Wood s lot also pointed me to this Guardian essay — Pete May on turning into your dad — and pulled this quote: ” It is a weird and far
from pleasant feeling, this cross-generational migration of souls.” A striking metaphor, but it grabbed me also because my loose association was to the absorbing, if abit uneven, novel I’m reading. David Mitchell’s Ghostwritten spins a web with its structure of nine individual narrators, drawn with skillful characterization and sharp clear prose, scattered to nine disparate corners of the world but connected by serendipity. A masterful and lyrical chapter which I could not help feeling throughout my reading can — and perhaps should — be read independently ‘describes’ the journey of a transmigrating soul in Mongolia struggling to understand its place in the world, its relationship with its succession of human hosts, and the meaning of their humanness. Of course, one reviewer castigates Mitchell as “a bit heavy on the supernatural hooey.” Interestingly, that reviewer too observes that the Mongolian chapter could stand alone.

CIA Declassifies Documents on Hitler, Other Nazis: “There were the Nazis the United States
wanted to try as criminals, and there were
other Nazis it wanted to try out as employees.
Some 10,000 pages of declassified CIA
documents made public Friday reveal a
wartime agency tracking Nazis as deadly enemies, and a postwar
organization hiring newfound ‘friends’ to spy.”

Court Orders Hospital to Release Man. The man, who suffered head injuries in an April 2000 accident, was released from a Bombay hospital by court order after his family alleged that the hospital was keeping him only because they could not pay his bill. The hospital contends that he still requires hospital treatment. Reuters

Citing Declining Membership, a Leader Disbands His Militia: ‘The leader of a paramilitary group in northern
Michigan said today that the group was disbanding because
membership had plummeted and it no longer had any members with enough
military experience to lead training exercises in the woods.

The leader… attributed the dwindling membership to the election of President Bush.
“Across the nation, there is a satisfaction among patriots with the way things are
going,” he said.’ New York Times