We had a day of spring yesterday, but by tonight we'll be back to winter, with snow, sleet, and freezing rain forecast into Monday. It's very difficult to get anything accomplished in the garden, but I have faint hopes of doing some weeding and stick collection today, before the glop moves in.

Anyway the Red Sox are winning, and that serves as a facsimile of spring.

Though waking up to the notion that Trump is in charge of a war in Syria is not a good feeling. Waking up to the notion that Trump is in charge of anything is not a good feeling. [Understatement of the century.]

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I've been thinking about the definitions of being useful . . . in particular, how much of my work--editing, teaching, mentoring--requires me to restrain my personal ambitions and pride . . . really, such restraint is a necessity in all facets of the work I do outside the privacy of my own writing. Perhaps this is one reason why I find Trump and his cronies so unbelievably coarse and gross and sickening: because they have no comprehension of any need for self-restraint in service of another's voice. Unless it's Putin's.

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I have begun rereading what has become my favorite Virginia Woolf novel: The Years. It suits my Akhmatova project as well . . . two writers with such an ability to concentrate on those points of synthesis, when past and present become fused.

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For some reason I'm feeling a bit glum this morning. Maybe it's Trump's fault. Maybe it's the weather. Maybe I'm recovering from all my passionate upset about Allan Monga's Poetry Out Loud disqualification. Maybe I wish someone would say yes to my poor floating manuscripts.

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But, hey, I have a house to live in. I have flowers in my garden. After yesterday's session with the homeless writers--listening to them tell their stories of loss and dismay and worse--I know I should be happy all the time.