In answer to a submitter's question on protection from Google, Alex has been kind enough to inform me:

...

If anyone tried to send me a sonnet this morning between 5:30 a.m. and 8:30 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, you probably did not get through due to the Google gmail crash.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sciencean...ash-fixed.html

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,499106,00.html

If so, please resend, as the problem has been fixed.

Thank you.

Cathy

I love the word bake-off. It takes me back to those Pillsbury Bake-offs in the '50s where some nice June Cleaver-ish housewife would win for her yummy brownies, or some other delicacy.

At the time, my father was recovering from polio (which he contracted in the spring the year the vaccine became available to the public) and my mother, age 25, was not only his caregiver and physiotherapist, but also in charge of the first four of what would eventually be her seven children, all of...