All right. This is probably the cutest darn story I've heard in a long time. Dylan Cast is a 7-year-old first grader at Montezuma Elementary School. Like most of us, when Dylan learned of the destruction caused by the recent tsunami he was utterly appalled. Unlike most of us, he vowed to actually do something about it.

Four Distinguished Artists at the KiMo Theatre Gallery

As kids in California, we used to hunt for sand dollars on the beaches north of San Francisco. They were a precious commodity because we almost never found anything but broken shards. The waves and rocky coastline weren't kind to the slim, fragile disks.

Brandy Slagle

Emeli F. Roche as Anne O'Sullivan in Sonnets for an Old Century

Vortex Theatre

Teatro Nuevo Mexico brings an innovative production of José Rivera's Sonnets for an Old Century to the Vortex Theatre starting this weekend. Rivera's play is a series of monologues delivered by different characters in a waiting room for the afterlife. Project director Michael Blum has recruited a dozen Albuquerque directors to direct each separate monologue. Genius or madness? You decide. Sonnets for an Old Century runs Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m. $10 general, $8 students/seniors. Sundays at 6 p.m. $8. Runs through Feb. 6. 247-8600.

Monique Delatour

Sekou Sundiata

Rodey Theatre

Poet, playwright, lyricist and performance artist Sekou Sundiata appears at UNM's Rodey Theatre this Saturday evening, Jan. 29, at 7:30 p.m. to perform his one-man show Blessing the Boats. The multimedia performance covers three difficult years in Sundiata's life during which he battled against renal disease, got a kidney transplant and almost died in a car accident. Funny, wise and deeply personal, Blessing the Boats should be an amazing show. It's being performed as part of the Revolutions International Theatre Festival. $16 general, $12 students/seniors. 266-2826.

Last March the U.S. government released five British men from Guantánamo Bay after holding them for nearly three years. In August the men filed a complaint that described a period of captivity eerily similar to that of the Iraqis in Abu Ghraib. They were punched, slapped, denied sleep, sexually humiliated, hooded and forced to watch copies of the Koran being flushed down toilets. Eventually the pressure proved too much—they gave false confessions that the British intelligence service, MI5, later showed to be untrue. Upon their return to the United Kingdom they were released by Scotland Yard without being charged.

It took cartoonist Jeff Smith 13 grueling years of blood, sweat and laughter to compose his epic comic adventure, Bone. A grand total of 38 international awards have been bestowed on the series, which follows the three Bone cousins—Fone Bone, Phony Bone and Smiley Bone—on their tragicomic journey through a fantasy medieval landscape. The entire series was recently compiled into a massive 1,300 page volume. Smith himself will be making an appearance at Santa Fe's True Believers Comics and Gallery (435 S. Guadalupe, (505) 992-TRUE, www.true-believers.com) this Thursday, Jan. 27, from 5 to 7 p.m. It'll be worth the trek for comic fans.

Constance Hester investigated guardianships and conservatorships for the Alameda County Superior Court in Oakland,Calif. for two decades. Since retiring in Albuquerque several years ago, she has more time to devote to her writing.