<P>The lines are being drawn for this Sunday's war

The lines are being

drawn for this Sunday's war

Dear Northern and Southern

relatives:

There's battle lines being

drawn, somewhere in Maryland, splitting my extended family North and South.

On one side those victorious Super Bowl veterans of past battles, the

New England Patriots. On the other side we have the (hell no we ain't

fergetten) upstarts, the Carolina Panthers.

There's something happening

here.

Now I'm surely not a consummate

sports fan. My Connecticut cousin Anthony always thought I was a bit strange

wanting to watch the weather report when there was a decent game on the

other channel. Occasionally, events of significant import do catch my

attention (still a bit chilly up North, I hear) and this battle of the

brawn is surely more than a continuing clash of regional rivalries.

What it is ain't exactly

clear.

You see I'm dealing with

a quandary: Which side I'm on.

Sometimes those cold blue skies

give way to gray, fluffy clouds. (Didn't a fellow named Lee once

struggle with a similar quandary?)

My heartstrings are tugging

me homeward to the land of my Northern birth but the righteousness of

the cause, the fate of the underdog and the land that God surely smiles

upon beckons me Southward.

My son Steven once said the

reason we moved to North Carolina back in the '90s was to pick up

his little sister Renee (born in N.C.) before moving