BEWARE THE IDES OF MARCH.

That is my advice for the day to all of you: BEWARE THE IDES OF MARCH. So if you see an ide coming, run in the other direction.

Cool word of the day: undecennary, which means "a period of eleven years" or "an eleventh anniversary."This courtesy of A Word A Day, which I commend highly.

There are many, many things I want to write about here, but I am sleepy and too busy to think/write them out properly (one activity being how I do the other) and therefore not able to do any of them justice. But they include: the idiots behind www.classkc.org and how they are symptomatic of the whole literalist divide in this country; thoughts on the role of the child protagonist in literature, inspired by John Updike's New Yorker review of my darling Jonathan's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close; a textbook example of why Anthony Lane is a fabulous reviewer; how the '90s retro club NerveAna is both like and unlike the middle-school dances I attended when my bangs were much bigger than they are now; "Bride and Prejudice," which is a good time but not nearly so good as it could have been if Mira Nair had directed it instead of the "Bend It Like Beckham" lady, who can't round out a scene to save her life, and if it hadn't had some guy who resembled a Ken doll and possessed the emotional range thereof cast as Mr. Darcy; and the pleasures of running. But as said, I am sleepy, so I am sorry to say you will be denied all these delights. Another time, perhaps.

I also wanted to announce that the Central Children's Room of the Donnell Library Center is currently displaying the original art for the Arthur A. Levine Books picture book The Red Bird, which was written by Astrid Lindgren, illustrated by Marit Tornqvist, translated by Patricia Crampton, and edited by Cheryl Klein. If you are in New York and around 53rd Street between 5th and 6th Avenues, you should stop in and look at it -- it is breathtakingly beautiful, and there until the end of the month.