In the weeks since my last post I have been busy. And I've done much traveling.

First I went to North Carolina to visit with Genevra's parents. They live in Chappel Hill. While I've been to the South many times, I have never visited during the Summer. One afternoon, while antiquing in a nearbye town with Cheryl and Jim, the four of us were crossing the street and it occured to me that my movement was slowed. A car was waiting for us to cross, and I was thinking to myself "I should trot across the street to be polite" but my feet were not compelled to agree with me.

My mother always said that she thought people moved more slowly in the south because it was so hot. Perhaps that's why us yankees seem like we're in such a hurry. Where we come from, we can move quickly without passing out.

Despite this, the South remains on our list of possible places to move.

There is mind-bogglingly good barbecue down there. And I have discovered hush puppies and they are good. Genevra is an iced tea fan and loves the sweet tea you find at all Southern restaurants. I also love the weather there in the Winter, Spring and Fall. Chicago is annoyingly cold for about 7 months out of the year. I still might take oppressively hot weather for 3 months over the cold for 7.

A weekend after that I was in New York City of all places. Genevra and I met with Randy, who will be performing our wedding ceremony. While we were there we also met Doug, one of our publishers from Playscripts, Inc. Both meetings were productive and fun.

There is a prevailing feeling among New Yorkers that New York is the only real city in America. My New Yorker friend Randy loved Tokyo because he felt like Tokyo was the only other city anything like New York. Myself living in a very large city that pales in scope to New York, I see things a tad differently. New York is not a city. Chicago, St. Louis, Boston, San Fracisco...those are cities. New York should be its own country...like the Vatican City.

Not that I want New York to cecceed. I like New York. And despite its other-wordliness, it is extremely American. I would not be a happy New Yorker, but I do like New York a lot. In a city like Chicago, you could uproot your life and move from one corner to the other, bouncing from neighborhood to neighborhood and your life probably wouldn't change that much from move to move. You would alter a few things like where you bought your groceries or where your bank was, maybe. You'd discover a few new favorite places to eat. But you'd still do mostly the same things in the same places. New York gives one the impression that with a series of similar moves, you would live a series of completely different lives. Even in a city like Chicago, you could spend your whole life trying to eat at every restaurant in the city and fail. The endless grandure that is New York would leave you unsure if you could dine at every restaurant in your neighborhood.

We left New York and came home. Soon after, we recieved an email from a breeder of Boston Terriers letting us know that she had puppies available. Genevra wanted to visit her grandmother in Southern Illinois so we planned a double trip to drive to Carbondale, IL and then swing over to Missouri on our way back and pick up a little puppy whom we decided to name Simon.

In the meantime, I finalized plans to take a road trip from San Francisco to Portland by way of the Redwood Forests and a drive along the northwest coast. We will go over Labor Day weekend and then come back to Chicago for my wedding. My friends along for the ride are Randy, Mike and Noam--my three oldest friendships. Noam, I've known since I was about three or four years old, we think. Mike I met when I was in Kindergarten. Randy I got to know when I was 16. But it was Randy who I was closest to during those incredibly formative years of high school and college at Fitchburg State, where we were roommates for a few years.

Then it was off to Carbondale. Southern Illinois is fascinating. It doesn't quite know if it's the midwest or the south. People speak with southern accents, mostly, but if asked if they're the south or the midwest, most of them see themselves as midwesterners. It's hot down there, and again, one is compelled to move slowly when crossing the street. They are mostly republican down there. The BBQ is good. But I didn't see any hushpuppies anywhere. Genevra has noted, and I've observed this to be true that: in the North when you ask for iced tea at a restaurant they will give you unsweetened iced tea; in the South if you ask for iced tea, they will bring you a sweet tea; in southern illinois, if you ask for an iced tea they will ask you if you want your tea sweet or unsweetened.

While in Carbondale we had an opportunity to visit with one of my favorite of Genevra's extended family, her first cousin once removed, Wendel. Wendel is a collector of antiques and an amature Civil War historian, who used to work for the Wildlife Refuge and is a Korean War veteran (he didn't serve in Korea but surved elsewhere during the war), as well as a tenor guitar player who specializes in plucking out Civil War tunes.

Wendel told me about Southern Illinois during the Civil War and apparently its mixed identity dates back to before Lincoln's presidency. It was a very evenly divided area politically--half the folks identified with the Confederates and the other half with the Union. Men from the area enlisted in both armies. At an historical marker in Carbondale (yes, I made Genevra stop and take me there one hot afternoon to see what it was) we found an interesting graveyard. Burried there is the man who started Memorial Day--Wendel had told me that a man who was instrumental in starting Memorial Day is a relative of his and Genevra's but we weren't sure if this was the same man.

Also in the graveyard, was an interesting looking stone sarcophagus (bottom right in photo above) that sat on two stone pillars about two feet off the ground. The gravestone next to it was rubbed blank but a nearbye marker had two possible explanations for the sarcophagus: One story was about a woman who refused to be buried in yankee soil and wanted to be buried in her home town in the south. Upon her death, her husband had dirt from her hometown placed inside the sarcophagus, which was kept above ground to literally prevent her from being buried in yankee soil. The other story was about a union soldier who's family, upon discovering that a confederate soldier was to also be burried at the site, had the coffin removed and placed in an above ground stone coffin so that he would not share the same soil with a confederate. Crazy.

Coincidentally, I was reading and have recently finished the best piece of historical fiction I've ever read called The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara. It's about the battle of Ghettysburg.

After we bid farewell to Genevra's loving and I'm sorry to say deteriorating grandmother, Celia (who didn't like FDR very much but did like Ike) we ventured across the Mississippi river into Missouri. The drive to the river was stunning. I like the landscape in Southern Illinois a lot better than most of the mid-state area. Cornfields, I'm afraid, bore me silly. But Southern Illinois is more wooded and hilly.

The area became extremely rural and we spotted tiny shacks with huge confederate flags on front lawns, German sheppards chained to poles in front yards--impossible not to imagine an overalled man in the back yard sipping on lemonade with a shotgun across his lap. I had just said to Genevra that maybe I could live in a place like this. Then I saw the flag. "See," I said. "That shit...I just don't think I could handle living near that." I'm not just an upstater, afterall. I'm a Massachusetts liberal--a New England yankee born and raised. Symbols like the confederate flag tend to shock me.

As we neared the Missippi, suddenly a town appeared. The sparse shacks, the occasional farm and the occasional brick, collumned home on high ground; all gave way to a small, hilly suburbia. I knew that this must be by the river and probably the only crossing of the Mississipi for miles. And I was right. But what we found was much more interesting.

Chester Illinois. Home of...Popeye. Apparently, the man who drew Popeye was from Chester and based his characters on people he knew from that town. Thus this small town has the silliest claim to fame I've ever seen. Genevra and I laughed in disbelief through the whole town. I hate to be a condecending northerner, but the popeye museum, the popeye collectibles store, the large popeye statue and the anual Popey picnic...it was just too much for me to bear.

A few hours into my first run-in with the Show Me State, we made it to the small town where Simon was born. Simon was 8 weeks old, unfortunately had a case of kennel cough which he's still recovering from, and is extremely cute and sweet. The Boston Terrier is a really great breed with an excellent temperment. Our car ride home with him to Chicago by way of St. Louis was a long and uninteresting trip. Genevra drove most of the way.

While in mid-state Illinois there was a huge downpour that forced me to pull over. The visibility was so poor, I was constantly scared that someone else who had pulled over would crash into our car. Soon after, the sun came back and an enormous rainbow appeared over the Illinois plains. I am not a midwesterner. It becomes so clear to me whenever I see those cornfields. And we drove on. We finally arrived home at about 11:30 that night after a huge trafic delay due to construction.

Simon has been learning our home and learning how to go the bathroom in a doggie litter box. Genevra has been stuck at home doing most of the training. She's a loving but impatient dog trainer. She never loses her patience with Simon, but comes to me broken hearted, and often teary every time he pees in the wrong place. She's such a sensitive woman. And yet not in the least bit wimpy--in fact quite the opposite. I adore that about her.

Genevra and I will marry on Sept. 9th. The following day we will travel to Italy for two weeks. My hope has been that after my return, my life will finally slow down, but I will need to get ready for a performance of 43 Presidents at The Carter Center in Atlanta when I return.

A large matter that Genevra and I will work to resolve when we come back from Europe as husband and wife will be deciding where we will live and raise our family. Both of us are certain that while we love Chicago, we will leave it someday. We have seriously considered the Southeast and the Northwest so far, but will keep the Southwest as a possibility as well. A priority for us is warmer weather. We neither of us appreciate the cold.

I am more and more ready to abandon the variety of city life. I will miss it, but I will do fine without it. I'm looking for a place of beauty. I like the charm and the history of the South and the weather of the Northwest. I will avoid confederate flags on front yards. I will not live anywhere that has a cartoon character as their major source of hometown pride, and I will not live in New York City. Or LA. I'm not sure where that leaves me, but I've still got a lot of traveling left to do.

Until next time...