It's been a quiet, also an odd, weekend . . . one spent making tomato sauce, harvesting dill for drying, beginning to figure out how to to deal with a giant crop of hot peppers, mowing grass, pinning laundry to the line, but also dealing with an angsty job-related issue that is ripping open a few scabbed-over emotions. And now here we are again at Monday, and I must turn my attention to the workaday world--which means scrambling to hammer out the rest of my big editing project before I embark for NYC on Saturday.

And the school year is upon us too. I don't start up with my high schoolers until later in September, but before then I'll be co-teaching a free workshop for teachers and teaching artists. So if you're in the Portland area on Saturday, September 21, you might want to check it out. Free, free, free, and all-day fun, featuring the great Gretchen Berg, a magnificent teacher of physical theater who is also a fine poet.

I've been rereading Louisa May Alcott and, more recently, Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres. Today I'll get my bound uncorrected copy of Calendar, so checking proofs is another job I'll need to add to my list for the week. Reading, writing, teaching, editing. Straightening my spine, getting on with it.