Updatery

Things done well and with a care, exempt themselves from fear.
--Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

Today is the first day of high school in the Village of Coopertown, so lark-rising season begins for me and my youngest. Tomorrow I tote my two eldest to driving school as well, as it is time for one young man and one young woman to learn how to navigate the world. My husband seems to be having a fine time in Mozambique, and has not been eaten by lions or trampled by hippos.

Yesterday I finished the first stage of the reading that has occupied my time since early June. The guest room floor is impassable, a city with skyscraper stacks of books. And each volume is a separate world with its own angle of vision and laws and dreams. Lately I have read some good books, particularly novels, that I will not forget and that will no doubt lure me on in some dream of winning those "silver apples of the moon." As Henry James said of novels, "the good subsists and emits its light and stimulates our desire for perfection."

But now it is time to catch up on all the things I have left undone, from my garden to promised writing and contracts to be reviewed and house repair.

The ghost files

Whenever I look out the front windows, I can see a house with three ghosts... four, if you count one in the stone wall. And I not long ago heard a ghost story about my federal era house. But I've written about those and other Cooperstown ghosts before. Here's a brand new one. Last week I was sitting outside on a bench when S. came by, walking a dog. She told me that her youngest son had been dog-sitting at a house down the street, one that had been a medical clinic in the late nineteenth century.

The day before, her son G. had walked the dog and taken it back in the house. But as he turned away from the dog in the shadowy entrance hall, he realized that a woman was standing close behind him. Alas, he bolted for the door and did not engage her in cross-species chitchat.

A little gift from Float Press

An interesting envelope from Austin, Texas in the mail...

Judy Jensen asked me for an August poem for Float Press.
(Click for larger versions in a new window.)

So I promptly wrote a triolet about Lammas,
the ancient festival of harvest, Hlaf-mass,
when bread would be blessed at church.

And in return I have three "postcards,"
or tiny letterpress broadsides.
Thank you, Judy and Float Press!

How it goes in the Village of Cooperstown--

As my husband (man of hobbies and adventures) flew off to Johannesburg and then Maputo and rambled on from there a few days ago, I am about to drag a healthy young man or two out of bed and fare into the world to do things that are normally on the man-list, starting with loading the Tundra with recycling and sacks of garbage and heading off to the village dump. Unfortunately I forgot to ask where the dump is, so I shall just have to trust my nose...

I'm still immersed in reading, so no new writing for a while longer. Shall post some more pieces from the Tinies, perhaps.

But mostly I am thinking about how I do not want my husband to be eaten by a lion.