Libby is off to Kentucky for her annual River's Edge International Film Festival trek (she left on Wednesday, and she's not due back until tomorrow). That left me a bachelor for the time, and since this is #1 Son Seth's last weekend home before he goes off to graduate school, where do you suppose we went today? I seem to remember making a similar trip last year when Libby went to the Film Festival. As I recall, the horseflies scared me off. Maybe the forecasted thundershowers will scare them off this time. If you love crows and other corvids, be sure to visit the homepage for the American Society of Crows and Ravens. There are plenty of marvelous links there all about the smartest birds in the forest. Have you been sending your links to Dan at Exploring the World of Trees for the next Festival of the Trees? Dan's English-language blog is based in Spain, so your links will get international attention. You can email your tree-related links -- and they don't have to be something you've created -- to Dan at treespecies (at) gmail (dot) com or by using the handy submission form. I'm getting much better at being assertive. I'm actually going out and asking bloggers if they'd like to host the Festival, and I've been getting positive responses. It's only a matter of time before I ask you, and you won't be able to resist my charm, will you? Remember also that International Rock-Flipping Day is coming up on September 7. Get thee out there and flip some rocks, then photograph, capture a video, or sketch what you find beneath them. Heck, you can even write a poem of you want. Dave and Bev are the brains behind this operation. They will be amassing a list of links to posts about rock flipping, and a special Flickr group will be set up for pix, just like last year. What's Pablo reading now? I dipped back into Age of Reason for a while but only until Libby completed reading The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by good old Edgar Allan Poe. This is the next selection for our library book discussion group, so now I'm reading it. The meeting isn't for another week, and that should give me plenty of time, but, ugh, that 19th Century prose! Missouri calendar:

• Snapping turtle eggs begin hatching.

Today in Missouri history:

• George Rapeen Smith was born on this date in 1804. When he saw that the railroad was not going to come to his town, he established a new town called Sedalia and did win the railroad. Sedalia now hosts the Missouri State Fair each year about this time.

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