This story from Benji is good, a speech given by Bill Moyers at Wake Forest. http://www.alternet.org/story/33958/ A Time for Heresy

I know now why Truman Capote always gave me the creeps - because he was a creep, famous, wealthy, genius, but still, a creep. Only he could make me feel sorry for a cold-blooded murderer like Perry Smith. The cold blood had as much to do with the ice water in his veins as the murder he depicted In Cold Blood. The remark he made to Harper Lee "the man is a gold mine," says it all. His exploitation of that situation should have haunted him to his dying day, and I guess it did, which makes him a little more human, but not much. "They're torturing me," he whined, when the convicted killers won a third stay of execution. What a self-absorbed little man.

Mike and I have been reading C.S. Lewis's The Great Divorce. His Sunday School class has been discussing it one chapter per week. Tomorrow's chapter is about the woman behind every successful man we used to hear so much about. There probably are still a few women who think like that, but their numbers are dwindling. She refused entre to heaven because she couldn't continue to nag and control and "make something of him." A motivator of Betty Friedan, no doubt, God rest her soul.

Benji suggested that I contact Karen's Aunt Pat to see if she wants to go to Ireland when I do. I'd love to have her company. When I met her at their wedding, I thought, if she and I lived nearer to each other, we'd probably be good friends. He's trying to plan our week while I'm there. Plan A includes:

Dublin on the 17th, shop there all day, spend most of the 18th there, then hop a train and get into Belfast around 4-5, rent a car, drive to Ballintoy (or the N. Coast), spend a day traipsing around, go to Scotland on the 19th (through maybe the 20th), come back to Belfast, train to Dublin, then train to Galway by the 22nd, since you're leaving on the red-eye on the 23rd....

Plan B:

...take the kids to the Cliffs, and to the Aran Islands (in Galway Bay), and hang out in the city some, so we can totally do that if you want to stay closer to home....

Truth is, I'd like to do it all. I should have scheduled 2 weeks instead of one. If we do Plan A, which is the way I'm leaning today, I need to change my flight plan to arrive at Dublin instead of Shannon. Traveling usually zaps my energy, changing time zones between here and Tampa is enough to disorient me a little. Building in a day of rest before embarking on all this gallivanting would be wise.