Yes, intrepid and discerning readers, yesterday's mystery book was The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy. Since speaking to you, I have not advanced much further into it, having been busy picking an extraordinary number of raspberries and dealing with various editorial snafus. (What kind of word is snafu anyway? I have an intuition that it is somehow etymologically related to moot. Whatever their connection, both words sound as if they have entered English by way of Smurf.)

I was not exactly honest yesterday when I said I thought I might never write another essay again. In fact, I'm presently writing another essay, albeit a very short one. Really, it's more of an introduction than an essay, which is why I forgot to mention it. A few months ago, the editor of LocusPoint contacted me about curating a Maine feature in his journal. As you'll see when you hit the link, LocusPoint focuses on poetry and place . . . up to this point, cities as place. (Our Maine feature will change all that.) Anyway, I'm composing the opening essay, and I'm looking forward to sharing the poetry of several Maine poets whose work I have been following for a number of years now. Most are not well known outside of Maine, so I'm excited to think that they'll get a bit of national exposure.