I want to remind you Portland-area locals that I'll be leading a 10-week poetry master class for the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance this fall, beginning on September 14. At least I'm hoping I'll be leading it because if we don't get enough sign-ups, it won't run. And since I'd really like it to run, I'm begging you wafflers to go ahead and take the plunge and register so we can hang out for 10 weeks together.

I realized lately that this will be the first Labor Day Weekend in approximately 20 years that I won't be staffing the Harmony Fair's exhibit hall. I did, in fact, get an invitation to serve as the vegetable judge, but I've got to drive the boy to college, so I had to say no. I thought I'd feel more melancholy than I do about missing the fair, but maybe 20 years spent breathing dust and shouting over the roar of truck pulls is long enough. Instead, I will be hauling boxes out of a Vermont storage unit, lugging a "portable" keyboard up dormitory stairs, and exchanging wan smiles with other students' similarly laden parents. And then I will embrace the boy and drive away to eat a peaceable dinner with my in-laws. On the whole it will be better than arguing with a crabby old man over why his head of garlic didn't get a blue ribbon.