Molly K. Homer and I are spending 5 days at the Union Leadership Institute in Delaven, Wisconsin. We left on July 31 at 10:AM from Macomb.

We ate lunch at the Alley Loop in Dixon, Illinois.

We are staying tonight (July 31) just outside of Rockford, Illinois at the edge of the town of Loves Park at the Quality Inn and Suites, which occupies a parallel universe or at least a universe fond of parallels.

I came across the first set of parallels beside a corn field that adjoins our motel. I wondered if were meant as an evocation of eternity or as an abstract reference to the corn in the field--which, after all, are parallel and vertical? Perhaps these wooden parallels were an act of sympathetic magic?

Then, I noticed a set of monumental parallels

Next, I came across another set of primitive parallels. These, somewhat eerily, emerged from a bucket.

A little further down the road, I came across another pair of monumentals. Perhaps there were two groups at work--one a more fundamentalist version of the other?

I also came across a volcano, one that spouts water instead of lava.

Close by the volcano I came across a set of parallels, both horizontal and vertial--a hertical sect?

While photographing this set of parallels, some natives in a SUV shouted at me, "Go away! Just Go Away!"

Thus ends the tale of this day.