Access Guides
Avalon Travel
Berkshire House
Chronicle
Countryman Press
Eyewitness
Falcon
Fielding's
Fodor's
Footprint Handbooks
Frommer's
Gayot Publications
Globe Pequot Press
Insider's Buides
Insight Guides
Interlink
John Muir
Knopf Guides
Lonely Planet
Michelin
Mobil Travel Guides
National Geographic
Pelican
Rick Steves
Rough Guide
Sasquatch
St. Martin's
Time Out Guides
W.W. Norton

You can help preserve or improve some of the 12 million acres of land and water under Corps stewardship. Work at beautiful Corps lakes across the county with opportunities including watershed cleanup, campground management, archealogy preservation and wildlife work. Call 'em or click 'em.

PRETZEL & LIZARD WORK ON THEIR MEMOIRS.

Hey, Get Lost:

When I went to visit my Aunt Paula in Florida, she fixed a pumpkin pie, among other things. She was a terrible cook, partly because she saved ingredients until they were way past the expiration, should- be- buried- six- feet- under date. The sweet potatoes were bad so she jazzed them up. I'm not sure what she did to them, but they were a deep maroon, sort of the color of beets. The mince pie looked like tar on a plate. And the pumpkin pie was gray.

Just so you know.

Hector and I are so proud to be on the January 2000 cover.

Donna "The Pretzel" Edsall

I think the worst cooks I've known were Home Economics majors or women who never quite recovered from the Great Depression. We had a neighbor, a very nice woman, who saved the bean water from the cans of pintos, she saved what appeared to be lawn clippings for vegetarian broth long before yard-waste programs became popular. Every quasi-edible bone, shard and trimming headed to the garbage only by way of a "hearty soup."

She also made her teenagers' clothes, so that the poor kids were objects of pity when thrown into a cruel teen environment. My late uncle Johnny's mother used to save all her remnants from her sewing projects and instead of making quilts like most people do, she would make him boxer shorts. At Christmas we were not allowed to laugh when he opened the annual carton of shorts. (He claimed he wore them all at least once.)

Leslie "The Lizard" Strom, your Editor

FLORIDIAN SANDCICLES

Hey, Get Lost,

Bitter was the wind in its cold and yowling ways, whistling through the hollow where once beat my heart. Even the stars were gone from the heavens today and the lunar eye squinted half shut at the menacing sting of it. Clouds that tried vainly to capture her glow were hastily brushed away, for the wind had no time to play, but screamed maddening on its way. The majestic poinsettia, once as red and green as Christmas itself, stood as a blackened curled skeleton, lost in the freeze. Oh sure, our birdbath occasionally crusts over with a thin layer of token ice this time of year and so too, the little wading pool that we keep for the dogs. But this is the first time I have seen the icy fingers reach deep into the pond. Crows skated gracelessly in the shallows this morning, entertaining me with a comical vaudeville of albatross-like landings. Wings spread and flailing on the slippery ice as they careened toward frosted tufts of browning shore reeds. It was COLD!

Puuleeease, someone remind me that I live in Florida today, for the air was deceitful of that fact. (Didn't I tell you that our cold fronts came in January?) Not since 1976 have I personally seen snowflakes drift to the browned grasses and stay long enough to build a mini-snowman in this tropical paradise. No snow came today, but the birdbath didn't ever thaw completely and the crows never learned how to skate. Because... tomorrow it will be in the 70's again, and this will just be a memory.

Gail Boysen

This freak cold snap that's hitting Florida will no doubt make you cherish that sweltering 100 % humidity in the summer all the more.

HEY, WE NEVER READ ABOUT WEATHER LIKE THIS IN THE BIBLE...

	Hey, Get Lost, Once every 50 years there's real snow in Israel, even at 500 Meters. I took the kids to the mountains on the way to Jerusalem. This was Avinoam's first time. Ilan Bernet