Until the six-a-week rehearsals kick in next week (in preparation for opening August 15), I am seizing the opportunity to deal with the backlog of magazine articles that I have sticky-noted and set aside to read later. I fell behind after the two-week trip that I took to California almost two years ago. So now I'm reading an Alice Munro memoir from the New Yorker, a short piece about endangered Attwater's Prairie-Chickens (Tympanuchus cupido attwateri) from National Geographic, Naomi Wallace's monologue for an Iraqi from American Theatre, a short stack of 9/11 stories from the New York Times, gee-whiz physics from Scientific American, Wood Duck nest box management articles form Condor, a Smithsonian profile of James Turrell. When Roden Crater opens to the public, I am so there.

When that pile is deal with, then I can deal with the shelf-and-a-half of books that demand to be read. I'm starting to make this calculation: if I read X books per year and bring home X+Y books per year, then eventually I will die with Z unread books in the house. This is not a happy thought.

Leta has a different problem. She doesn't have a lot of storage in her apartment, so she is re-reading everything that she has. If a book doesn't satisfy on re-reading, out it goes, to make room for yet more books lurking in boxes in the closet. I think she's gotten through half a shelf, so far.

But at least we don't have Caterina's problem.

posted: 1:30:56 PM