Like many another when I saw the dreadful, spectacular images of 9/11/01, I exclaimed, "That has the CIA (and George Bush Senior's peculiar histrionic style) all over it. It's Dubya's Reichstag fire." I have never doubted my original assessment, and I have found that every one of my friends, without exception, agrees with me. I don't ask them to believe it, they just do.

Spent the night, having dinner and playing pinochle with Ham and Gloria last night, sleeping in their spare, grand-daughter's bedroom. Then up betimes, Ham took me into his workroom and showed me the guitars he's making, and the machines he's made to bend and shape them; then played some perfectly lovely Villa-Lobos on one of them. Knocked me on my butt--He's a superb musician. I'd forgot. Then in the afternoon Gloria took me to meet her son, daughter-in-law, and grandkids, an eleven-year-old granddaughter, and a nine-year-old grandson: Brilliant, fun, utterly unpretentious, perfectly self-possessed little people, as are their parents, particularly the son Brad, whose diapers in my day I have changed. It was thrilling to see him all grown up, and to see how exactly like him at nine-years-old his son is. More like identical twins born twenty years apart than father and son. It pleased them both a great deal to hear me say so. Brad rather vaguely (but twice) has invited me sometime to come and have dinner with them, and I will.