one good thing. The Tempest: Critical Essays has been published. run right out and get your copy quick... actually, it's kind of pricey... and if you haven't recently read this play by shakespeare or pondered various literary critical theories, you might find yourself out to sea, as they say. but it is a very nice-looking book. see?

this is my brother pat's book. and he has worked very hard at it for six years. and he likes me enough to have sent me my own autographed copy. (you don't get to read the inscription because, like all good inscriptions, it's over the top...but i hope that i will live up to it or into it eventually.) i haven't plunged in yet, but i have tested the waters and look for a full day's reading - which might come tomorrow. thanks, pat. good work. i can't wait for the sequel.

another good thing: on thursday jay and i drove down to visit mom and meg in petersburg. excepting very difficult traffic around chicago, we sailed we roared we rumbilicated down through the guts of central illinois to say hi to at least two people we love. mom and meg...of course. but we found a bonus because brilliant niece taylor showed up to astonish us with the mysteries of blue bio-beads at the bottom of her as-yet fishless fish jar.

well, meg's got some bad poison ivy...so i was just a little bit careful when i volunteered to pull cut bend twist and jerk some weeds from wherever they lurked (mostly from within the deepest parts of a seriously overgrown evergreen in the backyard). towards the end of the exercise i noticed something suspiciously like poison ivy. so mom disposed of my gloves, i washed all my clothes, and i escaped serious p.i. contact. i do have an itchy spot on my hand...but it's behaving more like a spidermosquitobite than a rash. in fact, all the while i was stepping into that evergreen, i was expecting at any moment to be pierced by the fangs of some vile serpent. no such luck....though meg had talked about seeing a big black snake (cottonmouth?) down by the lakeshore rocks.

in fact, this little mosquito bite probably comes from thursday night's outdoor theater. earlier that afternoon i was lying around reading the humongous petersburg observer when mom says: oh i was going to look to see if anything is playing over at the park (that's the theater in the park at lincoln's new salem). i look and the second i see it i know there will be no escape. i say: big river the adventures of huckleberry finn. i don't have to look at jay. i know that if there is any earthly way to see this production - we will see it. it's a musical and jay is jay. it turned out to be a very nice production with some surprisingly fine voices jumping out from a uniformly strong vocal cast. though we were kind of bugged not only by mosquitos but by the Huck actor's too earnest golly-gee performance. i'm glad i saw it, since i took a breather from huck the past school year but will be doing it again in the fall. it was useful to see the way the play slips past the book's controversial elements.

friday found jay and i wandering into springfield, drawn like dust to the prairie archives bookstore across from the old state capitol. i found a good copy of selections from johnson's dictionary and a first edition of john gardner's freddy's book. jay picked up a volume of poems by e. l. masters. and after lunch we paid our respects to that poet back at oakland cemetery in petersburg.

the drive back this morning was uneventful...unless you count this great cd of sweeney todd that swept us home in record time.

One day in the country
Is worth a month in town.

Christina Rossetti