Back in Kent

 So, it's good to be back in Kent after a long (four week) research trip spent in the Marquette Archives. Once again my work focused mainly on fine-tuning the Map of the Manuscript I've been working on for about four years now. This schematic shows the sequence in which every draft of every chapter of THE LORD OF THE RINGS was written, making it much easier to navigate between the vast amount of material in Marquette's collection.  I made a lot of little fixes (and some not so little). As usual I learned a lot: it's impossible, for me at any rate, to spend any amount of time with the manuscripts without thinking of some project I'd like to work on, if only there were time.

And of course I enjoyed being back in Milwaukee. I've been away from the area twenty years now but still have a lot of friends in the area, some I got to see (which I enjoyed) and some I didn't manage to sync up with (hoping for better luck next time). Plus I got to visit the cat cafe twice, ordered out from my favorite Milwaukee restaurant (and trying out several I hadn't been to before), got some frozen custard, had a few long walks around the East Side, visited a bookstore famous for its cats, only to discover its longtime cat had died just two week before. No C.o.C. game in The Walnut Room, but then  my visit did fall during GenCon.

And now after the better part of a week spent settling back in it's back to work on the current project Monday. 

---John R.

--current reading: A KNIFE IN THE DARK.

--PORIUS by J. C. Powys