I really should have listened to mom. After all, she was, until her death at 85, her own living proof of vanity as a virtue. It involved antidotes that, in her case, at least appeared to delay aging.

H-o-r-r-o-r!? The lamp has gone out in the ancestral grove. Frightening darkness reigns. I step inside the grove; I grope on staggering steps. The gourd is broken. I saw its shattered pieces. I ...