We have canned 60 pints of sauce, 10 half pints of kama sutra chutney, 53 pints of plum tomatoes, dried 4 16 oz. jars of tomatoes –AND STILL THEY COME! We have given away probably 2 bushels of tomatoes at least. AND STILL THEY COME! Enough. I will not can another tomato. Damn it, I’m a writer, a poet, not a tomato canner. I am done with tomatoes [except, except I need to dehydrate a few more to fill up the 5^th jar]. This right knee is taking forever to heal. I do many of the things I usually do. I went out last Sunday night and played poker with friends. I walked. Of course I canned. I cooked. Today I’m going to a party at the Elephant House on Wellfleet Bay. Paul and Dan give an annual end of summer party. The Elephant House is not where they live but is in their family and they give a large party there in September. It’s a famous house locally, beautiful and eccentric and so called because of its profile from the water. As I said, I am working on being as normally active as I can be, but it hurts. Sometimes it hurts a lot, like the day before yesterday. When I came back from a walk, both knees were angry. My new story is revised, finished and accepted. I have been writing poems, four since my last blog. Now everything will stop because at 4:30 yesterday the copyedited ms. of my new poetry book MADE IN DETROIT arrived. It’s due back in a week and a half, so I’ll be quite occupied with it. I like it very much. They sent 2 new covers, an improvement over the last batch but not quite what I’d hoped for. My assistant Melenie is busy getting ready for her wedding next weekend so I will only have her one day this week, then one day the next before they fly off to Paris. They will have one hundred guests. They figured out this week what poems they want me to read as part of the service at the UU church. I had wanted to go to Maine this week for an overnight trip but my knees did not agree, so we put it off until the first week in October. I hope I will be able to go then. I was looking forward to the trip. I am reading Dora Horn’s GUIDE TO THE PERPLEXED and enjoying it very much. Also got back into Cavafy, a periodic dip. This morning I will make tabouli for the party today. My tabouli is different from what you might expect. Yes, it has lots of parsley; also some mint. But I cut up raw vegetables into it, very small. Zukes, pattypans, cukes, red onions and just before we go, tomatoes. Good olive oil and some toasted sesame oil goes in first. We soaked it last night and then before we went to bed, put it in the big sieve to drain overnight. The Cape has thinned out a fair amount so that it is possible to get places again and this week no tourist killed themselves on route 6 or killed a local, cause for celebration. We don’t hear the police sirens every twenty minutes. We can go to the post office to get our mail, go to Orleans again without risking a several hour delay while another accident is investigated in agonizing detail and finally clearer. We can actually start to work on some of the house and garden improvements we need. We get our lives back again.