on our 32nd wedding anniversary.

The Washington Monument towering above us to the west, the Capital Building at our backs in the east, nearly 7,000 graduates and perhaps twenty-five thousand family and friends on the National Mall, to celebrate the achievement.  It's true what they say about being a parent.  I take far greater pride and joy in my son's college graduation than I ever did for my own. 

But that's not what I want to tell you about today.  Today I want to tell you how I became a person of interest in a murder investigation. It all started this morning after breakfast, when I realized I didn't have my train ticket home.  I had a ticket, but not the correct ticket.  Riding the train on Saturday, south to Washington D.C., somehow I had given the conductor the ticket for my return trip, and somehow he had accepted it.  So this morning, getting ready for the trip home, my wife had the correct ticket, but I had a ticket dated two days ago, heading in the wrong direction.  I called Amtrak, assuming this was going to be a problem, but they explained to me that it happens more frequently than you might imagine.  They assured me the conductor would accept my ticket.  And, after a little explaining, he did. 

And that's where it should have ended.

We were just a few minutes north of D.C. when an announcement came over the P.A.  Would passenger Ellen Edmund please see the conductor.  Some ten or fifteen minutes later, the conductor repeated this announcement.  And not long after that, the conductor walked through the train, re-checking everyone's ticket.  My spidey sense was tingling.  Something was amiss.

Just north of Baltimore, I offered to walk to the cafe car to get my wife a bottled water.  While I was gone (I later learned) the conductor came looking for me one more time, asking my wife about the errant ticket.  She told the conductor I had gone to the cafe car.

Much to my surprise, the cafe car was nearly empty.  No one working behind the counter.  Just one exhausted woman, slumped at a table in the otherwise deserted cafe car.  I approached the woman, leaning over to see if she was in need of assistance.  That's how the Amtrak employee found us, when he walked into the cafe car. 

The woman clutched a ticket stub in her right hand.  The stub said her name was Ellen Edmund.  Ms.
Edmund, however, said nothing. 

Dead women rarely have much to say.    

    

Are You There, McPhee?, a new play by John Guare (House of Blue Leaves, Six Degrees of Separation) is enjoying it's world premiere this week at Princeton's McCarter Theatre.  I had an opportunity to attend last night's performance.  It is funny and clever, well-written  and well-acted.  With references to Peter Benchley, Jorge Luis Borges, Alfred Hitchcock, Walt Disney and Roman Polanski, Are You There McPhee?  promises "A Nantucket house with a mysterious past.  A pair of abandoned children.  An 11 pound lobster."  And it delivers on that promise. 

Every experience in a writer's life is fodder for his writing.  Or perhaps I have that backwards.  Perhaps it is only by writing it down that the writer experiences life at all.  "Edward Gowery is trapped and knows the only way to escape is to change his life - he just doesn't know how."   Are You There, McPhee? is a story about storytelling, a play about playwriting. 

And it is very nearly a very good play.  As I said, funny and clever, well-written and well-acted.  And about a half-hour too long.  Are You There, McPhee? starts too slowly, takes too long to get to the heart of the story.  Even talented, world-famous playwrights need a good editor.  

Are You There, McPhee? is an enjoyable evening at the theater.  But it could have been better.