Lately when I wake up the first thing I do, even before I've had my tea, is to read all the blogs on my links bar. I hope you have the time to check out Drew Gardner's blog, which is excerpted on "Circulars" as well. And Caterina's interesting quotes from D.W. Winnicott. Usually this is enough to brush off the morning mist surrounding my thoughts. Not today. Today the blues got me and I got the blues. Big time. I thought of my all time favorite blog, Jordan's one word blog some weeks back this winter. "Blizzard." I was tempted to follow suit with "War." But Maryann Shaneen is reminding us that this is not "war." This is slaughter.

I sat there drinking my tea and trying to figure out a way to get undepressed. So I casually opened the new issue (March 20) of "London Review of Books" lying there in a basket on the floor. Read through the usual literary stuff, how French biographies, this one of De Gaulle, are not very annotated (yawn), another article about the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation-interesting, but this won't help me feel less depressed, and then I found it. All new cartoons by Art Spiegelman! It happened again. I was laughing out loud. Very loud! A full two pages of color cartoons in the centerfold. One cartoon is about Mr. and Mrs.Spiegelman's visit to their daughter's school on the morning of September 11. Nadja's school is close to Ground Zero. Mrs Spiegelman is screaming to be allowed into the school and they are finally allowed inside, the only parents to be admitted. Art comments that sometimes hysteria pays off. They are waiting around and then they hear an announcement from the principal on the loudspeaker: "ATTENTION: DUE TO TODAY'S UNUSUAL CONDITIONS NO STUDENTS WILL BE ALLOWED OUTSIDE FOR LUNCH."