I've been working on my magazine piece about the South Solon Meeting House, which is advancing more quickly and coherently than I'd expected. When I visited the building last weekend, I somehow managed to take decent notes--rapid scratchings about noises, scents, quality of light, quick visual oddities. I didn't make any pretense of possessing artistic or architectural acumen. I'm beginning to discover, as a writer, that it's better to be up front about such gaps in my knowledge . . . which isn't to say I can't research something in order to learn more about it but that this new information may conveniently fill the chinks while not becoming the structure itself. The cloudy light filtering into stillness; the recollection of noisy children clattering upstairs to a choir loft; an imaginary Puritan thundering in the pulpit--these are what I kept thinking about when I was sitting in my pew last Friday. The 1950s-era frescoes that riot over the walls and ceilings are, on the surface, what make a visit to this 1842 meetinghouse so odd. Yet to me they seemed less resilient, less present than the building and its sensory surround, though, as Tom's photographs will show, the artwork is nonetheless omnipresent and visually overwhelming. I wish I had one of his pictures to include here; but since they're contracted to the magazine, I suppose you will have to wait for publication.