The other day, I was thinking about what Twain might write if he got the chance to rework his famous Salutation from the Nineteenth Century to the Twentieth. Looking back on what has happened since his death, he would have been keenly interested in the good and bad things we have lived through, and he would have written about the bad. Unfortunately, I have to follow such thoughts with an actual attempt to write it, so with apologies to Twain and all of you, here is what I came up with: A Salutation Speech from the Twentieth Century to the wenty-First Taken down in ascii by friends of Mark Twain "I bring you the stately anomaly called HUMANKIND -- returning bedraggled, besmirched and dishonored from mass murders in Auschwitz, Siberia, South Africa and Cambodia; with his soul full of meanness, his arsenals of nuclear missiles and his mouth full of pious hypocrisies, he stands on the brink of annihilating this planet or plundering somebody else+s. Drink deeply to forget where he has been, and you won+t have to think about where he is going." Dec., 1998. If this inspires any of you to try the same thing, I hope you will share it. Terry Ballard