Jim is in the Windy City. He's on what he hopes will be his last big (and maybe even entirely final) college search trip with his eldest son, a process that began six months ago with a tour of North Carolina schools, and which has taken him to about a dozen stretching from New England to the Midwest. Presumably the logic is that if you're going to strive to get a $200,000+ education, spending a few thousand more on test prep, travel, and the like is pennies in a bucket. Lot of pennies, though. On the other hand, it's a real rite of passage with one's child. No doubt about it: There's a transitional feel.

Airport reading this time will be the big novel of fall, 2010: Jonathan Franzen's Freedom, the follow-up to his widely hailed 2001 novel The Corrections. This is another family saga, this time set in Minneapolis. Only a few pages into it, the narrative hums, whooshing you along, like an American car built in the glory days of Detroit. A full review is slated for later this month.

Shalom to all who are observing the New Year. These goyim will have one last interlude before the school year finally gets underway in earnest.