anthropologists and sociologists.  
It's not clear that the newsgroups are, in fact, the Net's best feature.  They are, however, a remarkable place for eavesdropping.  And once you get bold enough to post your own messages, you'll never stopxand you'll probably be amazed at your candor.

It is difficult to imagine where the information superhighway will stop, or how its use will change our society.  Almost certainly, the Net will redefine many crucial aspects of the world at large.  When you can sit at your desk and chat with a teenaged Serb or a South African who has just cast a vote for the first time in his life, your perceived place in the world is bound to change.  
Who would have thought, thirty years ago, when the Net was just a gleam in a Cold Warrior's eye, that the Net would ultimately become a place where the boundaries of the world would get a little less important, and its interaction a little friendlier?
-Woody Arbunkle


BBS Listings

Unless otherwise stated, all BBSs are assumed to be in the 804 area code, open 7 days a week, 24 hours a day (except for maintenance), have file areas, E-mail, message boards and support Z-modem downloads.  WAG and riverrun enterprises are not responsible for errors and are not affiliated with any listed service.

Access! BBS-233-8506  (14.4k), 5,000 IBM files on CD-ROM; 20,000 item database on computer pricing; support board for customers.  Ken Sikora, SYSOP.

Airwaves-794-6910 (14.4k), IBM files with 585 megs, CD-ROM, GAMES, ANSI/RIP. Mike Andrews, SYSOP. VOCS/GIFS/Ani-mation.

Binary Illusion-379-9604 (14.4k), IBM files with CD-ROM, ANSI, GAMES. Peter Martin, SYSOP. Updated weather reports. E-mail to InterNet, America Online, Compu-Serve, GEnie, and Delphi. Local & VirtualNET Forums. 

Blue Ridge Express-790-1675 (2400), 790-9600 (14.4k), IBM & MAC files with 4 gigabytes+, ANSI. Webb B Blackman, Jr., SYSOP. One of the East Coast's largest BBS's, with 36 nodes and many sub-boards.

Boot Factory-262-9289 (21.6k), IBM files with CD-ROM, ANSI. Cabell Clarke, SYSOP. On-line
fishing simulator.

Chatter Box Lounge-741-9991 (14.4k), IBM files with CD-ROM, ANSI, GAMES. Grim Reaper,
SYSOP. VirtualNET, LocalNet.

Comet-288-7846 (Main) 282-9035 (14.4k), IBM files with CD-ROM, ANSI, GAMES, Auto Validation.  Hacker Tracker / DarkComet, SYSOP. Comet has moved to a new number and updated their software to Major BBS & MajorDatabase. Play Tradewars 2002!

Communication Systems-285-7231 (14.4k), IBM files with 700 megs and a rotating CD-ROM collection, ANSI/ANSI Music/RIP. David Harding, SYSOP. RIME worldwide conferences.

Cracked Windows BBS-732-1189 (14.4k), IBM files with 200 megs. ANSI/RIP. Raver X, SYSOP. Specializing in Windows & OS/2 shareware, software cracks, unprotects, cheats, and hints. Download on your first call!

CyberSpace-755-7293 (14.4k), IBM files, ANSI, GAMES. Cyber, SYSOP.

Falcon's Crest-737-1625 (14.4k), IBM files with a rotating CD-ROM collection. Over 20,000 files, free board with 2 nodes. ANSI/RIP. Paige & Rob McGhee, SYSOPS. Fidonet, Voyagernet, Tnet, Adanet, BINnet (birds).  Featuring the only conference available on "Adopting Greyhounds."

Freeboard-744-0744 (14.4k), IBM files with 440 megs. Bill Hunter, SYSOP. DTP, graphics, WIN3, Clip art.

G.A.S.O'line (Graphics & Sound On Line) -743-1377 (2400), 275-9184 (14.4k), IBM, MAC, & AMIGA files with 300 megs and CD-ROM, Auto-validation, GAMES, ANSI. Ron Beck, SYSOP, Stimpy, CO-SYSOP.  7 nodes, lots of GIF's and MOD's, Apogee, Epic, Flash, Fazuul, Infinity Complex.

Gates of Euphoria-745-817(14.4k),745-2594(16.8k), 2.6 Gigabytes of IBM files with 4 CD-ROMs on-line, 2 off-line, ANSI, GAMES. Jay Swain, SYSOP. Updated weather, Chat, The Pit, Tradewars 2002.

G.R.A.S.P. (Greater Richmond Atari Support Program)-744-8022 (14.4k), ATARI, IBM & MAC files with 120 megs. ANSI, ST Mono/Color VT52. Micky Angell, SYSOP. Extensive ATARI files and ATARI support/discussion.

Grand Slam-360-5899 (14.4k), IBM files with 2 CD-ROM's, ANSI, GAMES. Jay Brown,  SYSOP.  White House press releases.  Internet mail, White House mail.

Inland Whale Watch-323-4438 (14.4k), IBM files, GAMES. ANSI. Jim Normandin, SYSOP. SafNet, Fido, ADANet, Voyager, SantaNET.

James River Connection-288-2001 (14.4k), IBM files with 120 megs, CD-ROM, GAMES, ANSI/RIP. Charlie Higgins, SYSOP. Wildnet, MSI Supportnet.

Magnet Power-780-4419(14.4k), IBM & MAC files with CD-ROM, ANSI, GAMES. The Principal, SYSOP, "Largest MAC board in Richmond."

Many Titled Board (Formerly Vaporboard)-288-8630 (2400), IBM files, ANSI. Midnight Tree Bandit, SYSOP. WWIVLink, IceNET. Includes the DeadLink (dancing teddy bear stuff) sub-board (Hi, Ami!). "Home of the Deadtown Vapornet."

Metropolis-353-8821 (14.4k), IBM files with CD-ROM, ANSI/RIP, GAMES. Auto Validation. Luxa,
Supernaut, SYSOPS. "The Nicest BBS in Town!".

MindShatter BBS-378-9470 (14.4k), IBM files with 80 megs, ANSI, GAMES. Quaan Fleshharrower, SYSOP. "Lots of stupid users and a sysop with an attitude".

Modem Mania-745-8718 (16.8k), IBM files with 330 megs, GAMES, ANSI. Mike Holzbach, SYSOP. "The On-line Addiction".

Music BBS-739-7289 (14.4k), IBM files with 40 megs, GAMES, ANSI/RIP. Graham Lacy, SYSOP. Run by a 13 year old. RichmondNET.

O-zone-550-9348 (2400) 550-9347 (14.4K), IBM files with CD-ROM, ANSI, GAMES. The Great and Powerful OZ, SYSOP.  These are new numbers for O-zone this month (effective June 3).

Pirate's Cove-Rest In Peace. Cyber road kill.

Pistonhead-262-4036 (V-Fast & 14.4k), IBM files with 6 rotating CD-ROMs, ANSI, Auto Validation. Larry Burton, SYSOP. Weather news. FidoNET.

Radiation Poisoning-794-0752(14.4k), IBM & MAC files with CD-ROM, ANSI, GAMES. Beavis, SYSOP. Includes the "Science According to Beavis & Butthead" sub-board. Updated weather reports.

Raintree-740-2413 (28.8k), IBM files with 765 megs and multiple CD-ROMs, GAMES, ANSI/RIP. Wendell B. Kenney Jr., SYSOP. CircuitNET mail, first Spitfire BBS in Richmond.

Servant of the Lord BBS-590-2161 (14.4k), IBM files with 2.9 gigabytes including 2 CD-ROMS. GAMES, On Line Legal Advisor, ANSI/RIP. Dr. Charles A. Wooten, SYSOP. 470+ file areas, religious plus latest shareware. Many Christian & Jewish conferences, magazines & newsletters. Full access on your first call. ChristNet, Christian NET, NewLife Christian NET.

SBA Online (Small Business Administration)-1-800-697-4636(9600), 1-800-859-4636 (2400), also accessible through FedWorld. IBM files (about 300+ new a month). "Free" (your tax dollars pay for it) board with SBA information and services. Large business conference areas. Say hello to Ron Brown.

Spectral's Kingdom-794-2847 (9600), IBM files with 255 megs, GAMES, ANSI. Spectral, SYSOP, Music Man, CO-SYSOP. Home of the SK-team, large sound file area.

StarTek (PhishNet)-530-1540 (14.4k), IBM files with CD-ROM, GAMES, ANSI. Dr. Shoe, SYSOP. After DarkNET, MovieNET.

Underworld-750-1142 (14.4k), IBM files with CD-ROMs. Slade, SYSOP. Underworld is a beta test sight for Excalibur BBS software (as of this writing in v.65).  To call this BBS you must have matching special software (commonly available on local boards as excal*.zip or call the Excalibur HQ BBS (918) 496-8113 for current version) and be running Microsoft Windows. Excalibur supports high resolution graphics, simultaneous upload/download/main board access, concurrent graphic downloading/ viewing and graphic preview snapshots

United Zones of Twilight-804-743-4872 (14.4k), IBM files with 400 megs, GAMES. No Download ratios and a Sysop that is around 24 hrs a day to help!!

Valhalla-560-0701 (16.8k), IBM files with 480 megs, multiple CD-ROMs, GAMES, ANSI. C.G. Learn, Jr., SYSOP. FidoNet, SafNet-"Where the fun begins."

Windows Express-745-3743 (9600), Exclusively Windows files with 504 megs.ANSI/RIP, PowerCOMM. Robert Reese, SYSOP. Runs PowerBBS. FidoNET, InterNET.

Whistlestop West-784-7014(14.4k).No Files/Transfers, ANSI. Message sub-boards, GAMES.  Doc, the Stationmaster, SYSOP. Features the "The Malt Shoppe...ice cream and insight!" sub-board. "Please watch your step when boarding the train."



Astrological Forecast

ARIES - March 21-April 20
The presence of Venus in your fifth house of amour bodes well for affairs of the heart. Make the most of romantic opportunities before the 11th, when the planet of love will be moving on. This promises to be a busy summer for Ariens, with short trips, correspondences and neighborhood activities all likely to be on your agenda.

TAURUS - April 21-May 21
Early in the month, you should be feeling motivated to go for the brass ring. Even as you take time out for a short summer vacation, your thoughts are never far from your bank account, and you'll be full of ideas as to how to make those dollars multiply. After the 11th, try to steal some time for a romantic interlude.

GEMINI - May 22-June 21
While others are feeling drained in the summer heat and humidity, you're full of energy and vitality. You might feel healthier than you have in a long while, but there is a tendency toward overindulgence which should be curtailed. Financial rewards are in the forecast, if you've been working hard. If not, it might be because your heart's not in it.

CANCER - June 22-July 23
If your thought processes have seemed jumbled and short-circuited, you'll be relieved to find your thinking cap in excellent working order this month. You should be able to express yourself articulately in your medium of choice and come out on top in any arena requiring a sharp mental edge. The Sun in your sign adds charisma as well.

LEO - July 24-August 23
You're not your usual out-going self now, but there's much happening behind the scenes and you're just not ready to share. After the 22nd, your star should shine in a big way, and you'll be making up for lost time. Everyone will be so glad to have you back that you could find yourself on a social merry-go-round.

VIRGO - August 24-September 23
Your July social calendar might begin to fill up early in the month, so you'd best pencil in any plans, as unforeseen events make changes likely. Just be flexible and go with the flow. New acquaintances should be sized up carefully before you get too chummy. Use the summer to put the finishing touches on any projects in progress.

LIBRA - September 24-October 23
If you've been waiting for the perfect time to ask for a raise, that time has come.  Even if you don't get the raise, you're likely to receive some sort of recognition for a job well done.  Education, travel and romance might overlap this month, resulting in some interesting postcards.  Baring all could have embarrassing consequences, so use discretion.

SCORPIO - October 24-November 22 
This month you are likely to be the foreign correspondent of the zodiac.  Distant lands beckon to you, and even if you're unable to take the trip of a lifetime right now, you might be making plans for a future getaway.  After the 22nd, the focus switches to your career goals, and it would be wise to tread carefully where a partner or associate is concerned.

SAGITTARIUS - November 23-December 21 
You can blame Mars, the angry, red planet, for some tense moments in your marriage or partnership.  Unfortunately, this situation continues throughout July and into August, but try to keep your cool and realize that this too shall pass.  Late in the month, allow yourself some dreaming time.  Chances are your mind will want to wander, so leave detail work for next month.

CAPRICORN - December 22-January 20
The spotlight this month is on relationships and joint funds, and it looks like many single Capricorn natives could be entering into the bonds of matrimony.  If you're already spoken for, you might find yourself re-examining your relationship.  The Full Moon in your sign on the 22nd could make you feel wild and crazy.  Those who thought they knew you will be shocked.

AQUARIUS - January 21-February 19
You might be setting off some fireworks, with sexy Mars entering your fifth house of romance and fun on the 3rd.  The bad news is that money will probably be tight for awhile, so look for free summer entertainment or make your own.  Work presents challenges, but new techniques learned now should pay off in the future.

PISCES - February 20-March 20
A combination of planetary transits highlight activity involving friends, lovers and spouses.  In some cases, one person might wear all three caps, but if not, beware the lover-spouse collision.  Overall, July should be an enjoyable month with many opportunities to socialize and indulge in your favorite form of recreation.  Make the most of your day in the sun.


Sweet and Sour
by troy booth
It's refreshing to see pop music moving back to guitar-oriented rock after languishing for so long in the synthetic doldrums of the dance music craze.  
Three years ago, bands like Sugartooth wouldn't even have been able to get radio-play.  Their debut album, How Sweet It Is, would have been designated as album rock and promptly cast into the outer darkness.
Nowadays, though, we get real musicians with loud guitars.  All in all, it's something of a tarnished return to the golden era of The Stones and The Who.  And that, when you consider it, isn't a bad thing.

How Sweet It Is opens with "Sold My Fortune," a metalfest that sets the tone for the rest of the album.  It is dark rather than angry, driven rather than pained.  Marc Hutner's steely vocals seek you out rather than concealing themselves behind a multitude of mirror images.  The band's instrumentation is lucid and precise.
The second track, "Barrel," explodes out of the first with raw velocity.  The guitars' lower octave range lends itself well to the foreboding mood, and Hutner's flanged vocals again add flavor. 
"Tuesday Morning" continues the set with an exceptionally brooding tune that takes us one step deeper into the ride.  The lyrics aren't particularly accessible to the listener, nor are they supposed to be.  This is an experimental piece concocted, it seems, during an acid trip.
"In Need" finishes the best and most tolerable of the album's tracks without creating any bridge between the artists and the listener.  But the lyrics are exceptional.
From there, the album descends into a grunge abyss.  

There is a grand total of thirteen cuts on this album.  Thirteen.  Why a new band feels the need to saturate every square centimeter of their debut disc is beyond me.  Maybe they figured they'd worked too hard for a record contract to let a micrometer of disc space go to waste.  It's a hit and miss theory, with something for everyone.
That's great if you're Led Zeppelin and have something different to say in each and every song.  But if you're some twenty-year-old punk with the vocal range of a smoke detector and a guitar range that flutters fitfully between "stoned" and "un-stoned," then I think it's time to reevaluate your career.
What are these guys trying to prove?  That above all they're an uncompromising punk / alternative band?
O.K. I believe you.  Do I still have to listen to these pretentious songs?
This is a talented band, to be sure.  With a little more discretion and authorial control, their second album could be exceptional.


Reports from the Edge
by Greg Perry
To understand who the Illuminati are and what their purpose might be, it is necessary to go back to the beginnings of human civilization and work our way forward, examining various secret societies and traditions with which the Illuminati have been linked.  Remember:  one of the main charges levied against the Illuminati is that they are the controlling force behind other secret societies, such as the Masons, the Knights Templar and the Rosicrucians.  By looking at the origins and philosophies of some of these other groups, it might be possible to ascertain what purpose the Illuminati serve.
This month, we'll examine the Masons.

Freemasonry has long been linked with the Illuminati Conspiracy.  Some experts claim the two are so intricately linked that, for all intents and purposes, they're one and the same.  Thus, when one says that the Illuminati rule the world, one might as well say that the Masons are behind everything that goes on.  
For most people, that would be laughable, since the Masons are commonly perceived as a fancier version of the Elks or the Moose Lodge, with nifty little hats and clown cars that they drive in parades.  At best, many might consider the Masons to be simply an "old boys network," a way for businessmen to make the right connections with the right people.  It's doubtful that the average person would say that the Masons are the keepers of centuries-old occult knowledge, which, if known to the general population, would literally change civilization as we know it.  
However, this happens to be the case.
 
The Freemason tradition began in the early medieval guilds of masons, who were responsible for the construction of Gothic cathedrals throughout Europe.  These guilds provided benefits and self-help to members much in the manner of modern trade unions.  To recognize their fellow guild members, Masons developed secret handshakes and marks.  But the masonic guilds were much more than mere trade unions, for it is believed that, early in their history, they began perpetuating secret pagan knowledge derived from geometry.  The Masons symbolically incorporated this knowledge into the architecture of the Christian cathedrals they built. 
Masonic legend has it that geometry was taught before the Great Flood by a man named Lamech and his three sons.  One of these sons, according to legend, discovered geometry.  The second son was the first mason, and the third son was the first metal worker.  Warned of the flood, they hid their knowledge in two stone pillars for the benefit of future generations.  One of these pillars was discovered by a being known to the Greeks as Hermes and to the ancient Egyptians as Thoth.  This discovery came to be known as the Emerald Tablet of Hermes.
The legends also say that masons were first organized during the time of the building of the Tower of Babel.  Ancient Hebrew masons are supposed to have gained their knowledge of the Craft from the Babylonians and later passed it on to the Egyptians during the time of their enslavement.  In Egypt, the teachings of the masons were influenced heavily by contact with ancient Egyptian Mystery religions and the occult traditions of the pyramid builders.  This meshing of various pagan beliefs continued for centuries, as the philosophy which ultimately became known as Freemasonry slowly developed.

The cornerstone of the Masonic legend is the building of Solomon's Temple, for which Solomon imported numerous artisans and craftsmen.  The king of Tyre was requested to send his master builder, Hiram Abiff, whose father was himself highly skilled in geometry.  Hiram was named chief architect of the Temple, and his design undoubtedly incorporated features from his father's temples in Tyre, which were dedicated to the worship of the Goddess.  Pillars at the entrance of Solomon's Temple, for example, were similar to phallic images at the entrances to Tyre's temples, and the inner sanctum or Holy of Holies in Solomon's Temple bore strong resemblance to the inner sanctums of Tyre's temples, which symbolized the womb of the Goddess from which all life springs.  (At the time, worship of feminine fertility deities was still common, and there are some who believe that Solomon himself was a secret worshipper of the Goddess.)  
According to legend, Hiram was killed by three disgruntled masons who wished to have Masonic knowledge divulged to them before they were ready.  Again, the similarities to certain elements of the mystery religions are strong.  A common feature of Goddess worship, for example, included the sacrifice of Her consort or a priest, a role not dissimilar to Hiram's, if he were secretly building a temple to her rather than to Solomon's deity.  And the stories of Hiram's death and subsequent burial also resonate with the myths of Osiris, Dionysius and Adonis.  In each case, the central themes revolve around death, rebirth and fertility. 
The similarities aren't coincidental.  Whether Egyptian, Hebrew, or Greek, the various secret societies of this era all perpetuated the same pantheistic belief in the unity between God and the universe, as well as the belief that the principles of sacred geometry best displayed this unity.  Religious buildings were constructed using symmetry, measurement and proportion, and the block of stone, chiseled by the mason into a useful shape, became a symbol of mankind being developed by cosmic forces into a spiritual being.  

The secrets of the masons were kept alive during the early centuries of the Common Era by such groups as the Roman College of Architects and the Order of Comacine Masters.  Such groups, preserving both architectural techniques and esoteric knowledge of pagan religious beliefs, provided the link between the ancient builders of pagan temples and the masons who constructed the Gothic cathedrals in Europe.  While Christianity began to dominate the civilized world, beliefs from an earlier time were being kept alive by those who were forced to adopt outward appearances acceptable to the Church. 
With time, these pagan-based religious beliefs were carried over into the secular realm, and Masonic lodges were among the first groups actively to promote the ideas of equality and democracy in society.  But the battle with the Church wasn't easily won.  Indeed, the original Illuminati, begun by Adam Weishaupt (himself a Mason), drew considerable wrath from both religious and secular authorities, and they were forced underground after a plan to overthrow the Hapsburgs was uncovered. 
Early attempts at openness, it seems, taught the Illuminati that some things are best accomplished from behind the scenes.    

Next time, we'll look at various historical events alleged to have been manipulated by the Illuminati.


ABOUT WAG
WAG is published ten times a year in Richmond, Virginia, by Doug Childers and William H. Shinault IV. They can be contacted electronically by Internet:  WAGmag@aol.com.  

This electronic version of WAG is free. No fee may be charged for its circulation or use. Nor may it be altered in any way. 

The contents of WAG are copyright 1994 by riverrun enterprises. 