This week's conference may have been the most intense one I've ever attended . . . not because anything went wrong but because so many participants were fragile, vulnerable, fragmented, transitional--family troubles, work exhaustion, artistic distress. We came to the Frost Place knowing, even as strangers, that we craved each other, and when we got there we cried.

Yet the experience was not New Agey or touchy-feely-smiley or in any way fraudulent or contrived. We engaged in intellectual struggle, and I am so tired from the intensity of our reading that I have barely been able to pick up a book since I've been home.

So much of this week hinged on improvising amid the circumstances of the participants' inner lives, and naturally, now that I am home, I am still pining for my partner in this task. So here's a picture of Teresa and me. Teresa's title is associate director of the conference but her real job in Franconia is to be my wise-cracking New Jersey mirror, my intuitive partner in the art of improvisational teaching, my example and my relief.  With Teresa I am not only a better teacher but a better person.