Hello Readers, This week is a continuation of a letter from Pelea Meador and her remembrances of Dippin', Chewin', Spittin', and Smokin'. Pelea writes...

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Natural disasters, wars, accidents, illnesses and George Bush. The news is too depressing to watch. I spent my day cleaning and the house is STILL too filthy for visitors. Doug made me a cake unlike any cake I have ever had before. I asked him to take all the children to Boy Scouts so I could have an hour to myself. I mopped the floors for that hour. I’m tired. My hands smell like dust. I still don’t have Tommy’s graduation gift. Or food for Friday. At least I am not hysterical yet.

The numbers speak for themselves:

Eighty-two percent of Americans now say the country's seriously off on the wrong track, up 10 points in the last year to a point from its record high in polls since 1973. And 31 percent approve of Bush's job performance overall, while 66 percent disapprove.

The reasons are self-evident, so no further comment seems necessary.

We use them all the time - our firefighters, police officers and emergency medical service personnel. Hardly a day goes by that we don't come into contact either directly or indirectly with these hard working public servants. When we have traffic accidents or emergencies at home or at work these public servants are the first on the scene in our communities. Often risking their own safety in order to serve the public good, these employees of our cities, states and municipalities deserve to have collective bargaining rights.

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We use them all the time - our firefighters, police officers and emergency medical service personnel. Hardly a day goes by that we don't come into contact either directly or indirectly with these hard working public servants. When we have traffic accidents or emergencies at home or at work these public servants are the first on the scene in our communities. Often risking their own safety in order to serve the public good, these employees of our cities, states and municipalities deserve to have collective bargaining rights.

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I've been meme'd. The rules:

1) Pick up the nearest book.
2) Open to page 123.
3) Locate the fifth sentence.
4) Post the next three sentences on your blog and in so doing...
5) Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

While killing time in an airport bookstore last month, I picked up a new edition of Lolita and settled on a fun little project: This year I'm going to reread a few of the books that inspired me to become an English major way back when. I'm curious to see, fifteen years later, how my sense of the novels has evolved. So far, Nabokov is more impressive and Humbert is more disturbing than I remembered. Case in point:

"Oh, I've been such a disgusting girl," she went on, shaking her hair, removing with slow fingers a velvet ribbon. "Lemme tell you--"

"Tomorrow, Lo. Go to bed, go to bed -- for goodness sake, to bed."

I pocketed the key and walked downstairs.

I cheated by including a bit more than three sentences, but it seemed unfair to omit the final detail -- Humbert pocketing the key and taking leave while waiting for the sleeping pill he had just fed to Lolita to work its charm.