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either. Did you ever get all four feet mired in green cheese? Even Grundy’s big mouth isn’t going to be much help there!
    Remember when I told you about our rows of pine trees, and the blueberries that were getting mowed down? Well, a lot of blueberry bushes did get flattened, but a number survived because they were between the trees where the mower couldn’t reach. Now they have berries, and we’ll be able to pick them before long. Spring comes early to Florida, you see. You know, as I look at those pine trees, and see all the rows, it’s as though each row is a life, going straight through to the other side, with the trees alongside marking off the years. Some go a long way, and some only a short way. Each seems unique, yet if you step into the next row, there it is with its own life, just as nice. I think that if we could step from one person’s life to another, as we can between the rows, we would see how similar they are, even though each is the only one that seems real to it, and each probably believes that if it closed its eyes, all the others would have no existence. It’s sort of funny and sort of sad and sort of awesome too.
    We had a little bat visit. We found it on our garage door a few evenings ago, hanging from the top of the screen. It must have been too tired to make it home, so it stopped at our house. It turned its head and looked at us, but didn’t fly away. We left the garage open, but it stayed where it was all night, and the next day. I’m afraid it’s dead now. We would have helped it if we could, but we don’t know much about bats except that they are good to have around. They’re like flying mice, really. So I guess we’ll have to bury it. Some don’t make it out of the hospital, unfortunately. I considered calling it Brick Bat, after the one in
Heaven Cent
, but that might be unkind.
    Remember all those fireflies that turned up in our forest? They’re still here; every night they flash all around our house. I woke up one night and there was one flashing in our bedroom. I thought about catching it in a glass and taking it out, but I was afraid that in the dark I’d hurt it, so I waited till morning—and then couldn’t find it. I hope it found its own way out, because houses really aren’t the place for fireflies. We have fireflies by night and dragonflies by day. I was talking with some folk outside, and a dragonfly came and perched on my shoulder. They’re so pretty, with their four wings and their different colors! I saw six blue ones at once, one day. When we go out, they are always curious just what we’re doing, and sometimes they will sit on our hands if we hold them up.
    I’m enclosing a cartoon about the awful oil spill this past week in Alaska. Do you watch the news on TV? Maybe you should. Two recent headlines have been about the oil spill and nuclear fusion. Do you want a lecture on how they’re connected? No? Too bad, because I’m going to give it anyway, and maybe you’ll be interested when you see how it relates to you.
    You see, our world needs a whole lot of energy, for everything from jet planes to hospitals. They get most of it from fossil fuels like oil, and when they ship that oil, accidents happen. You know how bad drunken drivers are? You would not be in that hospital now, if the driver who hit you hadn’t been drinking. It’s a mean, bad business, drinking and driving, and there’s a group trying to stop it, called MADD. That stands for Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Well, the captain of that oil tanker was drunk, and his ship cracked up and leaked oil into the sea, and now thousands of innocent birds and seals and fish are dying because they got soaked in oil. So we need to stop the drunk drivers—but also to stop the shipment of oil, so it can’t foul the ocean.
    The trouble is, we need that oil, for a squintillion things. So what do we do? Well, another source of power is nuclear energy. But that can foul things up awfully too, when some drunk