S0mewhere outside my kitchen window, an unseen bird is making seagull noises. Because I live in the middle of a forest, the possibility of an actual seagull squawking among my trees does not seem likely. But who knows? A few days ago, while I was sitting in a lawn chair at a Babe Ruth baseball game, an eagle glided over the field--very low, so close to the ground that I could easily see his talons--followed by a cranky screaming gull in hot pursuit. The eagle was considerably larger than the gull but seemed to be abashed, having been caught in some embarrassment involving the gull's nest, I presume. The triumphant bad-tempered gull chased him into a fir tree, where he sat for some time, hunched up, with his feathers all awry. He did not look much like a nation's symbol of power and prosperity. What he did look like was a formerly successful hedge fund manager with a cocaine habit and a new divorce.

Today is the day that I have to go back to work, like many of the rest of you. I am not eager, and neither are you, I daresay. Truckloads of copyediting await me, which on the one hand is good since Tom is temporarily unemployed yet on the other hand is not good since Tom is temporarily unemployed. I tell you: there's always some pressing reason not to want to work for a living.