yes, it's Mineral Point, Wisconsin: the southwest of the Midwest.

Mineral Point. That’s right. A town, a village really. Fifty miles southwest of Madison. With great pommes frites at the Brewery Creek and very very nice people up and down High Street who want you to come visit. Are there many (any?) places where you feel like your appearance is a gift to others?

I buy my morning espresso at the Spotted Dog and I watch two Chicagoans come up to get their coffee. Cold people, both of them. The week-end did not fix their relationship. Too bad. Cheer up. Back in the city, you can work on it again.

A man with soiled hands picks up his fair trade coffee and says – I need to go open my gallery. Funny town, this is. People start the day at the café and go open galleries on a Sunday morning.

Meanwhile, Ed is eating two eggs over easy next door, at the Red Rooster. This is the kind of place I used to stop at in my days of hitchhiking! Why do men like to relive days of hitchkiking for you? Is it because there is a certain freedom inherent in that act, something that is gone, wiped out now that they’re no longer…hitchhiking? I watch him wipe the plate with buttered toast. A classic American diner breakfast. Mineral Point has both – the classic and, right next door, the café with the fair trade stuff. And jewelry.



We drive off to do a two hour (meaning short, compared to yesterday) spin on skiis, around the trails of Indian Lake. Lots of climbing up and shooshing down. I hate the climbing up, Ed hates the shooshing down. I am so terrified, my eyeballs freeze from the horror of it; I force myself not to look at the tree I am likely to crash into, he says.

He does not crash, but he does look terrified.



Me, I have the demeanor of the confident one. You can say this about me: there walks (skis) the person who does not fret about small dangers.



People are so quick to form impressions.

It’s 19 degrees outside and climbing. Tomorrow the snow may start to melt. The end of the cross country skiing season in southwestern Wisconsin?



I come back to the loft, the Wireless service crashes, I dash out to get a new router, it takes three hours to set it up, I eat late, I post late… welcome back.