It has started. It started last night, the night of September 12, 2011. The bedroom windows were open. A full moon, or one that was so nearly full as to make no difference, shone through the windows at the head of the bed.

Returning from the library, I enjoyed a Scotch-on-the-rocks, read a chapter of Georgette Heyer, and was about to drift off when I heard it. The cry announcing death, in this case, the death of summer. Continue reading “A Cry in The Night” →

Introduction

August, 1909

In those days, in the days when Helen Stillman had first discovered Mr. Wodehouse, Harvester was a little prairie town with no public library. A capacious bookcase stood in the lobby of the Water and Power Company. Never mind that there was no power to speak of. Harvester was a village of hopes and pretensions.

People who could spare a book or a periodical left one at the Water and Power Company for others to borrow and return. Eventually the shelves swooned and creaked beneath the weight of books piled there by the Lundeens — first Juliet and Laurence Lundeen and later their son and daughter-in-law, George and Cora, all of them great readers, the younger Lundeens great travelers as well. Continue reading “Goodnight, Mr. Wodehouse” →

You Pays Your Nickel…

This morning, Dan and I drive to Medina, a western suburb. There, every Sunday from the first of May to the first of November — while the weather’s tolerable — the Lions Club sponsors a flea market in the parking lot of the Medina Ballroom. Mmmhmmm. A ballroom. You thought they’d gone the way of 8-track tapes.

For years my friend Margaret and I have driven ritually to Medina, as if to church.  In recent years, Dan has joined us. Margaret’s husband Dave isn’t so taken with cast-offs as the rest of us. He stays home and works the Times Sunday crossword puzzle. Continue reading “April Essay, In Late June” →