When we castrated our one-year-old family jack-ass, Jack, a few years back, he was not even broke to lead. After the veterinarian hacked off the critical nuggets, he said, "These are huge," and handed them to me. I dug a hole outside the chicken coop and dropped them in, still glistening, and wiped my hands on my jeans. He told me to exercise Jack a few times a day to prevent swelling and increase drainage from the open wound. No, he said, they wouldn't stitch it up; that might result in infection. This transpired on a hot, humid June day, and Jack just wanted to lie out on the bare dirt and moan over his loss. My mother Susanna, the former horse-trader and 4-H leader, was out of town, and so I could not consult with her. I was able to get Jack on his feet by kicking him and yanking on him (as sympathetically as possible), but the only way I was able to get him to do anything remotely resembling exercise, was to tie him to the back bumper of my Chevy truck and drive. The neighbors enjoyed this activity far more than Jack.

The whole point of castrating Jack was to prevent our nearly-forty-year-old jennet, Jenny, from getting pregnant. Well, it turned out we did not fix Jack soon enough by a long shot, because the following late March, Jenny foaled. As usual, she took care of this affair entirely by herself, ate the afterbirth even, and we were greeted one cold morning by the sweetest, fastest, longest-legged creature on the planet. On the second day, we wanted to put Jenny and the baby in the barn for protection against some harsh weather, and it took four of us a half hour to chase him in to join his ma, and even this involved some serious wrestling on my part, as well as surprisingly loud he-honking on the baby’s part. On his first full day on this planet, this baby was capable of outrunning any potential predators that might have attacked his wild ancestors in North Africa.

Two and a half years later, our Jenny died. For the month following, we had two emotionally distraught boy donkeys mourning and he-honking at the fence line as though their hearts were breaking. Donkeys form intense friendship bonds and sometimes they even die as a result of losing friends. A few weeks earlier, Jenny had stopped eating and wanted to stand alone; she nipped either of the boys if they stood with her. Our veterinarian gave her a shot of steroids and vitamins, and that perked her up a little, but a week later my darling Christopher discovered Jenny keeled over. My brother George rented a backhoe—not an easy thing to do on a Sunday afternoon—and we laid her to rest six foot down just outside the pasture fence.

I could go on at great length about my two donkey geldings, Daddy Jack and the baby, Don Quixote, now three and a half years old and thirteen hands high, the biggest donkey we've ever had. Father and son like to roll in their dust pit, and they are sometimes sighted in the field rearing up on their hind legs kicking at one another with their front legs. (Susanna calls this "ramping.") But if I went on about their personalities, you’d get bored the way I get bored hearing about your cats and children. And you'd rather hear about donkey basketball, anyhow. Okay, let me just tell one story: one hot day last year Jack had a big fat horsefly biting his back, near his hip. Jack leapt in the air, threw his seven hundred pound body upside down into his sand pit, and crushed the horse fly. Can I tell just one more thing? The other day, my Don Quixote spooked, got away from me and jumped a four-foot goat panel fence to get back into his pasture--for crying out loud, he practically jumped his own height!

Before I talk about donkey basketball, you should know that the French, the Swiss, the Belgians, and plenty more folks around the world eat horses, donkeys and mules. The Japanese serve up equine burgers right next to whale burgers. And roasted donkey is apparently Korean leader Kim Jong-Il's favorite dish, which he refers to as "heavenly cow." Several Texas slaughterhouses will pay 30-60 cents a pound on-the-hoof for your pleasure horse today. Every week at the Shipshewana, Indiana livestock auction, dozens if not hundreds of equines end up in the kill pen, destined to become horse sirloin or donkey sausage, or zoo food. Donkeys can be got for as cheap as $25. According to a Dallas Morning News story, "In the United States, almost 57,000 of the nation's estimated 6.9 million horses were slaughtered in 2001 with exports of horse, ass and mule meat totaling about 13,000 tons."

I'm not telling you this to make you feel bad, just to let you know that if a donkey or horse has no value beyond sentimental value, there is a danger of that animal some day becoming meat. Even one Kentucky Derby winner, Ferdinand, was eventually sold for meat. That was why I decided to give my donkeys value by training them. What can donkeys do? you ask. Well, for starters, they are great companions, and once trained to lead, they like to take walks with you--they especially love to walk behind you along trails, the way they once followed prospectors, and if you will let a donkey stop occasionally and sniff the ground or a tree or an upturned bucket, he will be very grateful. I am surprised that more homeless people don't have donkeys, for they are far more companionable than shopping carts, and the donkeys could live just fine on the dry grass in abandoned lots.

Donkeys are sometimes employed to protect sheep and goat herds, as they will kick to death attacking coyotes. For this reason, I'd suggest you keep your dog leashed around unknown asses. Donkeys are proportionally stronger than horses and can carry heavy loads, as they still do in Mexico and the Middle East. If you can rig up a harness, even one made of inner tubes and burlap sacks, you can train a donkey to pull a cart or a sled or a plough. And people ride donkeys, as Mary, pregnant mother of Jesus did, and as I now do, ever since I have trained Jack to go, sort of, where I want him to, so long as it's down the long driveway and back.

In the next six months I hope to train Don Quixote (Donkey-Oatie) to carry a rider as well. That way, if I were to die, say if I were crushed beneath an avalanche of remaindered hard cover copies of my novel Q Road, these donkeys could have a new life as part of a pony ride at a carnival--you know, one of those mechanically operated apparatuses that keeps the animals walking in a circle all day. It's not a great life, but it's better than being served up with pommes frites in a Brussels café. Apparently our Jenny spent some years of her early adulthood as a pony-ride donkey, plodding around and around and around, and we suspect that was why she always had such contempt for humanity. For years after we got her, we couldn't even catch her. And in twenty-eight years with us, she never let anyone touch her ears. Donkeys are particular about their long ears, and hers must have been mishandled at some point.

I should mention that our Jenny did have a seasonal a job for twelve or so years, taking part in the nativity play at a local church. For years she and our old jack-ass Triumph (R.I.P.) spent the week before Christmas tied out in front of the Covenant Church in Comstock with some sheep and assorted teenagers dressed as shepherds. Susanna referred to this as hauling her ass to church. One below-zero night, the shepherd teenagers felt sorry for Triumph (maybe this was before we had Jenny) and let him in the church to warm up; Susanna got a late call asking her to come help them haul her ass out of the church. George says it took several ropes and a lot of muscle to convince Triumph to leave the heated building. A decade later Jenny distinguished herself at the same church. A rather stout gal was chosen to play Mary in that year's pageant, and Jenny decided she'd had enough. During the solemn performance, she bucked stout Mary and sent the plastic baby Jesus skidding across the parking lot. Jenny, like all the donkeys I've known, had a marvelous, if dark, sense of humor.

So not every donkey is cut out for ferrying the mother of God from church yard to parking lot creche. Where, I wondered, could an ass's stubborn demeanor and sense of humor be assets?

This spring my nieces invited me to a donkey basketball fund raiser at Comstock High School. I kept blinking; I’d heard about donkey basketball being played in the past, but this was the twenty-first century. Though I feared it was all some joke the kids were playing on ticket buyers, I forked over my six bucks and marked my calender. In the meanwhile, I learned that the game was real, and that animal rights organizations disapprove of donkey basketball, lumping it together with rodeos and bullfights as being abusive to animals. My brother George works at the school, so on the afternoon of the game he called me to tell me a man had arrived with a trailer full of donkeys. Upon investigation, I found the menagerie in the school parking lot: ten donkeys tied to the outside of an enclosed stock trailer, with a man brushing them individually, first with a hard rubber curry comb and then with a softer brush, just like I do with my donkeys.

The donkeys--all ten males--were smaller than my boys, maybe 40 to 42 inches tall. And looking inside of the trailer, I saw immediately that the size did matter. The donkeys rode in this trailer, side to side; the feed trough stretched down one side, and if a donkey were too long, he wouldn't fit comfortably. So there was no way that my donkeys could ever hold this job. I asked the handler if I could help him brush, and he produced another comb and brush, and a brown and white spotted donkey seemed to enjoy my attention.

In answer to my questions, the handler told me that the donkeys ranged in ages from five to nineteen, and that the charcoal and white spotted one was still a jack, with all his equipment. Wasn't that a problem? I asked. Apparently not so long as there were no female equines in heat in the gymnasium audience. In the donkey world, any white-and-dark pinto/paint patterned donkey is called "spotted," and the black-and-white coloration is especially highly valued. Each donkey had two names, the donkey handler told me: a real name and a show name used during basketball games (e.g., the brown and white one was called both Cinnamon and Killer.)

The handler pointed out the nylon shoes worn by the donkeys, designed so that they could tread on gymnasium floors. He told me that he sometimes trimmed their hooves and reinstalled the shoes if it needed to be done while they were on the road. He treated the donkeys affectionately, but I was still a little worried: according to the PETA website, the donkeys would be "punched, kicked, dragged, screamed at or whipped" during the evening game.

There is only one important rule in donkey basketball, I learned that evening: a player only earns a point if he or she shoots a basket from the back of a donkey. The donkeys, meanwhile, act like donkeys. When one gal sits on one donkey's back, the donkey does not move; the gal gets off the donkey and pulls the lead rope (attached to the halter--there are no bridles) and the donkey still will not go. Throughout the game, these players, all Comstock public school teachers, do not realize that if they stand beside a donkey and walk, he will lead just fine--like cartoon characters, the helmeted teachers continue to try to pull the donkeys from the front, as though not realizing that in any battle of strength and stubbornness, a donkey will win. One hopes that these teachers of children would have by now figured out a thing or two about stubbornness.

The male teacher astride Cinnamon-Killer has the ball and is moving toward the basket. Suddenly, this donkey bends his front legs and puts his head to the floor. The teacher slides off the front. The teacher gets on again, slides off again. The audience is roaring with laughter. The donkey turns to the bleachers, adopts a deadpan air, as though he doesn't know what people are laughing about, and when the man climbs on a third time, he does it again. Because of his trick, Susan Nowak, of Buckeye Donkey Ball, refers to this donkey as a ducker. "A ducker is a donkey that will run, stop on a dime and lower its head while the rider slides right off the front." She says, "The donkeys are not trained to do any of the moves they pull on the basketball court. However we can breed them to get a certain type of donkey. If the mother donkey is a ducker, then the odds are the baby will be one too."

A slender donkey with a cross at his withers bucks his rider and then takes a triumphant lap around the floor before the rider, a favorite social studies teacher and football coach, coaxes the donkey back to him. All Buckeye basketball games are fund raisers, and Buckeye advises that the groups choose players who are well-placed in the community--the higher and mightier the player, the more fun is the humiliation. A donkey lies down on the gymnasium floor and rolls, back and forth, as though scratching an itch, the way my donkeys do in their dust pit. Another donkey waits until a rider gets one leg over his back and then he sets off at a good pace, too fast for the "rider" to either jump on or remove the leg. The audience roars and claps as the rider hops alongside.

The Buckeye Donkey Ball people say: the donkeys win every game, which is corny but feels somehow true. All around the world, people over-work, neglect and beat donkeys, and donkey basketball might be the only forum in which donkeys abuse people without repercussion. Whenever the action stops, the teachers, despite the abuse the donkeys dish out, can't keep their hands off their mounts. They keep petting and petting them on their necks and foreheads. Donkey-abuse by the riders doesn't seem to be a problem; even if a rider did harbor hurtful thoughts, he would not dare be cruel in front of an audience. Most important to me, as a donkey lover, is that before today few of these kids in the audience have spent time in the company of donkeys, and now the kids love them, in all their beauty and stubbornness.

One donkey carries his rider toward the basket in slow motion, while the rider bumps up and down and says, "c'mon-c'mon." Meanwhile somebody steals the ball from him--stealing the ball is a legal move in donkey ball. There are no whips, and because the donkeys are short, the riders cannot really kick them in the bellies the way one might a full-sized horse; the most they could do would be to slap the donkeys' rumps. I wonder whether some of the riders are too big for the donkeys. I thought the same thing when I got the latest copy of Brayer, the publication of the American Donkey and Mule Society, and saw a photo of a big man riding a beloved little donkey; the caption says she lets him know when she feels strained. I think the same thing whenever I see a photo of two men riding a burro in Mexico. In any case, few riders spend much time on the bare backs of these animals during the basketball game. Buckeye Donkey Ball Company is a member of the ADMS.

The first game ends with a score of 3 to 1. There are two preliminary games, a halftime event, then a final game. The halftime event is donkey rides for the kids. The players and other volunteers lead the donkeys with children on their backs up and down the floor. The donkeys walk leisurely, and they do not toss the kids off. They do not duck and send the kids sliding down over their heads, nor do they try to run away. These donkeys know the difference between the players who can be treated with contempt and ridicule and the kids, who must be treated gently. I try to talk my very long legged niece Kayla into riding a donkey--if she got on the smallest one, her feet would almost touch the floor, and it would make a cute photograph--but she consults with her cheerleader pals and decides against it.

I am proud of these basketball donkeys. They perform dutifully as donkeys have performed throughout the ages, since they were domesticated from the wild ass herds 6000 years ago. The Old Testament is full of donkeys, who carried every burden of the people of Israel. Forty years in the wilderness was a long time for the asses, too, and they supported whole households on their backs. Donkeys have never had it easy. When donkeys appear in literature, they are often being beaten, and that might be what makes this basketball-burlesque version of donkey-human interaction so satisfying. Finally the donkeys are beating the people, if only for a little while.

There is something else wilder happening here as well, related to the very improbability having livestock misbehaving in the gymnasium: hooved beasts on the shiny wood floor where principals hold assemblies; a school board member in a funny hat rushing in to scoop the poop. A few times a donkeys runs loose, and the kids in the front row have to lift up their feet so as not to get trampled. The kids shriek with pleasure at this. I’m surprised and grateful that, in this world of overbearing safety, insurance companies allow this show to go on. I have seen a lot of events in this gymnasium, in my years as a Comstock High School student and beyond, including once a hypnotist, and this is by far the liveliest and wildest. Normally, teachers and coaches assert control in this place, or bigger kids hit littler kids with dodge balls; vice principals mete out discipline or conduct just-say-no lectures that bore kids silly. This evening, the donkey energy in this room creates a scene as wild as a foreign-speaking circus troupe setting up their high wire on the street in front of your own house.

These show-business donkeys have a much different life than donkeys who plow all day or carry wares to market in the hot sun or carry water from a village well. In many of the jobs that donkeys perform, their very donkey-ness is a negative quality--many third world farmers would rather have a tractor to work for them, and they beat their donkeys for not being more like machines. But in donkey basketball, donkey-ness is celebrated; these donkeys arrive in the gymnasium with dignified airs, and they leave with that dignity intact. And from the donkeys' point of view, the best thing about this job is that they are always with their donkey friends.

The truth about donkeys is that they are the smartest of the three equine groups (the zebra is the third equine), and what is called stubbornness in donkeys is often simply cautiousness. Asses have long memories. If you abuse a donkey, then the donkey will not forgive you in her lifetime. Donkeys in abusive situations throughout human history seem to take the attitude: "Sure, beat me. Beat me until your arm aches, you damned fool." Perhaps donkeys have some greater wisdom, perhaps they know about the punishment their torturers will endure in the afterlife. Throughout our time with asses on this planet, donkeys have carried a good portion of human burdens but have never given in to humans completely; donkeys are almost never slavish. Wild ass herds in Africa travel at speeds of forty miles per hour, and I've heard it said that donkeys can outrun horses if they care to, but they just don't see the point of doing it, and whipping a donkey will not help her see the point.

(There's some bad news about the wild asses. Every single wild ass population from Mongolia to Somalia is in danger of being wiped out in the very near future. In many areas, ass meat has become a major food source of rebel soldiers.)

Susanna the horse-trader still has one foot in the old school of equine training. While I will teach the guys a new skill with cajoling and carrots, Susanna has had success with the stick. She taught our Jenny to load by whacking her with a two-by-four when she first resisted. After that single two-by-four experience, Jenny would jump from the ground into the open bed of a pick up truck at the mere sight of a board. (Gee, maybe this has something to do with why Jenny was always so darned hard to catch.) Susanna's relationship with our old jack Triumph (along with his companion Disaster, he was named from the Kipling poem), reached a high point the time she had to ride him three miles home. She rode a hundred yards and he ducked, sent her sliding off, and then he stood still to let her get back on. A hundred yards later, ducked again, then stood and waited for her to get on again, and all the way home he did this, never tiring of his own joke. It was a long trip, Susanna said. Triumph would have been an excellent basketball donkey.

Back in the parking lot, the handler fed the basketball donkeys hay and grain two hours before the game, but the watering situation did worry me. The basketball donkeys, when they're on the road, only get water once a day, after their game. George, a Comstock High School custodian, could tell you just how unacceptable it would be to have a donkey release a stream on a gymnasium floor, but I've always read about the need for keeping fresh water available at all times. And yet I also have known there is a difference between horses and donkeys regarding watering; if the water in our tank is ever dirty, the donkeys will simply refuse to drink, for days even, until I clean out the tank.

The evening after the game, I did some research. The web sites pertaining to pet donkeys stressed that clean water should be available at all times, but sites discussing wild asses or work animals suggest that one visit per day to the watering hole was adequate so long as they were allowed to fill up. In dry areas of Africa, the ability to go without water makes donkeys practical work animals (In fact, the only thing that prevents donkeys from being ideal work animals, a report said, was their deep attachment to their companions, from whom they cannot bear being separated.) Other sites said that both wild and domestic asses can lose as much as 30 percent of their body weight from water deprivation and then bounce back after one watering--not ideal, I'd say, but probably that means the basketball donkeys are not suffering water deprivation.

Our new veterinarian, Alexandra Bedford, was unfamiliar with donkey basketball, and when I told her about it, she expressed concern, especially about what might happen to retired donkeys. Alex is the one who told me that donkeys don't show pain the way horses do and stressed that if one of my donkeys shows any signs of pain, then I should assume he is in a great deal. With such stoic animals, it is hard to know if they are suffering. The basketball donkeys seem fine to me, but I don't know them as well as I know my own asses.

Susan Nowak's family has been involved in donkey basketball since 1934. Her grandfather became a partner in the company in 1946, and she recently joined her parents in running the Buckeye Donkey Ball business office. The company also promotes donkey baseball and donkey races, but these don't have the popularity of basketball, she says. The Ohio farm has about eighty donkeys, and they also rent them out for parades or fair-related events. "When the donkeys are home," she says, "they are just donkeys. You know, walking the pasture, eating everything in sight, and braying all at once at 2:00 a.m." She says that when a donkey is retired from basketball, he just hangs out at the farm for the rest of his life.

If I were a donkey, I would prefer to live a life of leisure, hanging with my pals, play-fighting, rolling in sandpits and eating every thing I came across, but if I had to choose a career, I'd guess I'd seriously consider the basketball gig.

A foal born of a donkey father and a horse/pony mother is a mule, while the opposite (and far less common) coupling begets a hinny. Both are sterile. Donkeys can breed with zebras, to produce a mix called, variously, Zonkeys, Zedonks or Zebrasses. Natural selection has made donkeys healthy and able to survive on not much food, so that for most beloved pet donkeys, the great danger is overfeeding. And you should never feed them anything containing refined carbohydrates (no bread, no cookies, please!), or it will make them sick, and you won't know they're sick because they won't show it. Donkeys keep their dignity despite the odds, and if you are generous and open hearted with a donkey, he or she will teach you something about friendship. Be gentle with the ears, and your life will fill with the glorious sound of he-honks.

Photos by Christopher Magson: Jack and Don Quixote; Bonnie Jo riding Jack with the Bitless Bridle™.

News and Letters

Darling Christopher has long been saving his money, and now he has made nice with the building inspector and drain commissioner, with the Delton Pole Barn people and his wife in order to construct his fortress of solitude, a 32x48 foot pole barn to contain his dreams (as well as the 8-N Ford tractor with implements, table saw with room to cut 10-foot lengths, compressor, welding tanks, motorcycle, riding mower etc.). We moved everything out of the old garage and covered it with tarps before disassembling the structure with the chain saw and Ford tractor. A few months back, self and Christopher took a trip to southwest Florida where we saw every bird we could have imagined seeing, including bald eagle, tri-colored heron and American bittern, and of course lots of alligators. Also we saw Jan Johnson of Vermont and Venus, standing near alligator pond in a trailer park. His web page has finally arrived on this planet: www.zontar.net.

Susanna's farm news: Susanna swears she is going modest this year on her garden, but it looks expansive to me. Loring roto-tilled it three times before we put down black plastic mulch. They have so far trapped and shot five woodchucks, so maybe there's hope even for the beans. Oh, and a thirty-five-pound raccoon recently met the business end of Loring's .22 pistol as well, so maybe the chickens can relax. There have been several coyote sightings. Granddaughter of Susanna, Krystal Gayle Campbell, oldest of George's kids, has just graduated from Comstock High, turned eighteen, and gotten her belly button pierced. Now she's a triple threat.

Fun at the the cottage: visitors for a recent weekend event include three Lipsons cousins plus children: Sonia (with Felix and Lucy) and Sam (with Ava) from Boston, and Mimi (with cat-chasing dog Medusa). Mimi reports she has profitably sold her little Los Angeles house, and has now returned to Philadelphia. Sonia says she is embarking on a project to save her crumbling coach house in Somerville, MA. See Christopher's photo of Sam. Kellee Campbell joined us and was instrumental in the making of cherry and strawberry-rhubarb pies for the dinner. Joanna also arrived from Boston (with her cat-chasing dog Cleo) to begin her summer working on the little cottage. The full complement of Chicago Herlihys: Terry, Kathy, Julie, Andrew were also in attendance. It's so exciting when Lipsons are in town that I can't think straight. Or perhaps it's the wine we drink. Perhaps it was Lipson-intoxication that inspired Christopher and I to purchase a Lustron steel home in our neighborhood. More on the Lustron, including photos, in the next newsletter.

We are sorrowful over the death of Robin Lynch of Lansing, Michigan who, following a mysteriously high fever, was abruptly diagnosed with a rare liver cancer. Husband Mark Lynch and hospice helped Robin spend her last month at home with dignity and grace and relative comfort and in the good company of cats. We will miss her life force, her liberal politics and her good humor, even in dark circumstances. Rest in peace, bright Robin.

Heidi and Adam report on their trip to Alaska: We're back from Kodiak. We had a really great time. The island is beautiful, though it rained a good deal of the time we were there. I could never live there because of the combination of cold and wet, but it is a wonderful place to visit. Everything was blooming. We saw sea otters, a seal, and tide pools filled with little creatures. Thankfully, we didn't see any bears. The salmon aren't running yet, so many of the bears are still up in the mountains, I was told, which was fine with me. Did you know that the first thing bears eat when they come out of hibernation is a certain root that unclogs their intestines?

Carla Vissers writes from Holland earlier this year: Is Mercury still in retrograde? I'm thinking it must not be because terrible things keep happening. Two of my colleagues have lost much-beloved pets lately. Jack Ridl's Clumber Spaniel, Bobbie Jean, died a few weeks ago, and Beth Trembley's German Shepherd, Baker, died Monday night. Julie Ridl's mom is dying of cancer and they've had to move her dad, who has Alzheimer's, into a nursing home since her mom is incapacitated. Sheesh. Priscilla's Marcel (the little Papillon) got his cast off the week and she tells me there are places on his leg where there's no skin--just tendon and bone. Jesus. It's all too much sometimes.

On the other hand, the wedding in North Carolina was a blast. My Aunt Charlotte and Uncle James were there from Alabama. Aunt Charlotte is a passionate player of dominoes, and Uncle James is a passionate lover of football and hater of all things Republican. (My son) Ethan was a groomsman, and at the reception he ate his boutonniere--a white rose. I saw a woman I didn't know looking at him as though she were trying to decide whether or not to call the police.

Nearer the end of the semester, Carla writes: I'm so sick of college students I could puke. I'm especially tired of being forced to look at the naked midriff of practically every young woman I teach. Sheesh.

WRITING NEWS: Alicia Conroy and Melissa Fraterrigo will soon have their collections of short stories published, by Carnegie Mellon and Livingston presses--congratulations! Donna Sparkman, overworked professor, has done a wonderful job guiding the production of the tenth issue of Kudzu, literary magazine at Hazard Community and Technical College in Hazard KY, and it contains some lush writing. Heidi writes from Chicago: We went to the Printer's Row Bookfair today ("brought to you by the Chicago Tribune and Target"--we are indeed in a David Foster Wallace weird world) and saw Stu Dybek, Alex Kotlowitz, and a guy named Steve Bogira, who recently wrote a book called Courtroom 302 about the court system in Chicago. The panel was centered on Courtroom 302, and the other panel members were praising it. I was wondering what Bogira was going to say when it was finally his turn--how does one handle such excessive praise gracefully?--and he says, "Well, I completely agree with what you've all been saying about how great the book is." Totally deadpan. It was perfect. Carla writes, "I just heard from my friend Matt in Chicago about this phenomenon of bookcrossing. Do you gals know about it? If not, check out the website www.bookcrossing.com. It involves releasing books "into the wild," as the site puts it, then tracking them on the web.

Please send your news and letters to bonniejo@iserv.net, or PO Box 52, Comstock MI 49041