the busyness of my morning summerskool class has kept me ... uh ... busy enough. the class is called creative computing and contains ten outstanding young folks of the 6th, 7th, and 8th grade persuasions. we write stuff ... stories and poems and stuff. we use music for some inspiration. we use microsoft word. we learn nifty tricks on that program. we post some of what we write on the class message board at blackboard.com. it has all been pretty good, okay, nice enough ... but also kind of frustrating because time is so short. we have three days to go. i fear some students' enthusiasm is worn thin ... the glow of the whole project has faded and it has become something too much like work. sigh.

yesterday we celebrated the feast of our lady of mount carmel, the primary feast of our world-wide religious community. the day began in mundelein with prayer and finished in gurnee with food and the good company of regional carmelites. we were also joined by prior general joe and maltese student garvin. i had a great time listening to tales of adventure in foreign lands.

my summer calendar is filling up with lots of odds and ends. friends visiting me and me visiting friends. trips with pat to see mom and meg and bob dylan. and somewhere in the midst of all this i've got to get the new school year ready to run. when when when ...

i've been playing around with lists again - nothing as extravagant as the grendel index of last summer, but enough. this has been a wendell berry summer. the other day i posted minimally annotated lists of the characters in mr. berry's ten major works of fiction. he has - in the course of these books - created a coherent community. that's why a list seems appropriate - if not particularly earthshaking or useful. i at least got to look at the books again. it was like visiting with old friends.

i'm still wrestling with the sound and the fury of william faulkner. no decisive victory in sight. and i've begun reading ibsen's a doll house. not sure what to think about that yet. i'll get back to you.

In Europe life is histrionic and dramatized, and . . . in America, except when it is trying to be European, it is direct and sincere.

William Dean Howells