I was fairly sure I wouldn't be writing to you today as this blog platform is having some major posting glitches. However, I somehow managed to slip through the Page Not Working / Page Does Not Exist frenzy and snag a working screen. I wonder if anyone is trying to fix this stuff or if the platform has become so old that only Luddites complain.

In any case, here we are, meeting in our accustomed rooms--you at your kitchen table, in your hairnet, with a steaming cup of Ovaltine and the usual stacks of $100 bills littering the counters; me in my couch corner, on a dark and humid morning, drinking black coffee from a white cup and saucer, listening to the crickets chirp and the clock tick.

Today I've got a 9 a.m. staff zoom meeting about the Monson Arts high school program, which will be getting started again in mid-September. And then I'll finish editing an academic article, and do the housework I didn't do yesterday, and check in on my Rilke syllabus, and fiddle with the poem draft I started yesterday, and figure out something or other for dinner: maybe chicken curry., maybe something I haven't thought of yet.

The air is thick, full of unshed rain. I froze green beans yesterday, picked a passel of chard, brought over a bag of lettuce to my neighbor. The cherry tomatoes are coming in strong; the cucumbers are tender and sweet. I bought some nectarines yesterday and am ripening them for a pie. Thank goodness for the garden-to-kitchen pipeline. Sometimes I think cooking is what keeps me from shattering into a thousand pieces.

I notice that with my sister as well. She calls late in the day: "What are you making for dinner?" "What are you making for dinner?" We kvetch, each clattering among her own pots and pans.

My sister, I wished upon you those delights

            time never buries,

            more precious than heroes.

            --from Muriel Rukeyser, "Four in a Family"