During the past few days, I've had people come up to me to say how much they enjoy reading my blog. I was so surprised! The comments I've gotten here haven't been that positive. Just how I see it, folks. It makes a difference when you can look someone in the eye and hear their encouraging words coming from them in their own voice. Words, as beautiful as they can be, are the proverbial two-edged sword.

I was especially heartened when a clerk at a store here in Dexter called out to me as I was leaving that fine establishment.

"ElFreda!" she called. "Have you got a minute?"

"Sure," I replied, I'll admit, a bit wary.

"I just wanted to tell you how much I like your blog," she said earnestly. "Especially the one on Harry Potter. What you wrote was right," she added. "I don't care what anyone thinks."

Needless to say that led into an animated discussion about the Potter books and how the series ended. She related that she read "Sorcerer's Stone" to check up on what her young daughter was reading and was hooked from the start. She even confided that when she bought "Deathly Hallows," she would not allow her daughter to read it until she herself had finished it. The daughter read until the wee hours of the morning, bursting into her mother's bedroom to declare, "Snape was good!"

"I'm sorry it's over," she said of the Potter series. "I want to know what's going on at Hogwarts!"

"Harry's story is over," I observed, "but there are other stories that she (J.K. Rowling) could write about. There's always Albus Potter."

Would it were so. I don't doubt that fan sites will soon boast Potter stories just like the fanzines "Star Trek" inspired in the '70s.

Here's a thought -- why not have fictional school like Hogwarts set in the Ozarks for American witches and wizards? France has Beauxbaton (which means, by the way, "beautiful wand") and Romania has whatever-that-school's-name was. I think the series "Charmed" aluded to such a school, but I'm unclear as to its location. (They brought that in after the Potter books proved to be such a hit.)

I encourage you, dear readers, to share your ideas. How would the school be set up? How would students be admitted? What folklore can be woven into the fabric of the plot that is American rather than Old Country? What classes would be taught?

Boarding school is very much European, although in Yankee-land a lot of wealthy people ship off their kids to finishing schools or military academies. How could that jibe with the Hogwarts concept?

Oh, what fun! Will you join me on this magical journey? Let the games begin!