Applications are still open this week for the Frost Place Conference on Poetry and Teaching. Do make a snap decision and join us. Often our participants are neither classroom teachers nor poets; but they are people who feel deeply, who crave intellectual and emotional communion with colleagues, and they find these bonds with the participants who return year after year. If you have any questions or curiosities, please contact me.

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Finally, after days of terrible sleeping, I enjoyed a full night of unconsciousness, so this morning I'm feeling far less lizardy. I did manage to finish a big editing project yesterday, and I think maybe that shifted the invisible hammer of doom that was hanging over my head and jolting my synapses at 3 a.m. In any case, I'm grateful.

Now I'm sitting with my coffee in front of a small recalcitrant fire, trying to avoid turning up the thermostat on this damp gray rainy morning. Today will be student-poem-reading day, and taking-the-boy-to-the-dentist day, and probably bathroom-cleaning day. Today and tomorrow are forecast to be wet, but then things should clear up for our big family weekend of art, food, and minor league baseball.

I received the first printer's proof of Chestnut Ridge yesterday, and I am exceedingly pleased with how it looks. If all goes well, copies will be available at the Frost Place, though the timing is tight and slip-ups may happen. I'm feeling optimistic, however.