This Saturday dawned gray, wet, chilled: perfection. Do I like rainy days from sheer obstinancy? Is it a surviving echo from my toddler days, when my teachers declared I could only wear the sun dresses I so adored on wet days, when there was no danger of revealing anything delicate while playing at my recess? (My mother still avers to this theory.) Perhaps it's the invitation such days offer to quiet reading in lowlit coffee shops. Whatever the causation, today was one of those soggy days that most can't abide and I so love.

And it has unfolded deliciously. This morning Kaitlin joined me on a quest to locate the nearest Bojangles to my new home. According to Mapquest, it was a mere 10 miles away to the northeast of Arlington, and we found it with no problem. I had a few qualms about the place. The fries were cold and there was no seasoning on the counter for my always generous application. But the bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit was hot and lovely, the tea syruppy-sweet, and the waitress gave me plenty of seasoning when I asked. I have the feeling that many Saturday trips will be in order, particularly when any North Carolinians are in town.

And then, to satisfy cravings of a different order, we returned to our side of the river and visited a little store on Wilson Boulevard that boasted selling a variety of British goods. They weren't lying. We found shelves of brown sauce, digestive biscuits, OXO cubes, canned spotted dick, Walker's crisps, Aero bars, and every sort of Cadbury bar, to name just a sampling. It was by far the best selection of British goods I've seen on our side of the pond. I emerged with some golden-syrup-and-cream digestives, Smoky Bacon-flavoured Walkers crisps (delicious, but you can taste them for days afterwards), brown Irish soda bread mix, and fruit gums. So I was able to satitate both my NC needs and UK needs in one morning - brilliant.

Now I'm doing the very best thing a person can do on a day such as today: sitting at a coffee shop, nursing a latte, and alternately reading Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel and surfing the free wireless. Tomorrow - a sunnier, springish day promises the Post - there will be time for wandering downtown, visiting museums and celebrating Shakespeare's birthday at the Folger, but today, I will enjoy the holy damp.

Signs that might be omens

Large, flashing sign seen Thursday on the Beltway in Maryland:

"SPEED LIMIT
STRICKLY ENFORCED"

Also seen Thursday, spray-painted in large black letters on the side of a condemned building in Baltimore:

"JESUS IS LIFE - SAVE THE COMMUNITY CENTER
OPRAH HELP US"

Censorship in the backyard

The N&O reports on a local Christian activist group trying to ban books from Wake County's public schools.

I know I should just give up and deal with the fact that there are a lot of ignorant people in this world who believe that removing books from kids will somehow protect them from insidious ideas, but it still pains me everytime I encounter it, particularly when it's happening in my own neighborhood. The idea that kids reading books could be a bad thing just horrifies me. And gee, censorship worked so well when Hitler and Stalin tried it.

The books they're trying to ban, by the way, are Beloved by Toni Morrison, The Color Purple by Alice Walker, and The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier. The parents are objecting to "vulgar and sexually explicit language" that I guarantee is less offensive than what most high school kids hear on the bus to and from school. Isn't it better that kids encounter such language in books where the full power of such words can be absorbed and themes like racism and sexuality can be properly digested?

I've just never seen or heard of a case of censorship that has prevented.... whatever people like these parents and Stalin and Hitler hope or hoped to stop with these acts. Prevention of bad thought? Prevention of knowledge? Scary stuff, that.

"The men's list was all angst and Orwell. Sort of puberty reading."

Here's an enlightening article from The Guardian about the differing roles that novels play in the lives of men versus women.

I'm in the middle of The Sun Also Rises right now, written by that most uber-masculine of masculine men, Ernest Hemingway. I don't feel the same vitriol for it that I held for A Farewell to Arms, which to be fair was part of my high school summer reading, meaning I was predestined to hate it. The second time around, I find Hemingway simply dull. I like the themes of the book; hell, I even associate with some of them - lost generation of twentysomethings, expatriates in Europe, the complex relationship of an expat with America - but the plot so far is just so, so boring. If you're going to moan and groan about the greediness and emptiness of the post-WWI kids, give me F. Scott Fitzgerald. That guy knew his way with a metaphor and a plot.

I do have to give Hemingway props for having a house in Key West populated with scores of 6-toed cats. Aside from that, I've yet to be convinced of his greatness.

This is a belated April Fools joke, correct?

My God.

Cherry Blossom Festival

Last night as I continued my attempt to evade doing anything worthwhile until I absolutely have to, I began exploring this My Library website that you can see to the right. This counts as good Friday night fun for a bookslut like me. I looked up the one up-and-coming published author with whom I've had any personal interaction, Chris Bachelder, who was my English instructor at Governor's School. Turns out Chris just published his second novel, entitled U.S.!, which supposes that Upton Sinclair (author of The Jungle among numerous other muckraking efforts) is constantly assassinated and then resurrected to spread his socialist views. According to reviews, it's got the same biting, satiric take on American society as Chris' first novel, Bear v. Shark, to hilarious results.

It's pretty awesome, watching from afar as one of my mentors gets the success he very richly deserves. Chris was an amazingly nice, funny, and utterly grounded guy when I had his class every morning for six weeks during the summer of 2000. People are comparing him to Vonnegut and Don DeLillo, but I'll always remember him for his love of Woody Guthrie and veneration of Lorrie Moore. To see him achieving success on a big level (he's been published in McSweeney's, which is not only an amazing lit journal but also the project of my boyfriend Dave Eggers) is pretty fantastic, and you should all check out his books if you see them.

Thinking of Chris reminded me once again of just what an amazing and perception-shattering experience Governor's School was. It's still the most challenging, constructive, and open intellectual environment I've ever known - Carolina, love it as I do, couldn't compete. That place, that motley group of 16- and 17-year-old kids, felt seeped in talent and potential. It's hard to describe in words the electricity in that atmosphere, but I know I've never felt that level of creativity and brains and radicalism and ferver anywhere else.

Of course, as happens with most things that dare to challenge the status quo and engage the intellect, lots of folks feel threatened by Governor's School. The notion of teaching teenagers to think for themselves is pretty insidious, I must admit. But it's also one of the few institutions I've encountered that gives me hope in our future leaders, artists, and thinkers. The fact that I, as a pimply high school English geek and amateur writer, got to study with one of the brightest young postmodern novelists of his generation seems like a good testament to the impact of Governor's School.

Here's a great editorial from Ginny Franks at the DTH on the political threat to Governor's School, and why it should be saved:

The N.C. Governor's School provides the right education - Opinion