Day: March 8, 2004

Like with my last article for Voices of Central Pennsylvania (which I’ve yet to see in print myself), I was, I think, so worried I wouldn’t have enough information that I contacted people like crazy for interviews and information. Now I have more than I know what to do with, and I’m walking a fine line: I don’t want this to be just a press release for local groups — and I’m working with an 800-1000 word limit — but my ear for a good quote makes it difficult to know what to cut. I hate to ask people for responses and then not actually use what they tell me, but that happened with the last article, and it’ll probably happen this time as well.

Best I can do is thank people for their time and blame it on my editor.

I suppose that, at this point, there was little hope that he would turn up alive, but it’s still sad to learn that Spalding Gray is dead. One of the highlights of my first trip to Austin in 1999 was getting the chance to see him live on his “Slippery Slope” tour. It’s sad he couldn’t overcome the severe depression he’d suffered since 2001. He will be missed.

My thanks to Glen for pointing this out.

Every now and then, there’s a genuine question in my search referrers. Today’s is:

what is a coppersmith? in the bible

Well, in 2 Timothy 4:14 (King James Version), it’s written that “Alexander the coppersmith did me much evil: the Lord reward him according to his works…” I think that’s probably using the standard definition of “coppersmith”, unless Alexander really was a brightly colored bird of southeast Asia. But why a coppersmith is in the Bible, I don’t know. I’m no Biblical scholar (as this paper makes abundantly clear), and I believe — although I don’t know and should probably ask my father or grandfather — that our last name was Americanized from the German somewhere along the way. I don’t think our ancestors were ever actually coppersmiths — although, like I said, I don’t know that for sure.

Now, if I could just get people to spell it correctly…