Another entry in Dawn's foraging-from-the-fish-market chronicles: Last night I made a salt cod salad for dinner. It did involve some planning: two days of soaking the cod in multiple changes of water; then boiling it for 10 minutes, cooling, and breaking it into chunks. I mixed it with sauted rapini, garlic, and cherry tomatoes; preserved lemon peel; a diced pickled hot pepper, and capers. The cod was excellent--the perfect base for future summer salads mixed with this and that from the garden. And cheap!

Today, I'll be back to editing and syllabus planning, and eventually I'll undertake some extreme vacuuming to clean up after all of this trim installation. Tom's still got a threshold to urethane and fit, and then a batch of door trim to put up inside the bathroom. But that's the only ugly framing gash still glowering downstairs. Given that five doorways open into the kitchen and hall, this trim project has made a huge difference in the house . . . a giant step forward toward done.

I doubt I'll have much chance to write this week--I've got so much work to muscle through before leaving for Chicago. I do have a poetry-group meeting tomorrow night, though, so that's something, I've been feeling Merwin's loss deeply, pondering his long apprenticeship to the art, his deep sense of obligation to place. He has been a model for all of us, in those ways.