This weekend we cower at home. Woody did our shopping on Friday instead of Sunday. We’ll get the Saturday mail on Monday. We won’t go to town for any reason, at least I won’t. Woody often braves the huge crowds that take over our village every year at this time for a brief check on things. it’s a huge moneymaking for many local businesses and a huge headache for townspeople who aren’t making money. Tens of thousands descend on our village and many of them get roaring drunk by mid-afternoon. Parking places disappear early so they park anyplace. Woody will drive halfway to town and park, then walk ¾ of a mile to town. All along Main Street – closed to traffic of course and occupied by an overflowing river of people – are the booths of nonprofits all of whom do their best to guilt trip you into parting with whatever you’ve got. Then come the oyster booths and tables. In the big tent are the restaurants set up. Then there are a hundred craftspeople, mostly not from around here but folks who go from fair to festival to flea market every week. Then there’s the bar where beer is dispensed. When Woody was a selectman, he tended bar a couple of times and was astounded by how people threw money around. Then there are the bands, audible at our house across the marsh, some good, some lousy, all loud. Always there’s an oyster shucking competition and children’s theater. And crowds and crowds and crowds. We’re off to a friend’s party tonight, but the problem is getting there. We’re exchanging routes with friends how to get to Martha’s – ordinarily a ten minute leisurely drive –in under an hour. Route six will be stationary. Town is impossible to get through in less than 45 minutes. The Catholic Church will probably block off the way through, etc.etc. It requires ingenuity to get there at all. Last night I cooked a Greek lamb dish with beans and leeks and a stuffed pumpkin, all from the garden for our dear friends Dan and Paul and for John Braden who is the manager of WOMR, the station where Woody is chair of the board and does his weekly interview program and his short humorous essay. In the morning I made a pear pumpkin pie. Dan had a terrifying and nightmarish summer with a relapse of his blood cancer that sent him into a coma for eight days, from which he almost didn’t wake. They just got back to the Cape Monday night. i haven’t seen Dan since the end of May. I know he has gotten back to writing poetry since he is coherent again. I’m looking forward to getting together whenever he is strong enough to share and critique poems. I’m working on poems this week, although I had the beginnings of an idea for another new short story. Maybe next week. I potted herbs to bring inside this week and brought in a bunch of houseplants that spent the summer outside. This weekend we have to decide what to try to save of the various ornamentals I potted, as we may well have a frost tonight or tomorrow night. We had our first salad of the fall on Wednesday. Thursday we drove into Boston in our new car and bought wine and organic meat and stuff we can’t get here. I hired a new secretary/assistant this week and she’ll work for the first time Monday. I really hope it works out, but I miss Melenie. She seems to be happy in Hadley.