I taught a morning class at IYI today. I love teaching in the morning, especially someplace light and sunny like IYI. My students were great, with lots of questions.

After that I came home and phone-interviewed the Pastor of the church that has the food pantry I'm doing brochures for. He was mild-mannered but tight-lipped. He seemed happy with my amateurish brochures...I hope to be able to help much more in the future by sending press releases and stuff to the media, and coming up with some long-term publicity strategies. I'm kinda flying by the seat of my pants, here, but how hard could it be?

Now I'm eating lunch and watching, for the first time, the most stunningly awful show on TV (worse even than Gilmore Girls)--Crossing Over. Ouch, this is so painful to watch, but I am loathe to look away. This Edwards guy is using the oldest tricks in the book. "I see...a mother figure?"

"My aunt!"

"Yes, your aunt! And standing beside her is a person with...male energy...a brother, a father, a husband?"

"Yes, she was married!"

Wow, he must be psychic! I remember learning about "cold readings" (that's what that technique is called--throwing out a bunch of general statements to see what gets a reaction) in a Scholastic book about magic when I was in the second grade.

I was shocked to learn yesterday that Lucy Grealy passed away in December. I had read her beautiful memoir when it was a couple years old, and one night, only a few days after finishing it, I ran into her on an empty, late-night street in Soho. We were the only two people on the block, and I felt like I should say "Hello," but she crossed over to the other side of the street before I could say it.

Shortly afterwards, I was on a date with a guy who mentioned that he'd asked her out impulsively after seeing her give a reading. "I thought she was really cute, in a sort of half-faced way...but she never returned my call."

It's been intimated that her death was either a suicide or a complication from one of her many surgeries. Very sad.