The difference between smart and stupid is not always apparent

THERE'S this story I remember about a lighthouse keeper who went downstairs on a beautiful cloudless summer day to answer a knock on the door.

"Terribly sorry to disturb you, old boy," said the middle-aged tanned gentleman at the door. "My wife and I were sailing by and saw this lighthouse, and came in for a closer look, and we've run aground. Can you help us?"

"Sir," said the lighthouse keeper, "do you know what this is?"

"Well of course old chap. It's a lighthouse."

'In such ugly times, the only true protest is beauty,' Phil Ochs once said ...

DAWN was breaking over the magnificent desolation of the Karoo landscape as cats eyes flung themselves towards me along the road pointing toward an infinite horizon.

This is the 9th month of the year 1999. There are 99 days to go to the last year of this century. Do you feel a sense of destiny?

A BUTTERFLY flapped his wings in East Timor, setting up gentle spirals of air currents that grew as they intersected harmoniously with others nearby. He lived gloriously for a few short hours, mated, and died. Night fell and the remnants of his wings tossed and turned, no longer with life of their own, in the now strong breeze.

The stars looked down silently upon the scene. They had seen it before.

How we deal with death is as important as how we deal with life...

If you knew that a rose would scream, would you still pluck it?