Yesterday morning started out warm and rainy, and I'm glad I went for a walk then because the weather got suddenly colder and very windy. Midday, I lit a fire in the stove, trying to battle the drafts and the dankness. And all night gusts buffeted the little house. I felt like a boat rocking in a lake.

But at least I slept well, which is more than I can say for the previous two nights. And now here I sit with my coffee, reacquainting myself with day.

This morning I'll finish up some editing and then send a batch of files to the author. I'll work on class planning and clean the upstairs rooms, and tonight I'll go out to write. I'm glad to report that I fought my way through the byzantine toils of the government's online grant portal and managed to submit my NEA fellowship application yesterday--one of my least favorite tasks ever, though at least it doesn't cost any money. But, yikes. What an absurd, overcomplicated, nonintuitive, antiquated process. I think it was invented by a committee of caterpillars.

Tom, I'm happy to say, is finally feeling better. And I'm still not sick, a little miracle in its own right. I suppose I ought to think about submitting poems somewhere, but at the moment I'm really only interested in writing them. I'm in the midst of a good conversation about revision and critique with my friend, the poet Stu Kestenbaum, who helped to found Monson Arts and led Haystack School of Crafts for many years. It seems that performing artists have long understand that the maker needs to be in control of conversations about change. So why have writers gravitated to the workshop model, where the maker cowers in the midst of spears, like a victim tied to a stake? It's a puzzle.