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.