Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You don't read Newsweek. That's what so many of you have been telling me for nearly six years. Well, that's too bad because the current issue has a number of neat features:

■ What to Read Now. And Why

■ Now, Read it Again

■ The Write Stuff

■ Best. Books. Ever.

On the nightstand

Here we go again...

Books read
■ The Actor and the Housewife (Shannon Hale)
Melissa Wiley recommended this novel, but based on the description at Amazon ("a platonic relationship between a dashing movie star and a Mormon housewife"), I thought I would hate it. I didn't. You see, its implausible premise was undergirded by likable characters, easy banter, and emotional honesty, and I was completely charmed.

In the interest of full disclosure, though, I must confess that four-fifths of our little borg collective have been sick, sick, sick these last two weeks. Fever and lethargy, coughing and... ahem, other symptoms have punctuated our days, and when I could eat, I craved only mashed potatoes or scrambled eggs.

That went for my literary diet, too.

All of that said, however, I still think The Actor and the Housewife qualifies as a clever summer read -- two parts suburban fantasy, one part able writing. Give it a whirl. See what you think.

■ Dead Until Dark (Charlaine Harris)
■ Living Dead in Dallas (Charlaine Harris)
■ Club Dead (Charlaine Harris)
■ Dead to the World (Charlaine Harris)
Steve and Johnnie regularly rave about True Blood, so I decided to check out the books on which the series is based. This series will be, alternately, too erotic, too violent, or too silly for most regular readers of M-mv. That said, though, they comprise, without a doubt, the definitive "beach read" -- light, fantastical, easy on the brain, and not dreadfully written.

■ Lost and Found (Andrew Clements)
In what has become something of a tradition here, we selected an Andrew Clements title to accompany us to [insert town here], the meet location most distant from our little house in the tiny woods on the prairie. The trip takes us about 2.5 hours roundtrip, which, with periodic pauses, is just enough to nearly complete the story. The last time, Clements' Room One: A Mystery or Two accompanied us. And before you leap to the Island of Conclusions about the merit of the material or its ability to mentally stimulate, let me remind you that (1) not every reading experience must be Middlemarch and (2) we like Andrew Clements. A lot.

Moreover, the route to [insert town here] is fraught with confusion and a shot of terror: a single missed turn will lead one into an ever-narrowing road that ends in a cornfield of Stephen King proportions.

An Andrew Clements tale is about all any of us is equipped to process during that excursion. Trust me. I know.

Book for today
■ The End of the Alphabet (CS Richardson)
Recommended by Semicolon.

Book for later this week
■ Tears in the Darkness: The Story of the Bataan Death March and Its Aftermath (Michael and Elizabeth Norman)
Last week, I received an email message about this book from husband and wife writing team Michael and Elizabeth Norman. It read, in part:

"Tears In The Darkness," which Garner says "seamlessly blends a wide angle view with the stories of many individual participants" is the narrative account of the first major land battle for America in World War II and America's worst military defeat. We wanted to avoid writing history from on high, so the book looks at war from ground level, from the point of view of the men who lived that history. We want readers to see war, feel war, experience it on the page -- the suffering, the terror, the loss. A number of readers and reviewers have suggested that "Tears" reads like a novel.

Intrigued, I read the four-chapter excerpt they had attached and visited their website. And I was hooked. The library had just received its copy of Tears in the Darkness, which is now on my nightstand. Join me in learning more about Ben Steele and the Bataan Death March.

Notable acquisitions
■ You or Someone Like You (Chandler Burr)

■ How to Buy a Love of Reading (Tanya Egan Gibson)

■ Soul of the Age: A Biography of the Mind of William Shakespeare (Jonathan Bate)

Review copy en route
■ Best Friends Forever (Jennifer Weiner)

The man in the mirror

One could argue that just as the words, the text, can (and should) stand alone, the songs, the performances, can.

Some of my favorites:

■ "I Want You Back"

■ "She's Out of My Life"

■ "Human Nature"

■ "Man in the Mirror"

No kidding.

From "Not Every Child Is Secretly a Genius" (The Chronicle Review, June 15, 2009):

Perhaps in a naïve effort to deny that inconvenient truth, the debate about intelligence has become largely political, at times even facetious. Intelligence certainly is not the only predictor of success in work or in school, college, or scholarship, but it's as strong as any. Unfortunately, it's also largely genetic. Social justice, treating people the same, bringing out their best abilities are all worthy ideals. Yet we must be cautious when ideals conflict with reality. The world in which we live has no obligation to be politically correct. And it is not politically correct to say that one person is, well, simply more talented than another.

Ayup.

Related post
"[T]he quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers." (3.06.2008)

A good teacher can often improve the academic performance of poor or mediocre students. Good students can perform in spite of poor or mediocre teachers (although it is a disservice; ask anyone who did so, who performed well enough in spite of an incompetent teacher, or coach, or piano instructor). Good teachers and good students can make magic together. Great teachers and great students? Oh, that is the stuff of memorable years and classes, isn't it? And, yes, great students can and should outpace their teachers. But put a poor or mediocre teacher and poor or mediocre students together, and the results are always going to be poor or mediocre. In other words, the program can only go as high or as far as its engine permits, no matter how well all of the parts get along.

Semicolon hosts "The Saturday Review of Books." Consider participating this week.

Make just three changes today.

Reposted with corrected links.

1. Floss.
No, really. Floss your teeth. Every. Single. Day.

2. Drink more water.

3. Visit Ted.
Never been there? Start with Mike Rowe's treatise on the importance and value of hard, dirty work. Or try Liz Coleman's "call to reinvent liberal education."

Intelligence augmentation

From "Get Smarter" (The Atlantic, July/August 2009):

The amount of data we’ll have at our fingertips will be staggering, but we’ll finally have gotten over the notion that accumulated information alone is a hallmark of intelligence. The power of all of this knowledge will come from its ability to inform difficult decisions, and to support complex analysis. Most professions will likely use simulation and modeling in their day-to-day work, from political decisions to hairstyle options. In a world of augmented intelligence, we will have a far greater appreciation of the consequences of our actions.

"They're angry plus helpless."

From "Bitterness: The Next Mental Disorder?" (Psychology Today, May 2009):

Part of the incredulity the APA discussion has generated in the media and blogosphere is doubtless because bitterness strikes the person feeling it as a justified response to a social ill or personal wrong. It may be an exaggerated, distorted perception to which, Linden wisely notes, "revenge is not a treatment." But just one of the many reasons for alarm here is the thought of the DSM, of all documents, trying with a few vague, open-ended criteria to legislate what is reasonable bitterness and what is not. (If you knew that "fear of eating alone in restaurants" and "avoidance of public restrooms" were both official symptoms of social anxiety disorder, among the most widely diagnosed of mental illnesses in the United States, you'd share my concern.)

Ayup.

From the archives: Bloomsday

My tour through Ulysses was led by a deft literary guide, a full professor who preferred his students to his study, a rare, rare breed, indeed. He took us by the hand (and some us by the nose) as we sometimes walked, often plodded, occasionally skipped through his favorite book in all the world. And those who could afford the annual pilgrimmage to Dublin, he happily ushered through the streets and narrows that his beloved Bloom paced.

As I have done each June 16 since taking Marty N.'s seminar on James Joyce, today I pulled down my tattered copy of the tome and reread a paragraph here, a margin note there, assorted slips of paper quoting Marty, and Chapter 18 in its entirety. Our discussion of "the 'Yes' chapter," all those years ago, was prefaced by a screening of Irish actress Fionnuala Flanagan's performance of Molly Bloom's monologue. The stunned silence that followed the film's end was recalled to me today when I read this bit in the Times Literary Supplement:

This is particularly true of Molly Bloom’s closing soliloquy, which may end on a “Yes” but is tragic in its implications. Here is a wakeful woman, beside her sleeping husband, left with nobody to talk to but herself. After an afternoon assignation with her lover, she feels compelled to m-st-rb-te repeatedly in the bed, because her visitor took all the pleasure for himself. The blank pieces of paper which she posts to herself seem like emblems of her lonely condition, just as her “yes” seems a desperate tactic to convince herself that life is better than it is. When the Irish actress Fionnuala Flanagan performed the monologue in this way on an American campus in the 1980s, some elderly professors handed back their membership cards to the Joyce Association in disgust at her alleged blasphemy against a sacred text.

Not Marty. Like us, he was staggered by Flanagan's interpretation. Oh, what a discussion followed.

Yes, it's Bloomsday again. The eighteenth that I've marked. I grow old.*

You know, reading Joyce, hell, reading any of the "heavier" books, requires a time-space that few of us willingly make. Oh, the children, we chide. Ah, work, we moan. Oh, dear, the chores, the errands, the lawn, the home-improvement projects. We toss the books aside in dismay because they are no easier now than they were when well meaning English teachers and professors pressed them on us in our teens and early twenties.

Bulletin! They were never meant to be "easy."

Happy Bloomsday.
___________________

* From "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot:

I grow old . . . I grow old . . .
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

Do you want me "to bring it all home"? Okay. Modernists Eliot and Joyce (and Ezra Pound) influenced, nay, arguably shaped twentieth-century literature. In a 1922 review, Eliot described Joyce's Ulysses as "the most important expression which the present age has found." It's no small coincindence that Eliot identified the "mythical method" in Joyce's work: "The Waste Land" was meant to be read as a mythic quest, too.

Hence, it is not remarkable that a discussion of Joyce might remind me that "I grow old... I grow old..." and that growing old in that meter might call to mind Eliot.

The reading life is rife with leaps and connections, links and consolations.

And lest someone think me a literary snob, I offer this from Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye:

"'I grow old... I grow old... I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.' What does that mean, Mr. Marlowe?"

"Not a bloody thing. It just sounds good."

He smiled. "That is from the 'Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.' Here's another one. 'In the room women come and go/Talking of Michael Angelo.' Does that suggest anything to you, sir?"

"Yeah -- it suggests to me that the guy didn't know very much about women."

"My sentiments exactly, sir. Nonetheless I admire T. S. Eliot very much."

"Did you say, 'nonetheless'?"

Also from The Long Goodbye:

I'm a licensed private investigator and have been for quite a while. I'm a lone wolf, unmarried, getting middle-aged, and not rich. I've been in jail more than once and I don't do divorce business. I like liquor and women and chess and a few other things. The cops don't like me too well, but I know a couple I get along with. I'm a native son, born in Santa Rosa, both parents dead, no brothers or sisters, and when I get knocked off in a dark alley sometime, if it happens, as it could to anyone in my business, and to plenty of people in any business or no business at all these days, nobody will feel that the bottom has dropped out of his or her life.

The company of books is unimaginably rich.

The material in this post was culled from previous Bloomsday entries.

Speaking of tote bags...

(And I was, just briefly, in yesterday's entry.) Isn't this wonderful? Mine will be delivered later this week. When will yours arrive?

(Reposted with corrected link.)

From the "No Adult Left Inside" files

Click images to enlarge.

To answer a question has popped up a few times in your email messages to me, I'm still using this, even though Mr. M-Mv bought me both this (five months ago!) and this (earlier this month). I can't explain my reluctance to get started in earnest with the Nikon. The Canon just goes along and gets along, you know? It fits into a knapsack or a tote bag or a bicycle basket or even on one of these, and -- Spit! Spot! -- I have images I love, straight out of the camera.

(Note: As regular readers know, I'm not overly fond of "playing" with images. Shoot it right, and leave the effects to the fashion mags. I know I'm not alone in this conviction. After all, Little Jimmy wasn't born with "stars" or "twinkle action" in his eyes. Aunt Peg really has wrinkles -- a lot of 'em. Mom's hair is unmistakably gray. And so on. Blame it on j-school, I guess, but I'm a stickler for truth.)

More pics
The young jay was hanging around the feeders yesterday, and the red-shouldered blackbird greeted us on the bike trail today. (We did ten miles yesterday afternoon and seven this morning!)

The photo of the jay, like the one in this entry about my first days with the Canon, was shot through the front windows. See? Not bad, right? And don't you love the prairie plants framing my blackbird friend? Yeah. Me, too.

Read. Think. Learn. Hey, and spend some time outside. It's beautiful out there.

Related entries
■ Birding (5.18.2008)

■ This morning, before the clock struck seven... (6.06.2009)

■ Untitled (5.03.2009)

A few more offbeat film recommendations

Related entry: Some offbeat film recommendations (5.28.2009)

The Story of Robin Hood (1952)
I first saw this version of the Robin Hood story on the Disney Sunday night movie presentation, which M-mv readers of a certain age will remember was once a Big Deal. Heaps of action, humor, romance, and a wandering minstrel who reminded the Misses of Feste in Twelfth Night.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
A modern classic. It holds up, even on this, my tenth or twelfth viewing.

Le temps du loup (2003)
The aftermath of the end of the world as we know it doesn't lend itself to plot summary, so Le temps du loup is, quite simply, an extended meditation on what it means to be human in the worst of times. (An aside: Mr. M-mv is, on my ardent recommendation, reading The Road (Cormac McCarthy) and World Made by Hand (James Howard Kunstler) as "companion pieces" of a sort to this disturbing film.)

Rachel Getting Married (2008)
In his review of Little Miss Sunshine, Roger Ebert makes note of the extraordinary dinner scene that establishes character and theme in one extended shot. Rachel Getting Married is a film-length treatment of that concept -- a long, seemingly unfiltered, and often painful exploration of one family's life. For Anne Hathaway's brilliant performance and the vibrant soundtrack alone, this film is worth your time.

Shakespeare in American Communities
Since September 2003, the National Endowment of the Arts initiative "Shakespeare in American Communities" has engaged more than sixty professional theater companies to bring Shakespeare to more than seventeen hundred communities and military bases across in the United States. The program will also reach thousands of schools with performances and related educational activities. The companion videos and guides for this program were available through our local library, and while none of the material was new to me, I appreciated the "reconnection," if you will, with the material.

Transcript

Why is there a picture of a frowning fish next to this problem? I ask, gesturing to her math paper.

Because I was worried that I hadn't gotten the concept right, she replies, patiently, as if to a small child.

?

Look, she continues. Here's one on my lit paper, too. Sure enough. I look forward to discussing this with you, she says, leaving me to ponder the cryptic illustration.

Cute fish.

Oh. My. Goodness.

Do you remember Jane-Emily? My daughters have recently discovered this treasure from my past.

Reading plans

Janie at Seasonal Soundings is hosting Summer Reading Challenge 2009. I rarely participate in challenges and memes, but I was glad to see Janie blogging again, so I decided to "play nice with others." Heh, heh, heh.

Summer term is only six weeks for us, so the Misses and I have made the following read-aloud and book club selections. (And, yes, some of these will be re-reads for me. That is one of the joys (and sometimes one of the frustrations) of a sizable age-gap between your oldest student and your youngest.)

Aloud
■ Gay-Neck (Dhan Gopal Mukerji)

■ The Canterbury Tales (Geoffrey Chaucer, Geraldine McCaughrean)

■ In Search of a Homeland: The Story of the Aeneid (Virgil, Penelope Lively)

■ The Questing Knights of the Faerie Queen (Edmund Spenser, Geraldine McCaughrean)

■ Little Britches (Ralph Moody)

With the "Girls Rule Book Club"
■ Tuck Everlasting (Natalie Babbitt)

■ The Giver (Lois Lowry)

■ Chasing Vermeer (Blue Balliet)

■ The Tempest (Shakespeare)

On my own
I'm only going to list three titles here. I will read more than this, but I'd like these to rise to the top of my TBR pile.

■ Travel Writing (Peter Ferry)

■ Somewhere Towards the End: A Memoir (Diana Athill)

■ Growing Up Weightless (John M. Ford)

Party of one

Heh, heh, heh. You know you want one. I've decided it will work magnificently as poolside armor, particularly when coupled with dark sunglasses, a pile of books, and the new radio Mr. M-mv bought me this weekend.

Related entries
■ Yes, I'm supposed to be working... (1.18.2008)

■ The recommended daily allowance (11.05.2003)

■ "Mom, Mom! Look!" (8.19.2005)

From the archives (6.23.2006)

I wonder how much it would take to buy a soap bubble,
if there were only one in the world.
-- Mark Twain

We danced among the bubbles, barefooted on a freshly cut lawn. Like the bubbles, our laughter cascaded down our street and into the neighbors' yards.

What did you do today?

Did you dance? Did you sing? Did you tell them how much you love the spray of freckles on their sun-kissed noses? Did you read? Did you laugh? Or cry? Did you see the blue skies burst then fade to dusk and hear the birds' appreciative song as they darted from your feeders home? Did you open the door before he inserted his key and kiss him like you did on the eve of your engagement? Did you dream? Or nap?

Did you recite a poem? Inhale the damp-clean smell of laundry tumbling in the dryer? Did you cook a meal? Sneak a cookie? Walk it off? Did you write a letter longhand? Send a friend a book? Wear silly socks? Play Othello? Share a treasure? Did you count your change?

Did you eat fresh strawberries? Did you taste them? Did you wash your hair? Kiss a bandaged cut? Did you remember when? Did you call an elderly friend or relative? Send flowers to your sister? Did you paint a picture? Color in one of their books? Clean your closet? Empty your junk drawer? Balance your checkbook? Reflect?

Did you learn anything?

Did you love someone?

Did you live?

On the nightstand

Here we go again...

Books read
■ How Lincoln Learned to Read (Daniel Wolff)
Subtitled Twelve Great Americans and the Educations That Made Them, this collection of biographical essays describes the often unconventional paths of learning followed by -- among others -- Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, Abigail Adams, and W.E.B. DuBois. Wolff appears to conclude that the best education occurs in the argument or debate that rages between the various voices we hear in this book, and he most certainly asserts that the most effective education occurs beyond outside the walls of a classroom.

As the Misses and I prepare to begin our summer term in earnest, How Lincoln Learned to Read serves as both a reminder and an inspiration to me. More, Wolff's engaging style prompted me to purchase a copy of 4th of July, Asbury Park: A History of the Promised Land. Born and raised on the Jersey Shore, I'm well aware of Asbury Park's unfulfilled promise.

■ The Principles of Uncertainty (Maira Kalman)
Apparently, this book was something of a critical sensation when it was published in 2007, but I missed it utterly. Until now. Oh. My. Goodness. Its whimsy and simplicity are charming -- but deceptive: Kalman offers equal doses of art, autobiography, and philosophy. In short, even as she beguiles, she makes you think. Hard.

p. 25
My dream is to walk around the world. A smallish backpack, all essentials neatly in place. A camera. A notebook. A traveling paint set. A hat. Good shoes. A nice pleated (green?) skirt for the occasional seaside hotel afternoon dance.

p. 46
What can I tell you? The realization that we are all (you, me) going to die and the attending disbelief -- isn't that the central premise of everything?

It stops me dead in my tracks a dozen times a day. Do you think I remain frozen? No. I spring into action. I find meaningful distraction.

p. 52
Sometimes when I imagine my own death, I believe I will be reunited with my loved ones. We are all floating around in a fluffy sky.

I get a delicious cozy feeling.

But then I remember that even my loved ones are sometimes very irritating and even infuriating -- so what is that about? And what would we do all day forever?

Besides, the whole thing is insanely unlikely. I prefer the notion of Heaven on Earth. Of sweet, funny, loving moments.

Just trust me on this one: It's a must-not-miss.

For more Kalman, check out her NYT blog.

■ How to Be an Explorer of the World (Keri Smith)
In a neat bit of synchronicity, Smith includes a variation on the Kalman quote above (about walking the world with all of the essentials in a backpack) in the opening pages of her "Portable Art Life Museum." Asserting that artists and scientists view their worlds in "surprisingly similar ways" -- observation, collection, analysis, comparison, pattern identification -- Smith describes how to become an explorer of the world:

1. Always be looking. (Notice the ground beneath your feet.)

2. Consider everything alive and animate.

3. Everything is interesting. Look closer.

4. Alter your course often.

5. Observe for long durations (and short ones).

6. Notice the stories going on around you.

7. Notice patterns. Make connections.

8. Document your findings (field notes) in a variety of ways.

9. Incorporate indeterminancy.

10. Observe movement.

11. Create a personal dialogue with your environment. Talk to it.

12. Trace things back to their origins.

13. Use all of the senses in your investigations.

■ The Lightning Thief (Rick Riordan)
So much has already been written about Riordan's delightful Percy Jackson series. I'll add only that the Misses met the son of Poseidon after sharing many days with the beloved characters-now-friends in the first three Anne of Green Gables books and A Wrinkle in Time, and they still welcomed him to the book-lined rooms of their imagination. And that's saying something. And, yes, of course, the remaining books in the series are en route from your favorite book store.

p. 95
"But those are just--" I almost said myths again. Then I remembered Chiron's warning that in two thousand years, I might be considered a myth.

■ After Photography (Fred Ritchin)
Is there any truth in digital photography? Or is much of it "a Photoshop fairy tale"? (Related entry here). Well, I just knew that someone would eventually explore this matter with erudition: Ritchin, a professor of photography and imaging at New York University, searches for reality in a virtual landscape -- and doesn't necessarily come back empty-handed. Highly recommended.

■ Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse
One story is better than the next in this collection comprising works by such writers as Orson Scott Card, Stephen King, Octavia Butler, and Jonathan Lethem. Good stuff.

Still reading
■ The Girl Who Played with Fire (Stieg Larsson)
Alas, while the first book in this trilogy, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, made my list of particularly memorable books of 2008, the second book and I are not enjoying an exclusive relationship. That said, I do plan to finish it... in bits, here and there.

Books borrowed
■ How Lincoln Learned to Read (Daniel Wolff)

■ The Principles of Uncertainty (Maira Kalman)

■ How to Be an Explorer of the World (Keri Smith)

■ After Photography (Fred Ritchin)

Notable acquisitions
■ 4th of July, Asbury Park: A History of the Promised Land (Daniel Wolff)

■ Somewhere Towards the End: A Memoir (Diana Athill)

■ Against the Fall of Night (Arthur C. Clarke)

■ Growing Up Weightless (John M. Ford)

■ The Other (David Guterson)

■ Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse

One reason to rise early on Sundays

"The Sunday Papers" with Rick Kogan on WGN Radio 720.

Hey, by the way, how many of you attended the Printer's Row LitFest?

This morning, before the clock struck seven...

My companions and I had already flown nearly five miles
in the cool no-one-else-is-yet-awake air.
We had nodded to wildflowers beside the trail,
espied a yellow-bellied sapsucker in the woods,
and freed nine painted ladies.

(My life, after all, has "a certain Tom Sawyerish quality to it." And that's a good thing.)

"It is never right to play 'ragtime' fast."

Miss M-mv(ii) is working on an abridged arrangement of this lovely ragtime waltz for one of her three summer recital pieces. It was the first composition Scott Joplin copyrighted following the death of his wife, Freddie Alexander, and when it is played with this knowledge, the piece is hauntingly expressive.

Related NPR story with additional sound clips here.

Added later: Miss and I also like this young man's interpretation. More, we love the sound of his piano. Mmmmmm. Nice rich tones.

Horizontal triptych: Peonies

Two recent adventures

A few weeks ago -- after Master's semester had concluded but before summer swim season practices began -- we headed into Chicago for the day to see the Harry Potter exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry.

Readers who have been with M-mv for a while (We've been at this for nearly six years, folks. Can you believe it?) may remember my entry on the Tut exhibit at the Field Museum. Well, the HP hoopla reminds me of the Tut hype. The fundamental difference? HP tickets were free with our MSI membership package.

Notes on our visit
We were admitted about fifteen minutes before our actual ticket time with three gentlemen who were treated with the sort of deference and respect that whispered, "VIPs on board," so our tour had advantages few other "regular folk" will likely experience in popular exhibits like Tut and Harry Potter: space to move about; time to linger; the ability to separate without fearing that you will lose each other in the pressing, murmuring crowd; and the freedom to retrace your steps.

We opted to purchase the audio accompaniment, and I'm glad we did -- just as I was for Tut -- but I periodically wondered how appealing young listeners would find the florid opining of this and that designer. The Misses maintain that they really appreciated the commentary, but they do have an artistic bent. In short, I think that Hogwarts fans looking for insights into the "action" of the movies may be disappointed, not only by the audio but also by the costume parade. Yes, the exhibit is fundamentally a well-mounted but pulse-less fashion show, featuring original costumes, props, and some set elements from the Harry Potter films.

For the general public, tickets (admission plus Harry Potter) are $19 for children (three to eleven) and $26 for everyone else. In the end, the wise financial decision, even if you're from out of town, may be to purchase a membership in advance of your visit. Members get several free passes to the HP exhibit, to say nothing of free parking and free admission to the Omnimax features.

Speaking of free...
A couple of weekends ago, our adventures took us through Elgin, where we passed a pleasant hour or so at the Elgin Public Museum of Natural History and Anthropology. For those of you who are familiar with this treasure, yes, the Misses and I spent most of our time looking at the various bird exhibits.