Dear All,

This isn't politicking -- I don't do that.

But this is about Al Gore's idea to generate some interest about the environmental crisis -- he reasons that a lot of signatures make an argument look real good, so he's asking for them. I was willing to send mine, and thought you might be too.

Check out his website at Al Gore Goes to Washington for the form.

And thanks. My daughter is breathing a little easier now.

"Spring is like a perhaps hand" by e. e. cummings

This poem was printed on the liner that came under my room service dinner this weekend. I almost didn't notice it, preoccupied as I was with the tiny salt and pepper shakers and making room on the bed for the tray. I tried to bring it home -- folded neatly into a tiny rectangle, tucked in the pocket of my suitcase -- but it got mangled somehow. Ripped in the middle, creased like crow's feet. But here is the poem, so lovely in a Chicago room with snow flurrying out my window and a full moon rising:

Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere) arranging
a window, into which people look (while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here) and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and from moving New and
Old things, while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there) and

without breaking anything.