List #27 and Thursday Thirteen #6: Fruits you find in Laos

Thirteen Tropical Fruits Fruits in Asia are amazing and people eat a lot of fruit. At the end of a meal, hosts offer fruit for desert. During the long hot afternoons, people will buy small sour fruits and berries which they eat with sugar and powdered chile peppers. Some fruits can be found in the US, but they have to be eaten fresh before you really can experience them. Some of the following pictures are mine; some I found on wikipedia. 1. Lychee - usually found in cans in American supermarkets, they grow abundantly in the tropics. And fresh lychees are nothing like the poor specimens drowned in sugary syrup that are sent to the US in cans. The first reference to lychees was in a Chinese text in the Tang Dynasty, where the emperor's concubine craved them and he had them delivered by fast horse to keep her happy. 2. Longan - a little smaller than a Lychee with a brown tough skin and black pit. They are also called 'Dragon's Eyes.' The rind is thin and you can peel it back a little to pop out the fruit, which is white, and with the dark seed inside, it lives up to its nickname. 3. Rambutan - On the outside, they are red and green with soft spines. They are like burrs but bigger and red. I can't imagine how they evolved to look the way they do. Once you open them up, the fruit is sweet; the outside of the seed often comes off and it tastes a little nutty. 4. Mangostein - is a very strange fruit, very fleshy rind on the outside with a multisegmented fruit inside. It is the most sugary fruit imaginable and can only be taken in small doses - but very intense doses they are. Apparently the wood is very hard and can be used for spears and rice pounders; the rind can be used for tanning leather. So there's more to this fruit than meets the tongue. I couldn't find any pictures I liked for this fruit. Maybe I'll have to buy some and take my own. 5. Custard Apple - This fruit just about had a texture like bread. Again, very sweet. Originally from South America, somehow it has gotten around the world. And if you don't want to eat the fruit, the leaf juice can be used to kill lice. The seeds are very hard but don't kill you if swallowed - which is good because they are toxic, and also can be used as an insecticide. 6. Dragon Fruit, also known as Pitaya is actually a cactus. The fruit grows on the end of spindly cactus stalk, and surprisingly, it grows well in tropical climates. Around SE Asia, Cambodia and Vietnam grow and export a lot. The red skin pulls away from the fruit easily. The inside is white, a little crunchy and sugary tasting - the black seeds are crunchy and although I expected them to taste like poppy seeds, they don't. 7. Guava I love guavas. There are so many varieties and you can eat them either ripe or green. The most common variety we get here is the apple-sized type in this picture, which is eaten green - it's slightly sour with a lot of seeds. There are smaller and sweeter varieties in the north, which are just wonderful. As I write this, I'm craving one right now. The leaves of guava can be used as traditional medicine. Cambodian friends tell me that the tea can be drunk to cure diarrhea. Several years ago, my landlady had cut herself badly with her machete when she was weeding. The wound looked awful so I insisted that she see a doctor friend of mine. She didn't want oral medicine and certainly did not want an injection - so he told her to boil the leaves of guava, wash her leg several times a day and stay off her feet. I kinda of rolled my eyes - but I was the one to be surprised when I returned from the province a week later and saw that her wound was healed. 8. Of course, everyone knows and loves mangoes - however, here mangoes are something else. There are 300 hundred varieties grown in Thailand. There are about 50 varieties that are commonly available here - and they all have their unique taste. Most SE Asians like to eat them green; they are crunchy and sour. A common dipping sauce is made from honey (or cane sugar), mixed with fish sauce, roasted rice powder and hot chile peppers. Another treat is khao nieo mak muan, mango with sticky rice and covered with a sauce of sweetened coconut juice. When I first worked in Thailand, we could only get ripe mangoes and sticky rice between February to May, so it was like having something that you'd really wait for. In fact, some variety of mango ripens somewhere in the country but during the 1980's, they were not shipped outside the region where they were grown. Now, there's a lot more long distance shipping so even in Laos, some varieties of mango is available all year round. I took the picture on the right last week. The light color of the mangoes makes the tree look like it's decorated with Christmas ornaments. 9. Jackfruit - the taste for Juicy Fruit Gum comes from Jackfruit. It's a strange looking fruit; when I first saw it, it reminded me of the pods from the film Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The things are big - Wikipedia says they can weigh over 30 kgs. and it's the largest tree borne fruit in the world. Inside, there are yellow fruit sections which look like they're made out of plastic - the fruit is good (though it tastes like a certain gum) but the sap is very strange. It's like latex and coats your fingers. The Mughul Emperor Babar said, "The jackfruit is ugly and to some people is bad tasting. It looks exactly like sheep intestines turned inside out like stuffed tripe. It has a cloyingly sweet taste." I wouldn't go so far in my description - but it is an acquired taste! 10 Papaya Papayas that you buy in the US are nothing like the papayas grown here, which can reach epic sizes. Some people find that the smell of ripe papaya is rather disturbing. OK, let's say it - it smells like vomit. However, it's very good for helping digestion and its aftermath. Most Asians prefer to eat green papaya, and make spicy salad by pounding grated papaya together with fish sauce, chile peppers, lemons, tomatoes, and sometimes raw cane sugar and lemon juice. Another kind of Vietnamese salad is fish sauce, dried shrimp, lemon juice and a little sugar topped with grilled beef and peanuts. Green papaya is supposed to be good for high blood pressure, the seeds good for inflammation and stomach problems and the fruit can be applied to fungal skin problems. One of my favorite Vietnamese films is The Scent of Green Papaya. It takes place in the early 60's as the Vietnam War is heating up, also a time of social upheaval in Vietnam. The movie takes place in the small lane and house of one middle-class family, who hire a girl name Moui (which means 'salt'). The wife in the house is very kind to her, because she remembers her own deceased daughter who would have been Moui's age. The grandmother in the house prays all day in front of the family shrine - which she had done continuously since the death of her husband many years ago. The feeling is the house is half-dreamy with ghosts of deceased relatives and memories, and filled with desperation, of people living out destinies that would not have been of their choosing. When Moui is 17, she goes to work for a young pianist and they slowly fall in love. A new life starts to open for her. Throughout the film, Moui is mystified by human relationships and the natural world. Preparation of food and of cutting and grating the green papaya symbolizes freshness and a new life. It's a very powerful film. The picture on the left is green papaya salad. I didn't follow the advise from my last list, on taking pictures of food and had not wiped off the smudges on the edge of the plate. The papaya salad, eaten with sticky rice, was delicious. 11. Coconuts - There are a myriad variety of coconuts and they can be used in so many ways. Of course, there is the method of just drinking fresh coconut juice. One of the best type of coconuts are the roasted ones - they are young coconuts, where the outer husk has been chopped and then burned away. The juice is very refreshing, and the coconut meat inside is very tender. The large coconuts can be very sweet - though if left for too long, the juice can be tasteless. Coconut fiber has so many uses - compressed fiber is even used in beds. 12. Pomelo - While it looks like a grapefruit, it's not as juicy or as sour as a grapefruit. The rind is about 2 inches thick and it takes skill to take it off. The inside is segmented like a grapefruit and you peel off the thick skin on the segment and pull out the pulp to eat it. I like them much more than grapefruits. 13. Tamarind - come in seed pods, which when opened, there's a brownish paste with seeds in it. The paste itself is sour and has the consistency of mashed prunes. It's great to eat by itself, if you can stand the sour taste, but also dipped in sugar and powdered chile peppers. And tamarind paste is used for so many wonderful dishes - sour soup, chutneys, a sauce for shrimp. The one fruit I can not stand is Durian Most of my friends love to eat durian, and will even eat an entire one in a sitting (kilogram size!). I can't get close enough to even try to eat one. All the major hotels in Thailand have signs with a big red X across the fruit - once the smell of a durian (which may be due to hydrogen sulfide) attaches itself to the walls, the room always smells of Durian. I guess it's one fruit that proves the saying: To each his own! There are certainly plenty of other fruits to keep one happy here.

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Thursday 13: #6 and List #20 - Books by Arthur C. Clarke

Books written by Arthur C. Clarke I felt very sad to learn of the death of Arthur C. Clarke on 19 March. Like many people, I grew up with his books. I was born in 1952, the year that he wrote .http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif As a tribute, here are some of the other books that I grew up with, and shaped my mind. Some of these books are out of print, so even though I read them when I was a child, it was so long ago and my brain is leaky! 1. Childhood's End - Written in 1953, it really blew my mind. I think I was in junior high when I read it. I remember putting it down after humanity has ascended to a pure-mind, non-physical realm in the Overmind, and thought, "Is this where it's all going?" Clarke himself thought that this book was one of his best. 2. Against the Fall of Night was originally a novella about Earth one billion years in the future, when humans are in their twilight. Clarke expanded it, and later rewrote it. 3. The City and the Stars was a rewrite of Against the Fall of the Night. Both books explore the drives and the fears that make us human, as Alvin - a unique - fights against the limits that the elders say exist. 4. 2001, A Space Odyssey is probably Clarke's best known work because of Stanley Kubrick's film; Clarke had worked on the film, which was actually based on some of Clarke's earlier short stories. 2001 itself was not published until after the film came out. The book and film explore so many areas - the nature of exploration itself, evolution, the relationship of man's creation - the AI Hal - with man himself. Every few years, I watch the film again and it still makes me shiver. 5. Rendezvous with Rama is a believable scenario, which we all fear and hope for. An alien space probe travels through the solar system, and a group of humans travel to it to probe its mysteries. 6. takes place in the past and the 'present' Sri Lanka. In this book, Clarke proposes how a space elevator could work. 7. 2010: Odyssey Two is the first sequel to 2001, however, it doesn't have the same mystery of the original. 8. The Light of Other Days was a collaboration between Clarke and Steven Baxter, an engineer turned science ficiton writer. This book explores a wormhole technology, the technology of which gets out of control. While it fist gets used for research of the past, it ends up getting used to find out secrets. There is no such thing as privacy, where people can observe others, or themselves be observed, without knowing. 9. Expedition to Earth I know I read it but I can't remember any of the stories! 10. The Nine Billion Names of God is a book of short stories, the lead story being another mind-blower - a religious group hires a computer firm to put together all the possible names of God. 11. A Fall of Moondust about people who get trapped on a colonized moon after an earthquake. I remember reading this when I was a kid but not much else. 12. Imperial Earth. This book, written in 1975, is one of the first science fiction books that not only has a main character who is black, but also bisexual. It also explores the issue of cloning, which was newly discovered at that time. 13. Earthlight is another oldy, about the colonization of the moon, where tension between the earth controlled moon and the needs of the colonists is the center of the book.

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Thursday Thirteen and List #13: 13 March in History

Thirteen things that occurred on 13 March

1. William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus in 1781

2. In 1954, Viet Minh forces under General Vo Nguyen Giap started the battle against French forces in Dien Bien Phu. While the French felt confident of their military superiority, the battle lasted until 7 May with the French defeat. The

3. In 1969, the Apollo 9 mission returned to Earth, after testing the lunar module.

4. In 1911, Mongolia declares independence.

5. The Phoenix lights were seen in the skies in Arizona in 1997. I lived there in 1992 - wished I had stayed another five years so I could have seen them!

6. In 1845, Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto premiers in Leipzig. I can't imagine how performances in these old theaters must have sounded.

7. In 1884, the Siege of Khartoum started, finally ending in January 1885. A British colony, the siege was led by the Mahdi Muhammad Ahmad against the British troops led by British General Charles George Gordon.

8. In France, 1900 brought a law limiting the work day of women and children to eleven hours/ day!

9. Tennessee passed a law in 1925 prohibiting the teaching of evolution, which led to the famous Scopes Trial.

10. In 1930, the discovery of another distant planet is announced when Percival Lowell wired his news about the new planet Pluto. However, in 2006, Pluto lost its planetary status.

11. In 1989, a geomagnetic storm causes the collapse of the power grid, leaving 6 million people without electricity in Canada.

12. In 1991, the US Justice Department rules that Exxon was responsible for cleaning up the oil spill caused by the running aground of the Exxon Valdez. Although Exxon has spent 2 billion in clean-up and additional 1 billion USD for setting cases, major cases against Exxon are still going through appeals.

13. In 2003, the journal Nature reported on the discovery of 350,000 year old footprints in Italy!

And how will we remember 13 March 2008? Resignation of the governor of NY as well as a former US presidential candidate from her fund-raising position with the campaign of another woman seeking a high office.

My favorite news story today is about the Cassini space craft flying through the plume of vapor rising from Saturn's moon, Enceladus.

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List #6 and Thurday Thirteen : edition #5 - Famous Women

Thirteen Famous (and not so famous) Women 8 March is International Women's Day. It's a holiday here in Laos, where the men are supposed to cook and clean and take care of the women for the day. Today many of the hospitals and school have programs about the rights of women, with skits and music followed by lunch. In honor of the day for remembering famous women, I wrote up this list of known and lesser known women - politicians, diplomats, scientists, artists and authors. Some are famous; some I have never heard of, but it's a day to research and think about how the rights of women had to be fought for. For many of these women, being your own person was way ahead of its time. 1. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a Nigerian author now living in the US. Her book Half of a Yellow Sun starts just before the Biafran conflict and follows the lives of three characters as their lives and ideals are touched by the war. This book won the Orange Award for first novel. Her original short story is here 2. Zora Neale Hurston Raised in Florida, Hurston later moved to NYC to study anthropology under Franz Boaz and Ruth Benedict. Doing field work in African-American folk lore, she later became a writer exploring these themes in fiction. Her most famous work was Their Eyes were Watching God. As a black woman, she herself was between worlds. Her writing did not appeal to whites but her African-American objected to her accepting assistance from outside the community. She returned to Florida and died in poverty. The author Alice Walker rediscovered her works. 3. Hypatia Philosopher, astronomer and mathematician, living in Alexandria, Egypt between 370 to 415 AD. She was the first known woman involved in the sciences, and believed that scientific principles rather than mysticism explained the natural world. Because of her radical views which offended the church, she was killed by a mob while driving her chariot. Not much is known about her because her written works were destroyed with the library in Alexandria. 4. Pauline Kael Famous film critic for the New Yorker magazine. 5. Sofia Kovalevskaya (1850 - 1891) While many women take it for granted that they can study and attend university, this was not the cultural norm in Sofia's Kovalevskaya's early life. Her father allowed her to study math but when he refused to allow her to study abroad (at that time Russian universities denied admission to women), she married to be allowed to travel to Germany with her husband. Studying abroad was still difficult, but she eventually became the first woman to teach in a European University and the first woman to be on the editorial board of a mathematical journal. 6. Doris Lessing Writer, social critic, and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature. Although her most famous work was The Golden Notebook, she also wrote short stories and science fiction. Her work explores contemporary life and transitions. I remember seeing a YouTube video of her being told she had won the Nobel Prize - like "so what?" Trying to write more about this amazing woman and author would be too difficult - so I won't try. Look her up on the web and read her works. Doris LessingQuotes 7. Nefertiti A mystery woman, who married the Pharaoh Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten) and started the cult of sun worship. I think most people know her name more than that of her husbands, from the art that survives of her image. She lived at the time of the Eighteen Dynasty, about 1400 BC. 8. Cixi (or Tz'u-hsi or Hsiao-ch'in) (1835 - 1908) The minor concubine of the Chinese emperor Hsien-feng. The bio on the about.com site is very exciting and full of intrigue. 9. Wangari Maathai Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Born in 1940, she has been a major figure in Kenyan environmental movement, forming the 'Green Belt' movement to plant trees to deal withKenya's deforestation. She fought hard all her life to study - first to even get through school, then to study in the US and finally to receive her PhD in Kenya. She was impressed for her views in 1991 and suffered head injuries while taking part in a demonstration. In 2002, she was finally elected to the Kenyan Parliament. 10. Olga of Kiev 890 - 969 and known as the founder of Russian Christianity. 11. Eudora Welty Somehow I have never read anything by Eudora Welty. Her entry here is to remind me that I should. 12. Kiran Desai is an Indian author now living in the US. Her first book, Hullaballoo in the Guava Orchard established her reputation as an author. Her second book, The Inheritance of Loss, set in the hills of northern India is a meditation on change and loss and won the Booker Prize. 13. Emma Goldman Anarchist, women's rights advocate and writer, Emma Goldman was born in Lithuania and migrated to the US to work in the textile trade. She became an outspoken member of the anarchist movement and served time in jail for resistance against the draft laws. After WWI and the Russian revolution, she moved to Russia but became disillusioned with the Soviet system. She remained in Europe. Links about famous women: about.com has a nice women's biographies page.

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Thurday Thirteen : edition #4

Thirteen Things about The Internet I live in a developing country so it might seem strange that we can access the internet. It didn't use to be this way - when I first started working in SE Asia in 1985, telecommunications was quite different. Very few houses had telephones so if I wanted to call someone, I had to wait in line at the post office or at a house which made a business of letting people use the telephone. The lines were crackly so the volume of the conversation had to be turned up high. That meant that not only the person you were talking to, but everyone in line, knew your business. And since people were bored standing in line, they really listened with a passion. Telephoning someone in the US was expensive. 5 USD/ one minute. One friend had an argument with a relative during one phone call - and used up most of her month's salary. Double injustice. Instead of faxes, we had telexes - took a long time for them to make their way from Bangkok to the field. Once we got one, we had a few days to mull it over before sending a response, which took a few days to get back to the US. Things have changed. This is what I like about the internet. 1. I can keep in touch with family and friends by e-mail. As soon as I get an e-mail, I can respond and get a response even the same day. 2. My staff use IM to chat with people around the world. Since the common language is English, it's also giving them an incentive to learn English. 3. I'm able to read and complete the CME to for my biannual PA license renewal. 4. If e-mail were not fast enough, now there's Skype and I can talk with my boss in the US about work-related issues. 5. Podcasts - I download BBC programs, Escape Pod (science fiction podcast), medical lectures, exercise music, the New Yorker fiction podcasts, NPR, just to name a few. 6. Audiobooks - since I travel so much, being able to listen to books makes the drive more comfortable. And I get to keep up with books. 7. And on top of being able to listen to audiobooks, I also belong to a few online literature groups. When I have time, I enjoy the discussions. (In fact, there aren't many people who read the kinds of things I like to read over here) 8. Online writing groups - like Forward Motion, Musemuggers and Book in a Week. These communities are great for writing motivation. 9. And don't forget Nanowrimo, the biggest month-long writing marathon, held every year in November. 10. Blogging and reading blogs shares ideas around the world with all sorts of people online. 11. Online magazines and newspapers. I have to start the day with a cup of coffee and the New York Times Online. Where I live, the local papers have very little international coverage. The major papers, and print magazines and newspapers I get by post, are usually old by the time I see them. 12. When I have a broadband connection, looking at videos and downloading movies. 13. Keeping up a blog and sharing a little bit about where I live with readers. There certainly are down-sides to the internet. I'm constantly warning my staff not to be too free with information online. They are also constantly clicking on the links in spam messages and making our computers sick. There's sometimes too much information out there - especially on medical sites, it seems like one day something is bad and the next day there's new research saying that it's not so bad. When news comes so quick, analysis is spur of the moment - everything is dire.

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Thurday Thirteen for Valentine's Day: edition #3

Thirteen Things about My Valentine's Day 1. I did not receive any Valentine's cards 2. I did receive a rose 3. I did not receive any chocolates 4. The boys in the office did treat the girls to 'Happy Hour,' where we had Korean bar-be-que and beer 5. I received this text message: Happy Valentine's Day! I wish u healthy, good luck, good night and sweet dream. i miss you so i will dram to you. see u in next 3 hrs from a friend's son. He's a medical student and I've been funding his tuition and English language training. 6. I enjoy watching Lao people celebrating Valentine's Day. They really enjoy the roses and gift-giving. 7. The first few Valentine's Days I spent in Laos, no one did anything special, especially upcountry. Everything was just too rough - no running water, electricity only at night, horrible roads so it took a long time to go anywhere. Suddenly, one Valentine's Day (I think it was in '98), the director of one of the hospitals drove up with another friend to solemnly deliver a rose. Roses were rare back in those days - I think it had to have been flown up from Vientiane. It's probably the best Valentine's gift I ever recently because it meant so much. 8. I don't miss not getting chocolate. For some reason, chocolate produced in SE Asia has the appearance, texture and taste of wax. More to be given and not eaten. 9. I'm running out of things to say. Valentine's is not that big a deal for me. 10. Oh yeah. Most of my Valentine's greetings came by text message. I didn't realize that the inbox on my phone is so limited (I have an old generation phone), so if I save any texts, I can't receive new one. 11. Regarding #10 - that meant I missed receiving the one million text messages from my admirers. 12. I posted a Valentine's picture of kids settling up a Valentine's display in front of a beauty shop. Check out my main blog for the day. They really looked like they were enjoying themselves. 13. We're extending Valentine's Day to Friday when someone convinced me (while I was tipsy)to agree to support the regular Friday Happy Hour. We're going to do it at a restaurant on the Mekong River where we can watch the sunset and talk about Valentine's Days past.


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Pictures for Thursday Thirteen

Couldn't get the pictures to load as I wanted them to do in the text of the TT13 - so you'll have to figure out which is which!

Thursday Thirteen

Thirteen Cats 1. Cicero was the first cat I ever had when I was a kid, a black tom cat. He was an outdoor cat, who couldn't stand to be inside. We tried taking him to the vet for shots and he ran away. We lived about 20 miles from the vet's office so thought we'd never see him again. Six months later, he returned. That was about 1965. 2. Cluster and her sister, 3. Nebula were two tortoise shell cats. We learned our lesson with Cicero. These were indoor cats. 4. Irving was a gray cat. We thought she was a neutered male and thought that she was a banker's gray so that's how she got the name Irving for Irving Trust. Well, we couldn't trust Irving. One night he was acting funny and the next morning she had kittens. Around 1968, she took off to bestow kittens on another family I guess. Maybe she thought we'd neuter her. 5. Woody was the first cat I had as an adult (1972). I carried her in a suitcase on my bicycle while she yowled all the way. She was a nice gray tiger cat. 6. Peggy was a Siamese cat, whom I adopted in 1973 as a humanitarian, or rather felinitarian gesture. She had been in an accident in which she lost a hind leg. Her owners wouldn't take her back. 7. Saita was my first Seattle cat, after fast forwarding a few years. In between cats, I got divorced, moved to New York City, hitchhiked around the country and finally, in 1978, decided to live in Seattle. One day I was walking around Green Lake and a nice looking young man with soulful eyes convinced me to take this kitten. When I left Seattle for another long trip, not sure if I would return, a friend took care of her - and wouldn't give her back. 8. Hatty - in 1983, some friends who had moved into a loft together had cat wars. She had two big cats and he had Hatty. Hatty became absolutely catatonic and refused to eat or come out from a hole in the wall. By that time, I had moved into a house which I shared with a friend so I took her on. She remained neurotic - she didn't like to be outside so she would climb up on the roof and yowl for hours until I got back home. Equally embarrassing was that she would get on the fire escape of the apartment building next to our house and yowl into people's windows. Fortunately, I worked night shift so I didn't have to meet people's eyes. When I went to work in Thailand, I had a traumatic experience trying to find a home for her; it eventually worked out all right though. 9. Unnamed Cat in my Office who had three kittens under my desk and then they all disappeared one night. When I worked in a refugee camp in Thailand, I was amazed to open my office one morning and find a cat family there. While the refugees were not allowed to have pets, many managed to find cats or bring them from other camps. The mother cat was quite aggressive and when she felt my office wasn't secure enough, she dragged the kittens across the outpatient department and into our field coordinator's office. The following morning, she would not let her get into her office. Pretty wild! 10. Som - again more fast forwarding. I left Thailand in 1990 and returned to school. After graduation, I worked in rural community health centers in Arizona and California. Finally, when I returned to Asia in 1996 and got my own house in 1997, I could have a cat again. I inherited Som (which means Orange in Thai language) from a friend. Unfortunately, in the upcountry site where I was working, there were too many rats and people bought rat poison to take care of the problem. Som caught a rat which had been poisoned and then he died. I almost didn't want to have cats again. 12. Neung, Song, Sam- Then someone gave me these three black and white kittens. The names mean One, Two and Three since I couldn't think of what to name them. Sam eventually ran off, and other people in the neighborhood absorbed the others. I was doing a lot of traveling at the time so the cats found families to adopt. 13. Shadow was a tortoiseshell cat. My landlady in Vientiane decided that I needed to have a cat so she brought Shadow to me from a Buddhist temple. Often people will leave kittens and puppies at the temples because there is always surplus food and a lot of mice and rats. She was my constant companion for five years and a very Buddhist cat. When people in the neighborhood had ceremonies where the monks came to the house to chant, she would sit in the back of the room, listening. She had many litters of kittens who found homes around the country until two years ago, when she was run over. I still have three cats from her last two litters. So that's my contribution on a Friday. But since I still have work to do tomorrow, I'll consider this a Thursday and date it so.

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