Mud

Barreling down a sizzling-hot road, in a cloud of diesel fumes and dust, Ludkan Baba is on a serious roll. He lies flat on the ground, turning himself over and over like a runaway log, limbs flailing as he bumps across potholes, splashes through mud puddles and falls deeper into a spiritual trance. Like any sadhu, or Hindu ascetic, he undertakes severe penance to liberate his soul from reincarnation's endless cycle of birth, death and rebirth.

Before floodwaters sent mud, timber and debris roaring through it, Boistfort Valley Farm was a model of modern food production based on old-time values: community involvement and organic growing methods. The family farm supplied veggies, fruits, herbs and flowers for farmers' markets in Seattle, Olympia and Chehalis, Wash. Some 250 families participated in its community-supported agriculture program, in which they buy a share from the farm in exchange for part of its bounty -- a weekly box of fresh produce, usually delivered from spring until fall.

A mad mix of the traditional sword and sandal epic with mud, spears, snow and plenty of blood and severed body parts, Neil Marshall's "Centurion" tells the story of the Roman Ninth Legion, a group that disappeared while battling the Pict tribe in the Scottish Highlands in the second century. Starring Michael Fassbender and Dominic West as Roman warriors, Olga Kurylenko as a Pict scout and Imogen Poots as a Pict exile, the film constructs a scenario of brutal battles and political intrigue to suppose how such a large number of Roman soldiers, pushing the boundaries of the Empire, could vanish without a trace.

You want to talk dirty politics? Oh, we'll talk dirty. We'll talk about . . . 1800. Thomas Jefferson was attacked by ministers who accused him of being an "infidel" and an "unbeliever." A Federalist cartoon depicted him as a drunken anarchist, and the president of Yale warned that if Jefferson came to power, "we may see our wives and daughters the victims of legal prostitution." A Connecticut newspaper warned that his election would mean "murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest will openly be taught and practiced" -- though the paper (now the Hartford Courant)

One day after a river of mud brought havoc to a La Cañada Flintridge neighborhood, residents faced a massive cleanup Sunday, with chest-high mounds of muck lining the streets, damaged homes rendered uninhabitable and nearby catch basins filled to capacity with debris. Authorities lifted evacuation orders that at one point Saturday had affected 500 homes in the fire-ravaged foothill communities of La Crescenta and La Cañada Flintridge. Forty-three homes in the communities were damaged, and nine were red-tagged, preventing residents from entering until the structures could be stabilized.

A fly landed on my nose, and I wanted to sneeze, but I didn't dare. Muscled masseur Manoli, who had just caked my face with a slime-ball of stinking sludge, warned me not to move a muscle if I wanted this sulfurous mud pack's miraculous properties to work. It dried hard and tight after 30 minutes, turning my cheeks and lips as rigid as Agamemnon's gold death mask. My face tingled and itched as I rinsed it off, but after the burning had subsided a few minutes later, my face felt toned and purified, just as Manoli had promised.