This morning, I woke up at 5am and realized that the power was out -- I noticed first that the fan wasn't running, then that the clock was dark. Once I listened, I could hear the beeping of the UPS and realized I was never going to get back to sleep once I could hear it. The power stayed off long enough that eventually we went out for breakfast so I could get some coffee. I went north a short ways and found the source of the problem. A tree had come down across the lines. There was a place where the pavement was still smoking from where the live cable had set it on fire.
Later, Lucy and I took the boys to a fishing derby at Harkness Pond in Amherst. Charlie led us back and around the pond to take us to his "secret fishing spot", but was dismayed to find it had been discovered. Pretty much every spot where the water was accessible had been discovered. We eventually found a spot large enough to accomodate us joining in and began fishing. We ended up catching six fish, which we ate for lunch.
Over the past couple of days, I checked out One Dharma from the library, saw 
this link on Metafilter to thisTricycle article about Buddhism in the West, and then Phil forwarded me this link to a Salon article also about American Buddhism. Something of a hint, I guess. I've been having a great email exchange with an old friend from Kalamazoo. I'm mostly done with the book and hope to blog about it tomorrow.