JOURNALING WITH JENNINGS Every afternoon, ABC News' Peter Jennings posts a casually chatty preview of what the ABC news team is working on for the evening broadcast. I don't think anyone watches the evening news anymore, but he almost makes it sound appealing -- like sipping fresh-squeezed lemonade on an old fishing pier.

FALLING INTO ITHACA One of my November destinations, and far more hep than any town in this corner of New York should be, Ithaca is blessed with the quadrangular anchors of IBM, gorgeous scenery, Cornell and a pocket of socialist cattle farmers.

BIBLIOTECA One of the more disappointing explorations I made in Egypt was my hunt for the (then) under construction reproduction of the Great Library of Alexandria. We found it, took it in, and left in search of more interesting sites. The Library opened earlier this month to great fanfare, as this Al-Ahram article reports, but the lavish affair stands in stark contrast to the economic and cultural realities of Egypt proper.

ABSENTIA Hmm. Between work, getting this dreamboat of a flatscreen iMac set-up, and travel, updates between now and Halloween are likely to be sporadic. Check back, or write me breezy screeds of free verse.

A GIRL AND HER SHISHA Cairo in the winter of 1999 was a vibrant, frisky place, and though I never made it to the dance club named the Fat Black Pussy Cat, I did see the emergent (and tiny) middle class strolling the boutiques and galleries of Mohandiseen, a neighborhood just west of the Nile. But when I had orange juice at the Sidi Mansour cafe, I don't recall ever seeing a hip young thang puffing away on her shisha. Just another example of how change is nibbling at the edges of Egypt. (registration is required at the NYTimes.com)

DEFINING A TRANSITIONAL GOVERNMENT The Brookings Institution's Michael O'Hanlon takes a peek at a post-war Iraq (assuming there is a war) and tries to button down the costs. What's interesting -- beyond the $60 billion we'll spend prosecuting a war and then cleaning up -- is to begin adding some other numbers. If O'Hanlon is on target and 100,000 American troops are shoestringing Iraq back together in 2003, we will have more troops in Southwest Asia and the Middle East than we have in all of Europe. Now there's a snapshot that tells a story about the changing U.S.-Europe dynamic.

FIGHTING WITH SYMBOLIC WEAPONS No one can argue that the cops of the world have done a massive amount of legwork in the past 14 months to shut down al Qaeda and other terrorism cells. It is certain that the work of law enforcement and the military has prevented hundreds of new deaths from terror attacks that have been nipped in the bud. But a scan of political headlines around the globe shows that while Islamism, or Islamic fundamentalism, has been stalled, it hasn't been stopped. Elections in Pakistan show popular support for the Islamists growing -- not so much for religious reasons, but in protest to President Musharaf's alliance with the United States. Indonesia, Turkey, Morocco... all three controlled by relative moderates, and all three politically shaky. The Post asks a pretinent question: What is America's political strategy to bolster open, democratic societies under assault from within?

JUST THE FACTS... WHATEVER THEY ARE On the campaign trail with President Bush, Dana Milbank's been noticing something -- the president is prone to verbal exaggeration, known in the colloquial as "stretching the truth." From Iraq to unions to the economy, Bush has developed a track record of misstatement on par with most of his predecessors. "Everybody makes mistakes when they open their mouths and we forgive them," Brookings Institution scholar Stephen Hess said. Some of Bush's overstatements appear to be off-the-cuff mistakes. But, Hess said, "what worries me about some of these is they appear to be with foresight. This is about public policy in its grandest sense, about potential wars and who is our enemy, and a president has a special obligation to getting it right." Not if no one complains, he doesn't.

GOING FALLOWS This month's issue of The Atlantic leads off with a smart little number by editor James Fallows. Fallows clears the deck by assuming the U.S. is going into Iraq, and moves right on to ask the question that should be on everyone's mind, which basically goes something like, "Okay, smartass, now what?" What does Iraq look like on the first day after a U.S. victory? What needs to happen in the first week, first month? Fallows does an excellent job reporting on these questions. The piece is online, but the whole issue is pretty solid, following in the footsteps of the previous three.

AND NOW FOR THE REST OF THE STORY Veteran journalist (The Washington Post, TIME) Ted Gupp was handed a charge of examining how the media changed and how well it performed after the September 11 attacks. He more than delivers in this detailed, but readable, piece in the independent Columbia Journalism Review. The lifestyle changes of the reporters is nice stuff, but drop about halfway down into the article for a look at how Gupp and his peers view the Bush administration's need to control information, and the challenges inherent in covering a war that is taking place -- quite literally -- everywhere.

COMICS CROSS THE BORDER ArtBabe's Jessica Abel submits to a smart cross-examination in the latest online edition of Bitch Magazine, as she discusses her latest comic book. "La Perdida" sees Abel leave her established landscape of hipster Chicago to take a look at life in Mexico City from the perspective of an American expat -- and she does it bilingually.

ON LOVING THE DEAD Rosecrans Baldwin promises to tell us about the art of beautiful poetry in today's The Morning News, and winds up telling us instead about the complicated relationship he had with his grandfather, about how complicated his grandfather was. And, naturally, in the process, he tells us about the art of writing beautiful poetry.

ALICE GETS HER GROOVE ON The Starr Foster Dance Project is hands down the best young dance company I've seen in years -- Starr's production of "Alice," which retells the Lewis Carrol classic with a fresh, sexy sort of creepiness, is stellar. October 31, and November 1 and 2, the SFDProject represents "Alice," along with two permieres, "Mirror, Mirror" and "Monster in the Closet." "Alice" was scored by the amazing One Ring Zero (which also handles the zany music for the Pumpkin Pie Show in NYC).

GOING TO GROUND Ground Zero Dance Company, formed from the ashes of Steve's House, hits the Grace Street Theater this weekend with a series of performances choreographed and performed by company members. My childhood creek jumping friend Julie Mayo, who returned to Richmond a few years ago after a long stint with the San Francisco Ballet, will debut her first choreographed piece since leaving sunny California. The performances take place at 8 p.m. on October 25 and 26.

INTELLIGENCE ANSWERS BEGAT QUESTIONS On the balance, the hearings held (and sparsely covered) recently on intelligence failures that led up to the September 11 attacks were fair and useful. The Post does an even-handed job of evaluating the performances of former FBI Director Freeh and the CIA's George Tenet; Tenet was far more candid, direct and credible, the Post reports. But now that this round of hearings has ended, it's nearing time to start asking forward-looking questions. Here's one the Post offers: "The portrait that has emerged of what went right and what did not, in turn, frames the difficult questions that policymakers -- and the public at large -- now need to confront. Is the Federal Bureau of Investigation, with its entrenched law enforcement culture, capable of serving the domestic intelligence function it is being asked to play, or is some new institutional arrangement needed?"