So with these being the last few hours of off-time before I return to the office Monday morning, I thought I’d practice my blogging — and Lord knows I need it — by holding forth on what I did on my down week.

I took no big trip. I am saving money to help send Shalah to France this fall for a French language immersion experience. She’s been going back to college at UALR in recent semesters, taking French and excelling and getting more and more Francophilian by the minute. I’m not going because, well, I don’t really want to. There’ll be tennis to play in late October, not to mention college football games to watch.

So instead I kept a promise to my mom, just turned 79, to haul her to northern Howard County in southwestern Arkansas in search of her childhood and roots. We ventured toward the community of Umpire and discovered her tenant farming stomping ground in a spot on the road actually called Burg. (Calling a place Burg is kind of like calling a place Town.)

We found the one-room school Mom attended. We also happened upon a charming, genial old cousin pal of hers, Jesse Simmons, who, at 88, was sitting in a lawn chair in the middle of his garden.

I’ll post a picture of Mom and cousin Jesse, taken by my sister, Judy, who came along. And I’ll post another photo — below, at bottom — of me and Mom at the door of the old schoolhouse, also taken by Judy.

Meantime, my main man made the annual white peach trek to north-central Arkansas (I can’t say more, it’s a secret), where the old fellow said the wet and cold had disastrously cost him half his usual crop. But we got our three bushels right off the trees and we have been consuming and handing out these sweet, juicy delectable gems since. I’m also going to post a picture of a summer-pearl white peach.

Meantime, I just finished writing Tuesday’s column about how it’s hardly unAmerican, but all-American, to be uncivil and clueless about what you’re bellowing about. That ought to get me and readers back in full dialogue.

Oh, and for dinner tonight, my last of freedom: A grilled sirloin strip that’s about two inches think, fresh corn on the cob, a salad and, for dessert, of course, white peaches, peeled, pitted, cut into chunks and swimming in their own juice. Oh, and a glass or two of a bold and hearty syrah.

Then we’ll punch up a recording off AETN of the happy 90th birthday concert in May for Pete Seeger. It’ll be a culturally liberal thing to do, to offset the red meat.

P. S. — We saw the Julia Child movie last night, Julie and Julia, and I thought Meryl Streep was incredible as usual but that the film, in the end, was kind of stupid. It’s not quite a cinematic-worthy story for a Bronx woman to spend a year cooking Child’s recipes and blogging about it. It’s better suited for treatment on CBS Sunday Morning, which, actually, once aired a segment, I think.