In the Teton County Library this looked at me from the shelf in a way that made me pick it up and take it to a comfortable chair and then check it out for the few days I have left here. It has 1469 pages and not one photo. My middle granddaughter, nine-years-old, is big on graphic novels and she was maybe puzzled by the size and density of this book with no pictures in it when I showed it to her in the car coming home from school. I'm just dipping into it here and there. I have a library card from this library. It's pretty cool that I who live a long way away can take out a big book here. I must need this book now.

When I went to get my youngest granddaughter, a second grader, at her school bus stop the other day here in Jackson, Wyoming, maybe eight kids got off. She was the only one who wasn't of Mexican heritage. She's in a non-mandatory dual-immersion program at her school. Half the day she learns in English; the other half in Spanish. There's a big banner at the entrance to her school with a quote from Cesar Chavez. Many of the kids, and adults, in town came here from Mexico knowing little or no English. The Teton Literacy Center gathers volunteers from town to assist them.

I'm in the library here in Jackson, Wyoming. It opens earlier than my library in New York does. It stays open later too. It's open on Sunday which my New York library isn't. Since I dropped my laptop off my lap two weeks ago, I've used one of my branch library in New York's computers. They give me 45 minutes. Here I get 90 minutes. And you should see the library. Best book place I've been in.

In Jackson, Wyoming, at the hostel where I'm staying, in the wonderfully-well-worn community room where no one could find the other remote for the TV last night, there's a bookshelf where people from all over leave behind books they've finished for fellow travelers. On my first night, I looked to see who'd left what behind. There were two Alice McDermott paperbacks, Bel Canto by Ann Patchett with no dust jacket, a Zone diet book which I read once. The only book that really caught my eye was a thick paperback copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, in Dutch.