I'm home. (I got in about two hours ago, put away the groceries I bought, called my parents to let them know I got home OK, washed my hair, put away the clothes in my suitcase...one of the many nice things about visiting my parents is that I have the opportunity, my last day there, to do all my laundry, so I have clean clothes to put away at home instead of a bunch of laundry to do).

I often think, when I'm on my way home after a trip, of this passage:

Home! That was what they meant, those caressing appeals, those soft touches wafted through the air, those invisible little hands pulling and tugging, all one way! Why, it must be quite close by him at the moment, his old home that he had hurriedly forsaken and never sought again, that day when he first found the river!

And now it was sending out its scouts and its messengers to capture and bring him in. Since his escape on that bright morning he had hardly given it a thought, so absorbed had he been in his new life, in all its pleasure, its surprises, its fresh and captivating experiences.

Now, with a rush of old memories, how clearly it stood up before him in the darkness! Shabby indeed, and small and poorly furnished, and yet his, the home he had made for himself, the home he had been so happy to get back to after his day’s work. And the home had been happy with him, too, evidently, and was missing him, and wanted him back, and was telling him so, through his nose, sorrowfully, reproachfully, but with no bitterness or anger; only with plaintive reminder that it was there, and wanted him.

(Kenneth Grahame, "The Wind in the Willows," in case you weren't familiar. I think - and this is perhaps another discussion for another place - that one of the merits of reading the "classics," especially when young, is that your whole life long you carry around a bank of images and words that describe some of the universal experiences in life, and you pull them out at the appropriate times, and it makes things resonate more richly).

I will note two good pieces of news, one that affects pretty much me alone, another that affects others as well as me:

First, my talk went well at the meetings. People thanked me for it, and all the questions I received were the "Tell me more" or "Here is my experience, how does it differ from yours" type questions, and not the "I'm really smart and I'm going to prove it by trying to destroy you" type of questions - which I've never got but which I have seen happen occasionally and it always seems unfortunate when it does.

(Also, another talk I heard - this one about doing prairie restoration on a former strip mine - actually cited the first paper I ever had published, my Master's Thesis work, from 1996. Nice to know it's still relevant to some people.)

The second piece of good news is that the yarn shop in my parents' town is NOT closing after all - I went in there the first full day I was up there, to say goodbye and also to see if there was anything I wanted on sale. Well, there was a big sign up in the window declaring that the going-out-of-business sale was OVER because they were moving to a new location - the owner verified it for me - she and her husband had just signed the lease a few days before. It's a bigger space, on the other side of campus, and she said it was $350 a month less than what she was paying now. (Rents must be high for commercial space; five years ago $350 a month was what I was paying here for a two-bedroom apartment). She remarked that she was already planning what new lines of yarn she wanted to carry. The new store opens in September so the next time I'm up for a visit, she will be in her new space. This makes me happy for the selfish reason (of course) that I will have access to a yarn shop when I visit my folks, but it also makes me happy that a small business owner didn't totally get run over by the "newer and better and more upscale" movement in that town, and that someone who seems to love what she does will get to continue it. (She was also happy to report her new location was right across the street from the largest women's dorm on campus).

More later, including some book discussion and a couple of finished objects...