Shane's Deli, Wheaton, Illinois

My sweet sister Mariruth drove to Wheaton this morning, all the way from Kenosha, Wisconsin, to spend a couple hours with me (yes, with ME! Is that so hard to believe?).



We headed into the center of Wheaton and ended up at Shane's Deli (formerly The Cock Robin)...mainly because there was a parking slot available in their lot, and all the others on the street appeared taken.



We chose a table outside on this lovely day. Couldn't have asked for better company, and the food was pretty good, too.



Mariruth had a tuna salad sandwich, I think, and I had the grilled Atomic Turkey Panini.



We talked and laughed and caught up in the shade while watching the traffic come and go on this beautiful day. But don't ask to use the restroom.

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The Bone Boxes of Wheaton College

My friend Lin Johnson alerted me to the archaeological display on the fifth floor of the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College, which contains a couple fine examples of ossuaries, or "bone boxes," from the Second Temple period in Israel.


As the author of the novel, The Bone Box, I have a lively interest in these artifacts, so I made my way to the fifth floor today to see them (and to scout out the location of one of my classrooms for tomorrow's teaching).

They're good ones. And they are just a part of an extensive and absorbing display.

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Richard Owen Roberts Booksellers

I love to visit unique local bookstores when I'm traveling, and I came across a great one yesterday. It is located just around the corner from the Billy Graham Center on the Wheaton College campus.

I walked there in the morning, but the store hours are somewhat limited: 1:30-5:30 p.m. most weekdays. So I came back in the afternoon, and was amply rewarded.

The store is a rich warren of shelves and tables and boxes, stuffed with old and rare (and some new) books. The woman behind the counter made a point to tell me that if I didn't see what I was looking for, the bulk of their inventory is kept behind the scenes.

I loved it. So fun to browse the shelves. I saw an ancient three-volume set of Matthew Henry's commentary:

And a fifty-eight volume set of Dumas's works, above a thirty-two volume Balzac set (below).

And those were just the beginning. Row after row of carefully shelved and alphabetized books. Even one in the "ethics" section by Josh McDowell and Bob Hostetler:

I wish now that I had pulled it off the shelf to see what they were asking for it. The prices were not bargain-basement level at all. After looking through all the shelves, I asked the woman for a book for which I've been looking for nearly thirty years, Safed the Sage by William Barton. She looked it up in her computer files, disappeared for a few moments, and then produced the thin paperback volume. It cost me fifteen dollars, but I was glad to get it. Plus, I now have a souvenir (the best kind) of Richard Owen Roberts Booksellers in Wheaton, Illinois.

The Wade Center, Wheaton, IL

If a breakfast companion had not tipped me off this morning, I may have forgotten about The Wade Center on the Wheaton College campus, which I visited this morning. Named for the founder of the ServiceMaster Company, whose generosity established the center, it is the fulfillment of Dr. Clyde S. Kilby's vision. Kilby was a professor of English literature at Wheaton and a correspondent of C. S. Lewis.


The center's current holdings of twelve thousand volumes and more than sixty-five thousand pages of manuscripts and letters relating to the lives and writings of C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkein, G. K. Chesterton, George MacDonald, Charles Williams, Dorothy Sayers, and Owen Barfield began with fifteen letters from C. S. Lewis to Kilby and a handful of Lewis books.


On exhibit today is the desk (above) on which Tolkein wrote, edited, and illustrated The Hobbit (as well as some work on The Lord of the Rings). Under the glass atop the desk is a letter, beautifully calligraphed by Tolkein himself, explaining the provenance of the desk and the use it saw over the years. He wrote the letter on the occasion of his donating the desk to a British charity.


C. S. Lewis's desk (above), which he used at Magdalen College and also at his home, "The Kilns," is also on display, as well as--be still my heart--the actual wardrobe made famous in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. It took all my will power not to climb inside in the hope of entering Narnia.


The Wade Center also includes the Kilby Reading room, where I browsed the extensive collection of works by and about "The Seven," the authors to whom the center is devoted.


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Wheaton College

I arrived this afternoon on the campus of Wheaton College in Wheaton, a northwestern suburb of Chicago.


Living and working as I do so close to the beautiful campus of Miami University (of Ohio)--from which also my daughter and many loved ones have graduated--it's hard to impress me. But I am reminded (I've been here before) that Wheaton's campus is a lovely one.


The grounds are well kept and the buildings venerable.


I am here through Saturday for the 2013 Write-to-Publish Conference, one of the best in the world.

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A Chinese Lantern Anniversary Dinner

This evening the lovely Robin and I enjoyed a low-key thirty-sixth anniversary dinner at the Chinese Lantern, a favorite eatery of ours, in Hamilton. She had the (excellent) Happy Family meal and I had the (excellenter) Confucian Chicken. It couldn't have been better, all around--unless it were free.

Even the fortune cookies were dead on. Can you guess which belonged to whom? Not a trick question.

Bahamas Lighthouse

I took the above photo from the balcony of our Norwegian Cruise Lines cabin on a 2007 cruise I took with the lovely Robin to the Bahamas. Taken just as our ship was arriving.