Here I am in Minneapolis, a city with an airport, a mall and, at the moment, a lot of snow. We visited the "Mall of America" today, which is like a combination of a gigantic shopping mall and an indoor Disneyland. It's a great place for people watching while the kids are enjoying the rides and other attractions at Snoopy's Playground, or whatever it's called. (It includes a full-size roller coaster, a log flume ride, various other Disney-like rides and "Lego Land," where you can see nearly full-size dinosaurs and other critters made out of--yes--Legos. Thousands and thousands of Legos . . . .)

As I said, it's a great place for people watching. It's very white suburban, though, with only a few blacks and Asians. Every other male seems to have a big beer belly on him and every other female has what my father used to call, euphemistically, a "wide beam." Many people wear a kind of vacant expression as they walk around the mall, maybe because there's just too much sensory stimulation. I may have looked pretty vacant myself. (Isn't there a song called "Pretty Vacant"?)

After a while, I had to retreat from all the noise (people screaming on the roller coaster, etc.) and hide out at Barnes & Noble. I enjoy browsing the shelves, even if I can't work up the enthusiam required to plonk down $40 on a collection of Ray Bradbury stories, for example. I did buy a kid's book called Conversations with J.K. Rowling for my son, who is a Harry Potter addict. (He's currently reading the fourth book--in hard cover, because he couldn't wait for the paperback.) Thank the Cosmic Muffin for bookstores, even the chains, I say. They often serve as an oasis in the midst of modern chaos.

I'm just blathering on a borrowed computer. Maybe when I get home I'll fix this up and add some more blithering commentary about glamorous Minneapolis.