New firewood is scheduled to arrive within the hour, and here's hoping I can get the old firewood moved into the cellar by the end of the day so that we can move the pile out of the driveway as soon as possible. But everything outside is so wet; we had thunderstorms and downpours all night, so I don't think I can really get started on this project till afternoon. 

Autumn chores abound: I've got yet another batch of tomatoes to sauce, more peppers to pick, and I should think about tearing out some of the flowers that have reached shabby stage. Already a few leaves have begun to fall, though the weather is still warm.

Yesterday I finished up the first-pass reading of my friend's manuscript and sent it off to him with comments, so now my desk is temporarily empty. I'll be writing this morning--working, I hope, on some four-word prompts from the Iliad--and then, after lunch, rushing into town for a haircut appointment before I devolve into firewood moving. I can see that this note to you is a chronological mess, perhaps an accurate depiction of my brain this morning, which keeps blipping little "gotta get [chore] done" messages like some sort of '90s TV-show pager.

To recap, then. It's mid-week, mid-September, in the early years of the second decade of the twenty-first century. The people of earth are in crisis, dying in droves from a virulent virus. The planet's climate is likewise shaky, and so is American empire. Nonetheless, in a small seaside city, in the nation's easternmost state, a poet is reading Homer and picking vegetables.