I'm looking for some advice, friends. Laura and I will be traveling in France and Italy this summer. We are reasonably experienced world travelers, which of course means we have a small collection of electrical power adapters and transformers. Our last overseas trip, though, was three years ago, and in the time since our fund of small devices has proliferated. Between us we now have two iPhones and two iPads. We plan to bring those with us this summer instead of bulkier laptops and piles of books.

Instead of relying for power on a bunch of big transformers, I figured that Apple would probably make travel adapters that would be easier to carry and safer to use. It turns out that, yes, they do make a World Travel Kit with replacement adapters to plug your USB cable into. Unfortunately, they only seem to sell them in sets of six—one each for region of the world.

I need four European adapters, but I don't want to spend $160 to buy four full kits. Does anyone know of an alternative whereby I can purchase only the adapters I need? I'd prefer to buy Apple products, but that's not an absolute requirement.

We often say, my wife and I,
that Ella is our first dog,
the one you make your mistakes on.
But for me, that isn't true.

My first dog was Jessie,
a runty black shepherd mix.
Some of the mistakes I made
with Jessie were things like

Don't scold the dog unless
you catch her in the act.
Don't let the dog bite you.
Don't ever hit the dog.

Don't buy a dog with someone
you don't like, let alone love.
All mistakes I wouldn't
ever ever make with Ella.

I can't sit down
to write a poem

without hearing
Garrison Keillor's

voice, reading it
over my shoulder.

My first reaction this morning upon hearing the news that Osama bin Laden is dead was elation. I wasn't in Manhattan on 9/11, but Laura and I were in Queens, and we rode our bikes to the southern end of Roosevelt Island in the East River from where we could clearly see the smoke pouring from both towers of the World Trade Center a few miles away. Bin Laden being shot in the head by special forces feels like justice, though inadequate justice compared to all the death, suffering and hatred he ignited.

But at the same time, I have to wonder about the timing and importance of this event. I know the operation has been in the works for a very long time, but it comes as Al Qaeda seems to be fading into irrelevance. The Islamic world, as evidenced by the Arab Spring, seems to have taken to the idea that protest and civil disobedience are more effective at bringing down oppressive regimes than terrorism, which has been demonstrated as entirely useless in that regard. Al Qaeda will soldier on, no doubt, but it's not the power it once was.

All in all, with the election season starting up, the 10-year anniversary of 9/11 approaching, and the U.S. letting itself be drawn more and more into the Libyan conflict, the raid on bin Laden's compound in Pakistan seems almost like a distracting piece of theater.

But I do hope President Obama got George W. Bush on the phone and broke the news to him personally.