Good news rarely arrives in the late summer heat. Instead there comes news of the death of innocents, news of exhaustion requiring medical treatment, news of the misery of farmers whose crops are shriveling and scorching in Michigan fields. At the Boys Tennis Nationals (held annually at Kalamazoo College) a boy collapsed and had to be carried off on a stretcher. On the day my cousin Sonia and I took a 33 mile bike ride, no fewer than six people told us about the football player who had just died of heatstroke. Throughout the Midwest, children and the elderly are cooking in automobiles, small apartments, and trailer homes. These are "ozone action" days, and the days don't just have temperatures, but heat indexes. The public radio announcers are getting tired of saying "Don't fill your gas tank or mow your lawn until evening if you can help it."

Susanna is out of town for three weeks during this heat wave, with her musician, Loring, and she has called and announced that it is raining and flooding where she's been staying in Virginia and West Virgina-heat has not been a problem for her at Clifftop or Galax. When it is a hundred degrees, a flood sure sounds soothing. In her absence I'm wandering over to feed her animals once a day. Of the nine baby pigs in the new pen outside the hay barn, eight of them are white, and so their ears are sunburned pink, and these Shih Tzu sized porkers spend a lot of time standing in their water trough. The pigs aren't hers. An old friend of hers, Norm Carp, came by recently and asked her if she would let some guy keep three pigs in her barnyard, and she said yes, but additional pigs kept showing up.

Last year when we had a stretch of hot weather, Susanna lost the last of her dark-colored chickens; earlier this summer she lost the last of the long-lived hens to a possum or racoon. She's gotten three new young white chickens, and they are are upset and cranky about the heat, especially because their chicken yard is closed off, as it needs repairs before it can keep out the possums and racoons. Each day there appears in a nest against the wall one modest egg, about the size of a golf ball.

The donkeys are the only ones who like the heat. These temperatures, I suppose, are no worse than their native Spain or in the Grand Canyon where they reportedly do so well, to the detriment of nature there. Both Jenny and Jack look sleek. Only Jenny will let me spray her with bug repellent; when Jack hears the spray bottle, he acts as though I'm wielding a giant hissing rattlesnake.

"Don't water the garden," Susanna told me on the phone when she called from the watery part of our country. I didn't argue with her, even though the soil of her half acre makes the half-acre look more like a sandbox than a garden, but she says that once I start watering it, I"ll have to keep on watering. She told me to pick the cucumbers when they're little so the plants doesn't stress themselves over plumping the fruits up to full size. It seems impossible that the weeds find the energy to grow so stately. Even though she told me not to bother weeding, I pull the weeds that get over three feet tall.

It's a strange business tending someone else's garden. In my own garden, I know exactly where I planted everything. Susanna's garden stretches on, and her tomatoes aren't staked, so they reach out and mingle with all the other plants. Between two zucchini plants there's a yellow crook neck winter squash. Some days I don't carefully check one or more of her zucchini plants so that the following day there's a big green baseball bat waiting for me. Her woodchucks seem to be doing just fine. They cool themselves by eating juicy unripe tomatoes. They flee when I push open the garden gate and then they hang out in underground tunnels that connect the garden to the outside world.

I have my own garden at home, tiny compared to Susanna's, located on the only sunny piece of property Christopher and I own, a strip over by the women's prison. The prison is low security, and I often greet the women out working in their own garden or observe them doing yard work or walking to their fast food jobs on Sprinkle Road. Because I don't have a water source down there by the garden (and must lug water in buckets through the woods), I have spread black plastic on the garden rows to retain moisture. The man at Farm and Garden tells me he's not surprised my summer squash have deteriorated: apparently the plastic is causing the soil beneath it to be even hotter than it would be otherwise and this is causing the bacteria to grow. This deterioration, he explains, was set in motion by the North American squash bore. The bore laid eggs in the stem back in May, and then the larvae grew up and ate the stem. Apparently the larvae is long gone, but the stem was so damaged that bacteria (back to the black plastic) have eaten it away. A few squash flowers still blossom, but the fruits amount to nothing. The tomatoes however love the black plastic, and the melons are doing fine. Next year, no plastic for the squashes and peppers.

The heat has been hard on my dog Re-bar, who may not last much longer. Then again, the winter was hard on him, too, and I didn't think he was going to make it through that. He may live forever. In April he had a stroke which rendered him pretty much incapable of getting up on all three of his legs, and now I have to support much of his weight in walking, which I do by holding the base of his tail. He's overdue for his shots, but I've hesitated to take him in to the vet. He turns fourteen this year. I'm a little afraid each time I come into the room and find him sleeping, but so far he keeps waking up. When he wakes into the heat he pants like crazy.

Re-bar loves swimming and my brother Tom says I should be bringing Re-bar over to his house on Long Lake for an hour of cooling physical therapy every day, but I'm not so generous with my time as all that. Sometimes I bring him to Susanna's when I do chores so he can socialize with his sister Nightmare, who has sunken into a kind of depression without Susanna. Nightmare, born in the same litter as Re-bar, is stone deaf, and she sleeps under Susanna's desk, and so when I come over I have to pet her to wake her up. Old dogs do sleep well; my grandfather slept like that too in the last years of his life.

Back home, my house sits on a slab, so it remains cool so long as we keep the windows closed during the day. This annoys the big orange cat Paw Paw who likes to sit on window sills and pretend he still hunts, and also it makes the house smell a little like dog pee. (When Re-bar does call it quits there will be a ritual burning of assorted rugs, dog beds, and blankets.)

The squirrels press themselves against the ground in my yard, or at least the male ones seem to. I suppose that's because they can't go to the movies to cool down.

The carolina wrens nesting just outside the front door in the potted hanging spider plant don't seem to mind the heat. We are the northern edge of their breeding range, so heat waves may be par for their course. We have worried like crazy about that nest, worried that some creature (human or otherwise) would bother it, and to complicate matters we were in the process of trying to adopt a stray gray kitty. Christopher had detailed the wrens' every movement, and just fourteen days after the first egg hatched, four baby wrens jumped out of the hanging pot that was the only home they'd known. The mother and father seemed unaware of the progress of the chicks but returned to the nest as usual with their beaks full of grubs, bugs and suet, to find the feathery balls bailing out. The stubby-tailed wonders hit the ground lightly, looked around and then bounced back up into the air. Without looking back they headed to the woods, with a brief bathroom stop on Christopher's car.

News & Notes from Readers:

Jaimy Gordon lost her faithful companion of fifteen years, Tschotche (pronounced roughly Cho-chee), while they were visiting in Germany. Jaimy writes: "My good Tschotchie is dead. We buried her yesterday in the Blickles' fertile but stony garden. It was such a deep hole-on account of the foxes that abound around here-that standing in it and digging and digging into its coolness was like visiting another element, so now she seems both near and far away. I knew she was failing and yet I still hoped to get her home. I wanted, selfishly, to bury her near me so I could always have her with me."

Liz (Wyatt) & Kenny Cook had a baby girl Mary, and it was a much simpler endeavor than the birth of their dear Sarah, who is also doing just fine.

Darling Christopher got a new car, a Golf diesel that in a good week gets 50 miles a gallon, 40 in a bad week. We have also managed to adopt the aforementioned Gray Kitty who was hanging around , though our other cat has not accepted the adoption going on five months, and surprise encounters at the litter box get kind of rough. Christopher has named her Earline (Pronounced Er-leen). Unfortunately we have lost our favorite front yard shagbark hickory, which did not revive after last year. Felling it cost us half of the magnolia tree and half the burning bush, but the house is intact.

Campbell Clan notes: Clarion Campbell died in April of this year (age 87) and was put to rest in the cemetary north of the tracks in Galesburg. Jim and Linda will continue to live in the big house on FG Ave. Geo, Matthew & Kayla have joined Kobu-ryu karate at the Southside Dojo. Krystal is a flag girl in the Comstock High School Band. Geo's family has adopted two puppies (Shadow & Smokie) he found living in a drain pipe, and though the vet said they wouldn't grow to forty pounds, they are each over fifty and still growing. Kellee is in her second year of college, and needs a job if you know of one. Susanna is transplanting some of her beloved paw paw trees from pots into real Michigan earth. Some wicked wind storms took down a bunch of trees at the yard, thus blocking the driveway to the back field. Sheila is step-momming it, with the lovely teenaged twin Schwartz girls Heather & Heidi who are staying with her and Matt for the school year, at least. Thomas is building an elaborate raised garden and writes "I went to Kalamazoo landscape supply , I just love all the different kinds of things you can buy by the yard. You've just got to keep in mind that a yard is a lot of wheelbarrows full." Mikey writes: "I have a Kalamazoo Gazette box but I find mine every day on my front lawn or flower bed. If I don't get it right away it is wet from the morning dew and full of earwigs. I complained to the Gazette twice this week but what are they going to do? They can't fire the guy for bad service, because he is willing to work for poverty wages."

From Peter Brakeman, after his trip with son Dylan to Isle Royale in Lake Superior: "We did have an incredible time, saw many moose, and 3 moose calves (yes, we did take care not to get in between the adult moose and its calf), foxes (mostly the 4-legged kind), otters, a lone wolf, etc. Hiked through a hard rain one day, but dried ourselves in the sun the next; decided not to swim in a few inland lakes, not wanting to feed ourselves to the 6-inch leeches licking their chops -- instead we swam in the big lake, Superior, as often as possible. Met 3 guys from Calumet (in the U.P.) fishing out on Superior, who insisted we stuff ourselves with the fresh lake trout and whitefish they had just caught, and who seemed genuinely interested in what we'd been up to on the island (no kiddin', eh?). Dyl whispered to me 'why do they keep saying "eh?"'"

Lisa Lenzo writes: "I suspect that it was a raccoon that knocked down my wren house and ate the babies because the cat's water dish has been showing up dirty, as if someone has been washing her muddy little hands in it. So I started taking the cat food bowls in at night. Then today, I looked up to see a mother raccoon (her teats were a little swollen) standing on my windowsill, to which she had climbed from a porch chair, and peering in. I walked up to her, and at her feet were four babies prowling around. Next she taught them how to climb up and down off the porch several times. Also sharing the cats' bowl these past few days are four young titmice. Usually they just do that in winter, but maybe these are too young to know any better. Luckily, my cats aren't interested in birds--just a chipmunk or baby rabbit now and then."

Heidi Bell (who FYI is currently an editorial intern at Sourcebooks in Naperville) writes: "It was both great and exhausting having my niece Alicia here with us for a week. She is a nervous girl and scared the shit out of me one of the first nights she was here by coming into our room and waking me up to tell me she couldn't sleep. Waking up out of a sound sleep to someone strange standing next to my bed was pretty scary...Great America was a blast. We had a little trouble at first because Alicia didn't want to try the roller coasters. So, early on, I went on one alone while Alicia agonized on the platform. Then, after we'd gone on every spinning, swinging, flapping ride known to mankind, we tried the log ride, which has a small drop, and of course Alicia loved it. By the time she became a roller coaster enthusiast, it was time to leave. I was dying to go on the Raging Bull again because it was so great, but we had to get home. Our final act at Great America was eating huge waffle cone and funnel cake sundaes. For dinner.

"The weeks of summer day camp are flying by in a blur of dodgeball games and increasingly disgusting free lunches (I cheer when there's cheese on the day's sandwich because that means I don't have to eat the 'meat'). The kids are great, and we're all having a good time most of the time despite some strife among the staff people. I had a very strange conversation with my boss during which I could not figure out what he was talking about; it was like he was speaking in a code to which I didn't have the key. Surreal. But, as I keep telling myself, fuck 'em. I know I'm doing my job well, and the fact that we still have nearly 50 kids enrolled proves that we are doing what we are supposed to be doing. And what better way to enjoy summer than to play in it?"

From David Tartakoff: I am reading (in German) an early 19th century diary of a friend of Schubert's to bring out a bilingual edition, hopefully! It's slightly dicey and vaguely suggests that Schubert, my darling Schubert, may have been pederastic. This has caused such an outcry in the Schubert scholarly world that I wanted to see the original diary and whether any other part of it supported that suggestion. It does not, but reading that script is an incredibly difficult job. No wonder I don't have so many math papers these days!"

Anne Sjostrom writes from Australia: "These days I'm living by myself in a small cottage on 'a property', as they say here. I haven't asked the owner, who lives in the main house nearby, but there are probably a couple thousand acres at least. It's only 14 km from town, so very convenient--though the last 8 km are along a pretty rough road. Unlike the other places I've lived here, I see kangaroos nearly every day along the road. Still hoping to see a koala some day.Right now, I'm not organized enough to take much time off--I have to prepare the second half of ashort course in C++ for next month as well as get the materials ready to teach a longer version forthe semester that starts at the end of next month. I'm finding it a bit overwhelming as I still haven't learned this part of the language and don't like having to set assignments, etc. without having a good grasp of what I want the students to get out of an assignment.

"Lately, however, I have been relaxing in the evenings and reading for fun and, when the odd opportunity arises, doing some kind of experiential workshop on the weekend. A couple of weeks back I did a Tibetan Singing Bowls workshop. Around the region of Tibet, they used to hand make bowls out of a combination of several metals. The bowls make incredible sounds when you tap or rub them (somewhat like a fine crystal glass does). It turns out that here, at least, these old bowls are being used for healing. The vibrations do something to a person's body. I'm not sure how it works, but having bowls placed on my body and feeling the vibrations was both relaxing and bizarre.

"I went out over the weekend and helped the farmer (who owns the property where I live) pull dead calves out of heifers. Boy, the method of getting a too big calf out can be pretty brutal--wrap one end of a chain around the cow's neck and the other to the front of a 'ute' (short for utility truck--kind of like a pickup without side walls on the bed). Attach one end of another chain around the calf's front legs and the other end to the front of another ute. Keep the first ute stationary and slowly reverse the second one. As you might guess, the poor heifer can be left paralyzed (indefinitely) from having the calf. If, by some chance, I'm ever in a position to breed cattle, I'll think twice about joining 2 yr old heifers with big bulls!"

Carla Vissers writes from Holland, Michigan: "I've been so bad about starting books and not finishing them lately. For a while I was on a good streak of reading novels in their entirety, but now it's a challenge. I just started Steven Millhauser's Martin Dressler, though, and I have a strong feeling I'll see this one through. The book is dedicated 'For my sister, Carla,' and when I read that I got a little misty, pretending this Pulitzer Prize winning novel was dedicated to ME, his sister-in-writing or some such. Have I gone completely around the bend, or what? I'm getting absolutely no work done. I've turned into a full-fledged nighttime insomniac, so now when the kids leave for school in the morning I sit down at the computer for half an hour or so, then I think I just want to read this one little thing, then I take a book to bed and fall asleep. Ethan leaves Sunday for the Appalachian Trail (which is why my sleepless nights are spent obsessing about ticks and black bears and cottonmouth snakes). Leah leaves the 16th for Costa Rica (a week from Saturday). In fact, I need to take her to the health department for the second in her series of hepatitis vaccines. I should stop writing email now so that I can get into my 'real writing' mode--that is, staring out the window, eating a few M&Ms, staring out the window some more..."

Jesse Green writes: "Just got back from a business trip up north. I stayed 3 days at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, and it was an amazing thing for a white trash, poor-boy like me. I met the Governor (John Engler) in the hall while I was mailing a postcard. I saw Big John, and before he could move I darted between his minions and glad-handed him. I had introduced myself, pumped his hand, clasped his shoulder and told him my name and what I do for a living before he--or his soldiers--could recover. He said some empty political happy stuff and we parted ways, smiling (neither very sincere, I suspect). I have written some VERY unflattering stuff about him, his legal counsel, and his hand picked Supreme Court. As I pranced down the steps of the Grand to go buy fudge, in my mind's eye I saw him saying to one of his hirelings 'Hey, wasn't that the SOB from that legal paper that called me "self-appointed nobility" and "a whiner"?!?')

"I also ran all the way around Mackinac Island (between eight and nine miles, depends on who you ask, PLUS the 2 miles added on by getting lost and wandering around the airport and lower nine holes of the golf course). The high point of the trip for me. Some people collect tee-shirts. I run. Everywhere I go. Been hassled by secret service agents, run off by security guards, chased by would-be muggers (I think they were muggers..... They ought to train better and more often) and had things thrown at me at various places hither and yon around the globe as I ran by. More fun than a tour bus.

"But the Grand. After dark the place empties out. NO ONE on the porch at 11:30pm when I went out with my 'Big Porch Ale' (brewed special for the Grand by my friends down at Bells Brewery in Kalamazoo) and watched the fat orange moon hanging over the lower peninsula. They light up the Mack' bridge, too. Looks like an engineer's Christmas present. Once in a while a carriage drives by with the horses clop clop clopping on the road. During the day it is tacky and awful. By midnight you can pretend it is 1890 and you are an Astor or a Vanderbilt. Even in a tie and my good suit, being on that porch after midnight with a clear sky and the sound of big band music from the ballroom made me feel underdressed. I wanted a top hat. How often can a person say that? But the Grand Hotel IS a run down old pile, you know. Have you been up there? Don't think it is in any way fancy or anything. No air conditioning. The whole place leans in various directions. Cheap carpet and the doors are different weird heights and the rooms are not very nice. Looks like a flat in a cheap rooming house in some old neighborhood of Chicago (well, except they painted everything these god-awful gilded and pastel colors with bad renditions of geraniums on every surface. Ick!). Not nice, or tiled, or anything. I had a lovely view of the junky service buildings out back where they keep the lawn mowers and sort the luggage. Of course, if you splurged for an $800 room--or got Big John's suite-- it would likely be nicer. My bed was comfy, the mini-bar was cheap, the shower worked and they let me steal towels. What else does a room need? I'd rather spend the extra money on going out. The glamour is b/c of the reputation, the huge staff (all black, from Jamaica and they make them wear these awful Old South bellhop uniforms, and YES, that is very politically incorrect and the hotel gets hassled about it and I think many people feel--like I did--vaguely guilty about it even though we didn't actually do it or have any say so about it. But the staff are cool folks. I hung out with them a bit. What a great job. Work at the Grand for 4 months, two months off, work in Jamaica at another resort for 4 months, 2 months off) and the lack of cars and the huge old Michigan-pine pile of a building and the WONDERFUL food."

From Alicia Conroy: "I am home safe, with kitty no worse for wear-very clingy, as expected. The futon, however, is worse for wear as the little guy apparently found a neatly metaphoric way, lacking language, to express how PISSED OFF he was at my absence . . . oy! By the way, Bonnie Jo, apparently the only comments of mine that ever make the LP seem to involve feline scatology. I would therefore like any future quote to somehow reflect that Alicia Conroy does in fact have wide-ranging interests beyond her cat; for example, she is newly returned from a trip to Europe, where she participated in accidentally illegal activities with Rachael Perry and saw Sir Sean Connery in Gatwick Airport. Let it be said once and for all that Rachael Perry does not MEAN to steal petrol and is in fact contributing to the German economy through her part time employment at the library on Heinrich Heine Alle, and that she does not spend ALL her pay on Altbier (the local brew)...Myself, I did not buy the facsimile bowling shoes displayed in every shoe store in Dusseldorf, but instead bought some light blue with yellow platform sole Mary Janes, about which my brother Peter said: Now you'll look like a Japanese anime character! ...Rach and Steve are marvelous hosts, of course, even firing up the brand new and tiny barbeque to cook for me. Guest bed very comfy. And the German drunks on their way to the subway are quite cheerful--they sing. I think I may have gotten Rach hooked on sour rye bread and Dutch Gouda, though the local Farmer cheese was also yummy. ... Some of the more hilarious moments with Rach included the two of us prowling the Goethe Museum near her, and trying to make sense of the man's biography from guesswork and limited German 'Is that his mom or his lover? What is that about the Count? Where does Napoleon fit in?'

"My bro Peter has newly moved to luvly digs in a tony (London) neighborhood... I did a lot of walking, not much shopping: the guided walking tour of Dicken's London was fun (saw the three "black and white" houses dating from before the Great Fire of 1666). We went on the big Ferris wheel thing called the London Eye; didn't make it to the Globe Theatre; did make it to St. Paul's. Didn't spend as much time in pubs as I might have... but we did watch the England-Greece World Cup qualifier game at a pub (the Old Sod won, to the chagrin of Peter's Greek-American friends and the Athens home crowd). I was also in town during the General Election, which was kind of entertaining. Tony Blaihhhhh won again, in case you haven't heard, in a Labour landslide (the social dems picked up a few seats, the Conservatives got roasted). London is a very international city these days, and I find it more pleasant then NYC because its not so vertically imposing--only a few skyscrapers in "the city," several out in the Docklands development to the east... Still in a bit of culture shock--England seems but a dream, now that I'm back to a pissed-upon futon, my first mammogram (squish), my indeterminate future and my blossoming waistline.

Goulash Tours News: Yours truly visited Patti Kellermann and her husband Bob at their very clean house near Bad Axe, Michigan and got to look at photos from Patti's cycling trips in Cuba; Patti got a call from Berrie O'Gorman about going on a bike trip. A surprise email came from Marcia Bricker ("Living a quiet family life here in Brooklyn with my husband Mark and our almost 7 year old daughter. I'm back to teaching, working with computers and disabled kids.") I got a call from Paul Shapiro and he forwarded Derek Vann's missives for his latest trip. In an email dated Nov.3, Derek writes: "Before the flight to Hanoi, John and I had 8 hours in Hong Kong, which gave enough time to go to downtown and look around. It is amazing for the number of big buildings and people rushing around, very dynamic. Hong Kong makes Vancouver look like a small town. The flight to Hanoi, Viet Nam was uneventful. Contrary to what I expected, airport security seemed about the same as ever and the flights about 98 percent full. The Hanoi airport turned out to be new and very efficient. Getting through customs and immigration took only a few minutes. Once through customs we were approached by someone offering taxi service for $15 to downtown, about 35 kilometers. They had a small new taxi and somehow managed to get both bicycle boxes and luggage , plus four people into a car the size of a Honda Civic. We were delivered to a hotel, probably where they receive a kickback. The hotel was in good location, old town Hanoi, $20 a night, complete with television and remote control air conditioning. From landing to hotel check in was less than an hour. Hanoi is a great, dynamic city full of surprises, all positive. People are extremely friendly, no begging and no vendors giving hard sells. There are few cars, but thousands of motor scooters. Initially it was a challenge to cross the street because of all the traffic, and traffic uses any space that is available. Somehow it seems to work, though. The trick to crossing the street is to walk slowly, neither stopping or speeding up. This allows the motor scooters and bicycles to guess where you will be and somehow go around you-hesitate or speed up and they get confused, causing problems. The city is full of small shops and restaurants. We spent several days in Hanoi, longer than expected, as it is such an interesting and pleasant place. We soon found favorite restaurants, one for breakfast on the main street for viewing the start of the day, then coffee by the lake, and a place with a balcony on a side street for supper to watch evening activities. Prices are incredibly low, $1 for breakfast, half liter of good bottled beer under a $1 and dinner with a beer for $3. Most of the time in Hanoi was spent wandering the streets and relaxing in restaurants. We did go to see Ho Chi Min's mausoleum, but it was closed. Uncle Ho had been sent to Moscow for his annual servicing. It would be easy to spend a couple of weeks in Hanoi relaxing and checking the sights, taking some of the tours offered to surrounding areas. We did one overnight excursion to an island in Hi Long Bay. Hi Long Bay is an amazing area full of small islands, many of which have large caves. The $17 tour bought pickup at the hotel, a 3 hour bus ride to the coast, a great 4 hour boat ride through the islands to an island resort town with an ocean front hotel, plus all meals. Finally, after a week we got the bikes together and started cycling. The cycling so far has been minimal, only 300km in 3 days to a town called Vinh. We did get stuck in a small town for a day, as a storm blew though with torrential rains. Otherwise weather her has been good, cloudy and warm. The only slightly uncomfortable bit being the high humidity. The ride so far has been through delta land in the constant company of local cyclists going about their daily tasks. People are extremely friendly, constantly smiling and saying hello or waving. We had planned on heading to Laos today, but decided to stay a day in Vinh, a city that was apparently flattened by the French and the Americans then partly rebuilt by the Russians. It contains a large area of decrepit five story apartments, described in a guidebook as like East Berlin on a gray rainy day. Wandering the main and back streets brought may friendly hellos and smiles. The streets are full of life. Hard to believe when you see what people have and how hard they have to work. People really seem to work hard and put in long hours, often 7 days a week. Viet Nam seems to be a very safe country in which to travel. There is no feeling of insecurity, walking main or back streets either day or night. Contributing to staying in Vinh was finding a luxury hotel for $20. Based on what I have seen of Viet Nam, I would highly recommend it as a place to visit."

As for yours truly (Bonnie Jo), I am currently teaching at GVSU in Allendale, and next semester will be teaching full time a Western Michigan University. As for the new novel, it is called Q Road, and it is out of my hands until January 11, at which time I will have two weeks to work frantically on it, and then it will really be out of my hands. Publication is set for September 2, 2002. I have a story in the "Animals in America" issue of in WitnessMagazine ("My Dog Roscoe") and "Candy" appears in Ontario Review. Check out my new website at www.bonniejocampbell.com.