My apologies for the inactivity this week. I've been traveling (currently in the mountains just outside of Asheville, N.C.), but I hope to post again as soon as possible--Monday at the absolute latest.

Took a group from my church to Sliding Rock today, a natural water slide in the Pisgah National Forest. The kids love it, though for the first time, I couldn't bring myself to go down the slide this year--the water is breathtakingly, astonishingly cold. Still, it's a beautiful area.

An oddity like that has to be owned by the government, because if it were a privately owned park, it would probably have been sued out of existence years ago. There's a lot of potential there for broken bones and skinned knees, which would draw lawyers like a Liza Minelli concert draws flamboyant interior decorators if the park belonged to anyone but the behemoth federal government.