By Bob Hicks
Mr. Scatter has been traveling the byways of America quite a lot of late, and by a quirk of fate he found himself in an open pavilion in Sun Valley, Idaho, on the eve of September 11, listening to Salman Rushdie talk about Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Sarah Palin, the nonpolitical and political natures of art, the difficulties of free speech and the true perils of reactionary jihadism.
The unlikeliness, and yet the unabashed Americanness, of this event occurring in this place and at this time, nine years minus a few hours after the jihadist suicide attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, was perhaps less ironic than celebratory. It was proof, in a way, that in a world wracked by violent religious and cultural insanity, good sense and mere goodness can survive.
Felix/Martha and I have been studying up on all the books that are going to be used in his division this year for the 
When The Large Smelly Boys bicker in the car, I hit play and they magically silence before the almighty audio book. Nancy Farmer, god bless her. Past summers we plowed through her The Sea of Trolls and The Land of the Silver Apples. Just to be safe, we have along her The Islands of the Blessed on iPod, CD and hard copy. Thank heavens, because we’ve used all of them. In less than a week, the hard copy was devoured by two members of the Scatter Family.
I think of this because the big deal in Puddletown this weekend is Saturday night’s opening of 
Jesse Kornbluth, editor of 
As Kornbluth explains it:
This time he was working, covering the event for The Oregonian, and it turned out to be remarkable — well worth twisting and ducking twelve blocks through the crowds and police blockades for the Rose Festival’s 
Heald, the Broadway and Hollywood vet who gave it up to move to Ashland and join the acting company at the 
Between epic motorcycle trips and learned sessions with master brewers, Foyston’s been known to paint up a modest storm of his own. And Ken Dixon, who in the great long-ago wrote an occasional witty and perceptive art review for Mr. Scatter at a Large and Important Daily Publication, is a writer with a singular miniaturist approach to the puzzle of the written word. His books are wry and elegant, carefully measured for precise effect, and they maintain a sly satiric distance. At a time when the art world sometimes seems nearly strangled in a tangle of theory and jargon, even the name of Dixon’s artist-hero seems perfectly chosen: Christopher Freeze.
Victoria & Albert: Art and Love
Both works, as the 
Austen’s comedies may be the most precise and practical romances ever written. Obsessed with the often foolishly claustrophobic concerns of a narrow slice of self-satisfied society, they’re also worldly. Within the confines of that small society she discovers a measured universe of human possibility, from the perfidious to the noble. And she does it with one of the slyest, keenest raised eyebrows in all of literature.
I put my bag on the floor and moved a portable potty out of the way to give her a sideways hug.