Sunday August 27, 2006 6:30 am Frankfort, Kentucky. Day 12 of our trip to Virginia. Sunrise 7:05 Sunset 8:18 Hours of daylight: 13:11

A. Morning Musings

6:30 am 75 F (24 C) Grey sky with scattered clouds. The forecast high is 86 F (30 C) with a 40% chance of thunderstorms.

This feels a little more like the normal beginning to a day. It is just after 6, dark outside and I have access to the Internet.

B. Plan

Drive east from Frankfort, Kentucky and see how far we get.

C. Actual/Notes

7:50 am I have just googled " "The Marriage of Figaro" performance theatre Beaumarchais". I have not checked all the hits but have only found a couple of web sites that describe a performance of this play. However the critics' reviews have shown me where the historical satire lies in some of the exchanges and the general idea of a servant being much more knowledgeable than the master. We all agree on the cleverness of the script, but I still feel the play is much more "witty good fun" than a serious attack on the nobility.

7:10 PM We are now settled in at a place called Beckley in West Virginia. This morning we began with a 1-mile walk through the Buckley Wildlife Sanctuary near Frankfort, Kentucky. The only wildlife we saw was a turtle on our path. But we did see two American Goldfinches (one male, one female) in a bird feeder on the porch of a house near the park office.

We had a short chat with a park employee who asked if we had heard about the plane crash in Lexington, only about 30 miles from where we were. 49 people were killed as a plane crashed shortly after take-off.

The weather remains hot and humid - much like stepping out of a hot shower. We stopped for a short break when we crossed into West Virginia. We picked up another brochure that gave discount coupons for the state and are now trying a Days Inn. The room is fine but the Internet connectivity is not working (the signal is very weak). We had dinner in an Italian restaurant next door. The food was much better than yesterday but it still fell short of being great. Using canned mushrooms instead of fresh was a real surprise.

Buckley Wildlife Sanctuary	wildlife on trail
Interstate 64 near Beckley, West Virginia

There is now a noticeably cool breeze. Perhaps this will be the beginning of slightly cooler weather. Tomorrow we will arrive in Williamsburg, Virginia, our final goal and destination for this trip. We will stay there a couple of days for a bit of both site-seeing and genealogy before beginning to turn around and head north and west.

10:00 PM I have just finished reading the third play by Beaumarchais, "The Guilty Mother". That completes the book "The Figaro Trilogy". Now for a brief book report.

1. An opening sentence that makes a personal connection between the book and the reviewer.
2. A few sentences on the author's background and the relation to the story. (try googling the author for information)
3. A paragraph that focuses on 1 or 2 specific details from the story.
4. A paragraph that mentions a couple of weaknesses in the story.
5. A brief summary evaluation of the book.

These three plays represent some of the most rapidly paced and witty dialogue that I have seen since attending a play in London about twenty years ago called "Noises Off". The difference is in the plot: some stories are written and soon forgotten, others are timeless and transcend the writing. Beaumarchais' three plays, written shortly before the French Revolution, are in the latter group. There is dialogue in all three plays that reflects much of the popular feeling in France at that time although it is a matter for debate how much the play may have also fostered such feeling. The allusion in the third play to Tartuffe is startling, if only because I have just finished reading Tartuffe a few days ago. Although the plays are all sexual comedies it would not be difficult to take the same logic and write a good mystery novel. The book may be read for the simple joy of the intertwined logic and dialogue or it may be read for its place in French history, although these are not mutually exclusive categories. I will be making a deliberate effort in the coming months to see if I can find any live performances of any of these three plays (but not the opera versions).

Hopefully I will have Internet access tomorrow.

D. Reflection