On Saturday we will be scattered to the four winds: the boys are going to canoe camp, I'm going to the Frost Place, and Tom gets to be a private person at home for a week, which I'm sure will be a treat for him, despite the fact he'll have to do chicken chores. Last year I lost a considerable amount of weight at the Frost Place, mostly from being too worked up to eat. I have a hard time eating when I'm putting on a show, as I'll be doing all week long. Fortunately, there is Polly's Pancake Parlor up the hill and around the corner, where I will spend $11 every morning on buckwheat pancakes and fresh strawberries and good coffee. I could thriftily do my own cooking in Robert Frost's kitchen, but I cook all the time at home, and I'd rather sacrifice the $11 in hopes of a daily scrap of digestive cheerfulness. Plus, those buckwheat pancakes are really good.

Here is this week's Milly Jourdain poem:

January

The winter sunlight when it gleams

          So cold and fair;

Makes silver rivers of the roads

          All straight and bare,

And singing birds in misty trees

         Are no more dumb,

They sing of warmer days; I wish

          That they would come.