Got back from a 3 day trip with my 12th graders, went to Wadi Arugot (an oasis near the Dead Sea) and Eilat mountains (Near the Red sea...). This picture is a Panorama assembled from three individual pictures, you'll notice the unusual aspect ratio.

Ilan Bernet
Tel Aviv, Israel

Another technique for panoramic photography was featured in last month's issue. -ed.

You can help preserve or improve some of the 12 million acres of land under Corps stewardship. Work opportunities include watershed cleanup, campground management, archealogy preservation, and wildlife work. Call 'em or click 'em.

Check out www.mulletsgalore.com for the most encyclopaedic accounting of the mullet hairstyle we've ever seen.

Some exerpts of email from Donna Edsall regarding her cat Rosie (our December SpokesCat):

She's little but she's wise, she's a terror for her size. (We are studying heroic couplets in British lit). Rosie weighs about 10 pounds. Her motto is "If it moves, kill it." Rosie brought me a dead mouse this morning. She was so proud of it she brought it to me upstairs, then followed me down the stairs with it also. We should all have something to be proud of.

The Rodent Count since June 1 is 90, by the way. This is only the corpses I have found. She brought a squirrel in the other morning but it got away I think (I don't smell the rotting carcass, anyway).

I am getting used to the death screams of the small animals they drag in from time to time (although I recently saw Rosie, tiny Rosie, stalking a deer--how she planned on dragging it through the cat door is beyond me).

My brother Bob visited last weekend. In the evening he sat in my recliner with the foot rest up as high as it goes. I never do that. Well, Rosie came in with a mouse, put it down, and watched it scurry under the recliner. She went under there too. Then she came out and went around the recliner looking for the mouse. Round and round. Then she stood up on her hind legs and started peering behind Bob's back. "She thinks the mouse is in the recliner," I told Bob. "No, it isn't," he said. Rosie went around the chair another time, stood up and tried to look under Bob again. "She thinks the mouse is underneath you," I told Bob. "No, it isn't," he said. A moment later he jumped out of the chair and stood glaring at the seat cushion. The mouse ran up to the head rest. Bob knocked it off the chair, picked up Rosie and pointed her at the mouse. She took off after it.

In other words, it was a typical evening at my house.

After reading Mike McCrae's story, "Last Rites" I thought it might be possible to explain the punchline with a picture. I got this particularly fetching contribution from Ricky Rodriguez who was river kayaking the Shenandoah near Harper's Ferry, West Virginia and probably manages to fulfill any fleeting tutu fascination with the donning of a sprayskirt.

Adventurer Julie Keller sends us this equally fine figure of a paddler in a proud pose as Danseur avec Neoprene.

Dear Get Lost,

"There is so much in this world that most people just never see anymore. It is sad knowing that they can go through life never realizing what treasures we have before us. I think this is the main reason people have become so numb to their feelings -- why compassion is a stranger. If people could only see, they would understand."

- Kevin Pickard

I like this quote. Where I work a lot of inner city people come into to look us over. They are not too clean, their clothes hang on them, colors dulled by dirt. Worst of all, are the dead eyes of a predator. I say "hello," and see little humanity in their expressions and expect no reply.

I know things aren't supposed to be this way. The solution is not as clear cut as trying to help our animal friends, but as important. Maybe more important.

I look into my granddaughter's eyes, my Hannah, and can tell she has the eyes of a seeing person. They are incredibly lovely eyes, and belong to an almost eight year old with a compassionate heart. Kind and caring Hannah. Maybe she will be the one as Robert Kennedy once said, "To tame the savageness of man, and make gentle the life of the world." It's a thought.

Love, Carolyn Koppel

Carolyn: Every so often we get tired of being glib and we get tired of witnessing the pointless damage in the world. This past week's World Trade Organization's conference brought out thousands of the most unlikely people to demonstrate because, I suspect, they too are tired of it. Life in this country makes it easy to ignore and overlook certain kinds of carnage, violence, and mistreatment. Who in their right mind would go out of their way to experience it? You and I met at the demonstration in Miami to draw attention to the mindless captivity of Lolita the Killer whale, and since that time, I've become aware of just how many people are finally being driven to take a stand in the midst of so much blissful, self-imposed ignorance. The numbers are growing, especially among the very young.

Leslie