My plan, this morning, was to write a small personal review of Baron Wormser's new novel; and I will write that. First, though, I have to attend to the story that stepped in. Yesterday, while I was making dinner, the doorbell rang, and as a result I had a strange and moving interaction involving a sad drunk man and my flower garden. I'm not detailing it here, yet, because I want to try to shape a draft around it this morning, and I don't want to write myself away from the poem. But the moment was so unexpected, and I will say that it required a sort of humanity from me that I always hope I am capable of, always fearful that I am not.

Citizen-wise, I am feeling a little more hopeful this morning. I am pleased and relieved by Joe Biden's choice of Kamala Harris as his running mate. My sons point out the various blots in her history as California attorney general, and I don't deny them. I certainly don't love everything she's ever done. But my progressive predilections are not going to get the Trump plague out of the White House, and that has to be our number-one focus. Harris is smart and powerful and charismatic. Maybe, just maybe, we can turn the page.