I'm surprised that Nini & Bud describe themselves as loners. Elly & I thought we were the only such on something as socially tuned as LCT. Unexpectedly, I have become very fond of it, as witness my frequent participation.

In fact, Elly & I are beyond loners. We have completed 2 previous cruises on VOYAGER, +7 or 8 before that, all but 1 on Celebrity (our favorite until we found Regent).

On every 1 of these we have been voted the most boring couple aboard, & we have every confidence we shall retain our title on CROSS.

We never lie by the pool; never play bingo; never play cards- never play any games'; dislike Las Vegas-style shows; never participate in any organized mass activity; etc. We take occasional walks (my walking is called staggering), stare at the horizon, sit on our porch counting wavelets & thinking profound thoughts, &, much of the time, reading.

We do enjoy talking with others, over coffee/drinks/dinner, 1 or 2 other couples at a time. I have lost some hearing (& vision), & with any greater numbers find myself unable to decode what is being said. This leaves me frustrated & on returning to our cabin I may beat up Elly, if I can catch her.

We are astonished at having been given so warm & flattering a reception & want to avoid injuring any feelings. If we sometimes do not join you please never take it personally.

Some of you mentioned slaughtered chickens, chicken feet, & immature eggs. My mother sometimes took me to a nearby poultry market. Offered several live chickens she would grope each, fingering it fore & aft in a way I thought unnecessarily humiliating for the birds. A price settled, a slaughterer would slit the bird's throat & set it on the floor to wobble about, gurgling on its own blood, until it fell dead. It still fills me with horror. For pennies more a crone wearing clothes a half-step from rags would pick up the corpse & pluck it.

Like Bud, I cannot think of eating chicken feet. My Chinese daughter-in=law & her family however love them for their crunchy texture.

If you love Chinese food I strongly recommend having a Chinese in the family. (Just how you accomplish this is your business.) Mine takes us to wonderful, often tiny, not too neat places where nothing is in English & Big Noses seldom are seen. She discusses options with servers, & sets before us endlessly varied & wonderful dishes. (We have learned not to ask what anything had been before it was served us.)

Another chicken story. I came home from school 1 day to find a live chicken resident in our bathtub, clucking & defecating. I soon learned its purpose. A day or 2 later the bird was compelled to take part in a barbarous ritual, as irrational as it was cruel. Grasping it by its crunchy feet, my father whirled the chicken in a circle 3 times above my head & that of my brother, reciting a prayer asking that all our sins & the divine punishments that would inevitably follow them be transferred to the chicken.

Shortly afterwards I returned from school to find the bathtub clean & our resident chicken gone. When asked about it my mother gave evasive answers, but that evening we had chicken soup & boiled chicken. I refused to eat it on the grounds of cannibalism. My father grew angry, said we could not afford to waste food (true enough, but still....), & forced me to eat it all. I've never entirely forgiven him. Probably because of the opposition of my brother & myself (but possibly because the attempt to shift blame didn't seem to work), my parents never tried this again.

I'm surprised that ChatKat reports immature eggs are no longer allowed for human consumption. I'm not expert here, but to the best of my knowledge the problem with these eggs is the same as that with chicken flesh & livers- possible salmonella or campylobacter infection. If properly cooked, all should be safely edible. (??)

Has this infection spread to flocks on the west coast too?

Gil, you're right! Lawn Guylinder, not Lawn Guylander! I surrender to more discriminating ears.

I see you grew up in another city & in another generation. The leave-em-alone Theory of Child Rearing thus was spread beyond Brooklyn & lasted beyond my childhood. I wonder where, when & how the current fearfullness for one's children & mistrust of their good sense began.

Al (from Elly & Al)