An excerpt from an email to my sister, Jessica.

"all's well here. work is going great. we did some very adorable art projects last week - all themed with animals in polar regions. a narwhal coloring page, penguin suits, a tiger mask. no, not a mis-type. there exists a polar tiger. the amur (or siberian) tiger is the largest of all tigers, and inhabits the far east of asia (russia, mongolia, china). it is in appearance very similar to it's warm-weather cousins, excepting that it can be much larger (up to 10 feet, i think). the amur tiger is an endangered species. from what i read, it is concentrated into two regional populations. in one, the tigers number about 450. in the other, less than 50. reasons for the tiger's tenuous hold onto survival all trace back to man. however, in captivity the tigers numbers are high (it being bred as early as the 1950s). in addition, the captive population shows a greater genetic diversity than the wild population. this seeming incongruence likely results from a population decline in wild amur tigers after many had been taken for captivity.

"sorry to say, jess, that i cannot provide a bibliography to you. though, i may say that information comes from four main sources: encyclopedia britannica, wikipedia, a charitable website for the survival of the amur tiger and a guest appearance by said tiger on the BBC's series planet earth. the BBC series is entirely captivating, and i highly recommend it. the information provided is refined and captivating, and the cinematography ranks among the finest, most breathtaking documentary footage ever recorded."

This week at the preschool, we have chosen a new field of study: namely the study of that which fuels the fire of our beings, the art of eating. Our focus this week lies upon gingerbread, especially as it results in gingerbread cookies, gingerbread houses and fanciful, candy lands (such as the imagined land in which gingerbread men and women go about their business). To the last end, I have taken the opportunity to present a new song to the children. It is an essay upon 'candy land' more in title than text, which i discovered mainly while engaged in singing it, and to my slight chagrin. In fact, it is a vision of paradise taken not from the perspective of a sweet-toothed child, but from the perspective of a rail-ridin', law breakin', hustlin' vagabond, affectionately called a hobo. The song lyrics are below. Some of the lyrics had need to be edited to fit young (naive?) ears.

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains there's a land that's fair and bright

Where the handouts grow on bushes and you sleep out every night

Where the boxcars are all empty and the sun shines every day

On the birds and the bees and the cigarette [became "sugar plum"] trees

Where the lemonade springs where the bluebird sings

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains all the cops have wooden legs

And the bulldogs all have rubber teeth and the hens lay soft boiled eggs

The farmer's trees are full of fruit and the barns are full of hay

Oh, I'm bound to go where there ain't no snow

Where the rain don't fall and the wind don't blow

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains you never change your socks

And the little streams of alcohol [became "apple juice"] come a-trickling down the rocks

The brakemen have to tip their hats and the railroad bulls are blind

There's a lake of stew and of whiskey [also became "apple juice"] too

You can paddle all around 'em in a big canoe

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains the jails are made of tin

And you can walk right out again as soon as you are in

There ain't no short handled shovels, no axes saws or picks

I'm a goin to stay where you sleep all day

Where they hung the jerk [though I cannot condone this behavior, the lyrics stand] that invented work

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains

I'll see you all this coming fall in the Big Rock Candy Mountains