Today I'm driving back to Toronto, taking about 12 hours. Long day. So this will do for today and yesterday, which was wonderful. Did my Christmas shopping at LL Bean, pigged out on oysters at Legal Seafood and went to a play.

"Dear Elizabeth" is playing at the Lyric Theatre in downtown Boston. (It's the oldest professional theatre in Boston.) The play is by Sarah Ruhl, a brilliant young American playwright. (She was awarded a MacArthur "genius" grant just a few years ago when she was 28.) "Dear Elizabeth" is based on the book , "Up in the Air" - the letters between the poets Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell, two of the finest American poets of the 20th century. It's a two-hander, obviously, and could have been just two people on chairs reading their thoughts to each other. (It's been done.) But the design and direction create tension and action in what might have been a static production. I want to read both the book and the play, the book for more words and insights into the poets; the play to determine the contributions of the playwright and the director. (Of course, the actors add their own spin to the end result.) (The end result was a Revelation.)

I can't go on because my battery is low. I'll be back tomorrow.

Not writing till after I've seen the display at the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe. And so I missed the date. It's tomorrow, and I didn't write yesterday because I waited to report on the display at the Schlesinger. It's called What They Wrote, What They Saved: The Personal Civil War (SORRY, I can't get out of the italics now) - a fascinating collection of letters, photographs and journals of the women and families in the North concerned about and involved with the Civil War.

The handwriting is exquisite, and you can see where the writer dipped the pen to refresh the ink supply, with the exception of one young man whose messy handwriting revealed that he was probably suffering from what we would recognize today as PTSS. (Are those the right initials to use for Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome?) There is one whole display case devoted to the communications of the Beecher-Stowe family, and one of the accompanying notes refers to the possibly mythical report of the meeting of Abraham Lincoln and Harriet Beecher Stowe. The president is supposed to have greeted the author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" with the remark:

"So you're the little lady who inspired a war."

I've never read the book that apparently was an international best-seller and hugely influential. I am Canadian, of course, and therefore not personally or emotionally involved with this major American historical event, but I have always been fascinated with women's diaries, letters and journals and with their reactions to circumstances in their lives that were affected by public events. Their personal documents give us insights not otherwise gained. I remember when I was working on my play about Alice James, I was allowed in to the Houghton Library and granted the viewing (and handling) of Alice's letters to her brother, Henry, and Henry's letters to her. I wrote that the ink on the letters was blood-warm. I was reminded of that as I read the material in the Schlesinger display. It makes history so personal.

Oh, I hope people keep on writing letters and diaries!