When Laetitia’s granny was a young bride learning to cook she tried several recipes in which olive oil was an ingredient.  At that time, American grocery stores usually carried only one kind.  It came in small bottles, a yellowish sludge that was often rancid when it was opened.  For many years she didn’t understand why people raved about olive oil. Then she visited an olive mill in Tuscany while touring southern Europe and was awed by its fresh unfiltered product.  Laetitia wrote the day’s limerick about Granny’s olive oil experience.

Olive oil is sure to please your palate
On your bread or your pasta or salad
When unfiltered it’s best
And must be first cold pressed
To get the top score on your ballot.

Laetitia took a tour group on a cruise along the coast of Peru that included a flight overthe Nazca lines. Scholars estimate that these geoglyphs, large designs that include both lines and figures, were created sometime between 500 BC and 500 AD. Anthropologists have proposed a variety of hypotheses regarding the purpose of these enormous figures, but none received as much publicity as the claim by Erich von Daniken that these were alien space ship runways.

In the desert near Andean cliffs
Are the Nazca lines whose geoglyphs
Have been there since prehistory
But still are a mystery
That has spawned quite a number of myths.