My LINKcat AccountThe red-winged blackbirds returned last week. The cardinals are singing at full throttle at 5:43 in the morning (of course daylight savings time will set them back to a more reasonable hour to start doing warm-up exercises - for a while), and the start of the dawn chorus is beginning to emerge. More birds seem to be arriving daily on the south winds are bringing Spring to Wisconsin earlier than usual this year. This early spring reminds me of the prologue to the Canterbury Tales (Once an English major, always an English major)-which as you'll undoubtedly recall starts off with the notion that once April rolls around people generally want to get out and get going. In 14th century England there weren't a lot of vacation spots to visit, so if you wanted to get out of town and go somewhere exciting you usually headed for a shrine of some sort. This week I shall be making a pilgrimage of my own - this time heading East. I'm going to Philadelphia to attend the Public Library Association (biennial) Conference. Philly is - disputably-the home of the first public library in the United States (the dispute is with Boston and centers around what actually constitutes a free public library. Good old Ben Franklin and his cronies created the Library Company, in Philadelphia, but that was a subscription library.) or one of the first public libraries and there is the Liberty Bell and other sites concerning the founding of this nation. I think my sojourn qualifies as a pilgrimage on a number of levels. I'll advise you of my adventures when I return. Until then, there are lots of new books for your reading pleasure. Enjoy!
