Greetings from central Maine, where it is windy and cold and leafless exactly like the November morning one would expect. We left Mount Desert late yesterday afternoon and drove through the twilight across Route 15, through the Bangor strip of giant evangelical churches and used car emporia and then into the open fields and copses that spread into the highlands, past the Charleston prison, past the high school where my sons went, over the Piscataquis River and then, turning away from the Harmony road, we climbed the Greenville road into Monson.

We spent the night in Monson Arts guest housing, where we fried lamb burgers and potatoes and fresh kale and broccolini from the Tremont garden and watched a Veronica Lake noir on my computer before falling into bed early and solidly . . . though we did get up a few times in the wee hours to check blearily on the lunar eclipse. Meanwhile, the log trucks rumbled past, wind whipped and rattled at the building, and now the sunrise peers over the bare maples, the clutter of houses, the general store, the lake.

In a couple of hours I'll be down the street at Tenney House, greeting the school bus, falling into my teaching day. Tom will be doing whatever it is he'll be doing--taking pictures or reading or driving around or talking to people. At 1, he'll pick me up and we'll head home.

And by tomorrow morning at this time, I'll be on a bus to New York. Lordy.