An early thaw has come to Mount Winchester. Though the handsome young men who bathe beneath my rooftop deck haven't yet taken leave from their Chelsea photography studios, I can still revel in the warmth, both from the sun and my imported coffee. Roger went to see his dentist (who is also his brother) in Maine this weekend, so it was just Peggy and I. The damn kid cried through the night on Friday, so on Saturday morning I slugged a Pimm's and Sprite down her gullet and together we watched a terrifying movie about the fiery death of nearly 100 hair-metal fans. That quelled her for a while.

I went to my study and began compiling a list of the crimes of Sami Al-Arian. They are really too numerous to mention. First, he's Palestinian, which condemns him right there. Second, he's made phone calls, several of them, to the so-called occupied territories. He appears to be bald and unashmed of it. He's a college professor who refused to register his syllabus with the government. Also, he's raised lots of money for terrorist groups. Under Patriot Act II, that's more than enough evidence for Mr. Al-Arian to disappear into the bowels of the American prison system forever, with no right to an attorney, no right to a trial, no access to his family, and no need to be charged with a specific crime. This may be "politics," as the Good Professor says, but to my mind, it's the right kind of politics. John Ashcroft says the man is a terrorist. Therefore, I hope we never hear of or from him again.

To change gears slightly: entries may be shorter this week, and indeed continue to be brief until the war starts. For a delightful thing has happened! I've been cast in an all-male community theater-in-the-round production of Twelfth Night. At Oxbridge, I played Hamlet, and Macbeth, and Lear, and Othello, and also Titania, queen of the fairies. Now I once again get to play a woman, for I've been cast as Olivia, the fair princess who cross-dresses her way through the magic forest of Illylria. Roger is also in the production. He'll play Malvolio, Olivia's oily, pompous manservant who is secretly in love with her.

It's nice that the director cast Roger and I against type.

Doing Shakespeare presents unique challenges to a man of action, and also of letters. This space will be an occasional chronicle of those challenges. But for now, I say: "If music be the food of love, play on! Thou art more lovely, and more temperate! Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player, who struts and frets his hour upon the stage..."

Line!

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