The Rain in Spain...

..may fall mainly on the plain,
But here in Philly it falls willy-nilly.

There seems to be no let up from the cold and dreary, rainy Spring we are experiencing. It has been raining here since last Friday and the forecast is for it to continue through next Saturday. Nothing to be done about it but cuddle up with a good book, which I am doing. In fact I have three books under way at the moment: Toni Morrison's "A Mercy" has just ended (mercifully-I hated it) and I am reading two short story collections, "Bad Dirt" by Annie Proulx and Jhumpa Lahiri's "Unaccustomed Earth." I am also reading "The Limits of Power," by Andrew J. Bacevich, a history professor at Boston University. He seeks to identify and chart the decline of American political influence, which he tracks to the 1965-1973 period. For those of us who lived through this era, it is a fascinating hypothesis. I was turned onto this book by my Mother-in-Law and not many of us are fortunate enough to have a Mother-in-Law smart enough and curious enough to be reading stuff like this.

Fortunately, the Phillies are playing in St. Louis, which is blessed with sunny skies and temperatures in the 70s and Ryan Howard, whose home town is St. Louis, celebrated with a grand slam last night. "Watch this, Albert." (You'd have to be a baseball fan)

May the weather move East.