Morning Coffee

I say this all the time, but the web really can be incredible tool for education. I'll talk more on this later, but one of the rewards of having any sort of renown as a writer, in this age, is the access to yet more information. People who know your work have a strong desire to not simply talk to you, but to tell you things. My whole escapade into the Civil War was led by the web, and my escapade into French springs from that. Again, the web is indispensable. 

The doom-saying about the internet is fairly natural. But those of us who are really concerned about old things--about story-telling, about solitude, about the Old Masters--should do less carping, and more adapting. The web is a tool. It is not a value system.