Tilly screamed. Anna__ shocked brain only registered annoyance at the sound. Really, when had someone screaming ever solved a problem? She recognized her fixation on this irritation as her own way of avoiding the horror in front of her, but only in a distant and dreamy sort of way.

O [Roman] people be ashamed; be ashamed of your lives. Almost no cities are free of evil dens, are altogether free of impurities, except the cities in which the barbarians have begun to live...Let nobody think otherwise, the vices of our bad lives have alone conquered us...The Goths lie, but are chaste, the Franks lie, but are but are generous, the Saxons are savage in cruelty...but are admirable in chastity...what hope can there be [for the Romans] when the barbarians are more pure [than they]?"-Salvian

I know, at the time it was an imperfect solution in an imperfect world.

There is grace for survival in any situation.

May you find the grace of triumph in any situation.

Sometimes I think if we didn__ have these problems the whole world would stop spinning on her axis, we__ all stop spinning on our axises, axes, or whatever you want to call them, and then we__ have to settle into the nasty business of finding a way to be happy.