This morning, Maine has a new governor . . .  the first woman ever to hold the office, a lover of poetry and jazz, and also the outgoing state attorney general who battled many of LePage's edicts. Her inauguration is a great relief, after two terms spent writhing with indignation and embarrassment under the idiot's thumb. And today the U.S. House flips to the Democrats--another great relief. Let us hope that these changes-of-the-guard augur better times for the state and especially the nation.

I spent yesterday working steadily on my syllabus . . . only to learn, at the end of the day, that even more people had signed up for my class than I'd thought. So today: revision!

The house felt very quiet and spacious, in my first full day alone in it--though spacious is not typically how I'd describe our little box. And now it is snowing outside, and I am getting ready for another day spent working with words, and the leader of our state is a humanist, and I'm making chicken soup for dinner, and things could be a lot worse.