Part I: It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly, a shot rang out! A door slammed. The maid screamed. ¶ Suddenly, a pirate ship appeared on the horizon! ¶ While millions of people were starving, the king lived in luxury. Meanwhile, on a small farm in Kansas, a boy was growing up.

You can have the other words — chance, luck, coincidence, serendipity. I’ll take grace. I don’t know what it is exactly, but I’ll take it. -Mary Oliver-

I think 74 degrees Fahrenheit is the ideal overnight temperature in February.

Part II: A light snow was falling, and the little girl with the tattered shawl had not sold a violet all day. ¶ At that very moment, a young intern at City Hospital was making an important discovery. The mysterious patient in Room 213 had finally awakened. She moaned softly. ¶ Could it be that she was the sister of the boy in Kansas who loved the girl with the tattered shawl who was the daughter of the maid who had escaped from the pirates? ¶ The intern frowned. ¶ “Stampede!” the foreman shouted, and forty thousand head of cattle thundered down on the tiny camp. The two men rolled on the ground grappling beneath the murderous hooves. A left and a right. A left. Another left and right. An uppercut to the jaw. The fight was over. And so the ranch was saved. ¶ The young intern sat by himself in one corner of the coffee shop. He had learned about medicine, but more importantly, he had learned something about life. ¶ THE END

You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream. -C. S. Lewis-

Living our brief lives between the scales much bigger than an atom, yet much smaller than a galaxy, we forge our tools out of electricity, magnetism, and mathematics, and try to figure out how the whole thing works. We reach deep into the heart of matter for clues about the origin of the universe, and look to energetic messengers from the depths of space for reassurance that our curiosity will do us no harm, puzzling at the wonder and the unity of it all. -Stephen Reucroft and John Swain, Globe Correspondents (10/11/99)-

May there be such a oneness between you that when one weeps, the other tastes salt. -M. Buxbaum-

You may fire when you are ready, Gridley. -Commodore George Dewey, USN, 1 May 1898-

When trouble arises and things look bad, there is always one individual who perceives a solution and is willing to take command. Very often, that person is crazy. -Dave Barry-

I have never understood the female capacity to avoid the answer to a direct question. -Spock, “Star Trek”-