I just googled cobweblog, or coblog, or cobbers. Very humbling. Lots of people, mostly students, it seems, and with blogs dated in the recent, but not too recent, past. So it appears that I was not the only one to think of cobwebs in relation to websites; it's an easy jump. Nor am I the only one having trouble keeping u with the daily discipline of a blog. A friend just asked me did a blog mean I was no longer writing in my diary. No. Diary comes first, not that it's deathless prose. I started keeping it regularly within hours of my husband's sudden death and it became my surrogate companion. We used to have coffee together in the morning, or wine at night, and go over our day. My diary is a banal, dull, blow-by-blow (almost) account of my daily activities. If have a bad reaction, or a good one, it's there for editorial enlargement. And the brief reference to events serve as a mnemonic, should I need more detail. It helps. So I'm not leaving off the daily doings. Do you all know Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way? She tells her disciples to keep a notebook. For a while I was doing double-entry bookkeeping, two separate journals: one for me and one for Julia. Too much. This isn't like that. I don't think it is. This is like tapping into the inner dialogue and coming out with what? Thought for the day? Some time I'll write about my Happy Homilies. This is enough for now. Hey, cobbers, wherever you are, hang in there. Keep spinning.

I was away for a week, on an errand of mercy, serving as grief counsellor for a dear friend who has lost his dog. I wrote about it a few days ago ("pain".) He needed company to go to Cleveland on business and couldn't bear to travel alone. It was hard on me for several reasons, chief being that I relived my own grief when my husband died. I dredged up feelings and memories I had buried. One does, after all, develop scar tissue that forms over the wound. Not to dwell on it now. But, hey! what a lovely city Cleveland is! It has grand public buildings; Western Reserve University has a generous, lovely campus; The Cleveland art Museum (with a new atrium and layout) is delightful; the main library is gracious; the Terminal building is a genuine and attractive landmark and I went crazy in a huge, gorgeous, used book store. It was a privilege to discover such a delightful, genuine, American city. The Cleveland Symphony (I knew it already as one of the best in the country) the theatre (lots of them) were both dark, so I'll have to go back. Also, I want to see the new Museum of Modern Art. These are not Band-Aids; they are all salutary sources of comfort. I am so grateful.