Scavenger Face
For several years, a broken riding lawn mower has sat behind our garage. (Dad bought it when David went to college, i.e. when he would finally have to mow the lawn himself. We always had to use an often-clogged push mower.) Grand Blanc Township no longer has a special "anything two men can carry" disposal day and the replacement on-request service refused to cart off a heavy riding mower. Mom had the bright idea that perhaps if we placed it on the curb scavengers might claim it. What did we have to lose? If no one carried it off, I would just roll it back behind the garage to sit and rot for another couple of years. I took out the garbage and the recycling as soon as I got home this afternoon, rolling the mower to the curb at around 4:45pm. A few minutes ago, I took the recently full kitchen trash to the curb and found the mower gone, exactly as Mom had predicted. Holy wow! Actually, that was even faster than Mom had predicted; she thought the early-morning scavengers, they of the rusty pick-ups and authentic trucker hats, would claim it. Some time between 4:45 and 7:45pm, somebody felt the need to claim a broken down lawn mower off our curb; it didn't even last the night. The moral of the story? For fast, efficient service, you just can't beat scavengers.

The Aftermath of "The Hour of Europe"
Hyperlink. The Dayton Accords were never perfect, but Bosnia and Herzegovina has been at peace for ten years. The use of American military might to end the genocide in the former Yugoslavia came far, far too late, but it remains the best thing President Clinton did in his eight years in the Oval Office and one of the noblest things America has ever done.