We seemed to have dropped into a refrigeration weather pattern. The plants have retreated into stasis, the breeze is steady and cold, and the temperature never rises out of the 40s. Still, Paul and I enjoyed our walk on the beach and along the marshes. We saw no migrating birds, but we did find some beautiful sedimentary stones, striped and rough to the touch. We looked into an empty crab shell and noticed that whatever animal had eaten it out had decided to leave the eye stems. We watched a big seagull lug off an enormous quahog.

I have been rereading Laura Ingalls Wilder's By the Shores of Silver Lake and noting her discussions of laundry . . . more fodder for my slowly unfolding essay. These mullings over the historical minutiae of housework are conflicting strangely in my mind with the distractions of the news: FBI raids, talking-head meltdowns, presidential tantrums. The horrible gaudiness of our current political moment does not have much to do with hanging up clean shirts in a stiff wind. Yet the horrible gaudiness is mesmerizing.