Another Chapter Down

I finished the polished version of the Buddhas of Bamiyan chapter today and feel very relieved.

I was beginning to think I was in some sort of a swamp that kept getting deeper and deeper and I'd never get out. But the thing looks pretty good to me (today) and I get to move on to the next chapter soon. (Not today...)

Question is- what shall the next chapter be? Because I'm not doing a chronological history, there's no reason that one chapter has to build on the next, though once the essential work is done, I'll probably buckle under the tasks of organization, etc.

I'm torn now between "Saddam Hussein and the Fall of Baghdad" and "Who Whacked the Herms?" For the past couple of weeks, I've been immersed in contemporary documents, news reports, rumors and insinuations. If I go straight to Saddam, it'll be more of the same, and, to be perfectly honest, I'm stuffed to the gills with the wars of illegit regimes.

If I go to the story of the castration of the Herms, though, it'll require a whole different mindset, a whole different set of references and a whole new way of hunting them. It will be, as our esteemed political leader once repeated ad infinitum "hard work". I don't want to totally burn out. But I do, in the end, love this stuff and I don't want to lose my momentum.

This is the weekend before Christmas. I have to work in the ER the next three evenings and we're going to Boston for a little holiday next week. Perhaps I shouldn't schedule anything until after the New Year. But if I do decide to knock off, sure as you're born, some major news will break and I'll be twisting in the wind without computer or pen...

More as events develop....