Santina and I have been trying to downsize for a couple of years. Our timing's bad. With just the 2 of us, we'd like to move into a smaller space. No big deal, I mean it's nothing like Kaiser Wilhelm contemplating Lichtenstein. But with the economy being what it is, we're thinking smaller all the time. We've stepped back from 3 bedrooms/2 baths, to maybe one door and a perch.

A trade-off of sump pump and paint brush for the occasional tete-a-tete with English sparrows works for me, but the requisite change in diet is off-putting; and of course the growing restrictions on air travel will ultimately nix this deal too.

On Sunday a small contingent of a tiny Kansas-based hate group, calling themselves the Westboro Baptist Church, launched a name calling assault right here in Concord.

It is NH's new gay marriage law and WBC's anti-gay crusade that brought them here, but they are not limited to anti-gay; they are anti nearly everything, including anti-everybody-else's-religion; and anti-military membership (since joining the military is an act of supporting the government of a country in moral collapse). And so, you can throw in anti-US as well.

It is only natural to shake a finger at their hate mongering, to question the use of the word "Church" in their title, and to wonder how Baptists in general view this group -- but one has to marvel at the power of heredity (or perhaps environment) when members of the paltry congregation include not only the founder's middle-age daughter (Margie Phelps), but also his grandson (Ben Phelps). What chance do you suppose these poor souls ever had? How many flushes of a badly clogged toilet are required before really clear water returns?

So while I hold no sympathy for the rest of this errant congregation, I'm cutting Margie and Ben some slack. These two have plenty of reasons to be flailing against the world.