Well, that is quite an imaginative fantasy. Nice period flavor, but didn't some pan-continental railroads already get built?

I often wonder just what the school should be expected to handle. My students are in the 10th grade, and we can legally only do so much. If we venture into areas that we are not licensed to teach, we are in trouble. But who should teach kids how to get along with other kids? Who should help gay kids understand what is happening, and how to adjust to our world? What do we do with obese kids? They are often quiet, and have such little confidence. When I divide the kids into groups, I assign groups so that everyone will be included. Our society has become quite prejudiced against obese kids. Athletes, cheer, pom high steppers, etc are in. We hear so much in the news about weight that diet drinks and healthful foods are really in. I wonder who should help these kids. But then who should help the pregnant ones, the ones ready to run away, and the ones shoplifting. Parents are often giving their kids drugs and alcohol. They must see the cleavages of the sweaters - they probably buy them. The skirts are soooo short, and the boys' pants sag so much. The pop machines and candy machines are closed at lunch, but the teachers who buy food in the commons come to the lounge with fries, tater tops, greasy hamburgers, loads of grease and always a dessert. I think our school will be making some changes, but the changes need to be through the country. The school to tell the parents that their kids are obese? What a joke! Maybe there should be something the school could do about it, but if the parents don't know the kids are overweight, what good would it be to tell them? Sammy

Why would anyone trust personal accounting information to someone who is too stupid to comprehend "no advertising" in the Garden Web Membership??? Perhaps you did comprehend it, but you have the opinion that rules only apply to others, that certainly boosts my faith in your professional ethics...LOL

Cindy, I found the article. I won't post the whole thing, but here are some highlights: For "The Kite Runner," though, filmmakers have placed a huge wager on authenticity. They are betting, among other things, that audiences can be persuaded to sit still through two-plus hours of subtitled plot development - something moviegoers have become more accustomed to lately, thanks to studio films like "Apocalypto," "Letters From Iwo Jima" and "Babel," all of which unfold completely or largely in languages other than English. About the cast, it says: The search for a cast proved even more challenging. The streets of Kashgar, teaming with bearded men and women in burkas might fool the eye into thinking one is seeing Kabul. But dialect cannot be finessed so easily, and the producers needed to find a Dari- speaking cast once the decision was made to film in the original language. Homayoun Ershadi, a 59-year-old Iranian actor who played the lead in "Taste of Cherry," which was one of the winners of the Palme d'Or at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival, was recruited from Tehran to play the role of Baba, the father of the principal character, Amir. Khalid Abdalla, a British actor of Egyptian extraction who starred in "United 93," plays Amir as an adult. He traveled to Kabul to learn Dari in a crash effort that left a deep impression on the author, Hosseini, who spent time on the set here, and on all of the native speakers involved in the film. And Shaun Toub, the Iranian- born actor who appeared in the movie "Crash," appears as Rahim Khan, Baba's close friend and a mentor to Amir.