From the recent past

Here, in place of an actual blog post, is a page out of my journal dated 31 March 2007. I was in Philadelphia at a classics convention, staying at the downtown Holiday Inn. The hotel, among other bizarre things, looked down upon a graveyard which took the place of any courtyard. And so:

“In Phily for the Eta Sigma Phi conference. this is not the city of brotherly love. My companions miss home, as do I.
Steve jackson and I stood at the grave of Ben Franklin this morning. It was an incredible moment, but how I miss my wife and little girl.
Also, I bought a few books from a great old used bookstore while here. I am discovering that I am starting to prefer novels of nostalgia, quiet tales of the autumn of people’s lives. I like to read about men and women in solitude.
Perhaps, if so very slowly, I am becoming one of these people. I do know that i feel my age surrounded by my young traveling companions. They do not have the weight of family. Yet that weight is no burden. it makes me more substantial than i otherwise would be, more than some character in a book, more than the shade of a great man such as Ben Franklin.Even now in the dark I can look down from my hotel window and see his grave. Where he has gone, I shall follow. But not yet. Not for a while. not for ages.”