The Harmony Fair opens today, and this evening I will, as usual, be tearing my hair out in the Exhibition Hall--floundering in a sea of giant cucumbers and canned tomatoes and cute knitted booties and crayon renditions of Sponge Bob and wood-burned welcome-to-our-house signs with the apostrophe misused . . . and . . . and. . . . But otherwise my obligations this year are light. On Sunday evening my band performs, but (as far as I know) I don't have to manage two dozen middle schoolers, or cover for distracted vegetable judges, or taste questionable baked goods. Anything could change, however.

The same goes for my goat situation. As of last night, Lulu was still hanging onto life, but who knows what I will find this morning when I go out to the barn?

I hear that Seamus Heaney has died. My mother met him once, long ago, at some sort of event that I can't remember anything about. She says they discovered that they were born in the same year, which disturbed him, because the year they were born was the year that Yeats died, and Heaney liked to imagine that the Yeatsian flame had transferred directly to him. He had to make sure that he was born earlier in the year than my mother was. Then he felt better.

I find this anecdote silly but also touching, not to mention peculiar. I mean, what if my mom really did just miss out on the Yeatsian flame?