Believe me, Steve, I highlighted the whole story, but my precious machine of American design, mostly made in China by underpaid workers and mostly adding unreasonably much value to American bank accounts of billionaires while exploiting rare metals to extinction, refused to let me highlight more than one word at a time. Thus compromised and cuffed I nevertheless wish to express how much I grieve with you. How estranged the Lost Continent over there has become from the fastidious puppy it used to be! (The metaphor of the puppy was offered me by an intelligent American woman in 1994, I added ‘fastidious’ because I think of a fastidious retriever whenever I think of dog puppies.) Do you know the Mastiff? An obese Mastiff? Going that way down, I fear.