I have a new column up for your reading pleasure. It's about my view that we Americans don't offer our babies enough babying but treat older kids and teenagers like babies for far too long.

Let me know what you think (see guestbook above).

--KATIE

I have two 8 week old purebred Persian kittens available for adoption - free - to excellent homes. You must agree that they will be indoor cats only and that they will be spayed/neutered within 6 months.

I have a black kitten (we think a female) and a tabby (we think a male). Both have beautiful, long Persian coats. The mother is our tabby Exotic Shorthair and the papa is our Himalayan.

And before anyone sends me emails about how I shouldn't have allowed kittens to be born, don't. I agree with you. We waited too long to get Moses neutered. He's neutered now ;-)

If interested, email me at kgranju@yahoo.com

You must live within driving distance of Knoxville, TN

I've been reading a lot lately about the tens of thousands of
polygamist fundamentalists who live in Utah, Arizona, and Colorado. I don't think that polygamy in and of itself should be any of the government's business, but the problem is that as it is practiced in these huge, right wing cults, teenage girls are basically enslaved to their "husbands" and then raped and turned into baby machines. The governments of these states and municipalities are totally aware of this happening under their noses and do nothing to stop it.

A very sad and interesting case is that of teenagerRuby Jessop. She ran away from her polygamous family last year when she was told she was to be given as a "wife" to a man more than twice her age with many other "wives." When she was located by child welfare authorities, she was handed back over to her parents. The only sightings of her since that time have been in a local town where she was surrounded by other people from the cult and was clearly pregnant.

The paralells between what happened to poor Elizabeth Smart and this girl are clear and disturbing, but unfortunately for Ruby, her biological father is not a well-to-do, mainstream Mormon, but an abusive, polygamous member of a large Mormon breakaway sect that insists that all teenage girls are given away to other men in the group as sex slaves.

I saw what I believe to have been the worst kids' movie in cinematic history last night. And truly, I'm not that picky and wasn't expecting much in the first place.

Savage is gone, praise the Lord.