OK, to refine my position a bit, no one really needs to sing their own praises around here, folks are pretty generous (and persistent) with appropriate complimentation if you give them half a chance to hear you. (and Bert is clearly the greatest.)

People who are constantly told that they're the greatest thing since real bagels, that they are "the conscience of their generation", etc.etc., well it changes them and not for the better. I've seen these changes in some friends who I had previously known as unpretentious, and now are just excessively full of themselves to their obvious detriment if they could but see themselves _which they can't_. The main problem seems to be that they lose their ability to be self-critical.

However there is a delicate balance between self-critical and self-denigrating and I get upset at hearing too much of the latter. (Has to do with my in-laws actually, who believe that tone-deafness is (a) real and (b) a family characteristic. I have really had to fight against my kids adopting that belief set.) It's self-fulfilling prophecy--I think we should be confident of our own ability.

As for Molly's artwork, unfortunately I don't think there's any on the web at the moment and she's not really doing batik these past four years or so...long story (she has a real job now) OK not that long. But maybe in the next year or so I hope--her stuff is really made-for-the-web colours.

Willie-O