Remember the sign in your public library when you were little? The librarian's frown certainly reinforced it—she was always older than the sign—but to me the public library had a hush that made reading even more a sacred occupation.

Now that libraries have become media centers, with an interactive bustle, I wonder what they have done with the signs. I would love to have a few to house in appropriate places.

I would like one to end the din from the "drum" bangers on the subway platforms. I don't mean the real musicians but the fellows who have no drums, only empty plastic buckets which produce a racket more than sufficient to rouse the dead. I admire their energy, but not the accompanying timpani.

Books so often raise questions that can fill the empty spaces in a day. One novel that I have just finished and that has left me with much to ponder is Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky.

It is a book that almost did not see the light of day. The author, a Russian Jew who fled the Bolsheviks and who had long lived in France, was caught up in the trauma of the Nazi occupation of France. Her reputation as a successful author did not save her from being arrested and sent to Auschwitz where she died in 1942. Her very young children remembered her writing in tiny handwriting in a large notebook. They saved that notebook, thinking it was her memoirs. Some fifty years later they began to decipher it, only to discover it was a novel dealing with World War II.

Did you catch the news item about two women's softball teams working as one in an incredible act of sportsmanship? I saw it in the NY Times of April 30, and it has warmed by heart every time I think of it.

It took place during a college softball game between Western Oregon and Central Washington. Sara Tucholsky, a tiny Oregon player, hit what was certainly a three-run homer, over the fence and out of sight. As she trotted to first base, her right knee buckled and she crumpled to the ground, crying with pain as she crawled to touch the base. The Western Oregon coach made certain no teammate touched her, since that would have nullified any further action. What to do now?

It was a brilliant springtime on the island of Rhodes as we headed for Lindos and our third acropolis in five days. I was becoming fond of the challenges from those ancients who loved the heights of their rocky lands. As we passed the olive groves, watched the little roadside goats raise their inquisitive heads at our tour bus and then halted above the tiny seaside town, nothing prepared me for what was to follow.

Our path wound up from a small village up and up until we came to the beginning of the ascent to the mountain top. It was here that the psychology of the ancient builders some 25 centuries ago came into play. To reach the shrine at the top one had to ascend three staircases. The first was extremely narrow (parts of the original still exist, tortuously carved out of the rocky hillside.) It ended in a resting area with nothing to view except the sky above.

Taking a deeper breath we went for the second stairway. This one was wider and it too ended in a large flat resting area with no view. It was so different from both Athens and Patmos where the paths to the top offer stunning views of the world below as one climbs and climbs.

It was the little beach that I found so endearing. A tiny, sandy half-circle was most of what was visible of ancient Cenchreae. However, it took only a little imagination to see Paul coming ashore here.

One of the joys of our church trip to Greece was putting biblical names and bits of geography together. Here we were on the day after our exploration of Athens—where Paul's message fell on seemingly deaf ears—now tracing his next steps. If he had sailed from Athens to Corinth, this was his landing place. If he had taken the highway, he still at some point came ashore here because this community was special to him.

No, there is no extant letter to the Church in Cenchreae, but tradition says Paul composed the lengthy letter to the Romans while he lived among the Christians of this seaport. Why? Because, he put that letter into the hands of Phoebe, a deacon of the church in Cenchreae, and asked the Romans to receive both her and what she bore.

I have obviously spent much time thinking about Paul these days. One of his endearing traits is his love of his hometown, Tarsus, "an important city" as he describes it. However, once he left it for further studies in Jerusalem did he ever really live there again? Acts 11:25 seems to indicate that he went back after his conversion while he waited for some word as to what would happen next, but this could not have been an extended stay.

In so many ways Paul was the first of the moderns, we rootless people who agree with Thomas Wolfe that you can't go home again. (When we do go back, it isn't the same. I hate to walk down the street where I grew up and see strangers sitting on "my" front porch—even after these many years.)

Paul found a way around this by being at home everywhere. With only his letters for guidance, we can see a man who could love the highway town of Philippi, would spend months in the wildly international port of Corinth, would preach in sophisticated Athens, and would find his way to the heart of the empire, Rome itself, and not be a stranger.

Packing my guide book to Greece and a map of Athens in preparation for a trip that will be occurring as you read this, I am carried back in time to when Paul was making his own preparations to visit that same city.

By the time the Apostle of the Gentiles set out for Athens, most of its glory was already past. The buildings on the Acropolis were 400 years old when Paul first glimpsed them and the great age of Greek theatre was long past. Direct democracy, something we Americans have yet to taste, had been instituted 500 years before.

Paul came into a city now under the power of Rome, walked around it and marveled at the multiplicity of deities honored within the timeless walls of Athens. He made his way to the Areopagos and preached a marvelously well-planned sermon on the unknown god respected by the Athenians and which he cleverly told them he had come to announce.

On March 22 a minute of silence was ordered across Sri Lanka as the science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke was buried in the capital city. He had told friends he wanted as an epitaph:

"Here lies Arthur Clarke. He never grew up but didn't stop growing."

I do not know whether those words will actually appear on his tombstone, but they gave me pause for thought. Here was a man who asked for no political pomp or religious rites, but his final words speak volumes to me about the human spirit and about my own Christian faith.

Having just emerged, both bruised and squashed, from my regular morning ride on the L train, I am forced to ask: "What are we all carrying?" Have you noticed?

I had found myself next to a man who needed two precious spaces on an already overcrowded car, one for himself and one for the very fat backpack he was wearing. As I headed down the Union Station platform to the R train I was roundly whacked by a woman who was squeezing between me and a permanent girder and who failed to allow sufficient passage for both herself and the huge shoulder bag she was toting.

I had already passed a kindergarten-sized child with a Barbie backpack that hung down to her knees. How many cookies was she bringing for lunch or was she just an adult in training?

I alternate between laughing and rage. The English teacher in me never dies, and I would love to go around with a huge can of "Wite-Out" (a brand misspelling) and fix up the spelling and punctuation on the signs in public places.

My prime complaint is with "Caesar" in the "Caesar Salad." I refuse to eat in restaurants that are serving such variations as "Ceasar," "Cessar," or even "Ceassear Sallad." (Yes, I've seen that!) I check the window menus before entering. If they can't spell, can they cook?

I went so far as to suggest to a diner owner that he had it wrong, but he replied that the fellow who did the signs was "hard to work with." When he had complained about "Texas Weeners" they had been turned into "Texas Winers." I saw that he had a point.