Today's activities: editing someone else's book, mooning over my Phaeton poem, shopping for apples, husking scavenged corn, washing very dirty boy clothes, driving a kid to a piano lesson, trying to set up a slaughter date for my chickens, agreeing to bake brownies for a Halloween party, and reading Iris Murdoch's novel The Philosopher's Pupil.  I really, really like Murdoch, but I have the hardest time writing anything coherent about her novels. I reread them and reread them, and still they are over my head in some hard-to-identify way. But I guess the situation is an illustration of why you don't have to understand a work of art to love it anyway.

Tonight's possible activities: reading the Aeneid, taking a bath, drinking hot cider, playing cribbage, listening to game 1 of the World Series on the radio even though the Red Sox aren't in it, nagging my children to do their homework pack their lunches fold their laundry fill the woodbox feed the animals stop dropping crumbs on the new couch etc., watching a Buster Keaton movie, listening to Dusty in Memphis, which is a very odd recording that I can't decide if I like or not--it's sort of Muzak and sort of Aretha and she looks like Tammy Wynette and she comes from England and her voice is breathy and romantic and her song choice is wacky and the date is 1969 and it's an Atlantic hi-fi special chock full of Memphis horns-n-strings and you should listen to it yourself and see what you think.

Dinner: buckwheat and corn blinis with parsley butter; kale with garlic; diced apples with olive oil, lemon juice, and lots of black pepper (apples are excellent with pepper, surprisingly); ice cream and plum sauce.