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Sunday in My Mother's Garden:








What's this?



An insect eye?






Some strange pod from outer space? A fugitive ceiling light from a 1970's disco?



(Answer: Once it was a bowling ball.)

The Trouble with Nursing Homes: It isn't so much the care as it is the nature of the beast:

Nursing home priorities are matters like avoiding bedsores and maintaining weight -- important goals, but they are means, not ends. She left an airy apartment she furnished herself for a small beige hospital-like room with a stranger for a roommate. Her belongings were stripped down to what she could fit into the one cupboard and shelf they gave her. Basic matters, like when she goes to bed, wakes up, dresses and eats were put under the rigid schedule of institutional life. Her main activities have become bingo, movies and other forms of group entertainment. Is it any wonder most people dread nursing homes?

The things she misses most, she told me, are her friendships, her privacy and the purpose in her days. She's not alone. Surveys of nursing home residents reveal chronic boredom, loneliness and lack of meaning -- results not fundamentally different from prisoners, actually.

I'm pretty sure I would regard it as a prison, but I've known some people who are actually happier in the nursing home. They've all been very gregarious, outgoing people who love company. They are few, however, which is why movements like this are likely to catch on.

Death and Taxes: Is death the impetus for social organization?

Speaking of Witch Hunts: Ohio's new public smoking ban is turning its citizens into little Robespierre's:

Since enforcement of Ohio's law banning public smoking went into effect on May 3, the state has received 4,251 complaints -- an average of 193 a day.

Smoking in prohibited areas is the most common grievance, though callers also have complained that some establishments are leaving ashtrays on the tables, some aren't posting the required "No Smoking" signs and some are allowing smoke from outside to waft inside.

The "No Smoking" sign is required by law to include the phone number for complaining. As one would expect, it's giving the upper hand to the chronically disgruntled and aggrieved. Smoke wafting from outside? Come now.

Consequences: Sounds like this guy was asking for trouble:

One complaint led to another in which a 9-year-old boy made some scandalous allegations to sheriff's detectives. The boy said Corsi had a secret club inside the center to entertain children with videos, candy and a coin-operated vibrating bed.

Corsi would also have the boy climb into a ceiling crawl space with "Mr. Dave's" camera and videotape little girls changing their clothes. Sometimes Mr. Dave would store the videos under the bed and sometimes he'd take the tapes to his Malvern home, the boy said.

The allegations brought sheriff's Detectives Linda Rinear, Larry Limbert and others to the day-care center in May 2002. They were armed with a search warrant.

In court records, the detectives accused Corsi of invading the privacy of minor children "for the purpose of sexually arousing or gratifying himself" by photographing minor children in a state of nudity. He was also accused of allowing, coercing or enticing a child to be photographed "in a sexually oriented matter."

They left with Corsi's 9mm pistol, a 12-inch knife, a computer, some videos, a leather whip, nude photos of women, a video camera, a computer and computer disks.

Accusations may be false, but those items aren't the types of things most parents would want at their children's day care center. And at the time of his arrest, those items were widely reported in the local news. But now we get the rest of the story:

The ceiling the boy said he crawled through with Corsi's camera turned out to be a foam drop ceiling that couldn't support the weight of a puppy. Besides, a firewall blocked access to the bathroom where the photos were supposedly shot.

In fact, there were no pictures of children. No vibrating bed. No secret club. The adult photos were a Sports Illustrated swimsuit calendar or thumbnails that came through spam e-mails. The gun and knife were separated from the children through two locked doors. The whip was actually a child's toy used as an Indiana Jones prop.

Too late for him. He lost his business and his reputation.

We like to think that as a society we've evolved beyond the days when people accused their neighbors of being witches. The triumph of reason over religion and all that. But we're no better than we were 400 years ago, it's only the accusations that have changed. Consider that this man's torment began with a complaint from a parent who owed the daycare center thousands of dollars, then read Entertaining Satan which details the personal grievances and grudges behind the New England witch hunts.

Sex is our witchcraft.