March 25th is the last day Kroger Food Stores will be doing the Share Card program. Remember to swipe your Share Card when you do your grocery shopping at Kroger's. The UFL will receive a percentage of what you spend there.

There's a new one in our Lending Library: Grasshopper Dreaming by Jeffrey Lockwood. I must admit, it was the subtitle that grabbed my attention: Reflections on Killing and Loving. "Hey! I want to read that!!" I thought, and took it home. Although it turned out not to be exactly what I first thought, I thoroughly enjoyed it and recommend it highly. It is a "series of nine essays - some painful, others funny, and all invariable complex - that gives readers a provocative glimpse at the moral and spiritual conflicts in the life of a scientist who sees himself as a "hired assassin for agriculture

From Joel Vance, author: "Grasshopper Dreaming is as much a voyage of self-discovery as it is an odyssey of discovery about the hidden life of a most familiar insect. In luminous prose, Lockwood peels away the mystery of grasshopper life and digs pretty deeply into the lives of human beings at the same time."

We pray for the children

     who sneak popsicles before supper,

     who erase holes in math workbooks,

     who can never find their shoes.

And we pray for those

     who stare at photographers from behind barbed wire,

     who can't bound down the street in a new pair of sneakers,

     who never "counted potatoes,"

     who are born in places where we wouldn't be caught dead,

     who never go to the circus,

     who live in an X-rated world.

We pray for children

     who bring us sticky kisses and fistfuls of dandelions,

     who hug us in a hurry and forget their lunch money.

     And we pray for those

     who never get dessert,

     who have no comforting blanket to drag behind them,

     who watch their parents watch them die,

     who can't find any bread to steal,

     who don't have any rooms to clean up,

     whose pictures aren't on anybody's dresser,

     whose monsters are real.

We pray for children

     who spend all their allowance before Tuesday,

     who throw tantrums in the grocery store and pick at their food,

     who like ghost stories,

     who shove dirty clothes under the bed,

     who never rinse out the tub,

     who get visits from the tooth fairy,

     who don't like to be kissed in front of the carpool,

     who squirm in church and scream in the phone,

     whose tears we sometimes laugh at and

     whose smiles can make us cry.

And we pray for those

       whose nightmares come in the daytime,

       who will eat anything,

       who have never seen a dentist,

       who aren't spoiled by anybody,

       who go to bed hungry and cry themselves to sleep,

      who live and move, but have no being.

We pray for children

      who want to be carried and for those who must,

      who we never give up on

      and for those who don't get a second chance.

For those we smother and . . .