Submitted by John Batchelor, Dec 5, 2006 14:36

Letter from Nearly Chappaqua: The John Batchelor Show crew and this bookish host are grateful for the kind words from the polite and the thoughtful such as VSK and David B. Richard. I am camped this season at the spectacular Butler Library at Columbia University, where I was sitting the day of the 9/11 attack and will likely be sitting the rest of my days. Columbia University is a treasure, and this recently refurbished library, with its wireless links and rich periodical collection, is one of the most enlightening places in America. In between my library visiting and my microfilm reading, there is much certainty of going back on air next year in partnership with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University: details to be announced over the next weeks by my partners. Meanwhile, I am writing a work of fiction -- my first fiction writing in five years -- and reading happily and most swiftly: I have started Tom Pynchon's mordant marvel "Against the Day" and David Cannadine's breathtaking "Mellon." Because I commute to Westchester these days, via the Dickensian 125th Street Station, I am often in Chappaqua on my way home, and keep a weather eye on the village that it will take to make Mrs. Clinton a nominee and, luck holding, a president. The villagers are ready, the Clintons are beloved, Mr. Clinton is a tireless and heroic advocate for the least among us on the Earth, and Mrs. C is as well-prepared and dutiful as ever there was a candidate for the presidency. My audience is well informed that I am a lifelong and grandfather-father-sworn-to Republican. Nonetheless, this is a front row seat at a political storm coming like 1960, or 1932, or 1912. Bumpy ride, seat belts, fasten. I hope to be along for the adventure and hope to have my kind and smart audience alongside.

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