The Note

T h e   N o t e

The Note is on vacation this month and will return in the March issue. The Note spent a long time researching the vacation. She knows that month-long vacations are usually for the rich or the unemployed and she is neither. She is simply between issues.

The Note is reluctant to use the Internet, so she looked for her ideal vacation tour in the local library. The library was once named after a local millionaire who helped fund it, but the millionaire got arrested and put in prison for bribing a local politician, who is also in prison. Now the library is just called The Library.  There is also a strip joint in town called The Library and that, as you might expect, has been the source of considerable confusion. Before her current job, The Note worked at The Library. but she never tells people, when they ask, whether it was The Library or The Library. But the truth is, only one of the two establishments is appropriate for researching vacation locales. The Library.

The Note settled on a driving tour of the Ozark Mountains, which is where The Note is on vacation this month. Mostly, she is visiting fish hatcheries. She realized at some point that January isn't an ideal time to visit fish hatcheries in the mountains, but to her surprise she hasn't been the slightest bit disappointed. During the day, The Note is given tours of the hatcheries. She buys fish-food pellets in plastic bags and drops a few on the water and watches the trout stir the surface. At night, the Note stays in clean but spartan hotels that sit on the sides of mountains. It occurs to The Note, awake at 2:00 a.m. one night, that she is resting well but sleeping poorly, which she would not think possible. On many nights, she stands at the window, sipping water from the motel bathroom mug, watching trout, not in the rivers or pools, but swimming slowly through the mountain air, winding through the hills, the rocky cliffs, the trees. She believes she sees the edges of the rocks smooth as the fish pass. The Note is thrilled when some of the fish approach the window and graze the glass as they pass.

My thanks to Marc Vincenz for guest-editing this issue. Marc's a lovely guy and a fine writer and he's selected some beautiful work. As always, thanks also to F. John Sharp, FJ Bergmann, and all whose work appears here and all who submitted.

Yours,

Dale

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