I did not miss any trains on my trip into the city last night for my book group. The group met in my old stomping grounds in that area between Ukrainian Village and Wicker Park that now seems to be called simply Wicker Park. The neighborhood has changed so much since I left. As I walked down Division, I was counting the businesses that were gone � the Latino grocery that had great produce but always smelled of decaying meat; my favorite used bookstore in all the land, Myopic Books where at any time of day you would have to step over the creaky dog lying in the patch of sun in front of the door to enter and where there were always two old men silently playing chess in some dank corner of the basement (Myopic has moved twice since those days); The �Shi- Shop,� which, as the gregarious owner would tell you if you asked about the graffiti-style sign, was pronounced �Shit Shop� unless his kids are around, in which case it was called �Shy.� It truly was full of shit, from floor to ceiling, with few items with price tags more than a buck or two. If you bought anything at all, he�d let you take home just about anything else for free. I have a beautiful, although non-functional, typewriter that keeps my LPs from tipping over on the shelf that was a gift from the Shi- Shop�s owner one day when I stopped to wave on my way home. �Look! I know you a writer. You needa typewriter. Only a dollar.� �No thanks, I don�t need a broken typewriter.� �Well, just take it then. I was using it for a doorstop, but I gotta better one.� I have to say that I�ve become very attached to it, even after the grease dripping off it ruined my favorite T-shirt when I carried it home. The typewriter found new life as a toy for AJ. He still loves it when we pull it off the shelf for him to pretend to type. He likes to find a particular paperback book, an anthology of short stories, that has a typewriter very much like that one on the cover, and place it next to him while he�s �working.�

There are still some familiar sights on Division. The post office is there, looking as drab as ever. So is the school with its inexplicable and possibly obscene sculpture out front. The Alliance Bakery, with its vivid neon sign and elaborate German pastries (some of which were consumed at last night�s dinner � yum). And the Gold Star bar, ever-dissolute. They�ve been joined by a spate of coffee shops (my jaw just about hit the pavement when I passed a Starbucks. Starbucks?!? In my neighborhood???) and organic bakeries and trendy clubs and sushi bars with condo lofts up above.

Unfortunately I didn�t have time to walk as far as the tiny Louis Sullivan Russian Orthodox Church. But book group was worth stopping for � a good crowd, a good discussion, even though we all agreed that the book itself, Margaret Atwood�s Penelopiad, was pretty bad. The premise was so promising � telling the story of the one real female character in the Odyssey, and accompanying her voices with those of the maids killed by Odysseus upon his return to Ithaca. I think Atwood wants to be a feminist writer but she always seems to run into trouble. She just doesn�t seem to like women very much. In Penelopiad, she seeks to exchange the stereotype of the good wife for something else, but she ends up reinscribing several other stereotypes instead. It�s sloppy. It reads like a student essay � a marginally clever party trick, no more. What makes it so infuriating, though, is that she had so much to work with. The Odyssey itself is a goldmine, but Atwood broaches several interesting subjects � the comparison of the the upper class woman with the servant class, for example � but does nothing with them. We all agreed that we would have collectively written a much better book. But we were also all glad to have had the excuse to dig into Homer. I haven�t read the Odyssey since high school and I�ve never seen to Fagles translation before. Rereading the Odyssey has been a pleasure.

And now, I must return to domestic affairs, playing my own role of Good Wife. There are dishes and laundry to do before I go at 3 to beg my doctor for cough syrup with codeine to remedy my annual January bronchial freakout. Be glad I am not coughing on you.

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