It's one degree above zero this morning in the little northern city by the sea--balmy compared to much of the rest of northern New England. Thank goodness for brand-new furnaces . . . though of course the curse of household disasters refuses to relinquish its grip. Last night, as we were driving back from dinner with friends, the clutch in Tom's truck suddenly gave out. Fortunately we were close enough to home so that he could more or less coast into the driveway. But while I'm teaching today, he's going to be figuring out where he can get his truck towed to on a Saturday morning and what the hell we're going to do about vehicles next week, given the giant snowstorm coming in tomorrow and Monday and the fact that I have to drive back and forth to Monson on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Yesterday afternoon a friend took me to see Hamnet. I did not love the novel--I felt, there, as if the character of Shakespeare was somehow too thin, compared to Agnes's. But the movie was far more convincing, in large part because Jessie Buckley, the actor who plays Agnes, has the most incredible of faces. The emotions she conveys through her expressions constantly also reveal the motivations and inner lives of those around her. It's really remarkable. Yes, the film is a shameless tear-jerker, and I cried much of the way through, but it also is incisive about how people misunderstand one another's grief and how an artist channels sorrow. I wasn't sure I wanted to see it, but I'm glad I changed my mind.

Otherwise, the atmosphere in southern Maine continues to be grim. We're under siege--by ICE, by cold. I'll spend today in class, curled up in my blue chair in my tiny sweet study, as thugs terrorize my neighbors and freezing mist coils over the bay.