Return from Sylva

Graham, Mary and I are just back from a not-quite whirlwind tour of the mountains west of Asheville. We stayed in rather shiny new cabin up a crazy driveway in some random holler. You may hear more about that later.

But for today I would be remiss if I didn't tell you about Sylva. It's a sweet little town with not one but three book stores, though admittedly one is a friends of the library store so the selection isn't great (but the guy behind the desk was super friendly). It is more than counterbalanced by the one next door, a classic used book store of the sort one sees rarely, where the owner clearly just buys up the collections of faculty members from the nearby university (Western Carolina) and sells them. All manner of oddities and things that took me back to college. Graham ended up independently picking up a book about US-China relations that had been on my Amazon list for years.

One can also purchase food in Sylva.

But the place de resistance, no doubt, was the one in this picture, which features the world's largest collection of pieces of the Berlin Wall, some of them adorned with the original graffiti, others with newer artwork. Accompanied by a museum which gives a detailed timeline of the Cold War. It is owned by a guy from Florida who is a history buff. It's free to go in but you can buy some of the art and also T-shirts (Graham and I got a couple) and other memorabilia. There's also a range of other period stuff strewn about, like a 1979 issue of US News and World Report which promised to explain why there would be food inflation in the upcoming year. I turned to the relevant article, which proved to be a fairly detailed interview with the Secretary of Agriculture. Times have changed.

Early Wednesday I have to pick up and head to the west coast, first to Seattle for a couple of days, then on to Juneau to see Natalie for a few days before she returns to the East Coast. Then I'll be back for a week and change before we deposit Graham in the apartment he will share with Ben. This morning it occurred to me that Graham may never live under the same roof with us again for as long as a summer. My heart fell. Though, as I have attested before, there are virtues to empty-nesting, it is also nice just to have him here.