Yesterday I had a two-hour zoom meeting with Julia, Maine's outgoing poet laureate, which was incredibly helpful. I asked her every little niggling question I could think to ask, and she was generous and open and so supportive. I'm grateful have her as a guide into this strange new laureate world.

Already I'm getting a lot of requests and invitations, which means that already I'm trying to sort out priorities, read situations, figure out how to be fair to others and myself. Public-facing introvert is a peculiar role, and I'm lucky to have friends with experience in the matter who can advise me when I become foolish.

Today I'll be back to ye olde copyediting, with a break for a late-morning meeting regarding some Monson Arts stuff. Tonight I'll go out and listen to my friends read--Merrill Memorial Library in Yarmouth, 6 p.m., if you want to meet me there. And then this weekend I hope to devote myself to Tom, Chuck, and the garden.

It was, as always, a refreshment to go out to write last night. One group member said that she tells her friends she "writes with luminaries" on Thursday nights, and I agree. I, too, write with luminaries . . . these bright lights, these bright voices; these explorers taking their first tentative steps into an unknown land. It is great good fortune to sit among them.