By keeping my hand in that, it's the way I keep learning. The main way you learn in medicine is by practicing and working with patients.

To be clear, I worry as much about the impact of the Internet as anyone else. I worry about shortening attention spans, the physical cost of sedentary 'surfing' and the potential for coarsening discourse as millions of web pages compete for attention by appealing to our base instincts.

Gardening is not trivial. If you believe that it is, closely examine why you feel that way. You may discover that this attitude has been forced upon you by mass media and the crass culture it creates and maintains. The fact is, gardening is just the opposite - it is, or should be, a central, basic expression of human life.

In the world at large, people are rewarded or punished in ways that are often utterly random. In the garden, cause and effect, labor and reward, are re-coupled. Gardening makes sense in a senseless world. By extension, then, the more gardens in the world, the more justice, the more sense is created.

I have never known Frances to complain once of my Church responsibilities. I have been gone many days and many nights, and I have rarely been able to sit with her in the congregation. But there is no one like her - absolutely no one. She is in every way supportive and is a woman of quiet and profoundly powerful faith.

Every few thousand years some shepard inhales smoke from a burning bush and has a vision or eats moldy rye bread in a cave and sees God.

In other words, a person who is fanatic in matters of religion, and clings to certain ideas about the nature of God and the universe, becomes a person who has no faith at all.

I mean, I would love to have the career Joan Baez is having in Europe right now, but God knows I don't begrudge her that career.