A dim morning. Everyone else in the house is still asleep. A pair of cardinals flutters at the wet feeder. A fat gray squirrel burrows into a heap of millet. Across the way, Robert Francis's little cottage is dark, though a white car sits in his driveway. The wraith of Emily Dickinson flits in the fog.

I am making coffee and a composing a hire-me letter to a writing center in Portland. As of today, I am still getting responses to the TLS essay, and now I am wondering if I need to compose a follow-up piece . . . perhaps a personal reaction to my worries about the ways in which political hatreds dilute our humanity and our liberal ideals.

We'll see. First, I have to take my son shopping for dorm food. Then tomorrow I have to go home and chlorinate my well. Will the house-selling tortures never end?