It's been raining for close to 24 hours now and will likely continue for most of another 24. It's been a long time since we've had this much rain, and it's been perfect: no gale-force downpours and the rain falling slow enough so that the ground has a chance to absorb it.

I kept a little fire going all day yesterday, just for the pleasure of idling beside it. I did accomplish a few useful things, but mostly I nursed my cold, and this morning I do feel like I'm on the mend. It was never a very large cold, just a small first-day-of-school reminder, but still it left me slow-bodied and slow-witted. A rainy Sunday at home was a convalescent's dream.

This morning I'll be back to work: first, a walk and mushroom hunt in the rain; then weekly housework, a zoom meeting, and with luck I'll also manage to finish my editing project. Pan-roasted spicy chicken is on the docket for dinner, alongside fresh salsa and guacamole and buttered Swiss chard. I need to run a couple of errands. I'd like to work on a poem but likely won't have time. I'm finishing up Niall Williams's This Is Happiness and then I'll start on John Berryman's Dream Songs (my next reading project with Teresa) and Ruth Moore's A Walk down Main Street, about high school basketball in 1950s-era Maine.

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One thing I did accomplish on my convalescent day was to send out the first fundraising letter for the Baron Wormser Scholarship for Teachers. Baron died last October--on my birthday--so now seemed like a good time to announce this initiative and to think again about how much he gave to the world. Here's the letter I sent out. If you can donate to the fund, I would be so grateful--

Announcing the Baron Wormser Scholarship for Teachers

Last October we lost our friend and mentor Baron Wormser to brain cancer. As the first anniversary of that loss approaches, I have been thinking again about the hole his absence has left. So many of us were changed by his writings, his teaching, his comradeship. He built a space for many people who might not otherwise have known we belonged to the poetry world. He helped us to find one another, and to find ourselves.

Perhaps Baron’s greatest public service was his devotion to teachers and to young people. When he founded the Conference on Poetry and Teaching at the Frost Place more than two decades ago, he threw out a lifeline to teachers who had been struggling to balance their own creative longings with their responsibility to their students as well as with the burdens of institutional requirements and increasing political pressure. The conference quickly attracted participants from around the United States and beyond. Though it began by focusing on K–12 educators, it was soon welcoming community college and university professors, MFA candidates, teaching artists, people working in social service and government positions, even poets with no institutional affiliation who were simply drawn to the collegial, democratic nature of the conference.

After Baron retired as director of the conference in 2012, I was honored to shoulder the work he’d begun. Now, after nearly a quarter-century at the Frost Place, it is thriving today as the Conference on Poetry and Learning, held each July at Monson Arts in central Maine.

In honor of Baron, I am announcing the establishment of the Baron Wormser Scholarship for Teachers, a full scholarship to the conference that will be awarded annually to a K–12 inservice teacher who could not otherwise afford to attend.

If you would like to honor Baron with a donation to this scholarship fund, I would be immensely grateful. Simply follow this link and scroll through the donation options until you find “Conference on Poetry and Learning (Baron Wormser Donation).”

Your support of the conference helps us continue the work that Baron began. He believed that poetry opened a window into the best of humanity. Our teachers and our young people are the future we must cherish.