Today I joined my daughter's 4th grade class on a field trip to Annapolis to learn some new things about my home state and to renew the sunburn on my face.

Annapolis is a beautiful old town, full of 2 & 3 hundred year old brick homes, shiny young midshipmen, hippies from St. John's, and the best crab cakes you'll find in this world. Our tour guide, Squire Richard Hillman, dressed in authentic colonial garb (with the exceptions, he confessed, of modern shoes and undergarments to the delight of the 10 year olds) was a former mayor of Annapolis. No wonder he knew so much. I'm planning to go back on a weekend evening and hear his ghost tour.

One thing I learned today was about the history of the Maryland state flag. I had always heard that Maryland was a "neutral" state in the Civil War. The truth is that it was divided. Marylanders were killing each other in battles. About 50 years after the War's end, the different military regiments wanted to march separately in a parade under their different banners. Their wives wouldn't let them. They sewed the two flags together into what was later adopted as our state flag. It's a bury-the-hatchet flag.

I did slip away from my well-chaperoned charges long enough to purchase two crab cakes to smuggle onto the Harbor Queen for my lunch. Mmmmmmm.

If you have never been to Annapolis, put it on your bucket list. I'd be happy to offer my home as a hub of your tour plans, but my basement had a cataclysmic flood last week and I'm afraid my guest quarters are inaccessible for months to come. But I will meet you there for crab cakes and a ghost tour!

Why did the chicken cross the road?




BARACK OBAMA: The chicken crossed the road because it was time for a CHANGE! The chicken wanted CHANGE!

JOHN MC CAIN: My friends, that chicken crossed the road because he recognized the need to engage in cooperation and dialogue with all the chickens on the other side of the road.

HILLARY CLINTON: When I was First Lady, I personally helped that little chicken to cross the road. This experience makes me uniquely qualified to ensure -- right from Day One! -- that every chicken in this country gets the chance it deserves to cross the road. But then, this really isn't about me...

DR. PHIL: The problem we have here is that this chicken won't realize that he must first deal with the problem on 'THIS' side of the road before it goes after the problem on the 'OTHER SIDE' of the road. What we need to do is help him realize how stupid he's acting by not taking on his 'CURRENT' problems before adding 'NEW' problems.

OPRAH: Well, I understand that the chicken is having problems, which is why he wants to cross this road so bad. So instead of having the chicken learn from his mistakes and take falls, which is a part of life, I'm going to give this chicken a car so that he can just drive across the road and not live his life like the rest of the chickens.

GEORGE W. BUSH: We don't really care why the chicken crossed the road. We just want to know if the chicken is on our side of the road, or not. The chicken is either against us, or for us. There is no middle ground here.

COLIN POWELL: Now to the left of the screen, you can clearly see the satellite image of the chicken crossing the road...

ANDERSON COOPER - CNN: We have reason to believe there is a chicken, but we have not yet been allowed to have access to th e other side of the road.

JOHN KERRY: Although I voted to let the chicken cross the road, I am now against it! It was the wrong road to cross, and I was misled about the chicken's intentions. I am not for it now, and will remain against it.

NANCY GRACE: That chicken crossed the road because he's GUILTY! You can see it in his eyes and the way he walks.

PAT BUCHANAN: To steal the job of a decent, hardworking American.

MARTHA STEWART: No one called me to warn me which way that chicken was going. I had a standing order at the Farmer's Market to sell my eggs
when the price dropped to a certain level. No little bird gave me any insider information.

DR SEUSS: Did the chicken cross the road? Did he cross it with a toad?
Yes, the chicken crossed the road, but why it crossed I've not been told.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY: To die in the rain. Alone.

GRANDPA: In my day we didn't ask why the chicken crossed the road. Somebody told us the chicken crossed the road, and that was good enough.

BARBARA WALTERS: Isn't that interesting? In a few moments, we will be listening to the chicken tell, for the first time, the heart warming story of how it experienced a serious case of molting, and went on to accomplish its life long dream of crossing the road.

ARISTOTLE: It is the nature of chickens to cross the road.

BILL GATES: I have just released eChicken2007, which will not only cross roads, but will lay eggs, file your important documents, and balance your checkbook. Internet Explorer is an integral part of the Chicken. This new platform is much more stable and will never cra... #R&^*^(!.... Reboot.

ALBERT EINSTEIN: Did the chicken really cross the road, or did the road move beneath the chicken?

BILL CLINTON: I did not cross the road with THAT chicken. What is your definition of chicken?

AL GORE: I invented the chicken!

COLONEL SANDERS: Did I miss one?

DICK CHENEY: Where's my gun?

AL SHARPTON: Why are all the chickens white? We need some black chickens.

I'm reading a book that Julie sent me called "The Birth House" by Ami McKay. I underlined this sentence:

"Victory isn't anywhere near the same as peace."

Do you write in your books? What I write depends on the book. Sometimes I just underline or star so I can find that part later. Sometimes I write a counterpoint or a sound, like "mmmm".

When my ex-grandmother-in-law passed away and everyone was picking over her things, putting their name on stickers on her stuff, I just took a couple of books off her shelf. One was her Bible. I had hoped she wrote in the margins, although she didn't. She did have a chapter torn out of a sexy detective novel stuck right in 1 Thessalonians. There was no writing in that either.

I have a friend who was reading in the Library of Congress. He was outraged to find notes penciled into the margins of a very old book. He took it to the librarian who told him that those were written in there by the man who donated the book to help start the Library: Thomas Jefferson. Wouldn't those margin notes be cool to read?

You know, some of the scriptures in the Bible were margin notes written by the scribes that later scribes just included?

If you've been following the expanded record of my happenings on my Mom's blog,my Dear One's blog, and my friends' blogs, you'll see that I have been busy!

When I was a kid imagining how wonderful it would be to be the grown up, I hadn't realized how busy I would be once I got here. I never thought about the hours my mom & dad spent on taxi duty, only seeing 1/4 of it. I just remember the places they took me. Those were great places too, so I salute all the Kith & Kin Taxi Drivers - past & present.





I want to tell you about seeing the wild ponies at Assateague Island with the Girl Scouts. Or about the moving burial service at Arlington National Cemetery for Mark's father, about the wonderful way Mark & I celebrated the one year anniversary of our meeting, my son's thirteenth birthday, my daughters' social dramas, my first ever 18 holes of golf, and my recent upsets and openings in my writing career.

But I'm going to go put my ankle on ice and have a glass of wine and listen to John Stewart for now. I'll get back to you soon!