a strange week when the days pass suddenly - not quickly. they leap out of the way like frightened cats or startled pigeons. what's coming that drives them away? i don't know. i've been sleeping too late into the morning, into full sunshine this morning.

we've had no school since tuesday. the school has been taken down and reassembled for the 28th annual Street Scenes. it's our mid-february break at the beginning of february. one can never have too many days away from school. this is a basic principle of american life. we would be lost without it.

so i have been reading and reading. i read junior first draft research papers and then i take a break by reading a short biography of joseph conrad. i read junior first draft research papers and then i read a few pages in The Death of Vishnu. then i wander downstairs for a decaf and some crackers and find myself reading the newspaper. (i don't understand enron - aside from what everyone understands: greedy rich bastards get richer and stick it to everyone else. which is not really news, is it?) i read the comic strips and laugh a little. i like boondocks and doonesbury and the old peanuts and - what else? - dilbert seems just too true to be funny. i read junior first draft research papers and you'd think i'd be done by now but i ain't. i read them very slowly. and must take a break to weed out the email which lately has been more weedy than usual.

anyway. in honor of all this reading i've begun a new attraction here at brtom.org called A Good Book. the other day i got an email from a student who was headed to the library to find a book for the airplane. i named a few titles. and then it came to me that i have read a few books - and some of them have been good ones. if any of my three regular readers would care to name their three favorite books, i'd be happy to list them for others to consider. just drop me a note via that handy box down below.

this afternoon i found a delightful anonymous threatening message on my voice mail. it was quite rude and entertaining. seems i'm going to burn in hell for something or other. don't i know it. but he must have had the wrong number.

the cars are piling up now for the night's events. we've got police "horses" blocking our driveway to keep illegitimate parkers away - but i bet it won't work so well. when folks gotta park, folks will park....anywhere. reminds me of my last trip into chicago three weeks ago: an hour into the city, half an hour to find a spot to tie up the old horse.... and that was a lucky fluke tossed my way by the gods of grease and asphalt.... and i still had to walk half a mile from there. what are we doing?

When the Day of Judgement dawns and the great conquerors and lawyers and statesmen come to receive their rewards-their crowns, their laurels, their names carved indelibly upon imperishable marble-the Almighty will turn to Peter and will say, not without a certain envy when he sees us coming with our books under our arms, "Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them here. They have loved reading."

Virginia Woolf