I accidentally found out yesterday that the magazine Maine Home & Design has named Tom one of Maine's 60 Most Collectable Artists. I'm presuming that the magazine is referring to his work, although a friend wonders if the magazine is planning to release collectable bobbleheads of each artist. Ah, if only this were so. But let us return to the word accidentally.

Tom has not only known about this collectable thing for a week, but he would probably not have gotten around to telling me about it at all if I hadn't noticed that he had a self-portrait lying on his desk. Having never known him to waste time taking good photographs of himself (let alone a photograph that, in my opinion, does make him look rather collectable), I asked, "Why?" And thus the tale leaked out. He wasn't hiding it; he just rarely thinks of mentioning anything.

In the early 90s, when we were living together in Providence and he was finishing his degree at the Rhode Island School of Design, he had a work study job for an entire year and never got around to telling me. All I can say is that anyone who knows Tom would not be amazed at this story.

1. Back to Maine Home & Design: the issue will be out in April, and I will post a link because he certainly won't.

2. Winter's Tale readers: I will post a comment prompt later today. By the way, this current scene contains literature's most amusing stage direction. Paul has made me promise to let him be the one who reads it out loud.

3. Pork roast for dinner tonight, prepared to the music of Amplitude, my boys' band, which will be rehearsing in the living room. Then we plan to watch some 8-millimeter home movies, circa 1962, that Tom bought at a yard sale. We are especially looking forward to the one labeled "Nothing Important Here."

4. Blake is coming along as well as can be expected. I've finished Raymond Chandler and don't know what to read next, so I am perusing a review of Zadie Smith's essays in the New York Review of Books. I've never read anything by her, and this article, though it praises her highly, isn't necessarily convincing me that I should. What do you think? I tend to be allergic to Booker Prize Winners. But have you read these essays? Or any of her novels? Also, why can she get away with publishing something called an "essay collection" when the rest of us can't? Publishers hate "essay collections." Except for hers, apparently.