I'm starting the day with a book rejection and a band collapse, but neither of these events is entirely bad. The Vagabond rejection was kind, personal, and just what I expected to hear. As Phillip Lopate says, the essay has long been "an underutilized, low-status genre, neglected by both the academy and commercial publishers. . . .  Those gifted essayists who are trying to get their first collections published still face daunting odds." And though I am not co-opting the adjective gifted as a way of making myself feel better, I also know that I'm not an apprentice essay writer and that the quality of my prose has nothing to do with why no one will publish this book. Contemporary publishers prefer nonfiction that streams, novel-like, from beginning to end. Would any of them now publish an unknown Virginia Woolf or E. B. White, whose Common Reader and One Man's Meat were collections of previously published, stand-alone pieces bound together with a loose thematic ribbon? I think that's a reasonable question to ask; and if I were a publisher, I would stand back and ask it of myself. But then again, I'd rather eat rats than be a publisher.

And now for the band collapse. One of our members has a mortally ill child, and the rest of us knew that it was just a matter of time until he admitted that he would have to bow out. We've been limping through gigs, never being sure he'd show up, never knowing what songs we'd be able to play. So now we're officially a trio--Sid Stutzman on vocals, guitar, mandolin, and banjo; me on vocals and fiddle; and Brian Smith on guitar, bass, and occasional vocals--and though I'll miss Craig's presence terribly, at least the rest of us can start figuring out what we really need to practice. I think we'll probably be temporarily working under the monicker of Doughty Hill, which has been a fall-back name for the various groups of musicians who've worked with Sid over the years. I'll keep you posted on what transpires.