This is my librarian-wanna-be look. I doubt actual librarians can see any better over their glasses than through them, any more than I can. But look, I've got my hand crooked just like Mrs Who's as she used her robe to demonstrate the tesseract

Reading: Lucy Maud Montgomery, Rainbow Valley

Moving: NT 20', 2.04 miles; half a weight circuit

Watching: clouds and storms

Listening: RDC is watching "U-271" loudly. Very loudly

I took this yesterday while watching my flock in the webcam.

29 May 2001: Letters

Dear Peter Gabriel,

I love your music and your causes and your art. Your website, however, is a tad too much, being nigh unnavigable and with way too little content per (excessively long even on a T1 line) pageload to be worthwhile. I still love you, though, even bald.

---

Dear Kate Bush,

On the other hand, you don't have a website at all. What's up with that? I assume your hair is still long and luscious, unlike Peter Gabriel's or Margo Timmins's.

---

Dear Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush,

I don't care that it's been sixteen years since you sang together or that Sinéad sang with Peter on Us. Please collaborate again.

---

Dear Cowboy Junkies,

Even though I came to you later and you make me feel disloyal to my other two favorites, you have the best website. And Margo has the best hair. Plus I've actually met you. So I still like you best.

---

Dear Mosquitoes,

RDC blames your existence on SPM, who first complained that yes, there are mosquitoes in Denver even away from the creeks. He had never been bitten in this town until his friend told him you existed. Now you exist. I myself am glad of this, because it means Denver is cooler and damper this year than I have previously experienced--how did any larvae survive last summer anyway? I like you because of what you represent: spring. This doesn't mean I'm not going to weedwhack my overgrown yard to deprive you of territory, though.

---

Dear A.S. Byatt,

I'm waiting! [For the fourth book in the Frederica Potter series, Powerhouse, OMFB.] Even though I kind of haven't read The Biographer's Tale yet, even though I bought it, um, a year ago, from the U.K., because I had to have it immediately and it wouldn't be available until this year in the States, with a different and ugly cover.

---

Dear Margaret Drabble,

I intend to like you if for no better reason than that you're A.S. Byatt's half-sister. I assume Radiant Way will be a real reason. I'll get to that Real Soon Now. Right after I finish with the following:

---

Dear Lucy Maud Montgomery,

You say that Susan and Rebecca Dew instantly recognized each other as kindred spirits, sparked up a correspondence--in which, I'm glad to say, you gave the housekeepers credit for better spelling than Louisa May Alcott gave Hannah in Little Women, and, when they met again at some event or other, immediately trysted. I would like some assurance that you are not corrupting the youth of our noble continent with insinuations of a love which should not dare to speak its name.

---

Dear Rosamunde Pilcher
(with spoilers),

I will read and reread The Shell-Seekers till my dying breath. But I've been meaning to talk to you about the diseases ex machina that you use in Shell-Seekers and in September.
You might already know about the Hitler rule in debate, which seems to crop up most in online conversation. The rule is that bringing Hitler into any subject automatically kills the exchange, because comparing someone or her practices to Hitler('s) means the bottom of the rhetoric barrel has been scraped: "Hitler was a vegetarian, therefore all decent people eat meat."
You could also call this "jumping the shark," a term Haitch just taught me, in which you do something totally extreme to re-attract the wandering attention of the viewer or reader (the term originates with Fonzie's jumping a tankful of sharks on his motorcycle during the waning and no longer as happy "Happy Days"). Danus's epilepsy and Pandora's cancer completely destroy the narrative integrity and realism of these two otherwise wonderful novels, although Danus's illness at least was not such a red herring. This came up when I was recently discussing The Bone People: "Oh, Kerewin has cancer. Now anything can happen." The cancer rule is herewith a corollary to the Hitler rule.
Oh, and nothing could keep Penelope's parents from her wedding, but Lawrence got with bronchitis so Sophie bailed instead of leaving him with Doris? You only did that because you knew, as Penelope knew, that she would never have married Ambrose if her parents had met him beforehand and realized what a git he was. Oh, and Doris was much upset at Penelope's death, but even though her husband was merely "unwell," she couldn't travel a weekend (despite her sons living so closeby, to care for him) to a funeral? (And why wouldn't Ronald and Clark have wanted to go in your stead? They grew up with Penelope.) You only made Ernie sick because Doris's journey would have been long enough to warrant her stopping at Podmore's Thatch and thus give Olivia a chance to ask about Richard right then.
I do, however, forgive you for giving two different, disparate ages for Sophie in Charles Rainier's portrait (19 then 25), and for whether Nancy had a clear memory of her grandfather (either none or his cold hand against her round cheek when they said goodbye) and for when Olivia dropped her bag on the pine table in her mother's conservatory (before or after she told her that Cosmo had died, speaking of cancer). We'll blame these errata on your copy editors.
I haven't liked any of your books before or since, but I do love those two; and for love of Shell-Seekers I have considered slogging through your earlier, soppier romances because Rose Pilkington, who is referred to and makes a cameo in Seekers, reads three-dimensionally enough that I think she might be a character in earlier book. I could probably find out online, though. Or (after looking) maybe not, because apparently all of your readers are too busy emulating Penelope--gardening and entertaining and cooking and listening to music and looking at pictures and having long, satisfying conversations, and spelling Rosamunde without an e--to be major web surfers. Or they might have a Yahoo! group set up, which I would be reluctant to join (as reluctant as I would be to read your gothic romances?) because the first subject line in the chat area is about Mary Engelbreit.
At the library today I flipped through Sleeping Tiger, just to get a feel for what I'd be in for searching for Rose. The plot was ludicrous and I read only the first chapter; by skimming the rest did I miss any more literary references? What percentage of your audience do you think got the allusion to "End Game"? Not a lot of Becket readers among them, I'd suppose, though I'm one and laughed when your protagonist would rather watch a musical than two hours of pauses about people who live in dustbins.
Flawed you are, but I still want to be Penelope. Or know her. She is one of my favorite literary characters, alongside Blackberry and Janey and Gwyn and Scout. And I want to know what happened with Noel and Alexa, with Olivia, with Richard's mother, with Melanie and Rupert--might they be redeemed, as Noel was? Also I want to tell you, I am so Usanly blind to social classes that Edie's exclusion from the Steyntons' dance puzzled me for several pages.

---

Oh My Friends and Brothers, Oh My Future Biographers

So maybe I slacked from the list for my birthday weekend, to be reading Anne of Green Gables books and Rosamunde Pilcher. Sorry.

And yes, I am aware the epistolary format doesn't suit me.