I am haunted by the pictures of Saddam's sons. I am also devastated inside from the descriptions of the tortures they perpetrated. I seem to be too sensitive for these reports. Last month, I decided not to renew my subscription to The New Yorker. I am beginning to close down -- not to information, but to The Culture, and it's slant on information. All this should go without saying, noting the other things I have done lately (i.e., moving out of the country), but it still comes as a surprise to me that I want to fold my own tent of The Culture.

I am on the planet that you call Mars. From here, your world seems like a garden paradise. Full of possibilities. We have been observing you for many of your centuries. We have seen a great deal from here. From time to time we send Ambassadors to you. They appear as you, and in fact they voluntarily erase their Martian memory for the duration of their mission in order to harvest information in the most unbiased way.

For the first time in very many eons, we are alarmed. We see your species, which had been nursed to become the husbands of your planet, drowning in a sea of the inconsequential. You have no idea who you are, where you have come from, where you are going. You are on the verge of becoming an interplanetary disappointment.

Sometimes, recently, we have despaired of your ability to go to the Next Step. You take one step forward, and two steps backward. We continue to walk among you -- to guide, to teach, to encourage your evolution upward. Much rides on your blossoming, because you are part of our solar system...the other planets (there are twelve, by the way) are depending on your development to make the rest of us complete and whole.

We have work to do. We watch you spinning your wheels. Sometimes we feel there is nothing to do but to let you pass and wait for the next planetary opportunity with another species.

We have moved closer to you now than we have been in thousands of years. Consult your astronomers. See that we are here, ready to help.