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

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)-

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

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars — mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is “mere”. I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination — stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern — of which I am a part…. What is the pattern or the meaning or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little more about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. -Richard Feynman-

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

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

I have not yet begun to fight! -Captain John Paul Jones, USN-

I wish to have no Connection with any Ship that does not Sail fast for I intend to go in harm’s way. -Captain John Paul Jones, USN-

On the other hand, we have different fingers. -Jack Handey-

And why is it that writers write but fingers don’t fing, grocers don’t groce and hammers don’t ham?