Rain is tapping at the windows, and cold is seeping through the crevices. Last Saturday I played a gig in 90-degree heat. This morning I turned on the heat in our apartment. My justification is that I'd better enjoy "free" heat while I can because the oil bill at our new house is not going to be pretty. Also, I'm freezing.

But my bathrobe is thick, and the coffee is cooking, and my little garden needs the rain.

Yesterday before dinner I finished painting the bedroom walls, washed the spackled walls in both studies, and slapped primer over some weird stains. Meanwhile, Tom tore off the back stoop, which was a hideous conglomeration of rot. Today he's going to frame out space for the new kitchen door and window, and I will paint and paint and paint. The bedroom walls came out beautifully, so I am feeling enthusiastic, despite the sloppy boredom of the job. The brand of paint Tom chose turns out to have a thick velvety sheen that is very satisfying to stare at. Texture-wise, it sort of feels like painting with pudding.

I have made some headway in the John Brown biography, and thus far I've been struck by how Miltonic his version of Puritanism seems . . . not that Brown was a scholar, but the way in which their stern beliefs fed their social radicalism does seem to have parallels.

Here's what Reynolds writes, in John Brown, Abolitionist:

Normally Puritanism does not factor in histories of the Civil War. A widely held view is that Puritanism, far from stirring up warlike emotions, had by the nineteenth century softened into a benign faith in America's millennial promise. Supposedly, it buttressed mainstream cultural values, fostering consensus and conformity.

For many in the Civil War era, however, Puritanism meant radical individualism and subversive social agitation. In 1863, the Democratic congressman Samuel Cox typically blamed the Civil War on disruptive New England reform movements that he said were rooted in Puritanism. He insisted that fanatical Abolitionism caused the war, and, in his words, "Abolition is the offspring of Puritanism. . . . Puritanism is a reptile which has been boring into the mound, which is the Constitution, and this civil war comes in like a devouring sea!"

Good morning . . . and sorry for running late today. Though I've been awake for hours and I've been doing work stuff and house stuff, I've only just now managed to get dressed and back to my laptop.

It's 40 degrees here this morning, a extreme swing from where we've been for the past several days. Tom is so relieved. Framing a three-story house, which is never fun, is a misery in hot weather. And then after work, he's had to go to deal with our own feckless house. He does not lead an easy life.

In the meantime, I edit and try to track down subcontractors and read about John Brown and paint rooms and cook  meals and fold laundry and throw a few more phrases into the long one-sentence poem I've been stringing along for the past week or so. It's probably a miserable piece of work, but it's keeping me going, in a playing-scales kind of way.

Still no word about the Autumn House results. But yesterday I applied for an Obama Foundation Fellowship in the hopes of being able to disseminate the work we do at the Frost Place more widely. I won't get it, of course, but the act of writing about that work was uplifting.

And all three of my invited guest poets said yes. Let the 2018 season begin!

Today I think the weather will moderate to something more akin to September in Maine. It's about time. I love summer, but this weather has been exhausting.

My John Brown book arrived yesterday, thank goodness; and when Tom got home and saw it on the coffee table, he asked, "How many chapters have you read already?" Fortunately, I preserved my self-respect and was able to say in a dignified manner, "I did not have time to read today. I only got through the preface and part of chapter 1."

But guess what? I switched paint colors! Now instead of Ceiling White, everything I touch will be French Moire, which in case you were wondering is kind of a subdued robin's egg blue. It's going on the walls of our bedroom and my study, to be accompanied with, eventually, On the Rocks trim and a Sunny Veranda alcove. (That's pale grey and bright yellow, for those not in the know.)

I also filled out two W-9 forms, which, though dull on the surface, is a signal that two institutions are preparing to pay me some money. So that had its charms as well.

As you can see, my life is full of poetry.

Fog drapes thinly over the bay, and already the humidity is intensifying.

I'm back at my desk today: no morning walk past the cruise ships disgorging their thousands. I have a wagonload of editing work to do, and I also have some hopes of dipping back into my poem-in-progress. I also have endless painting work to do, so who knows what will transpire?

Yesterday evening Tom and I went to the tile store and sort of narrowed down what we like for the kitchen floor (grey slate or its porcelain twin) and the counter backsplash (red glass). Tom will be building the cabinets of fir, and I think we'll have white countertop. And he got word from the city that they're about to issue our building permit. I guess that means things will be shortly be hustling along.

I'm feeling good at the moment, despite also feeling overwhelmed by duty. My two days among the teachers were revivifying, and I'm glad to have so much steady editing work. My new garden is producing new greens: this evening, I'll harvest a batch of kale and chard. I've been playing music, and hanging out with friends, and carving out a small space for private thought.

But Puerto Rico.

Here it is, 7:15 a.m. in Maine at the end of September, and I am decked out in full July gear--sleeveless shirt, summer skirt, flip-flops. Sweat is already beading up along the bridge of my nose. Portland is so hot and humid. It's very strange.

This morning I will walk down past the docks again, past the giant cruise ships disgorging their passengers, past the sellers of lobster-decorated geegaws, past the homeless man sitting in the middle of the sidewalk declaiming, "Welcome to Portland!" amid a stampede of oblivious visitors. . . . The tourist explosion is unsettling. I've never lived in such a place before.

Fortunately my end goal will be worth it. Yesterday I spent all day doing teacher-training stuff at the Telling Room, and I have to say: it is sweet to be surrounded by eager, dedicated people--many younger than me, a few older--who love the word, and love young people, and love collaboration; whose discomfort with the system guides their eagerness to swoop into schools and do this guerrilla work. It's a pretty wonderful scenario, and I am more and more certain that I'm going to fit in just fine here.

On Saturday evening, I played one of the hottest open-air gigs ever: 90 degrees in the shade at the end of September in central Maine. But then Tom and I had a lovely noisy talky overnight in Wellington. And in the morning we stopped in Skowhegan to buy $600 worth of house paint and drove south via Waterville, where we stopped to look at the Marsden Hartley show at the Colby College Museum. For dinner we had mushroom risotto with a passel of honey mushrooms my friend Steve had picked for us. And then we fell asleep in sweaty exhaustion.

Today will be different. I'll be spending two workdays at the Telling Room, doing various inservice-y things with the other teaching artists. I'm a bit anxious about leaving my desk, where I am juggling back and forth among five different projects, with subjects as varyied as "politics in Tanzania," "getting a job on Wall Street," and "how is Walt Whitman like the founder of Mormonism?" I'm also a bit relieved to be leaving my desk. My brain is tumbling with other people's necessary facts.

So, as a break, today and tomorrow I'll have a 9:30-to-3 job, almost sort of like a regular person's, if that person went to work late and came home early.

This afternoon Tom and I will head north to the homeland, where the band and I will play a gig at a community party in Sangerville and Tom will amuse himself till we're done. This will be his first visit north since last winter, and I wonder what it will feel like for him.

The weather is supposed to be strangely hot today, so this gazebo gig will apparently not be much like one we played at Moosehead in August, when I thought the north wind would drag us into the lake.

I have been on a roll lately, at least as regards dinner. I told you about the pan-fried scup we had a couple of nights ago. Well, last night I took a notion to mix together some coarse mustard, olive oil, cayenne, salt/pepper, and chopped rosemary; spread it all over a small boneless pork loin; and bake it for an hour at 325 degrees. It was magnificent, and just about as easy as opening a package of Oreos . . . a fine after-house-painting-when-you-are-starving-but-sick-of-working meal.

In actual news: I'm just about to send off invitation letters to guest faculty for the 2018 Frost Place Conference on Poetry and Teaching. I hope they say yes, I hope they say yes.