Such beastly weather yesterday--sleet, rain, fog, rain, sleet, wind. I disrupted all of my plans for walking around town and stayed home instead. In the morning I reorganized the bookshelves in my study, and in the afternoon I simmered chicken stock and baked chocolate-krinkle cookies and squash-and-black-pepper rolls. Then Tom and I ate chicken and miso soup for dinner and watched Alfred Hitchcock's Torn Curtain, a 1966 Cold War thriller starring a smoldering Paul Newman and a doughty Julie Andrews. Gosh, that Newman was something. Andrews was pretty, and her character was brave and stubborn, but all Newman needed to do was glance sideways and he blanked her every time.

This afternoon I'll be back in the zoom classroom (with tidy bookshelves behind me), so I'll probably spend the morning doing laundry and watering plants and such, and also trying to get in a long walk, before being sucked into a chair for three hours. I'm planning wild mushroom risotto for dinner--fruits of my harvest freezer--topped with fried sage, and with a kale and red cabbage slaw on the side. Yes, it's December 12 and I'm picking kale and sage from my Maine garden. Amazing to say, I still haven't purchased any store greens, yet we have a fresh salad every night. I admit that this makes me feel smug and self-righteous, and you can slap me if you like.

So: a busy teaching day; lots of listening and questioning; lots of standing back and letting the participants run with their thoughts and discoveries. This is the second iteration of my Nina Simone-based chapbook class, and so far it seems to be standing up as a template for working with many different personalities and writing styles. I plan to offer another round in the spring, so let me know if you're interested in taking part.