Greetings from the take-out coffee cubicle at the Littleton (N.H.) Coop. Here I sit in limbo, having finished my work at one school, anticipating my work at a second. On Wednesday evening, when I arrived in the White Mountain region, the peaks were masked with cloud.  Yesterday I was too busy working inside a classroom to notice the out of doors. This morning, though, I see that the sky is blue blue blue, with the mountains crisply outlined in the clear air. It will be a beautiful drive home.

I am feeling uplifted because I have just finished reading Whitman aloud to an assembly of high school students. And they listened. As I told one of the teachers afterward, I try, even when (especially when) surrounded by teenagers, to throw my heart out on the table for everyone to see. Doing this is difficult and embarrassing and clumsy, but I do it anyway. All I can say is that I wish some teacher had done it for me when I was a teenager. When one of my college teachers did so, I was transformed. Bob Butman, you funny, serious, heart-led man, long dead now but not forgotten: thank you.