The summer is densely packed with wonderful events: concerts, trips, sales, tours. Sometimes I have to take a day off and just rest. Last week I went on a jaunt to Quebec City, about 5 hours away, with my nieces Jeanne and Melanie. Jeanne's French fluency served us well. I'd never been to Quebec and the lodging choices were inside or outside the wall, upper or lower. What? I just picked one. We stayed in the Manoir Lafayette (upper) on the Grand Allee (outside the wall) among some of the dozens of sidewalk cafes. We walked everywhere and never ate indoors. The fortified (inside the wall) old city sits high on a bluff above the St. Laurent River, its multiple levels connected by stairs and a gondola. In every view the skyline is dominated by the Chateau Frontenac. Imagine a multi-level French Quarter with cool breezy temperatures. Actually it's older than New Orleans. Melanie has just graduated from Ursuline Academy in New Orleans, but the Ursuline convent in Quebec has been there since 1642. And does food just tast better when the waiter says "Bonjour, Madame"? We were there on the opening day of their spring music festival; the music stages are tucked onto wharf areas and small green spaces around the old city. I'd like to give a few days to that Festival next year. Melanie bought her first pair of Birkenstocks in a little shoe store where they were tried on in the way I remember as a kid. We zipped home to Unity in time to hear Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer play in the Field of Dreams, the first of a series of free concerts in the park. Carter is a great song writer. Mythic aquifer beneath the Ordinary Town, indeed. His lyrics are as busy as a treadle machine stitching tapestry patches onto an old pair of jeans. I bought a book to send to my sister Ingrid called Best Spiritual Writing 2000. I couldn't very well buy a book with that title for myself. Harvey Cox has a piece in it called "The Market as God": "Since the earliest stages of human history, of course, there have been bazaars, rialtos, and trading posts--all markets. But the Market was never God, because there were other centers of value and meaning, other 'gods' ... only in the past two centuries has The Market risen above these demigods and chthonic spirits to become today's First Cause." Another good thing in it are some prayers by Mary Gordon, like this one For Liars: "For makers of elaborated worlds, adorned and peopled by the creatures and furniture of their inventions. for those who live as if the way things are were not enough and mean, by their words, to do something about it. For those who would protest the first beloved from the fresh reality of the second. For fabricators of plausible excuses that will save the fragile hostess's amourprope. For ornamentors who cannot endure a history without clear heroes and sharp villains. For speakers of the phrase 'it's a fabulous haircut' ..." Ok, Ingrid, it's all yours now. I'm reading, petal by petal, The Hours by Michael Cunningham, making it last by balancing it with Daniel Boorstin's The Seekers

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