One might say that Barbara Crafton has always �done ministry differently.� Her background as an actress has given her a distinctive style as preacher and minister, as well as a friend and neighborly presence when appearing on television or in other electronic media. All of that helped when she decided to establish The Geranium Farm as the online base for her ministry.

Crafton was rector of St. Clement�s Church in Manhattan�s Theatre District. She also was a chaplain on the waterfront of New York, and she served both historic Trinity Church, Wall Street, and St. John�s Church in Greenwich Village. She was a chaplain at Ground Zero during the recovery effort after the World Trade Center bombing.

In 2001 she began to write her �Almost-Daily eMo� e-mail meditations, and when she retired from parish ministry a year later, The Geranium Farm (http://www.geraniumfarm.org/) replaced St. Clement�s as the eMos� point of origin. Physically, it isn�t a farm at all, although Crafton�s house and garden reside there. The latter most definitely includes geraniums, which she calls the solid citizens of the plant world. Crafton�s cyberspace home for �down-to-earth support for living� includes her daily messages (available in print and audio versions), her schedule of personal appearances, an online bookstore, and a �vigils� page, where visitors may �light� online candles, pray, and communicate via a message board. Thousands of readers receive the eMos, and the website is a popular destination.

The Geranium Farm bookstore sells titles by Crafton and others. Her own books, now nearly a dozen, include two eMo compilations; meditations for Lent and Advent; her best-seller, The Sewing Room (still going strong after more than a decade); and her musings on middle age, Some Things You Just Have to Live With. Soon these will be joined by the first volume in a four-part series of meditations on the Daily Office, Let Us Bless the Lord.

Crafton is married to Richard Quaintance, known to her readers as �Q,� a professor of English literature. She has two children and two grandchildren.