Since early 2004, America has had two robotic rovers on the surface of Mars, exploring, analyzing, and sending back breathtaking pictures and data galore, helping us to learn about our celestial neighbor. Originally expected to be a mission of around three months, the two rovers – dubbed Spirit and Opportunity – have surprised one and all by continuing successfully now for more than four years.

There is a great story about Art Linkletter, who was a household name and widely known in his heyday as a television personality. The story goes that, as Mr. Linkletter entertained at a nursing home, with microphone in hand, he asked an elderly lady in a wheelchair, “Do you know who I am?” The lady replied, “No, I don’t, but if you will go over to the nurses’ station, one of the nice people there will tell you who you are.”

"We are obviously watching the dollar very carefully," Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told the Senate Banking Committee on February 29, 2008. Yes, Bernanke's Fed is watching, as is the rest of the world, while the once-mighty American dollar sinks to the status of third-world currency! Since August 2007, the U.S. government has spent nearly $1 trillion bailing out financial institutions and to shore up the ailing US economy.

There is a line from "A Death in the Family" by James Agee that says: "How far we all come. How far we all come away from ourselves. You can never go home again."

Dr. Jekyll, in novelist Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, was a respected 19th century doctor who concocted a personality-altering potion that turned him into Mr. Hyde, an out-of-control threat on the after-dark streets of London. Little by little, the evil Mr. Hyde took over, until all the good Dr. Jekyll had done was destroyed.