I am excited about the Democratic ticket, excited in a way that, a few weeks ago, I did not think could be possible. Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are smart and interesting and funny and personable. Like me, they are 1964 babies, and thus they understand the power of snark and irony, as my generation does so well, but they also understand joy . . . and this is such a massive, massive relief.

I've been thinking that age 60 may be the perfect time to run a good presidential campaign. We've got life experience, but we've also got energy. And we've got a vivid relationship with the generations on either side of us. Many of us still have living parents; many of us are the parents of young-adult children. This creates the possibility of a broad network of knowledge and care and trust. It's an interesting moment, even if we're not running for president.

I'm not going to burden you with a politicking post: I'm pretty sure that all of my eight or so readers will be voting the same way I do in November, so you don't need any advice from me. But all of us have endured some gruesome times together, and the cloud of gloom has been hard to break through--sometimes impossible to break through. Reports of last night's raucous, happy Harris-Walz rally in Philadelphia dispelled some of my gloom, and that's no small thing in this era of dread.

Another drizzly dawn after a night of downpour. Still, most of yesterday was sunny enough for me to dry sheets on the line, though I didn't have time to do much else outside, other than take a morning walk and pick vegetables for dinner. The new editing project swallowed my morning, housework swallowed the afternoon, and by late in the day I was at the stove hovering over the first sauce of the season. The tomatoes are coming in early and fast, and there is nothing lovelier in a pan than a clutch of Romas, a few bright peppers, a sliver of onion, and a pat of butter.

This morning I'll be back on my mat and back at my desk. With the weekly house chores behind me, maybe I'll have a chance to mow grass or move compost in the afternoon, if things ever dry out around here. 

I've been reading Babel Tower steadily, and I've been thinking hard about my friend's poetry manuscript, but I haven't written much myself for the past few days. That's fine--I've certainly met my quota of poems for the summer: I've been productive and I've been excited about being productive. Lately I've been feeling a lot of confidence, which may or may not be justified but is at least reassuring. It's restful not to be anxious (for the moment) about my worth.

Sunday was another wet day--off-and-on drizzles and downpour, no possibility of yard work, though I did find a few dryish minutes to pick blueberries and tomatoes. Instead, I spent much of the morning at my desk, finishing up commentary on my friend's ms, and then transferred my thoughts first to grocery shopping and then to the kitchen: making vanilla ice cream, making quick green-tomato pickles with a handful of windfalls, marinating chicken with lemon and fresh sage, listening to baseball, watering houseplants. I finished rereading Our Mutual Friend and started rereading A. S. Byatt's Babel Tower. I made a fresh corn, cucumber, and tomato salad; oven-braised the chicken with minced garlic and a Serrano pepper; put half of the blueberry harvest into the freezer and sugared the other half for scattering over the ice cream. It was a puttering-around day, a slow Sunday-dinner-prep day, a day for an apron, a summer dress, and a fat novel.

And today I am back on the job. This morning I'll begin a new big editing project; in the afternoon I'll clean the house; in the interstices I'll wash sheets and towels and maybe get them onto the line if the weather give me the nod. I'll go for an early-morning walk in search of mushrooms, though on the whole it's been a terrible foraging summer. Outside a cardinal sings his Jericho, Jericho tune. Upstairs T clings half-heartedly to sleep.

We went out last night with our friend Betsy to see the Arkestra--the jazz group founded by Sun Ra in the 1950s and that has continued to perform since his death in the 90s. The venue was the big First Parish Church downtown, and the place was packed, and very hot, but the show was terrific--a mix of loopy hypnotic Afrofuturism and demented Duke Ellington, performed by a giant band, all clad in sequined capes and King Tut hats, etc., and all of them stellar musicians. The audience, a real all-ages crowd, was swooning with heat and delight: it was a great show, and afterward I stepped into the coolish night air feeling giddy and excited by the comedy and beauty and history and cadence of it all.

Still, after three outings in a row, I'm ready for a quiet Sunday. It's drizzling outside again, so I have no idea what I'll be able to do in the garden and yard today. I suppose I should undergo the grocery store, though, and I'll probably try to finish reading my friend's poetry manuscript as I've got a new editing project to start tomorrow. Next weekend I'll be in Vermont--another flurry to prepare for. But for the moment I'll try to put that out of my mind.

A beautiful hot night for baseball, a slow walk home through the velvet gloaming, a deep sleep in a cool house. Now, this morning, I have turned off the air machine and the sound of steady rain spatters the darkness. I carry up a cup of coffee to T and he murmurs hmm? . . . wordless interrogative of comfort, of cotton sheets and deep shadow and the trickle of water against windows and the low harmless grumble of distant thunder.

And now the storm moves closer, a flash of light, a clap--sudden drama, then sudden calm, rain resisting downpour, clinging to andante, though electricity thickens the air.

Once upon a time there was a summer.

We had a sudden bat uproar in the house last night. After a terrible swooping fluttering flurry, we finally shut it into our bedroom, hoping it would eventually find the wide-open window and escape, and T and the cat and I ended up downstairs on various couches for the rest of the night, all of us attempting to calm down and get some sleep, which I'm not sure I ever did. I love bats in the wild and panic about them in close quarters--for good reason, though this one, poor thing, was clearly not interested in biting us.

My slip-sliding sentences here are a reasonable reflection of my overnight state of mind. But fortunately the open window did work. The bat has now returned to its proper sphere, and we are all highly relieved, except possibly the cat, who enjoyed the chaos, even if he was annoyed by the disruption in his sleeping arrangements.

I still have not quite pulled myself together, though a cup of coffee is helping. I sure hope I can find a moment for a nap today. I went out to write last night; tonight we're going to a baseball game, tomorrow night to a jazz show, which will mean three nights in a row of getting to bed late, on top of the bat mayhem.

In the meantime, the torrid weather continues. Yesterday I spent most of the day in front of the fan with stacks of books, a notebook, a laptop. Today will likely be a repeat--early-morning blueberry picking, a walk before the heat kicks in, and then books all day long. Let's hope the bat also has a calm day.

Just like that, it's August. Month of elegy, month of rush, the school year looming, the harvest beckoning, all of the get-me-done-before-winter obligations scratching at the door.

Of course I have an easier slide into the school year than most teachers do. My high school sessions don't get underway until late September; and with no children at home, August is more seasonal memory than actual stress. Still, there's the list of winter needs to check off: firewood, chimney sweep, furnace cleaning, car inspection . . . And there's the sudden flurry of visiting: next weekend's hustle to Vermont, the Chicago kids whirling into town, then my trip to Brooklyn, everything crammed in before my teaching schedule chains me into routine.

And summer is far from over. We'll be back in the high 80s today and tomorrow, which I suppose will mean another bout with the noisy air machine. Already the day is deeply humid, 70 degrees at 5:30 a.m. I'll probably go out and pick beans first thing this morning, before the heat sets in. I've got a dish full of plums to deal with--a future cake to bring along to my writing group tonight. I want to buy tickets for tomorrow night's Sea Dogs game, maybe our last chance to see the young Red Sox phenoms before they start getting called up to the bigs. There's no better way to soak in summer sweetness than to lean back in my seat in a minor-league ballpark, sipping a beer and and staring from field to sky as the evening rolls in.

I didn't get much writing done yesterday, mostly just playing with stanza breaks, but I did read a lot. This morning I'll go out for a walk, and then I'll return to the words and see what happens.

Maybe nothing will happen other than flowers and tomatoes and bees and the two monarch butterflies that have fallen in love with my garden. Which will be good enough.